Part 2

Liana, holding the hand of the admiring Princess, stepped out, with downcast, bashful eyes, into the bright, busy city of the sun, into the din of the music and of the exultant spectators. Upon Albano the stormy scene came shooting like a torrent; such opposite and strangely intermingled parts played before such opposite persons, the splendor of the evening's gladness, and the nightly bewilderment in his bosom, made it hard for him to walk through this evening with a firm step.

The Princess soon drew him onward in her wake and vortex; Liana she let not go from her side. The Minister daubed and starched up with old gallantries the erotic slave; but to every one he appeared, as the Princess settles with creditors after the death of the Prince, to imitate only the manner of ministers, whose spirit loves to proceed from Father and Dauphin--_filioque_[12]--at once, in order to seat itself, not between, but upon two princely chairs. She seemed, however, since his manœuvring with Liana, to receive him more haughtily. He was sufficiently blessed in the good fortune of his daughter, as his step-son Bouverot was by her nearness, and this pair of knaves lay deeply buried and revelling in nothing but flowers. Albano could divine nothing more than that even a cold dragon, an orang-outang of souls, was darkly spying out the charms of this angel.

The Minister's lady and the Lector took turns, with an easy alternation, in guarding Liana from every word--of Albano. The Princess let herself be conducted through the sparkling pleasure-avenues, through the enchanted wood which was standing in moist lightnings, and finally to the thunder-house, by way of taking the burning garden from all points into her picturesque eye; Liana and Albano attended her through all the walks of her withered, stale Arcadia, and held their shattered hearts mutely and steadfastly together. True to her word with her parents, she gave him no warmer look or tone than any other, but no colder one neither; for her soul would not torment, but only suffer and obey. He made--he thought--all his looks and tones gentle, nor did the noble man avenge himself by a single manifestation of coldness, or in fact of any insincere making-of-friends with the princely female-recruiting-officer of crowns and hearts.

The Princess began to be unintelligible to him. They passed from the romantic to romance, then to the question, why it did not portray marriage. "Because," she replied, "it [romance] cannot be without love." "And marriage?" asked Albano, uncourteously. "Cannot exist without a friend," said she; "but Love is a god, _nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit_,"[13] she added, for she had learned Latin for the sake of the poets.

Bouverot finished the verse, in order to make the sense ambiguous,--"_Nec quarta loqui persona laboret_."[14] No one understood this last but the Lector and the Princess.

"Why are there no lamps in that house?" she inquired. "Who lives there?" She meant Spener's house. Liana answered only the latter question, and concluded her glowing picture with the words, "He lives for immortality." "What does he write?" inquired the Princess, misunderstanding her; and Liana must needs give a Christian explanation of the matter, whereupon the unbelieving woman smiled. There arose forthwith a dispute for and against the eternal sleep, which took up not much less time than they needed for making the circle of the thunder-house. The Princess began: "We should have quite as much to say against our every-day sleep, if it were not a fact, as against the eternal one." "More, too, however, against our ever waking out of it," said Albano, striking in, and cut short the religious disturbances.

The Princess came back again with her inquiries after Spener, who had interested her by his long mourning for her deceased father-in-law; and Liana, sure of her mother's concurrence, poured herself out into a stream of speech and emotion,--her eyes were forbidden to shed one,--on which was borne along a sublime image of her teacher. How the exaltation of this so delicate, tender soul thrilled her friend! So in the pale, small moon and evening star do higher mountains rear themselves than on our larger earth! "She was once inspired for thee, too, but now no more," said Albano to himself, and stayed behind after all the rest had gone on, because his soul had been long since full of pains, and because now the Princess began to displease him.

