Part 36

Now the happy couples--and the children too--went out into the joyful day, into the youthful garden, in order, like planets, with their moons, to stand now near each other, now far off, now in opposition, and now in conjunction, on their heavenly orbit around the same sun. "We will launch out at a venture," said Charles, in port, "and see whether we do not meet." Albano went with Liana after the children, who were already skipping along on the little houses through the rose-walks, on the bridge over the singing wood. He whose heart beats in such calm blissfulness, seeks in the invisible church no visible one: the whole temple of nature is the temple of love, and everywhere stand altars and pulpits. On the smoothly descending life-stream man stands without rudder, happy in his skiff, and leaves it to its own will.

Then the children, mindful of the maternal prohibition against excursions, led the way up along the right, over the bridged eminence, to the western triumphal arch; and Helena, merely as guide of the little convalescent, ran forward quite unexpectedly and wildly with his hand. How gladly did Albano follow the little pilots and pointers! Heavens! when they looked round them on the magnificent height, and into the rich outspread day, and then into each other's eyes, how freely and broadly did the arches of their life-bridge rear themselves, and ships, with swollen sails and proudly towering masts, sail away beneath! Rose-trees clambered up the triumphal arches, the children reached up, snatched roses from their summits, and trudged away (working out and proving the unusual obedience) over four gates, in order, from the fifth, to look down into the smooth, shining lake, and to descend into the "enchanted wood," where art, like the children, played her pranks.

Out of the entrance of the wood came forth Charles and Rabette, on their way back to Chariton over the arches, the former bound to the wine-cellar (he had something empty therefrom in his hand), and she intending to run a moment into the kitchen. He went blissfully, as if on wings, and said: "Life travels to-day in the constellation of the wain, far away through the blue." He turned round, however, to let the _Pleiades_ rise before them, that is, the so-called "inverted rain," which ascends only for the space of five minutes, and properly only in an illumination. He led them all into the wondrous wood, through a light that lay in noonday slumber, glowing under free trees, whose stems, standing far asunder, only tendered each other their long twigs. At the focus of the picturesque paths, he let them await the play of the rain. The children sprang after him with their hopes, and, backed by the courage of the grown ones, sat down by them, on designated seats of the gods, or children's seats, between two little round lakes.

While Charles ran swiftly up and down in zigzag, attending to the hydraulic and other mechanism,--nearly according to the points of the labyrinth-garden in Versailles,--they could fly about through the magic wood that rose everywhere. An all-powerful arm of the Rosana, which swept by without, struck in among the flowers, and bore a heavy, rich world; now the water was a fixed mirror, now a winding, beating vein, now a gushing spring, now a flash of lightning behind flowers, or a dark eye behind leafy veils; tapering shores, short beds, children's gardens, round islands, little hills, and tongues of land lay between: they held their motley, blooming children on arm and bosom, and the blue eyes of the forget-me-not, and the full tulip-cheeks, and the white-cheeked lilies played together like brothers and sisters apart from strangers, but roses ran through all. Now they heard a murmuring and purling; the lakes beside them bubbled up; on a peeled May-tree, fenced in on an island, the yellow fir-needles began to drop from above; from the hanging birches on the tongue of land, an inner rain dripped and glided down; out of the two lakes beside them water-jets flew like flying-fishes toward heaven. Now it gushed everywhere, and rows of fountains, those water-children, played with the flower-children. Like birds, streams fluttered with broad wings out of the laurel-hedges, and fell into the groups of roses. On a hill full of oaks, a water-snake crawled up; victoriously shot out from all the mouths of the shores besieging arches to the summits; suddenly the cheated spectators found themselves overhung with rainbows, for the lakes flung their waters high across over them, so that the wavering sun blazed through the lattice-work of drops, as through a shivered jewel-world. The children screamed with a terror of joy. The scared birds cruised through the shower; night butterflies were cast down; the turtle-doves shook themselves on the ground, beaten down in the torrents; the banks and the beds held their blooming little ones beneath the heavens.

