Part 23

He waited several long days, yearning and anxious for his two friends, although his sunny companion was always reminding him to make allowance for the rapidity of his own journey. His determination to be gentle grew continually more and more unnecessary and involuntary. The very island itself, with its springs born of perfumes and with the distant garland of Alps, melted his soul. In the former year he had seen it more in leaves than in blossoms. It was, indeed, his land of childhood. From many places on the lake stars glimmered up to him out of a deep, early, after-midnight hour of life. Here had he for the first time found his father, and for the first time seen Linda's form across the waters; here he finds and loses them again, after the longest separation, for a still longer one; and here he stands in the gateway between north and south. The free, fragrant land, full of islands, the Jacob's-ladder of his life mounts back into the ether, and he goes down into a cold region full of constraint and eyewitnesses; his love is judged by his father, it is assailed by the downfallen friend. "Ye days in Ischia," he sighed, "ye hours in Vesuvius and in Tivoli, can you reverse your course? can you ever come back again and overflow anew the insatiable heart, that it may drink, and say, 'It is enough'?"

To his Dian, as if by way of justifying himself and his illimitable longing, he spoke frequently of Chariton and their children, and asked him how it was with his heart when he thought of them. "Don't talk to me so much of them," said he, after his manner, feeling more than he suspected or betrayed, "we are still so cruelly far off from them; one only spoils one's journey without cause. But when I have them all.... Well, ah God!" Then he paused, snatched the youth to his arms, and did not kiss him.

On a fresh, blue morning Albano stood, before the resurrection of the sun in heaven, on the high, bloom-encircled pyramid of terraces, where he had once, on awaking, seen his dear father flee without farewell; and he gazed with emotion down into the vacant, broad lake, and around on the summits of the glaciers, which already bloomed in the reflection of Aurora riding down from on high,--and no one was with him but the past. He looked upon himself and into his breast, and thought: "What a long, heavy time has already passed through this bosom since that day! A whole world has become a dream within me! And the heart still beats fresh and sound within thee!" All at once he saw, in the light morning-smoke of the lake, a skiff rowing along. Slowly, lazily it waded, for he saw it from a great distance. At last it glided, it flew; the sail bloomed up in the morning-blaze, and the green waves became a wild-fire, playing around it, as formerly in Ischia, on that evening, around Linda's skiff.

Linda it was, and his sister. They looked up, and motioned a greeting. He cried, in hasty joy, "Dian! Dian!" and ran down the long flight of steps, all astonished and enraptured at the wide-spread splendor, because, on account of the glad apparition, he had not seen the sun rise, for it was he who was strewing before the loved one the fair flames, like morning flowers along the path of the waters.

"Is it you again, ye divine ones? O speak, weep for joy, that I am blest and have you once more. Come ye then again with your real old love?" Thus he went on speaking in eloquent ecstasy, born of his long-dreaming expectation. Linda looked with secret angelic pleasure, with lovely reflection into the high-playing flames of his love; and his sister enjoyed in a sweet emotion of sympathy the beautiful mildness on both their countenances, which, in union with energy, is as enchanting as moonlight on a mountain. Descriptions of travels were begun by both parties, but ended by neither; arrangements for the day and plannings out of the island were projected, but none chosen. Julienne held up before his heart his own word and her stipulation, that at evening he must pursue his journey, as a slight cooling against the fire of joy that burned therein; sadly he looked up to the friendly, serene morning sun, as if it were not mounting higher, but already going downward.

