Part 18
But he sighed for the island of Ischia, that Arcadia of the ocean, and that wonderful place where he was to find a sister. It was not in their power earlier than in the early part of Saturday night--if indeed waking and glancing life can be called night, particularly an Italian Saturday night--to reach _Aversa_. Albano insisted upon their continuing on in the night toward Naples. Dian was still reluctant. By chance there stood in the post-house a beautiful girl, who might be about fourteen years old, very much troubled at having missed the coach, and determined this very night to go on to Naples, in order to reach Ischia, where her parents were, early enough on the holy Sabbath. "She had come," she said, "from _Santa Agata_; her name was only _Agata_, and not _Santa_." "Probably her old joke," said Dian, but he was now--with his love of hovering about every fair form--himself quite in a mood for the night-ride, that so they might carry the black-eyed one along with them, who looked joyously and brightly into the fire of strange eyes. She accepted the invitation cheerfully, and prattled familiarly, like a naturalist, about Epomeo and Vesuvius, and predicted for them innumerable pleasures on the island, and altogether showed an intelligence and thoughtfulness far above her years. At last they all flew along under the bright stars out into the lovely night.
109. CYCLE
Albano goes on in the description of his journey thus:--
"A night of unrivalled serenity! The stars alone of themselves illuminated the earth, and the milky-way was silvery. A single avenue, intertwined with vine-blossoms, led to the magnificent city. Everywhere one heard people, now near, talking, now distant, singing. Out of dark chestnut woods, on moonlit hills, the nightingales called to one another. A poor, sleeping maiden, whom we had taken with us, heard the melodies even down into her dream, and sang after them; and then, when she awoke herself therewith, looked round confusedly and with a sweet smile, with the whole melody and dream still in her breast. On a slender, light two-wheeled carriage, a wagoner, standing on the pole and singing, rolled merrily along by. Women were already bearing in the cool of the hour great baskets full of flowers into the city; in the distance, as we passed along, whole Paradises of flower-cups sent their fragrance; and the heart and the bosom drank in at once the love-draught of the sweet air. The moon had gone up bright as a sun in the high heaven, and the horizon was gilded with stars; and in the whole cloudless sky stood the dusky cloud-column of Vesuvius, alone, in the east.
"Far into the night, after two o'clock, we rolled in and through the long city of splendor, wherein the living day still bloomed on. Gay people filled the streets; the balconies sent each other songs; on the roofs bloomed flowers and trees between lamps, and the little bells of the hours prolonged the day; and the moon seemed to give warmth. Only now and then a man lay sleeping between the colonnades, as if he were taking his siesta. Dian, at home in all such matters, let the carriage stop on the southern side, toward the sea, and went far into the city, in order to arrange, through old acquaintances, the passage across to the island, so that we might have exactly at sundown out on the sea, the richest view of the stately city, with its bay and its long coasts. The Ischian girl wrapped herself up in her blue veil, to keep off the flies, and fell asleep on the black, sandy shore.
"I walked up and down alone; for me there was no night and no house. The sea slept, the earth seemed awake. In the fleeting glimmer (the moon was already sinking towards Posilippo) I looked up over this divine frontier city of the world of waters, over this rising mountain of palaces, to where the lofty Castle of St. Elmo looks, white, out of the green foliage. With two arms the earth embraced the lovely sea; on her right, on Posilippo, she bore blooming vine-hills far out into the waves, and on the left she held cities, and spanned round its waters and its ships, and drew them up to her breast. Like a sphinx lay the jagged Capri darkly on the horizon in the water, and guarded the gates of the bay. Behind the city the volcano smoked in the ether, and occasionally sparks played between the stars.
"Now the moon sank down behind the elms of Posilippo,--the city grew dark,--the din of the night died away,--fishermen disembarked, put out their torches, and laid themselves down on the bank,--the earth seemed to sink to sleep, but the sea to wake up. A wind from the coast of Sorrento ruffled the still waves; more brightly gleamed Sorrento's sickle with the reflection at once of the moon and of morning, like silver meadows; the smoke column of Vesuvius had blown away, and from the fire-mount streamed a long, clear morning redness over the coasts as over a strange world.
"O, it was the morning twilight, full of youthful omens! Do not landscape, mountain, coasts, like an echo, speak so many the more syllables to the soul the farther off they are? How young did I feel the world and myself, and the whole morning of my life was crowded into this!
"My friend came; all was arranged; the boatmen had arrived; Agata was awakened to the joy, and we embarked, just as the dawn kindled the mountains, and, her sails swelling with the morning breezes, our little vessel flew out into the sea.
"Before we had yet doubled the promontory of Posilippo, the crater of Vesuvius threw up its glowing child, the sun, slowly into the sky, and sea and earth blazed. The half earth-girdles of Naples, with morning-red palaces, its market-place of fluttering ships, the swarm of its country-houses on the mountains and up along the shore, and its green throne of St. Elmo, stood proudly between two mountains, before the sea.
