Part 19
During the walk she often stood still, to look at the beautiful flame of Vesuvius. "He stands there," said Albano, "in this pastoral poem of Nature, like a tragic muse, and exalts everything, as a war does the age." "Do you believe that of war," said she. "A man must have," he replied, "either great men or great objects before him, otherwise his powers degenerate, as the magnet's do, when it has lain for a long time without being turned toward the right corners of the world." "How true," said she: "what say you to a Gallic war?" He owned his wish that it might break out, and his own disposition to take part in it. He could not help, even at the expense of his future liberty, being open-hearted towards her. "Blessed are you men," said she; "you dig your way down through the snow of life, and find at last the green harvest underneath. That can no woman do. A woman is surely a stupid thing in nature. I respect one and another head of the Revolution, particularly that political monster of energy, Mirabeau, although I cannot like him."
During these discoursings they came upon the ascent of Epomeo. Agata accompanied the two playmates of her earlier days with full tongue and hungry ear for so many mutual news-tellings. As he now went along beside the beautiful virgin, and occasionally looked in her face, which was made still more beautiful by mental energy, and became at once flower, blossom, and fruit (whereas generally the converse holds, and the head gains by the face): then did he pass a severe judgment upon his previous deportment toward this noble being, although he as well as she, out of delicacy, remained silent about the former juggling play with her name, as well as about the wonderfulness of to-day's meeting. Silently they went on in the rare night and region. All at once she stopped on an eminence, around which the dowry of Nature was heaped up on all sides in mountains. They looked round in the splendor; the Swan of Heaven, the moon, floated high over Vesuvius in the ether,--the giant serpent of the world, the sea, lay fast asleep in his bed that stretches from pole to pole,--the coasts and promontories glimmered only, like midnight dreams,--clefts full of tree-blossoms overflowed with ethereal dew made of light, and in the vales below stood dark smoke-columns upon hot fountains, and overhead they floated away in splendor,--all around lay, high up, illuminated chapels, and low around the shore dark cities,--the winds stood still, the rose-perfumes and the myrtle-perfumes stole forth alone,--soft and bland floated the blue night around the ravished earth; from around the warm moon the ether retired, and she sank down love-intoxicated out of mid-heaven larger and larger into the sweet earth-spring. Vesuvius stood now, without flame or thunder, white with sand or snow, in the east,--in the darkening blue the gold grains of the fiery stars were sowed far abroad.
It was the rare time when life has its transit through a superterrestrial sun. Albano and Linda accompanied each other with holy eyes, and their looks softly disengaged themselves from each other again; they gazed into the world, and into the heart, and expressed nothing. Linda turned softly round and walked silently onward.
Just then, all at once, one of the prattling maidens behind them called out: "There is really an earthquake coming; I actually feel it; good night!" It was Agata. "God grant one," said Albano. "O why?" said Linda, eagerly, but in a low tone. "All that the infinite mother wills and sends is to me to-day childishly dear, even death;--are not we, too, part and parcel of her immortality?" said he. "Yes, man may feel and believe this in joy; only in sorrow let him not speak of immortality; in such impotency of soul he is not worthy of it."
Albano's spirit here rose up from its princely seat to greet its lofty kinswoman, and said, "Immortal one! and though no one else were so!" She silently smiled and went on. His heart was an asbestos-leaf written over and cast into the fire, burning, not consuming; his whole former life went out, the leaf shone fiery and pure for Linda's hand.