He posted himself alone, and looked at the ringing, gleaming war-dance of joy. The children ran illuminated through the uproar and in the bright green foliage. The tones hovered and hung twining together into one wreath, high in their ether above the noisy swarm of men, and sang down to them their heavenly songs. Only in me, said he to himself, do the tones and the lights toss a sea of agony to and fro, in no one else, in her not at all; she has brought with her for all others her old gladdening heart of love, not for me; she has not thus far suffered, she blooms in health. He considered not, however, that in fact his struggles also had shed not a drop of water into the dark red glow of his youth; in Liana well might wounds from such conflicts, like those of the scratched Aphrodite, only dye the white roses red.

But he determined to remain a man before so many eyes, and to await the crisis and Liana's solitude. He therefore exchanged several rational words with his foster relatives from Blumenbühl;--he said to Rabette: "It pleases you, does it not?" He startled, unintentionally, the Captain, who was hovering about some new faces from Haarhaar, with the unmeaning question, "Why dost thou leave my sister so alone?"

But as often as he looked at Liana, who to-day went in her long veil, as the only one without any thick, heavy gala-wrappage, as if she were a young, breathing, tender form among painted stone statues, so bashfully putting others to the blush, glistening and trembling like an egrette,--so often did masses of flame fly wildly to and fro within him. Passion, as the epilepsy often does with its victims, hurries us away, precisely at the dangerous crises of life, to shores and precipices. He leaned his head against a tree, slightly bowed down; then Charles came along out of his waltzes of joy, and asked him, with alarm, what provoked him so; for his bending down had cast gloomy, wild shadows upon his tense, muscular face; "Nothing," said he, and the face gleamed mildly when he lifted it up. At this moment, also, came the unreflecting Rabette, and would fain draw him into the general joy, and said, "Does anything ail thee?" "Thou!" he replied, and looked at her very indignantly.

"Go into the gloomy oak-grove to Gaspard's rock!" cried his heart. "Thy father never bowed; be his son!" Thereupon he strode away through the world of brilliancy; but when, far within, amidst the darkness, he leaned his head upon the rock, and the tones came toyingly and teasingly in after him, and he thought to himself, how he could have loved such a noble soul,--O how exceedingly!--then it was as if something said within him, "Now thou hast thy _first_ sorrow on earth!"

As during an earthquake doors fly open and bells ring, so at the thought, "first sorrow," was his soul rent asunder, and hard tears dashed down. But he wondered at hearing himself weep, and indignantly wiped his face on the cool moss.

Weakened, not hardened, he stepped out into the enchanted land, besprinkled with glimmering jewels, and among the tones which came dancing more rapturously to meet him, and would fain snatch his soul away and lift it up and set it on high places, so that it might look down into far and wide spring-times of life! Here on this once blessed soil he saw lying the shattered, trampled pearl-string of his future days. "O how happy we might have been this evening!" thought he, and looked into the bright Feast of Tabernacles, into the gilded but living branchwork,--into the green, flitting reflection, rocked by the night-wind, and into the wild-fire of burning bushes in the flowing waters. On the arched triumphal gates stood lights like heaven-descended constellations of the wain, and behind him the dark cloister-wall of Tartarus, which showed sublimely in its summits only single small lights; and, over beyond, the silent mountains sleeping in night, and here the noisy life of men, playing with the night-butterflies about the lamps!

Thus does the fire within us of itself create in us the storm-wind which fans it still higher. The tones that floated by him spoke to him every thought which he would fain kill. As man sees himself, so does he often hear himself, in the presence of a sound of music.

At this moment Liana went off some distance from the crowd with Augusti. "I will speak with her, then it will be over," said he to himself, as he drew near her, battling and wrestling with himself: he saw plainly that she wanted to be back again among strange listeners. "Liana, what have I then done to thee?" said he, with the deep-souled tone of a tender heart, bitterly despising the Lector's presence and powers. "Only do not desire an answer to-day, dear Count," said she, turning back, and took in haste Augusti's arm; but he remarked not that she did it to avoid sinking. Upon this he cast at the Lector a fiery look, hoping to be offended and then avenged,--left her in haste and silence;--the sweetest wine of love a hot ray had sharpened into vinegar;--and he slipped away, without knowing it, into the temple of dream.