"When we came round Posilippo, there stood Ischia's Epomeo, like a giant of the sea, in the distance, girdled about with a wood, and with bald, white head. Gradually appeared on the immeasurable plain the islands, one after another, like scattered villages, and wildly pressed and waded the promontories into the sea. Now, mightier and more alive than the dried-up, parcelled out, stiff land, the watery kingdom opened, whose powers all, from the streams and waves even to the drops, join hands and move in concert. Almighty, and yet gentle element! grimly thou leapest upon the lands, and swallowest them up, and, with thy undermining polypus-arms, liest stretching around the whole globe. But thou reinest the wild streams, and meltest them down into waves; softly thou playest with thy little children, the islands, and playest on the hand which hangs out of the light gondola, and sendest out thy little waves which play before us, then bear us along, and play behind us.
"When we came along by the little Nisita, where Brutus and Cato once sought shelter after Cæsar's death; when we passed by the enchanted Baja and the magic castle where once three Romans determined upon the division of the world, and before the whole promontory, where the country-seats of great Romans stood; and when we looked down towards the mountain of Cuma, behind which Scipio Africanus lived in his Linternum and died; then did the lofty life of the great ancients take possession of me, and I said to my friend: 'What men were those! Scarcely do we learn incidentally in Pliny or Cicero that one of them has a country-house yonder, or that there is a lovely Naples. Out of the midst of nature's sea of joys their laurels grow and bear as well as out of the ice-sea of Germany and England, or out of Arabia's sand. Alike in wildernesses and in paradises, their mighty hearts beat on. And for these world-souls there was no dwelling except the world; only with such souls are emotions worth almost more than actions. A Roman might here weep nobly for joy! Dian, say, what can a modern man do for it, that he lives so late after their ruins?'
"Youth and ruins, tottering, crumbling past and eternal fulness of life, covered the shore of Misenum and the whole far-stretching coast. On the broken urns of dead gods, on the dismembered temples of Mercury and Diana, the frolicsome, light wave played, and the eternal sun; old, lonely bridge-posts in the sea, solitary temple-columns and arches, spoke, in the luxuriant splendor of life, a sober word; the old, holy names of the Elysian Fields, of Avernus, of the Dead Sea, lived still along the coast; ruins of rocks and temples lay in confusion upon the motley-colored lava; all bloomed and lived; the maidens and the boatmen sang; the mountains and the islands stood great in the young, fiery day; dolphins chased sportively along beside us; singing larks went whirling up in the ether above their narrow islands; and from all ends of the horizon ships came up and flew down again with arrowy speed. It was the divine over-fulness and intermingling of the world before me. Sounding-strings of life were stretched over the string-bridge of Vesuvius, even to Epomeo.
"Suddenly one peal of thunder passed along through the blue heaven over the sea. The maiden asked me, 'Why do you grow pale? it is only Vesuvius.' Then was a god near me; yes, heaven, earth, and sea stood before me as three divinities. The leaves of life's dream-book were murmuringly ruffled up by a divine morning-storm; and everywhere I read our dreams and the interpretations thereof.
"After some time, we came to a long land swallowing up the north, as it were the foot of a single mountain; it was already the lovely Ischia, and I went on shore intoxicated with bliss, and then, for the first time, I thought of the promise that I should there find a sister."
110. CYCLE.
With emotion, with a sort of festive solemnity, Albano trod the cool island. It was to him as if the breezes were always wafting to him the words, "The place of rest." Agata begged them both to stay with her parents, whose house lay on the shore, not far from the suburb-town.[95] As they went over the bridge, which connects the green rock wound round with houses to the shore and the city, she pointed out to them joyfully in the east the individual house. As they went along so slowly, and the high, round rock and the row of houses stood mirrored in the water; and upon the flat roofs the beautiful women who were trimming the festal lamps for evening spoke busily over to each other, and greeted and questioned the returning Agata; and all faces were so glad, all forms so comely, and the very poorest in silk; and the lively boys pulled down little chestnut-tops; and the old father of the isle, the tall Epomeo, stood before them all clad in vine-foliage and spring-flowers, out of whose sweet green only scattered, white pleasure-houses of happy mountain-dwellers peeped forth;--then was it to Albano as if the heavy pack of life had fallen off from his shoulders into the water, and the erect bosom drank in from afar the cool ether flowing in from Elysium. Across the sea lay the former stormy world, with its hot coasts.
