Part 37

[185] At the court of King Olaus, the royal youth Olo, dressed as a peasant, offered himself as a champion of the daughter against robbers. Then did the fire of the eyes and nobleness of form tell as proof of a high descent; thus did Suanhita, for example, recognize King Regner in a herdsman's guise by the beauty of his eye and face. The king's daughter looked searchingly into Olo's flaming eye, and came near swooning; she essayed a second look, and was senseless; and at the third, swooned. The divine youth therefore cast his eyelids down but uncovered his brow and his golden hair and the signs of his rank. See "The German and his Native Land," by Rosenthal and Karg, Vol. I. pp. 166, 167.

[186] For what we call light is only an intenser white. No one sees, by night, the luminous stream which rushes upward along by the earth, pouring from the sun upon the full moon.

[187] This warmer, tenderer, more timid, ever-praised sex, living more in the opinion of others than in its own, is poisonously pierced by a reproach which only pricks _us_ so as to draw a little blood, as noxious beasts, in warm countries and months, poison, and in cold ones only wound. Therefore let the girls' schoolmaster consider that a dose which is satire upon the boy--who, besides, must withstand opinion--becomes a lampoon, when it lights upon his sister.

[188] Poetic name for May.--TR.

[189] In which were always enclosed letters from Liana to Albano. Let every one see here, by two examples, how on the harmonica of love a brother must stand in front as key-bank for the sister, who would reach the bells. There should, therefore, always be a couple of couples, diametrically connected in sisterhood and affection.

[190] "Such a character," writes Hafenreffer in this connection, "were desirable for romancing Kotzebues, for they, as he always will, according to his nature, create and raise the dignity of the situation by the accidental place thereof, might, under the cloak of his personality, humor entirely their own and disguise the weakness of the poet under the weakness of the hero." Methinks this is, so far as a biographer of romancers can decide, very striking.

[191] Tiring-women.--TR.

SIXTEENTH JUBILEE.

THE SORROWS OF A DAUGHTER.

73. CYCLE.

Clouds like these last consisted with Albano less of falling drops than of settling dust. His life was yet a hothouse, and stood therefore toward the sunny side. Every day brought a new apology for the absent sweetheart, till at last she needed one no longer. But still he gave to every day its letter of indulgence for her silence; by and by they grew into letters of respite (moratories); finally, when she never let anything at all be heard or read from her; then he began to re-examine the afore-said apologies, and strike out many things therein.

Quite as little could he find for himself, or for a note, a way of access to her. Even the Captain had been gone for some days on a journey to Haarhaar. With faint hands he held the heavy, drained cup of joy, which, when empty, weighs the heaviest. The wild hypotheses which man in such a case trots[192] through him--as in this, for instance, that of Liana's being sick, having caught cold, her imprisonment, absence on a journey--are, in their alternation and value, to be compared with nothing, except with the quite as great wildness and number of the plans which he enlists and dismisses,--that of abduction, of hate, of a duel, of despair.

The terrible motionless time had no gnomon on its dial-plate. He stood as near his fate as man does to his dreams, without being able to recognize or prepare for its form, any more than one can for that which dreams will take. He went often into the city, through all whose streets there was riding, running, and driving, because they were about bringing and nailing together the beams for the grandest throne-scaffolding, on which the princely bride at her introductory compliment in the land, might look round the farthest; but he heard nothing there of his own bride, except that she quite often visited the picture-gallery with the Minister.

Hereby two distressing hypotheses, that of her sickness, and that of her being at war with her family, seemed to lose their stings. The best, though the hardest thing was, to go straight to the Minister, as to Vesuvius, in order there to have the fairest prospect. He visited the Vesuvius. In fact this volcano was never more still and green. He asked after everything, and expressed himself upon much which immediately concerned the marriage festival; nor did he seek to conceal his hopes and wishes that the Count would help welcome the admirable bride.

At last the latter, too, must venture to unfold _his_ hopes and wishes about the ladies. The Minister replied, with uncommon pleasantness, that the two had just carried back the "charming Mademoiselle von Wehrfritz" to Blumenbühl; and indulged himself forthwith in a eulogium of that "unsophisticated nature." Albano soon took his leave, but much happier than when he came. A few street-lamps[193] certainly were now burning on his path.