When they reached the last eminence below which Linda's and Julienne's dwelling lay, and they stood near each other on the point of separation, then the maiden suddenly cried out below: "An earthquake!" Out of hell a thunder-car rolled on in the subterranean ways,--a broad lightning flapped its wings up and down in the pure heaven under the stars,--the earth and the stars trembled, and affrighted eagles flew through the lofty night. Albano had grasped the hands of the tottering Linda. Her face had faded before the moon to a pale, godlike statue of marble. By this time it was all over; only some stars of the earth still shot down out of the steadfast heavens into the sea, and wondrous clouds went up round about from below. "Am I not very timid?" said she, faintly. Albano gazed into her face livingly and serenely as a sun-god in morning-redness, and pressed her hands. She would have drawn them away violently. "Give them to me forever!" said he, earnestly. "Bold man," said she, in confusion, "who art thou? Dost thou know me? If thou art as I, then swear and say whether thou hast always been true!" Albano looked toward Heaven, his life was balanced; God was near him; he answered softly and firmly: "Linda, always!" "So have I!" said she, and inclined modestly her beautiful head upon his breast, but immediately raised it again, with its large moist eyes, and said, hurriedly: "Go now! Early to-morrow come, Albano! Adio! Adio!"
The maidens came up. Albano went down, his bosom filled with living warmth, with living radiance. Nature breathed with fresher perfumes out of the gardens; the sea murmured again below; and on Vesuvius burned a Love's-torch, a festal fire of joy. Through the night-skies some eagles were still sailing toward the moon, as toward a sun; and against the arch of heaven the Jacob's-ladder stood leaning with golden rounds of stars.
As Albano was walking along so solitary in his bliss, dissolved in the rapture of love, the fragrance of the vales, the radiance of the heights, dreaming, hovering, he saw birds of passage flying across the sea in the direction of the Apennines, on their way to Germany, where Liana had lived. "Holy One above!" cried his heart, "thou desiredst this joy; appear and bless it!" Unexpectedly he stood before a chapel niche wherein the Holy Virgin stood. The moon transfigured the pale statue,--the Virgin took life beneath the radiance, and became more like Liana,--he knelt down, and ardently gave God his prayers of gratitude and Liana his tears. When he rose, turtle-doves were cooing in dreams, and a nightingale warbled; the hot fountains smoked glimmering, and the happy singing of far-off people came up to his ears.
TWENTY-NINTH JUBILEE.
Julienne.--The Island.--Sundown.--Naples.--Vesuvius.-- Linda's Letter.--Fight Departure.
111. CYCLE.
After a long night, the fresh morning breathed when Albano was to find again the treasures of the most blessed dream, the flowers of fortune which the moon had opened, in broad sunlight. Life shouted to him exultingly, as he climbed again yesterday's heights, which shone overspread with the varnish of light; not to a rose-feast, but to all flower and harvest-festivals at once; to feasts of myrtles and lilies; to gleanings and blossom-gatherings. The sun went forth over the blessed region, and as a peacock with his trailing rainbow flies into a blossoming tree, so did the young day, heavy with colors and laden with gardens and full of reflections, mount the blue heights, and smile like a child upon the world. Albano looked now from his height down on the enchanted castle wherein yesterday the mighty enchantress had disappeared.
He went down to it. A singing maiden on the flowery roof, who seemed to have been waiting for him, pointed out, leaning over without interrupting her singing, a near apartment below her into which he was to enter. He stepped in; it was empty. Through the windows of oiled paper streamed a wondrous morning light; on the wooden ceiling figures from Herculaneum were painted; in a Campanian vase stood yellow butterfly flowers and myrtle-blossoms, which diffused around them a sweet perfumed atmosphere. The singular environs enclosed him more and more closely, for he found, in fact, some pictures and articles of furniture which seemed familiar to him. At last he saw, to his amazement, on the table a half ring. He took out his half which he had got from the pretended sister in the Gothic chamber on that ghostly night, and which, to be ready for the opportunity of a comparison, he always carried about with him. He pressed the semicircles into one another; suddenly they closed, clasping, and formed a fast ring. "God!" thought he, "what arm strikes again into my life?"