Agata led the two into the home of her parents, on the eastern declivity of Epomeo; and immediately, amidst the loud, exulting welcome, cried out, quite as loudly: "Here are two fine gentlemen, who wish to come home with me." The father said, directly: "Welcome, your excellencies! You shall, with pleasure, keep the chambers, though many bathing-guests will come by and by. You will find nowhere better quarters. I was formerly only a _turner_ in the Fayence manufactory, but have been for these eight years a vine-dresser, and can afford to do a favor. When was there ever a better December and March[96] than this year? Your commands, excellencies!" Suddenly Agata wept; her mother had announced to her the interment of her youngest sister, for which solemnity, according to the fashion of the island, an eve of joy was appointed to-day, because they loved to congratulate each other upon the eternal, bliss-insuring ratification of a child's innocence by death. The old man would fain have gone at once right into narrations, when Dian begged his Albano, after so long a commotion of souls and bodies, to go to sleep till sunset, when he would wake him. Agata showed him the way to his cool chamber, and he went up.
Here, before the cooling sea-zephyr, the going to sleep was itself the slumber, and the echoing dream itself the sleep. His dream was an incessant song, which sang itself,--"The morning is a rose, the day a tulip, night is a lily, and evening is another morning."
He dreamed himself at last down into a long sleep. Late, in the dark, like an Adam in renovated youth, he opened his eyes in Paradise, but he knew not where he was. He heard distant, sweet music; unknown flower-scents swam through the air. He looked out; the dark heaven was strewed with golden stars, as with fiery blossoms; on the earth, on the sea, hovered hosts of lights; and in the depths of distance hung a clear flame steadily in the midst of heaven. A dream, of which the scene was unknown, confounded still the actual stage with one that had vanished; and Albano went through the silent, unpeopled house, dreaming on, out into the open air, as into an island of spirits.
Here nightingales, first of all, with their melody drew him into the world. He found the name Ischia again, and saw now that the castle on the rock and the long street of roofs in the shore-town stood full of burning lamps. He went up to the place whence the music proceeded, which was illuminated and surrounded with people, and found a chapel standing all in fires of joy. Before a Madonna and her child, in a niche, a night-music was playing, amidst the loquacious rustling of joy and devotion. Here he found again his hosts, who had all quite forgotten him in the jubilee; and Dian said, "I would have awaked you soon; the night and the pleasures last a great while yet."
"Do hear and see yonder the divine Vesuvius, who joins in celebrating the festival in such right good earnest," cried Dian, who plunged as deeply into the waves of joy as any Ischian. Albano looked over toward the flame, flickering high in the starry heaven, and, like a god, having the great thunder beneath it, and he saw how the night had made the promontory of Misenum loom up like a cloud beside the volcano. Beside them burned thousands of lamps on the royal palace of the neighboring island Procida.
While he looked out over the sea, whose coasts were sunk into the night, and which lay stretching away like a second night, immeasurable and gloomy, he saw now and then a dissolving splendor sweep over it, which flowed on ever broader and brighter. A distant torch also showed itself in the air, whose flashing drew long, fiery furrows through the glimmering waves. There drew near a bark, with its sail taken in, because the wind blew off shore. Female forms appeared on board, among which, one of royal stature, along whose red, silken dress the torch-glare streamed down, held her eyes fixed upon Vesuvius. As they sailed nearer, and the bright sea blazed up on either side under the dashing oars, it seemed as if a goddess were coming, around whom the sea swims with enraptured flames, and who knows it not. All stepped out on shore at some distance, where by appointment, as it seemed, servants had been waiting to make everything easy. A smaller person, provided with a double opera-glass, took a short farewell of the tall one, and went away with a considerable retinue. The red-dressed one drew a white veil over her face, and went, accompanied by two virgins, gravely and like a princess, to the spot where Albano and the music were.
Albano stood near to her; two great black eyes, filled with fire and resting upon life with inward earnestness, streamed through the veil, which betrayed the proud, straight forehead and nose. In the whole appearance there was to him something familiar and yet great; she stood before him as a Fairy Queen, who had long ago with a heavenly countenance bent down over his cradle and looked in with smiles and blessings, and whom the spirit now recognizes again with its old love. He thought perhaps of a name, which spirits had named to him, but that presence seemed here not possible. She fixed her eye with complacency and attention on the play of two virgins, who, neatly clad in silk, with gold-edged silken aprons, danced gracefully, with modestly drooping heads and downcast eyes, to the tambourine of a third; the two other virgins, whom the stranger had brought with her, and Agata, sang sweetly with Italian half-voice[97] to the graceful joy. "It is all done in fact," said an old man to the strange lady, "to the honor of the Holy Virgin and St. Nicholas." She nodded slowly a serious yes.
At this moment there stood, all at once, Luna, played about with the sacrificial fire of Vesuvius, over in the sky, as the proud goddess of the sun-god, not pale, but fiery, as it were a thunder-goddess over the thunder of the mountain, and Albano cried, involuntarily, "God! the great moon!" The stranger quickly threw back her veil, and looked round significantly after the voice as after a familiar one; when she had looked upon the strange youth for a long time, she turned toward the moon over Vesuvius.