He went up and down therein, murmuring, "_Je ne suis qu'un songe_"; but was soon driven out into Tartarus by his disgust at so many copies of himself moving round with him, and by the eternal spring of tones flying after him, which just now beside the upturned flower-bed of life was so intolerable.

In Tartarus all the apparatus of horror seemed to him now very diminutive and ridiculous. Just then, not far from the Catacomb avenue, Roquairol and Rabette came to meet him. Roquairol's flaming face was extinguished and Rabette's turned backward, when Albano passionately strode forth to meet them, and, still more imbittered by the remembrance of the time when their heavens were contemporaneous, and flaming up under the wind which blew upon his glowing ruins, attacked the Captain with: "Art thou a friend? Art thou no devil? Thou hast referred me to this evening: never, never say a word more of it!" Both trembled, confused and colorless; Albano, without further reflection, ascribed the growing pale and turning away to their sympathy for his martyrdom. What a confounding, hostile night!

He roved onward and onward, the licking fire of the joy and music that pursued him tormented him unspeakably,--the tones were to him mocking tropical birds of fairer, warmer zones that came fluttering to meet him. "I will just go to my bed, so soon as it once becomes still within there!" He was half a mile off, when the music of Lilar still continued to sound after him; he sternly stopped his ears, but Lilar still sounded on within them,--then he perceived that he was only listening to himself. But all the time it seemed to him as if the merry ringing must, as in _Don Juan_, resolve itself into a cry of murder at the presence of ghosts.

The avenue of coming days ran to a frightful point before him, when he now snatched out from them the moon of his heaven, which had once gleamed upon his childish heart and upon the paths of Blumenbühl. The blooming, dancing genius of his past, all unseen, with only the wreath of joy in its hand, stole away behind him, while he struggled with the dark angel of futurity going before him, who dragged him along after him through sounding thickets,--through sleepy villages,--through moist, trickling valleys. At last Albano looked up to heaven, beneath the innumerable eternal stars, to the hanging blossom-garden of God. "I am not ashamed before you," said he, "because I weep on this ball, and am oppressed before your immensity. Up there ye stand, all of you, far asunder,--and on all great worlds every poor spirit has, after all, only one little spot beneath its feet where it is happy or miserable. When only this night has once gone by, and I am gone to my bed; to-morrow I shall certainly be a man and stand fast!"

Suddenly he heard several times an almost exasperated cry of lamentation. At length he beheld, near a stream, outstretched white sleeves or arms; he went to the female form. "Alas! I am blind of God," said she; "I too was at the illumination, and have strayed away; I am generally acquainted with road and lane; over yonder lies our village; I hear the shepherd dog, but I cannot find the bridge over the water." It was the grown-up blind girl of the herdsman's hut. "Does it still go on pleasantly there?" he asked, as he guided her along. "All over!" said she. On the bridge of the Rosana she would not, out of vanity, let herself be directed any farther.

He returned through the pleasant bushes, which were already dripping with the dew of morning, to an eminence before Lilar. All was still down below there; a few scattered lamps flickered in the flute-dell, and in Tartarus a couple, like deadly tiger-eyes, still lingered. He went down into the vacant land away over the silent, flat grave,--up through his gloomy, downward-ascending cavern-avenue,--and into his bed. "To-morrow!" said he with energy, and meant his vow of steadfastness.

EIGHTEENTH JUBILEE.

Gaspard's Letter.--The Blumenbühl Church.--Eclipse of the Sun and of the Soul.

79. CYCLE.

If in the foregoing night a strange, hostile spirit cruelly drove against each other and away from each other human beings with bandaged eyes, so will that spirit on the morning after, when from a cold cloud he surveyed his battle-field with sparkling eyes, have almost smiled at all the joys and harvests which lie prostrate round about him down below there.