Just then the door was hastily opened, and the Princess Julienne entered hurriedly, smiling and weeping, and exclaimed, flying to him, "O my brother! my brother!" "Julienne," said he, seriously, and with deep emotion, "art thou really my sister at last?" "O, long enough has she been so!" replied she, and looked on him tenderly and blissfully, and smiled through her tears. Then she again embraced him, and again looked at him, and said: "Thou dear Albano-brother! So long have I, like a moon, been sailing around thee, and had, like her, to stay colder and farther off. Now will I love thee with exceeding fondness; my love shall run backward, and run forward too!" "Almighty!" Albano broke out, weeping, when he found himself so suddenly clasped by a beneficent arm out of the cloud, "all this dost thou now give me at once?" "Ah!" cried Julienne, with liveliness, "that I were only weeping for pure joy! But I must eat my bitter crust of sorrow with it too! Dear brother, Luigi writes me yesterday from Pestitz that I must hasten back, else he will hardly live to see my return. Did I think of this on my setting out? Thus what I receive with one hand I must give up with the other." Albano said nothing to this, because he could not possibly take the least interest in the Prince. So much the more did he refresh himself with fresh, clear joy in the open, breathing Orient of his earliest days of life, in the sight of this young, pure flower, which grew and played, as it were, in and out of the bright, fresh fountain of his childhood.
"But, heavens! explain to me," began Albano, "how all came to pass." "Now, I know, the questioning begins," she replied. "The ostensible sum and substance thou shalt shortly have; if thou askest for more, if thou wilt peep into the book of mysteries, then I shut it to, and repeat to thee some lies. Next October, it may be sooner, all comes to light. This for the present, and first of all,--my mother was, and remains, verily pure and holy in this relationship, by the Almighty God!"
"What a riddle!" said he. "Art thou the daughter of my father? Is Luigi my brother? Is my dead sister Severina thy sister?" asked he.
_Julienne_. "Ask October!"
_Albano_. "Ah, sister!"
_Julienne_. "O brother, trust the daughter of Melchisedec. Further,--I was indeed the sister in the apparition, whom the man with the bald head introduced to thee in Lilar. I could not, and yet I felt that I must, have thee ere thou hadst flown away into foreign parts. The old age which I then had in the mirror was, as thou seest, made only by an artificial mirror."[100]
_Albano_. "Truly, I thought then of no one but of thee. Only how comes there a man like the Baldhead and like the Father of Death, who so incomprehensibly predicted to me in Mola that I should find thee?"
_Julienne_. "That is impossible. Did he name my name?"
_Albano_. "That only was wanting. The Pater is, for the rest, in all probability one and the same man with the Baldhead. Immediately after the announcement he went toward heaven."
_Julienne_. "There let him stay, by all means, and the other too. Does this dark bond of enchantment concern or disturb me or thee, which, in its false miracles, has thus far always been interrupted by singular real ones? It was quite innocently that I happened in Lilar at that time, and perhaps I prevented something frightful."
_Albano_. "By heavens! I must ask what, then, is his object, who his leader, his manager?"
_Julienne_. "Probably the father of the Countess, for he lives still, I hear, unknown and unseen, although thy father is guardian. Be astonished when thou art at home, and leave the riddles, which, be assured, are unravelling themselves so agreeably for us both, and await the October days."
_Albano_. "But one thing, beloved sister, deny me not, I pray thee,--a clear word about my and thy wonderful relation to the noble Countess! Only that!"
_Julienne_. "Has my heart, then, already denied it thee? The glorious one,--well for her and me and thee! Thy first word of love,--which the gods have now so firmly sealed,--was to be the signal-word for my annunciation to thee; only from the beloved mightest thou receive the sister. What jugglers and ghosts have done towards it, and how much of it, no one knows better than--October; why shall I, meanwhile, be choosing between lies and perjury? I simply did all, only to bring you two together; the rest I knew beforehand. Nothing succeeded,--it all was a stifling snarl; everything went up hill. I saw precious beings[101] sowing in an unblessed spring dreadful griefs, and withal smiling so hopefully! and I could not hold their unhappy hands,--I, who with such certainty foreknew all the coming anguish. O thou pure, pious soul above!" said she, all at once, with quivering lip, looking towards heaven.
The brother and sister embraced each other softly, and wept in silence at the thought of the innocent sacrifice.