They went now on a lovely stroll through the island; everywhere bloomed beside the present a still past, under the rose a forget-me-not. Here, in this grotto before the leaping waves, had he once played with his sister Severina, and on this island was her death announced to him. "But, Julia, thou art my Severina, and more," said he. "I think," said she, softly, "quite as much." Not far from the arcade was it that he had for the first time gazed into the face of his father. "But O when wilt thou find _thy_ father at last? Speak about this, good Linda!" said he. She blushed, and said, "I shall find him when fate permits." "But when is that?" "I know nothing about it," said she, with a soft hesitation. Then Julienne touched him, nodding, and said, in as much French Latin as she could muster together, but in an indifferent tone, as if she were soliloquizing to the air, "_Non eam interroga amplius, nam pater veniet_ (_ut dicitur_) _die nuptiarum_."[106] He looked at her with astonishment; she nodded repeatedly. "Julia," said Linda, smiling, "is like women, as cunning in acting as she is open in speaking. I could not have disguised myself from a brother so long." "When the brother and sister," replied she, "do not find each other till they are equally grown up and with all perfections, they can easily become lovers of each other, while other sisters have first for many years to conquer the faults of the brother growing up."

Now they came upon the gallery, amid lemon-blossoms, where Gaspard had let his son see so many veils and masks hanging about the future; then Albano said, with displeasure, "Here I had to let many riddles be announced to me,--and there"--he meant the spot in the sea where Linda's image had first appeared to him on the waves--"even this precious form was mimicked." "My God!" said Linda, vehemently, "why speak any more of it at all? O it was so wicked to do it!" "No one, however, has lost much by it," said Julienne, joking, "except a couple who have lost their hearts, and I my anonymousness!" "Could we not both answer, Albano?" said Linda, softly, and raised her eyes. "By Heaven, that we could!" said he, strongly, for without those preludes they would have sought and found each other earlier.

Amidst these lookings into a past so singularly interwoven with futurity, they had stepped into the Borromæan palace, which to-day was fortunately without occupants; because Albano, at Linda's request, was to usher them both into the chamber, where he and Severina were brought up. The palace-keeper, supposing they were only in quest of a prospect,--for the nursery apartments were in the fifth story,--would have led them out on the roof; he insisted they were dusty children's-chambers, and had been locked up from time immemorial. With difficulty the man turned, with a rusty key, a rust-eaten lock. They stepped into the bedusted, clear-obscure, high, empty chamber, wherein a vacant cradle, a flower-pot with a little Chinese rose-bush dried up like its earth, a child's pewter watch, a girl's baby-kitchen with old-fashioned utensils, a rolled-up shining harpsichord string, a German almanack of 1772, many black seals with bare antique heads, a dried-up twig of the liana, and the like, lay as cast-off lumber round about. Man looks with emotion down into the far, low-lying time, when the spindle of his life ran round as yet almost naked without threads; for his beginning borders more nearly upon his end than the middle, and the outward bound and the homeward bound coasts of our life hang over into the dark sea. Albano was touched with melancholy at the scene around him, and at this glimpse of human life and this out-look upon his own green fields yet standing in wintry lowness,--and at the sight of the spot where he had lived with a mother and a sister, who had vanished from the earth, yes, even out of his imaginings. He took up the pewter watch, and said, "Is there a better watch for that age which knows no time but only eternity, than this one with only an index and no wheel-work?"

Linda was surprised as she drew away a curtain from a glass casket and a waxen child, of angelic beauty, lying therein, caught the light in her clear eyes. "It is the dead Severina," said Albano, hastily, with the harsh adjective "dead," which Linda could not well endure. It became more and more uncomfortable to him in the clear-obscure chamber,--a streak of sunshine burned in singularly down through the lofty window,--animated resurrection-dust played therein,--the spirits of the sister and of Liana might at any moment flash across the earthly light,--and the mountains out in real life receded into the distance. When he looked again upon the blooming Linda, all at once she appeared to him changed, strange, supernatural, as if she appeared among spirits, and was going hence again. She looked upon him significantly, with the words, "One is not at home here, let us go!" "Woman!" said he, with strong voice, in German, making answer to an inward terror, and grasped her hand, "we will hold together like a live heart, if one should try to tear it asunder." Linda replied, "I cannot stay longer, Julienne!" and they went.