After five minutes the whole was over, and nothing remained, save that in all flowers and eyes the moist radiance trembled, and on the waves the stars continued to glisten. The children ran after the wonder-worker, Charles. "All is over outwardly," said Albano, "but not within us. I am to-day perfectly and peacefully happy; for thou lovest me, and the whole world, too, is friendly. Art thou, too, happy, Liana?" She answered, "Still more happy, and I must needs weep for joy if I told how happy I am." But she was weeping already. "See! drops!" said she, naively, as he looked upon her, and wiped _his_, which were the sprinklings of the rainbow, softly from his cheeks. His lips touched her holy, tender eye, but the other remained open, and her love looked out from it at him, and never did her holy soul hover nearer to him.

After a few minutes this inverted heavenward shower was also over. They went across the middle of the free gardens to the eastern parts and gates. How brightly lay the coasts of the future before them, with thick, high green, and nightingales flying around the shores! Rapture makes the manly heart more womanly. The voice of his full bosom spoke but softly to Liana, on whose countenance, turned sidewise and heavenward, lay a still, pious gratitude; his fiery glance moved but slowly, and rested on the beautiful world; and he went without hasty strides around the smallest points of land. The young nightingale whet her well-fed bill against the twig, and shook herself merrily; the old one sang a short lullaby, and skipped chanting after fresh food; and everywhere flew and screamed across each other's paths the children of spring and their parents. Little white peacocks ran, without their pride, like little children in the grass. Blissfully floated the swan between her waves, with the white arch over the eyes that dipped under, and blissfully hovered the glistening music-fly, like a fixed star, undisturbed in the air, over a distant, flowery bell. The butterflies, flying flowers, and the flowers, fettered butterflies, sought and sheltered each other, and laid their variegated wings to wings; and the bees exchanged flowers only for blossoms, and the rose which has no thorns for them they exchanged only for the linden.

"Liana," said Albano, "how I love the whole world to-day, on thy account! I could give the flowers a kiss, and press myself into the very heart of the full trees; I could not tread in the way of the long chafer down there." "Should one," she replied, "ever feel otherwise? How can a human being, I have often thought, who has a mother, and knows her love, so afflict and rend the heart of a brute mother? But Spener says, we do not forgive beasts even their virtues." "Let us go to him," said he.

They came out through the eastern gate on the mountain-way behind the flute-dell, up to the house of old Spener, which lay in noonday brightness; but, as they heard loud reading and praying, they chose rather to walk by at a great distance, in order not to throw so much as their shadow into his holy heaven.

They gazed into the fair, still flute-dell, and would fain go directly in; at length it spoke up to them with one flute. Their friends seemed to be down below there. The flute continued long to complain, as if lonely and forsaken; no sisters and no fountains murmured in with it. At last there rose, panting, in company with the flute, a timid, trembling singer's voice, struggling forth. It was Rabette, behind the tall bushes. She stirred both to the depths of the soul, because the poor creature, with the labor of her helpless voice, was rendering her loved one the meek sacrifice of obedience. "O my Albano," said Liana, twining around him with ecstasy, "what sweetness to think that my brother is happy, and has found peace of soul, and _that_ through thy sister!" "He deserves all my peace," said he, with emotion; "but we will not disturb the two, but go back the old way." For Rabette's tones were often cut short, but it was uncertain whether by fear, or by kisses, or by emotion.

When they came in again through the eastern gate, the songstress and Charles came out of the green portal to meet them, both with wet eyes. Charles, stepping impetuously over living beds, and with wandering eyes, grasped a hand of both with his, and said, "This is, for once in this rainy world, a day which does not look like a night. Brother, but when one is so deeply blest, and catches the music of the spheres, the tones are such as were once heard in token that from Mark Antony his patron deity, Hercules, was departing." Thus are joys, like other jewels, mechanical poisons, which only in the distance shine, but, when touched and swallowed, eat into us. But Albano replied, smiling, "Since thou now fearest, dear friend, thou hast nothing to fear; for thou art not perfectly happy. I, however, alas! fear nothing." "Bravo!" said Charles; "now go into your kitchen, maiden!" He went into the so-called "Temple of Dreams," but soon hastened after her into the forbidden kitchen.