In Blumenbühl, Rabette, in lonely corners, wrings her hands with trembling arms, and breathes upon the wall-plaster, to wipe away the redness of wet eyes; out of Lilar comes Albano, gloomily looks upon the earth instead of its inhabitants, and from the astronomical tower gazes eagerly into the heavens, and seeks no friend; Roquairol musters up horses and riders, and makes himself, out in the country, a merry, drunken evening; Augusti shakes his head over letters from Spain, and reflects upon them disagreeably, but deeply; Liana leans in an easy-chair, all crushed, with her face falling towards her shoulder, and nothing blooming in it any longer save innocence; her father strides up and down, with a reddish-brown complexion; she answers but faintly, lifting from time to time her folded hands a little. Before the night-spirit on the cloud men's time goes swiftly by, as a fleeting pair of wings without beak or tail; the spirit has near him the distant week when Albano shall see by night from the observatory how in the Blumenbühl church there burns an altar-light, how Liana kneels therein with uplifted hands, and how an old man lays his own on her serene, shining brow, which directs itself with tearless eyes toward heaven.

The spirit looks down deeper into the months; he writhes around himself for delight, and grins over all dwelling-places and pleasure-haunts of men which lie about him; often a laugh runs round along all his open hell-teeth, only sometimes he gnashes them under the cover of the lip-flesh.

Look away,--for he too sees and wills it,--and step down from the wintry spectre among the warm children of men, and on the firm ground of reality, where flying time, like the flying earth, seems to rest upon steadfast roots, and where only eternity, like the sun, seems to rise.

Albano's wound, which cut through his whole inner man, you can best measure by the bandage which he sought to bind around it. Our grief may be guessed from the solace and self-deception we resort to. The next morning he let his griefs discourse across one another, and lay still, before their funeral wail, as a corpse; then he rose up, and spoke thus to himself: "Only one of two things is possible,--either she is still true to me, and only her parents now constrain her,--then they again must be constrained, and there is nothing at all to be lamented,--or else, from some weakness or other, perhaps towards her tyrannical and beloved parents, she is no longer true to me, or it may be out of coldness toward me, or from religious scruples, error, and so on; in that case I see," he continued, and tried to tread his two feet deeper and firmer into the ground, without, however, having any _purchase_, "nothing else to be done than to do nothing; not to be a crying suckling, a groaning sickling, but an iron man; not to weep blood over a past heart, over the ashes of death lying deep upon all fields and plantations of my youth, and over my monstrous grief." Thus did he delude himself, and mistake the necessity of consolation for its actual presence.

Every evening he visited the star-tower out of the city, on the Blumenbühl heights. He found the old, solitary, meagre, eternally-reckoning, wifeless, and childless keeper, always friendly and unembarrassed as a child, making no inquiries after war-news, journals of fashion, and poesies, and never paying money for his pleasure, except on the coach to Bode and Zach. But the old eye sparkled when it looked from under the sparse eyebrows into heaven, and his heart and tongue rose to poetry when he spoke of the highest mundane spot, the light heaven over the dark, low earth,--of the immense, universal sea without shore, wherein the spirit, which in vain seeks to fly across it, sinks exhausted, and whose ebb and flow only the Infinite One sees at the foot of his throne,--and of the hope of a starry heaven after death, which then no earthly disk, as now, shall intersect, but which shall arch itself around itself, without beginning and without end.

If Socrates humbled the proud Alcibiades with a map of the world, so, when this in turn is annihilated by a chart of the heavens, must our pride and sorrow on the earth be still more put to the blush. Albano was ashamed to think of himself, when he looked up into the immense ascending night above him, wherein days and morning twilights abide and move. He edified himself and his teacher when he spoke of _this_: how even now overhead, in the immensity, spring-times and paradises of new-born worlds and thundering[15] suns and earths burning up are flying across each other's paths, and we stand here below like deaf men under the sublime hurricane, and the roaring tempest and torrent shows itself to us, so far off, only as a still, stationary, white rainbow on the brow of night.