But Albano was agitated by a god, and dazzled by a wonder; he saw here Linda de Romeiro. When she raised the veil, beauty and brightness streamed out of a rising sun; delicate, maidenly colors, lovely lines and sweet fulness of youth played like a flower-garland about the brow of a goddess, with soft blossoms around the holy seriousness and mighty will on brow and lip, and around the dark glow of the large eye. How had the pictures lied about her,--how feebly had they expressed this spirit and this life!
As if the hour would fain worthily invest the shining apparition, so beautifully did heaven and earth with all rays of life play into each other,--love-thirsty stars flew like heaven-butterflies into the sea,--the moon had soared away over the impetuous earth-flame of Vesuvius, and spread her tender light over the happy world, the sea and the shores,--Epomeo hovered with his silvered woods, and with the hermitage of his summit high in the night blue,--near by stirred the life of the singing, dancing ones, with their prayers and their festal rockets which they were sending aloft. When Linda had long looked across the sea toward Vesuvius, she spoke, of herself, to the silent Albano, by way of answering his exclamation, and making up for her sudden turning round and staring at him. "I come from Vesuvius," said she; "but he is quite as sublime near at hand as afar off, which is so singular." Altogether strange and spirit-like did it sound to him, that he really heard this voice. With one that indicated deep emotion he replied: "In this land, however, everything is great indeed, even the little is made great by the large,--this little human pleasure here between the burnt-out volcano[98] and the burning one,--all is at one, and therefore right and so godlike." At once attracted and distracted, not knowing him, although previously struck with the resemblance of his voice to that of Roquairol, gladly reflecting on his simple words, she looked longer than she was aware at the ingenuous, but daring and warm eye of the youth, made no reply, turned slowly away, and again looked silently at the sports.
Dian, who had already for a long time been looking at the fair stranger, found at last in his memory her name, and came to her with the half-proud, half-embarrassed look of artists toward rank. She did not recognize him. "The Greek, Dian," said Albano, "noble Countess!" Surprised at the Count's recognition of her, she said to him: "I do not know you." "You know my father," said Albano, "the Knight Cesara." "O Dio!" cried the Spanish maiden, startled, became a lily, a rose, a flame, sought to collect herself, and said, "How singular! A friend of yours, the Princess Julienne, is also here."
The conversation flowed now more smoothly. She spoke of his father, and expressed her gratitude as his ward. "That is a mighty nature of his, which guards itself against everything common," said she, at once, against the fashion of the quality, speaking even partially of persons. The son was made happy by this praise of a father; he enhanced it, and asked in pleased expectation how she took his coldness.
"Coldness?" said she, with liveliness, "I hate the word cordially. If ever a rare man has a whole will and no half of one, and rests upon his power, and does not, like a crustaceous animal, cleave to every other, then he is called cold. Is not the sun, when he approaches us, cold too?" "Death is cold," cried Albano, very much moved, because he often imagined that he himself had more force than love; "but there may well be a sublime coldness, a sublime pain, which with eagle's talon snatches the heart away on high, but tears it in pieces in mid-heaven and before the sun."
She looked upon him with a look of greatness. "Truly you speak like a woman," said she; "they alone have nothing to will or to do without the might of love; but it was prettily said." Dian, good for nothing as to general observations, and apt only at individual ones, interrupted her with questions about particular works of art in Naples; she very frankly communicated her characteristic views, although with tolerable decision. Albano thought at first of his artistic friend, the draughtsman Schoppe, and asked about him. "At my departure," said she, "he was still in Pestitz, though I cannot comprehend what such an extraordinary being would fain do there; that is a powerful man, but quite jumbled up and not clear. He is very much your friend." "How does," asked Dian, half joking, "my old patron, the Lector Augusti?" She answered concisely, and almost with a certain sensitiveness at the familiarity of his question: "It goes well with him at court. Few natures," she continued, turning to Albano, on the subject of Augusti, "are doomed to meet so much injustice of judgment as such simple, cool, consistent ones as his." Albano could not entirely say yes, but he recognized with satisfaction in her respect for the strangest individuality of character the pupil of his father, who prized a plant, not according to the smoothness or roughness of its skin, but according to its bloom. Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another's. But Linda's lofty candor on the subject, which is as often wanting in finely cultivated females as refinement and reserve are in powerful men, took the strongest hold of the youth, and he thought he should be sinning if he did not exercise his great natural frankness towards her in a twofold degree.
She called her maidens to depart with her. Dian went off. "These are more necessary to me," said she to Albano, "than they seem." She had, namely, she related, something of the ocular malady[99] of many Spanish women, of being infinitely short-sighted in the night. He begged to be permitted to accompany her, and it was granted; he would have guided her, after what she had said, but she forbade it.