Albano visited Liana's spring chamber. Here he painted to himself from memory that bright Sunday when Liana led him through Lilar, and he let the past soothingly glimmer into the present; but the latter overpowered the former with its beams. Out in the garden stood and shone, so it seemed to him, the pure pillars of his heaven, the supporters of his temple, the trees; and all that he here saw near him belonged again to his happiness, Liana's books and pictures and flowers, and every little mark of her tender hand.

At last the saint of the Rotunda herself--suffused with a virgin blush at this nearness and at his blushing--stepped in, to take him away into the cool dining-room. It was small and dusky, but the heart needs not for its heaven much space nor many stars therein, if only the star of love has arisen. To the table-talk,--whereby alone an eating becomes a human one,--and to the jokes,--the finest _entremets_, the powdered sugar of conversation,--the children contributed their share, especially as they, unqualified to ascend from the forbidden _thou_ to _you_, always used thou-you at once. The deeply-red Chariton made extracts from Dian's letters and from the history of her life, and from the surgeon's bulletins in relation to Pollux's broken arm; she sought to extol the snow-balls, listened with a half-credulous, half-cunning look to the Captain, who spun out the sportive marriage-thou toward Rabette into five acts, and smiled with pleasure just where it was required. Especially did that music-barrel of all souls, Charles, spin joyously round; that Jupiter, around whom the eclipses of so many satellites were always flying, could show a great, serene splendor, when he and others wished. As often as Albano, according to the old way, would not come to his tragedy, he drew up the curtain of a comedy. To the good Rabette a word was as good as a look from him, although she only returned the latter, so as neither to fall into the _Thou_ nor into the _You_. Albano, knit with ears and eyes to one soul, could not produce with his lips much more than a smile of bliss; he could more easily have made a hymn than a _bon-mot_, a grace at meat than a dinner speech. For his Liana was to-day too affectionate, so contentedly and exhilaratingly did the sweet maiden look round with such hearty play, acting the chatty, bantering hostess, that a man who saw it and thought of her firm death-belief, would only have been so much the more deeply affected by this dance around the grave with flowers on the head, though he should remark--or rather for the very reason of his remarking--that she was here merely carrying on a joke with jocoseness itself for the sake--according to her new moral funeral arrangement--of sweetening for her beloved every parting-hour, as well the next as the last of all. But this was hard to perceive, because in female souls every show easily becomes reality, whether it be a sad or a gay one.

How happy was her friend and every good being to think that the saint pronounced herself blest! And then she became, in turn, still more so. Thus does the radiance of joy dart to and fro between sympathizing hearts, as between two mirrors, in growing multiplication, and grows without end.

72. CYCLE.

The hour of departure came rolling on with swifter and swifter wheels; more constellations of joy went down than came up. Thus do the blooming vineyards of life always grow green on the ups and downs of a mountainous way, never on a smooth plain. The two lovers needed quiet now, not walks. They took the nearest, the path to the thunder-house. They stepped into the glimmering vesper-grounds as into a new land; at mid-day man is awakened from one dream after another, and has always forgotten and sees things always new. In Albano the golden splendor of the strings of joy still lingered under the declining sun; he told her gladly, how often he would visit her at her parents', and how he certainly hoped to find them friendly. Liana, as a daughter and a lover, retouched all his hopes with her own. But now she let her hitherto light heart, which had been rocking itself on the flowers of sport, sink back upon the solid ground of earnest.