"No," said Albano, very warmly, "no hell-conspiracy could have sundered us had she only stayed with me, or even on the earth." "See, Albano," said Julienne, collecting again her more cheerful life-spirits, and opening all blinds, "how the morning hill sparkles and swims up and down! Let me speak out! By the very greatest good luck, I learned in winter that thou wast turning thy thoughts toward Naples. Linda had already been there once, and her mother at the baths of the neighborhood. For me, I said to her, Ischia's baths would do as well as any. Go with me; we will not disturb or go near your triste guardian in Rome at all. She readily assented. Of course there was no mention made of thee; previously, however, there had been often enough in letters and otherwise, when I always praised thee beyond measure. And now _nous voici donc_. Yesterday I received in Naples the mournful letter of my brother. Of thy arrival I knew as yet nothing. I let the Countess go alone to the feast of tones, and hastened home with heavy heart. When she came back, she opened her glad heart, and told me all; and then I told her all. Ah, thank God," she added, falling upon his neck, "that we have now at last disembarked in Elysium, and that the rotten Charon's-boat has not sent us to the bottom. But for all Europe, even for thy Dian, mark me, the privy seal remains upon our relationship." Albano must needs still put a few questions. She kept answering, in a lively tone, "October! October!" till all at once, as if awaking, she exclaimed, "O, how can I say that so gayly?" but without explaining herself on the subject.
"Now will I bring thee, as I have heretofore done, to the Countess, only by a shorter way," said she, took his hand, led him out, opened the opposite apartment, where Linda lived, and said, "I present to thee my brother." Deeply blushing, the noble form came to meet them, and embraced, without a word, her dear female friend. When her eye met again Albano's, she was so struck that she sought to draw away the hand which he kissed, for she had yesterday hardly seen but in a glimmering light his beautiful eye, and his noble brow, and the lips of love; and this blooming man stood, inspired with double emotion, so bright and still and earnest before her, full of noble, real love. Her heart would gladly have fallen upon his; at least, she gave him back her hand into his, and wished him joy of this morning. The obvious answer, "and of yesterday evening," he could not get over his lips, from a peculiar, modest shyness, of giving as of taking praise. "A third man is found at last for the travelling-college," said Julienne; "for thou must go off directly, in a few days; thou, too, must be off to Pestitz, Albano." "I, too, sister?" said he; "I meant to stay a month, and here is the visit of Vesuvius, Herculaneum, and Naples crowded into a few days." He wondered afterwards himself at the sweetness of obedience under the fair commands of love, since he used once to say, "Command me to command, and I will not obey." "I accompany my friend," said Linda, "glad as I should have been to go to Greece, to which I am already, for the second time, so near."
"This very night I fly away," said he; "I will only wake, see, live, and love." Julienne had already begun to show a sister's concern about his health and his objects; divided between two brothers, gladly would she, had it only been possible, have sacrificed herself to both. "The good creature has not even yet enjoyed Ischia," said she; "he must have that to-day."
Albano felt, at the expression of this new female love, that woman was the human heart in the fairest form. Within him rang a glad melody,--"What a day lies before thee, and what years!" Sweetly entwined and overspun with a canopy of double love-blossoms, he saw life and earth full of fragrance and light; over the morning dew of youth a sun had now been ushered up, and the dark drops glistened up and down through all gardens.
He cast, at length, a glance at the place which surrounded him. Niobe's group, the Genius of Turin, Cupid, and Psyche, stood there in casts, borrowed from the cabinet of an artist in Naples. The walls were decorated with rare pictures, among which was--Schoppe sneezing. This alone rushed with the northern past mightily into his softened heart, and he expressed his feeling to his beloved. "You," said she, "prefer friendship to art, for that portrait is the worst in my collection; but the original deserves, indeed, all regard."