As often as Albano's great eye came back from heaven, it found the earth brighter and lighter. But at length the night came, which the hostile spirit had already so long lived in anticipation. It was already very late, and the heavens quite serene; the nebulæ crowded down nearer, as higher market-towns;[16] the sky seemed more white than blue. Albano thought of the hidden loved one, who, were she by his side, would still more consecrate the heavens and himself with her heartful of unceasing prayers; when suddenly, through his lowered telescope, he espied light in the Blumenbühl church,--the princely vault open,--Liana kneeling at the altar, with uplifted hands,--and an old man near her, as if blessing her. Fearfully stood the torch-flames and Liana's face and arms upside down; for the telescope caused everything to appear inverted.

Albano, shuddering, begged the astronomer to look that way. He too saw the apparitions, to him, however, nameless. "There are probably people in the church," said he, indifferently. But Albano rushed down,--hardly allowing the astonished astronomer time to call out after him with an invitation to the total eclipse of the sun tomorrow,--and ran toward Blumenbühl. How his heart wore itself out in the race, and most of all in the hollows, where he lost sight of the illuminated church, must remain a secret, because it was hidden even from himself in the tempest of his feelings. At last he saw the white church before him, but the church-windows were without any light. He knocked hard at the iron church-door, and cried, "Open!" he heard only the echo in the empty church, and nothing more.

So he went back, with a stormy past in his bosom, through the sleeping night: the earth was to him a spirit-island, the spirit-islands were to him earths; his being, his city of God was burning up, he felt.

It lay on the morrow still in full glow, when the Lector came to him, and brought him the incomprehensible message from Liana, that she wished, about noon, to speak with him alone in Lilar. He was not this time enraged against the suspected messenger, and said, full of wonder, "Yes." With what bold, adventurous forms does our life-cloud rise to heaven, ere it disappears!

80. CYCLE.

Let us go to Liana, with whom the riddles dwell! On the morning after the illuminated night she felt, upon reflection, for the first time, the horrible effort with which she had kept the promise of silence made to her parents; she sank down with unstrung energies, but also with renewed and ardent fidelity. "What," she kept continually saying to herself,--"what then had this noble man done to deserve that I should cause him a whole evening full of pangs? How often he looked at me imploringly and judgingly! O that I might have been permitted to hold up thy beautiful head, when thou leanedst it heavily against the rough pine-bark!" What had made her most melancholy in the heavy midnight had been his silent disappearance; how often had she looked up at his thunder-house outwardly illuminated with lamps, while within only darkness lay at the window! Now she felt how near he dwelt to her soul; and she wept the whole morning over the night, and the ray of love stung her more and more hotly, just as burning-glasses bring the sun before us more potently when it looks down just after rain. The mother showed her gratitude to her to-day for her yesterday's sacrifice in keeping her word by returning love and confidence; though the father did not by any means, since with him one was as little saved by good works as with the elder Lutherans, but only damned for the want of them; even now, however, when the parents had drawn from the previous night the newest hopes of renunciation, the daughter could not humor a single one of them.

How often she thought of Gaspard's letter! Is it a shot-off arrow, which, with a wound on its poisonous point, is on its slow way from Spain to Germany, or the friendly light of a never yet seen fixed star, just entered upon its distant track towards our lower world?

Augusti had, however, received the letter even before the night of the illumination, only he had not found good reasons for delivering it. Here it is:--

"I must needs value your anxiety very much, without, however, adopting it. Albano's love for Mademoiselle von Fr., in whom I have already formerly remarked, with great pleasure, a certain _virtuosity_[17] in virtue, so to speak, secures us and him against the influence of the ghostly machinery, and against connections of other kinds which might well be more dangerous for his studies and his warm blood. Only one must leave this kind of youthful plays to their own course. If he becomes too closely attached to her, then he may see to the _dénouement_ of the affair. Why shall we cut this pleasure still shorter for him, when you, too, already complain to me of the sickliness of the fair one? In the latter part of autumn I shall see him. His brave, vigorous nature will know well how to bear privation. Assure the Froulay house of my best sentiments.

G. d. C."