When there is peace and fulness in a man, he wishes not to enjoy anything else but himself; every motion, even of the body, jostles the full nectar-cup. They hastened out of the loud, lively garden into the still, dark thunder-house. But when, as if parted from the world, which lay out around the windows, brightly glistening and far receding, they stood alone together in the little twilight, and looked upon each other,--and when Albano's soul became like a sun-drunken mountain at evening, light, warm, firm, and fair, and Liana's soul like an up-gushing spring on the mountain, which glides away purely bright and cool and hidden, and only under the touch of the evening-beam glows in rosy redness,--and now that these souls had just found each other in the wide, unharmonious world,--then did a mighty joy thrill through them like a prayer, and they cast themselves upon each other's hearts, and glowed and wept and looked upon each other exaltedly in the embrace;--and, on the Æolian-harp, suddenly the folding doors of an inspired concert-hall flew open, and outswelling harmonies floated by, and suddenly again the gates shut to.

They seated themselves at the breezy eastern window, before which the mountains of Blumenbühl and Lilar's hills and paths lay in the sunlight. Around them was evening shade, and all was still, and the Æolian-harp breathed low. They only looked at each other, and felt joy to their innermost being that they loved and possessed each other. How ecstatically did they look, from the protection of this citadel, down into the sounding, stirring world! Down below the wind blew the blaze of poppies and tulips far and wide, and in among the heavy, yellow harvest. The silver-poplars, wearing eternal May-snow, fluttered with uptossing splendor; a flock of pigeons went rustling away, and dipped into the blue; and overhead, amid flying clouds, stood those round temples of God, the mountains, in rows, beside each other, bearing alternate nights and days; and the pious father stood alone on his hill, and handed his roe tender branches.

"Thus may we ever remain!" said Albano, and pressed her dear hand with both of his to his heart. "Here and hereafter!" said she. "Albano, how often have I wished thou wert at the same time my female friend, that I might speak with thee of thyself! Who on the earth knows how I esteem thee, except myself alone?" "Here and hereafter? Liana, I am happier than thou, for I alone believe in our _long_ life here," said he, all at once changed.

Whatever, now, may have been the reason,--whether that man is not at all accustomed to be happy in a pure present, severed from all future and past, because his inner heaven, like the natural one, directly over his head and close to him, always looks dark-blue, and only round about the distant horizon radiant; or that there is a bliss so tender and unearthly as, like the moonshine, to be made too dark by every passing cloud, whereas a sturdy one, like daylight, can bear the broadest; or that Albano was too much like men who always in joy feel their powers so strongly that they would rather kick over the table of the gods than see a dish or a loaf of the heavenly bread less thereupon, rather be perfectly miserable than not perfectly happy;--suffice it, he could not and would not be guilty of longer fear and concealment.

So, when Liana, instead of answering, only embraced him, and was silent, because she meant to remain the whole day true to her promise not to dash the festal tapestry of fair days with a shade of mourning-cloth, then, as if urged on by a strange spirit, he spoke out: "Thou answerest nothing? Only joys, not sorrows, shall I share? Thou hast not thy veil? Wilt thou spare _me_ as a weakling? and thee alone shall thy death-belief continue to oppress? Liana, I will have pangs, too, and all thine,--tell all!"

"Truly, I only meant to keep my promise," said she, "and no more. But what then shall I say to thee, dear?"

"Dost thou believe, then, that thou art certainly to die after a year, superstitious one?--heavenly one!" said he.

"In so far as it is God's will, certainly," said she. "O my good Albano, how can I help my belief, much as it pains thee too?" And here she could no longer restrain her tears, and all the crucifixes of memory started up alive in the fair soul, and bled intensely.

"God's will?" asked he. "Quite as well might he at this moment precipitate a winter as an iceberg, into this happy summer. God?" he repeated, looked up, knelt down, and prayed, "O thou all-loving God--But thou shalt not die to me!" He turned, as if in anger, towards her, incapable of continuing his prayer, for the cry of his heart, and wiping hastily with both hands over his moist face. Now he prayed on, with a soft, trembling voice: "No, thou all-loving One! kill not this fair, young life! Leave us together long in purity and in peace."