On the threshold it occurred to the Count to look into the next chamber; he opened it and shrank back, but cried, "You only go on," and he himself went in. He had, namely, beheld himself twice imaged as in a mirror. Within the chamber he found himself standing in wax in a niche in French uniform, but as a youth still, and close by, which the door had concealed, his father also as a youth, dressed in the old fashion, but beautiful as a Grecian god; the warm, full, flowery face had not yet been iced over in the winter of mature life, and still bloomed with love. He plunged deep into the sea of the past. The colossal statues out of doors, and the illuminated mountain ridges had risen up out of the dark waves, and stood in dripping splendor. There was a call from without. He looked again into his face, but angrily. "Why twice over?" said he, and crushed his face, but it was to him like suicide and laying hands upon his very self and soul. The form of his father he still more begrudged to the strange, unguarded place, but it was to him too holy for the slightest touch.

He went back, and remained silent on the subject of the images, in order not to ruffle the great, stubborn wings of Linda's fancy. The green, glistening, blooming day soon swallowed up the cold shadows which had fallen in from the heights and grave-mounds of the past. "But now," said Albano to Linda, "as you have just come out of my nursery, lead me once into yours." "I will not crown thee until we are at the right place," said she, and broke off and bound together twigs of the laurel wood, through whose swarm of light and dark waves they were now passing, for a garland. Bodily activity gave to this maiden, who, with more than common ease, knit together tones and colors and ideas, a peculiarly touching aspect of childlikeness and naive condescension. She braided the wreath, but with difficulty, confounded once the arbutus with the laurel that resembles it, put in one more blooming myrtle-twig, and decked his curled hair with it, but very seriously. "The garland becomes thee; the high laurels up on the summit thou wilt one day get for thyself," said she. He thought she was playing behind this seriousness; but she looked joyfully and searchingly and smilingly on the crowned one, but like a mother, and said: "It is right so! What wilt thou more? I will bring it. Albano, I have at this hour a very peculiar and new love for thee. I could do much for thee, endure much. My heart is moved with exceeding love. Kiss me not. I will tell thee." The fair womanliness which loves the beloved more ardently and intimately when it has for the first time gone over his homestead, the scenes of his childhood, his dwelling-places, unconsciously filled her strong heart. He kissed her not; he looked upon her, and wept in the ecstasy of love. She inclined her head towards him, and said, but cheerfully, "It is hard for me to weep, dearest! I will tell thee what thou desiredst to know about my childhood. Of the first places of my childhood but a very faint impression remains with me,--perhaps because we were always travelling, and because I look more for persons than for scenes,--except my having stayed longest in Valencia. Probably from this early travelling I derive my travelling mania. After all, however, it lies in my nature. But _you_ always believe, like the Germans, that you learn that which you properly inherit or create. By my mother I was more hated and loved than by any one. I am now clear about her. She was wholly born for art or for the arts, although I believe that she was originally marked out by the gods for the stage. She was everything this minute, nothing the next; curses and prayers, belief and unbelief, hatred and love, alternated in this epic nature. She could have lavished a world, and she could have stolen one. She once pressed me to her heart, and said, 'Wert thou not my daughter, I would steal or kill thee out of mere love'; and that was when I had said, 'I love Medea more than Creusa.'

"However, she was too inconsistent to be wholly loved; I loved my invisible father far more. I thought he was _God the Father_. I once imagined he must dwell in the _Porta Cœli_;[107] for whole hours together I went round the garden of the dead of the cloister, and looked longingly through the palms over the roses of the graves; I hung on every living thing, even to pain. A dying canary-bird once made me sick, and I thought the mass for the dead was read for him. On God and spirits also I hung in a sort of intoxication. They once flashed by before me in the fire which I struck out of sugar in the dark. I never played, but read early. As I was very serious, and my form developed itself precociously, I was early treated as a grown person, and I desired it too. No one was earnest enough for me, except my guardian, who, with secret hand, governed my development. Over books and in travelling carriages my early life passed away. I envied men, and their knowledge, and their freedom, but they did not please me, still less did women. I passed for proud--and at an earlier period I was so too--and for fantastical. I took it not ill, and said, 'You have your way, and I mine.'" The narrative was interrupted by Dian and Julienne.