But in the morning he fell into a little obscure alley, where there was not a single one; in other words, Rabette, the little reindeer, came running to Lilar, as she yesterday had to Pestitz,--for what is a race of a mile to a country-girl, else than a simple _Allemande_?[194]--and shook and shook her heart before him, even to its very ears, but nothing fell out of it except pleasant images, a few heavens, a complete wedding-day, a couple of parents-in-law, and a Captain's wife. "The Minister had been so courteous toward me, but--the mother afterward still more so toward my parents; and they have mentioned and praised the Captain so much,--in short, they of course know all, my glorious, heartily-loved brother!" said she,--but of Liana she had nothing to bring to her glorious brother, except a bill of her health; her joyous eye had not turned toward any dark region whatever. "We were not alone a minute, that is the reason of it," she added, and came again upon the subject of her Captain, whom the Minister had sent out on the Haarhaar road, as chief marshal of the escort of the Princess; yet she referred him to the illumination night in Lilar, when she and Liana, and the parents on both sides, had arranged to be there. Thou good creature! who is so cruel as to begrudge thee the glittering ring of joy, which thou contemplatest on thy brown and hard-boiled hand, and who does not fondly wish that its stones may never fall out?

Soon after, the brother of the past festivals flew to the heart of the deserted one,--Charles. He repeated almost exactly Rabette's deposition, although not her rapture; he said,--but without special emotion,--that his father actually threw him the brotherly hand kiss through several rooms, distinguished and designated him quite particularly, and kindly made use of him for business purposes; and all this merely since he had become acquainted with his love for Rabette, and the silent assent of the parents; for with his father, though the heart was of no account, yet Rabette's fief was, especially as one could not trust, with all the romantic stock-jobbing of his heart, that he would not himself one day realize the poorest result.

With a sighing breast, which would gladly have imparted more to an expecting one, Charles merely related that he had found Liana well and quiet, but not alone for one minute. The association of another's want with his own open, rich fortune was, so Albano believed, the fair, tender reason why Charles glided with such cool, fleeting pleasure over the parental benediction of his soul's bond. O, how he loved him at this moment! Could he have loved him ever so much more, he would have done it, though Liana had been actually lost to the sum of his happiness, merely to show himself and him that holy friendship wants no third heart in order to love a second.

This cloud of silence lay fixed for weeks, and grew more and more dark around his fairest heights; and the guiltless one went round and round through the darkness in a circle of contradictions. How must this youth have harassed himself when he thought, as he soon did, that the parents would, in all probability, reject an alliance with him, as he, indeed, thought himself obliged rather to forget than to reciprocate their advances, and that they might sacrifice two hearts to political heartlessness; or when he let fall upon the innocent Liana the suspicion of giving way before parental assaults, which suspicion received reinforcement from the past through the conjecture that she had embraced him rather in poetical enthusiasm and from goodness, and more with wings than with arms, and that, in fact, accustomed to such long submissions, she could hardly distinguish sacrifices and inclinations, and might take one for the other; or when, as he soon and oftenest did, he turned the point of all these weapons against his own breast, and asked himself why he had such a firm confidence in friendship, and such a wavering one in love. Then this reproach led him to a second, upon every previous one, which he had cast upon the good soul merely for the sake, according to the proselyting system and reforming mania which men exercise more upon their wives than upon their friends, of melting her down for his own mould. This last he might rue; as Holberg[195] observes that men do not keep estates so well as women, because the former are always wanting to improve them more than the latter; on the same ground, also, lovers spoil women more than these do them.

For the sake merely of getting more expeditiously from the tedious tribunal of the future his sentence of death, or a more agreeable document, he went again to the ministerial house. He was again smilingly received by the Minister, and seriously by the mother; and, in reply to his question, Liana was not quite well. He laid before old Schoppe (who now pressed his friendship upon him more warmly, and who, for some time near the dissecting-knife of the Doctor, had not studied any other heart than that which was to be spattered to pieces and prepared) a short question about the Doctor's visits at the Minister's. How was he astonished when he heard that no one out of the house any longer made any visits to it, (while Liana, quite blooming, went into all circles,) except merely the Lector, who made very frequent ones!

He well comprehended that only the Medusa's-heads of the parents could turn the softest heart into stone against him; but even this he found not right. He boldly demanded that she should love him more than her parents, "not from egotism," said he to himself, "not on my account, but on her own." A lover wishes a great, indescribable love, of which he thinks himself always only the accidental and unworthy object, merely for the sake of tendering the highest himself.

Even the silent Lector, who generally placed all newly rising lights behind light-shades and fire-screens, communicated unbidden to the Count the novel tidings that Liana would be, under the administration of the coming Princess, something--[196]maid of honor. His old jealous suspicion of Augusti's wishes or relations allowed him no answer to that.

Now his spirit manned itself, and he wrote straight to the soul that belonged to him, and sent the letter to her brother for delivery. The latter came the next day, but seemed to him not to have any answer yet, because he would otherwise have given it with the first greeting. Charles introduced him to the Haarhaar court, where he had lately been; said every nerve there had on jack-boots, and every heart a hoop-petticoat; then went on to eulogize the youngest, but most unpopular Princess, _Idoine_; declared she possessed, in addition to all her other advantages,--for instance, purity, kindness, decision of character, which even on the throne selects for itself its own lot and life,--the further grace of amiableness, since even the princely bride, who loved no one else, hung upon her heart, and--last, not least--the advantage of a very deceptive similarity to Liana.