She went into the cabinet, and brought out a miniature likeness of herself, which represented her, after the Turkish fashion, veiled, and with only one eye uncovered. How livingly beside the twilight of the veil did the open, soul-speaking eye look and strike! How did the flame of its might burn through the covering of mildness! Linda named the master of the magnificent picture, that very Schoppe, and added, he had said in this case the master must, out of reciprocal complaisance, himself praise a work which praised him more partially and powerfully than any other work of his ever had. She explained this difference of his pencil by another cause, which he had stated to her almost in these words: he had, he said, in his earliest youth, loved her mother as long as he had seen her, and afterwards never any one again; and therefore he had, as she resembled her mother, painted her _con amore_, and really striven to bring out something.
"O, honest old man!" said Albano, and could hardly keep tears out of the eyes which so often were happy. But it was only the holy pang of friendship; for there darted through him at last, like a beam of lightning through the clearest sky, a presumption made certain by everything,--by Schoppe's diary and Linda's words and Rabette's letter,--that Linda was the soul whom the singular being secretly loved. A sharp pain cut hastily but deeply through his brow; and he conquered himself only by his present younger freshness of spirit, by newly gathered power and force, and by the free thought that a friend may well and easily give up and sacrifice to his friend a _loved_ one, but cannot or dares not so easily surrender _one who loves him_.
Julienne said, "The only wonder is that my brother, between two such fantastical beings as this Schoppe and Roquairol, has not himself become one of the same feather." A running fire broke out. Linda said, "Schoppe is only a southern nature in conflict with a northern climate." "Properly with life itself," said Albano. Julienne simply remarked, "I love always rules in life; with neither of them is one ever tranquil and _à son aise_, but only _à leur aise_." She asked him at once about Roquairol. "He was once my friend, and I speak of him no more," said Albano, whose tongue was tied by the ruined favorite's torturing love for Linda, and even his relationship to Liana. Linda glided over the subject with the mere verdict that he was an overstrained weakling, and without special mention of his love for her or of her abhorrence of him. She quite as coldly forgot at a distance every one who was repulsive to her inner being as she did vehemently thrust him off when he was near.
Julienne withdrew to make arrangements for the little day's journey over the island. Albano despatched a note to Dian, containing the _marche-route_ to Naples. Linda said, in respect to Julienne, "A deeply and firmly grounded character!" "The stem and twigs all buried in little fragrant blossoms!" he added. "And exactly what she hates in books and conversations,--poesy,--that she pursues right earnestly in action. Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected, as the root of everything good. You, too, are very good," she added, with soft voice. "Truly, I am so at present," said he; "for I love right heartily; and only a complete being can one really love, and with entire disinterestedness."
"So must the sun's image strike full and round, in order to burn." "Or an image which one takes for it," said she; "I am what I am, and cannot easily become anything else. If man has only a will once for all, which goes through life, not alternating from minute to minute, from being to being, that is the main thing." "Linda," cried Albano, "I hear my own soul. There are words which are actions; yours are." When she thus spoke out her soul, her beautiful form vanished from before his enchanted spirit, as the golden string vanishes when it begins to sound. Wounded and punished by the past for his often hard energy, he breathed only with a gentle breath--although now life, the world, and the very region made him bolder, brighter, firmer, and more ardent--upon the _unisonant_ Æolian strings of this _many-toned_ soul. But how must she have been charmed with a man at once so mighty and so tender,--a soft constellation of near suns,--a beautiful war-god with the lyre,--a storm-cloud full of Aurora,--a spirited, ardent youth, whose thought was so honest! She said it not, however, but simply loved, like him.
He threw an accidental glance at her little table-library. "Nothing but French!" said she. He found _Montaigne_, the life of _Guyon_, the _Contrat Social_, and, last of all, _Madame de Staël sur l'Influence des Passions_. He had read this, and said how infinitely pleased he had been with the articles upon love, parties, and vanity, and, in short, with her German or Spanish heart of fire, but not with her bald French philosophy, least of all with her immoral suicide-mania. "Good Heaven!" cried Linda; "is not life itself a long suicide? Albano, all men are still somewhere or other pedants, the good in morality so called, and you especially. Maxims of Kant, great, broad classifications, principles, must they all have. You are all born Germans, real Germans of the Germans, even you, friend. Am I right?" she added, softly, as if she desired a "yes."