She knelt involuntarily at his side;--to-day more exhausted with pleasures and unknown inner victories, even with long walking, so much the more intensely struck by a moving reality that she had been spoiled and softened by moving fancies, and inexpressibly afflicted at Albano's sorrow;--she could not speak; her head and neck bowed, as under a burden suddenly laid upon them; and thus, as one heavily overclouded by a whole life, she looked down upon the floor. The embracing death-flood sounded with one arm around her; then did she see, without looking up, her Caroline pass by somewhere in bridal dress, and with the white, gold-spangled veil trailing along far over life; and she saw clearly how the celestial shape, when Albano begged for her life, shook its head slowly to and fro. "Cease to pray!" she cried, inconsolably. "But listen to me, thou cold apparition, and only make _him_ happy!" she prayed, but she saw nothing more; and, with inexpressible love, she hid her face, marked all over with the lines of agony, upon his breast.

Here her brother called up, that the carriage was ready. She threw down a quick, thin-voiced "Yes." "Must we part?" asked Albano; the fiery rain of ecstasy had now fallen back into his open soul, in the shape of a darker rain of ashes; and so he went on without any bounds to his anguish. "Then have we seen each other for the last time?" and under the closed eyelid his noble eye wept.

"No! in the name of the All-gracious, no!" said she, and rose to go. "Stay!" said he, and she staid, and embraced him again. "But do not accompany me!" she entreated. "Not!" said he, and held her for some time as she withdrew, by the tips of the fingers; it pained him so much, when he saw the sufferings which had been brought upon this still form, that these white wings of innocence had beaten themselves bloody against his cliffs and mountain-horns. He drew her again to himself, ere he let her and his salvation go from him. He looked after her as she slowly stole down along the sunny mountain, drying her eyes under the twigs, and went with bowed head along all the gay, blooming paths of the forenoon's walk. But he gazed not after, when her carriage rolled away across the joyous wood; he stood at the eastern window, and saw his childhood's mountains tremble, because he had forgotten to dry his eyes.

FOOTNOTES:

[180] The Titan was originally divided into four volumes.--TR.

[181] A musical term, meaning the compensation made by transferring to imperfect concords part of the beauty of the perfect ones.--TR.

[182] Every partial development of course works well for the whole; but only for this reason, because its opposite partial one balances it in a higher equation and sum total, so that all individual men are only the limbs of a single giant, such as the Swedenborgian _man_ is. But in so far as, in one individual, a want arises which helps out an opposite one in another,--so that the road of humanity plagues and trips equally much by hills and by hollows,--it will be seen that every one-sided fulness is, only a cure of the times, not their health; and that the higher law is, after all, a culture slower in the individual, but still harmonious; less in amount, indeed, but impartial, and thereby, in the long run, even more rapid. We always forget that--as in mechanics power and time are mutual supplements--eternity is the infinite power.

[183] According to Borreux, the engineer, literally only every thousandth shot from small-arms hits. So is it in all cases; fear death, and then there stand flower-pots ready to fall from chamber-windows, lightnings from the blue sky, air-guns going off, polypuses in the heart, mad dogs, robbers, every gash in the finger, _aqua toffana_, proud flesh, &c., in short, all nature--that ever-going, crushing cochineal-mill--stands with innumerable open scissors of fate round about thee, and thou hast no consolation, save this, that--nevertheless people grow eighty years old. Fear impoverishment: then fire, flood, famine, and war, banditti and revolutions, set upon thee with greedy claws and fangs; and yet, thou rich man! the poor man--creeping along under the same birds of prey--becomes at last as rich as thou. March, therefore, boldly through the slumbering lion-herd of dangers, lying on the right and left, and go up to the fountain, only do not wantonly wake them up; of course a hell-god drags down individuals who feared nothing; but so, too, does a higher God draw up individuals who expected nothing; and fear and hope are swallowed in one common night.

[184] Titan, 13. Cycle.