"Has Liana received my letter yet?" asked Albano. Charles handed it back to him. "By Heaven!" said he, ardently, and yet ambiguously, "I could not get it to her just now. But, brother, canst thou believe, only for one minute, that she does not remain forever most thine?" "I do not believe anything at all!" said Albano, offended, and tore his leaf on the spot into little bits no bigger than the letters. "Only _we_ will," he continued, with a tone of emotion, "remain, as we are, firm as iron, and flexible as iron when it comes out of the furnace." The deeply touched friend sought to console him with the following: "Only wait, I pray, the illumination evening;[197] then she will speak with thee. She must certainly appear, and thou wilt wonder in what character, and for whom." He nodded silently; he easily gathered her part from her resemblance to Idoine, and from her expected office at court. But what help was it to his fortune?

With the return of his note, which he despatched against his pride, that same pride came back in renewed strength. Now was a hot seal stamped on Albano's bleeding lip; he had now nothing for and before him, except time, which was now his poison, and would by and by, as he hoped, be his antidote. Nothing was ever master over his sense of honor, when it was once roused. He could look forward to a scaffold on which blood spurted out, but he could not look upon a pillory where, under the heavy, poisonous, murderous pain of scorn and self-contempt, a downcast, distracted face hung on the sinful breast.

Charles sometimes approached with a few lights the long night-like riddle; but Albano, however much he wished them, staggered him by opposition, and sought not even to hear him, much less to ask him questions. So he lay on hard, youthful, thorny rose-buds, which a single hour can open into tender roses. Victories beget victories, as defeats do defeats; he found now, if not a complete relief from the emotions which besieged him, nevertheless a mountain-fortification against them, provisioned for a little eternity, in the shape of an astronomical observatory. With an entire and firmly collected soul he threw himself upon theoretical astronomy, in order not to see daylight, and upon practical astronomy in order not to see night. The watch-tower stood indeed upon a mountain intermediate between the city and Blumenbühl, and commanded a view of both; but he cast his eyes only upon the constellations, not upon those rosy-red spots of the earth, where they now could have sucked out of the cold flower-cups only water instead of honey. Thus amid the festive preparations in Lilar did he go armed to meet the long delaying evening when the presence of the fairest soul should either bless or destroy him, vainly looking from time to time at the distant telegraph of his destiny, which was constantly moving, uncertain whether with peaceful or hostile significance.

74. CYCLE.

To remove the seals from the enrolled acts of the foregoing history for the purpose of looking into it,--or to push back the blinds and shove up the windows of the same,--or to uncover so many covered ways and vehicles,--or, in fine, the whole matter,--all that is mere metaphors,--and the most inappropriate ones, too,--which cannot serve any other purpose than only to hold off still longer and more tediously the long-expected solution, which they would fain describe; much rather and better, methinks, will the whole war and peace position in the ministerial palace be at once freely laid bare as follows:--

Herr Von Froulay had, as has been already mentioned, come home from Haarhaar with a _Belle-vue_ in his face, and with a _mon-plaisir_ in his heart (provided these tropes do not seem more elaborate than exquisite). He told his lady openly, what had hitherto detained and enchanted him so long,--the future Princess, who had conceived for him a more than ordinary fancy. He threw a full, glorifying light on her enriched understanding,--he never praised anything beyond this in ladies,[198]--as well as a faint streak of shade upon his own _her's_; and pronounced himself fortunate in the possession of a person whose fine, persistent coquetry (he said) he for his part could recommend as a model, and whose attachment he, in fact, (that he pretended not to conceal,) reciprocated half-way, but only half-way, for it was perfectly true, what the Duke of Lauzun[199] asserted: in order to keep the love of Princesses, one must just hold them in right hard and short. In the old man accordingly there shoots up, as we see, quite late,--not unlike the case of fresh teeth,--which oftentimes old men do not cut till they are nonagenarians,--a lover's heart beneath the star; only it is more to be wished than hoped, he will especially play the ridiculous in the matter. For as he all the week long holds the helm of state, either on the rower's bench, to keep it in motion, or on the cabinet-maker's bench, to trim it down into a fine and light shape for the Prince; the consequence is, he is so tired when Saturday comes, that no Virgil and no tempest could persuade him--and though his feet had not more steps to take for the purpose than the number of feet in Virgil's hexameter, or of commandments in the Decalogue of Moses--to accompany a Dido out of the storm into the nearest cave. He does no such thing. He remains quite as free from sentimental and pathetic love as from sensual, especially as he apprehends that the former would in the end entangle him in the latter, because like a minor-tone it has quite a different returning scale from its ascending one. The ironical and stinging element in the man made every marriage--even that of souls--to him as well as to other world's people as disagreeable in the end as the spines of the hedgehogs make theirs. He lays up, therefore, in the future for the Princess only a cold, politic, coquettish, courtly love, such as she herself haply has, and such as he has occasion for, in order less to gain her than to gain from her, and to gain first of all the entire Prince. I promise myself cosmopolitan readers, who, I hope, find no offence to this personage in Froulay's partiality for his lady; for so soon as the court-preacher has but once laid his joining hand on the Princess, then has this house-steward made, as it were, the cut in the pea-hen,[200] and she can then be taken off untouched, and be feasted on in other places.

I have already (in the second volume) intimated the anxiety of the Minister's lady lest the Minister, if he should (in this volume) come back and not find Liana at home, should chafe; but, contrary to expectation, he approved; her use of the country air-bath fell in exactly with his design of sending her into the vapor-bath of the court atmosphere. He told her mother that it by no means displeased him that she should now be entirely well, since the new Princess would select her for her maid of honor, whenever he should say the word. He could not for three minutes see a sceptre or a sceptrelet lying by him without proving its polarity for himself, and either attracting or repelling something with it. As the famous theologian, Spener,--a predecessor of our Spener,--prayed to God so beautifully thrice a day for his friends, one finds with similar pleasure that the courtier daily prays a little for his friends before his god, the Prince, and seeks to obtain something.

The Minister's lady, never opposing his changeable plans in the sketch, but only in the execution, easily became reconciled with his latest one, because it at least seemed rather to stand in no auxiliary relation to the old one of the bethrothal to Bouverot.

One evening, unfortunately, the fatal, anxious Lector--who pasted the smallest visiting-card to a Fulda's historic chart--arrived in her presence with his packet-ship, and came ashore having under his two arms the state and imperial advertisements of her two children; he had one of them under each; and yet why do I fly out upon the man? Could a double-romance, especially when played in the open air, remain better concealed than a single one?

Her astonishment can be compared with the greater astonishment of her husband, who happened to have just been screwing on in the third chamber his tin ear,--made by Schropp of Magdeburg,--in order to listen to the servants, and who now caught a number of things. Nevertheless, the double-ear, with the broad meshes of its nocturnal lark-net, had only fished up from Augusti's low, whispering, courtly lips single, long, proper names,--such as Roquairol and Zesara. Hardly had the soft-spoken Lector gone out, when he stepped gayly into the chamber, with his ear in his hand, and demanded of her a report of the reports. He held it beneath his dignity either to patch up or disguise his suspicion,--which, even in the friendliest and gayest mood, would never shut its Argus ears and eyes,--or to dissemble his eavesdropping, with so much as a syllable or a blush of shame; the fair lilies of the most colorless impudence were not painted, but branded on him. The Minister's lady immediately seized upon the female expedient, of telling the truth--half-way; namely, the agreeable truth of Roquairol's well-received advances at the house of Wehrfritz, whose estate and provincial directorship had been cast into a very fitting shape for a father-in-law. Meanwhile the Minister had seen in his lady's face the mourning-border around this pleasant notification-document, far too clearly and broadly not to inquire about that prominent word "Zesara," which his delicate tin searcher had also caught up, but he inquired in vain; for the mother held her good daughter too dear to set this wolf on the scent for her into her Eden; she hoped to get her out of it in a gentler way, by a divine voice and angels; and so evaded his question.

But the wolf now ran farther on in his track; he got the gout in his stomach,--so it was reported to Dr. Sphex,--demanded of him speedy aid, and also some intelligence of his tenant, the Count. Doctor and Madam Sphex had already a grudge against the inflated youth; through their four juvenile envoys, as _enfans perdus_ in every sense, as four hearing-organs of every city rumor, much might be brought in on advice-yachts from Blumenbühl and Lilar. In short, the auricular organs fitted in so well to those of others, that Froulay, in a few days, was in a situation to ask, with his lily brow, the Greek woman for a letter to his son, which he offered to take along with him.

He found one, which he broke open with great joy, without, however, finding anything therein from Albano's or Liana's hand, but only some stupid allusion of Rabette to that couple, which, to the Minister, were as much as if, with his sharp exciseman's-probes, he had bored into Liana's heart and lighted upon contraband there. Without any long, slavish copying of the former seal, he set a second upon the letter, and went away enlightened by it.

We can all follow him, when we have detained ourselves only a few minutes for his justification, with my

_Apology and Defence[201] in the Matter of the Second Seal upon Letters in State Affairs._