118. CYCLE.

The first solitary minute which Albano found with his sister he devoted to an inquiry about her Latin intelligence that Linda's father would appear precisely on her marriage-day; but she referred him to his own father, who could tell him all about Linda's, and begged him "to indulge Linda, not only in her tenderness, but also in her characteristic shyness of marriage, which went very far. She could not, upon one occasion, accompany a female friend to the nuptial altar," Julienne added; "she called it the place of execution of woman's liberty, the funeral pile of the fairest, freest love, and said the heroic poem of love became then, at the highest, the pastoral poem of marriage. Of course she knows not whither such principles ultimately lead." "I hope, too, that thou trustest her," said Albano, making other and higher deductions from this singularity than his strict sister. She suddenly broke off, to impart to him a piece of advice which he was to take with him to Pestitz,--namely, to shun the Princess, who was, to the very core, cold, false, revengeful, and selfish. "She has something in view with thee, and, indeed, much; and her hatred toward the Countess must now be added. Linda clearly apprehends her, but yet she lets herself, out of passionateness, be carried away and made use of by all whom she foresees and surveys." Albano adhered to his old, milder judgment of the Princess,--so much the more, as he already knew Julienne's moral severity towards every woman of genius, from her misjudgment in the case of Liana,--but he readily gave her his word to shun the Princess, without telling her the reason,--namely, the love which the woman had for him, and of which it was so hard to disenchant her. To his tender feelings, there was no greater rudeness than this public breaking open and reading of a love-letter, this masculine catching and proclaiming of a woman's sigh of love through a speaking-trumpet for the people.

All came together again, encamped themselves upon a spot which commanded the lake and the Alps, and the shadows of the blossoms. The day cooled its glow, and sank from beauty to beauty down into evening. "On this exquisite island," said Dian, "already the Northern nature begins, and we shall soon find ourselves at home under a peaked roof." "Well, yes," said Julienne; "but, after all, one is glad too, at last, when one sees again a neat man, a blonde, and a shadow, and hears a bird or two."[108] "I think not here of Tivoli and Ischia and Posilippo," said Albano; "I think of my childhood and of the Alps. Over on the shore of the long lake (_Lago Maggiore_) of course the two sugar-loaves may not represent themselves to the best advantage, but, as a compensation for that, here from the sugar-loaf the shore and the lake appear so much the better, and for him who stands on this alp of the lake, it is, after all, made." "All is indifferent to me," said Linda; "for I find myself here entirely well. Remarking upon fine landscapes is also a Northern characteristic, because there one can become acquainted with them only through books. The Italian, who has them, enjoys them as he enjoys health, and is conscious only of the deprivation of them; for this reason he is not even a great landscape-painter."

"One should," said Dian, "celebrate in song the magnificent Italy, even upon the boundary-line, if one could get a _guitarre_ from the Castellain." He went and brought one. He now began to improvisate in Italian. He sang: "Apollo felt his old love for his former pastoral land on the earth and for the lost, veiled Daphne, wake again within him; he came down from heaven to find both. Jupiter had given him Momus as a companion of his journey, who should show him all that was odious, that he might flee back. As a beautiful, smiling youth he went over the islands, through the ruins of the temples, through eternal blossoms; he passed along before divine paintings of an unknown, exalted virgin with a child, and before new tones of music, and moved as over the magic circle of a new and fairer earth. In vain did Momus show him the monks and pirates, and his temples prostrated by the hand of time, and quizzingly make him take columns of thermæ for temple-columns. The god looked up at the high, cold Olympus, and looked down upon this warm land, upon this great, golden sun, these clear, blue nights, these ever-blooming perfumes, these cypresses, these myrtle and laurel woods, and said, 'Here is elysium, not in the subterranean world, not on Olympus.' Then Momus gave him a laurel-twig from Virgil's grave,[109] and said, 'That is thy Daphne.' Now did his great sister Diana grow indignant. She gave Daphne her form and dress, as if she had come over out of the woods of the Pyrenees; but he recognized his beloved, and went back with her into Olympus." As Dian sang this, and let the strains fly with the tones of the strings, there stood high over in heaven the eternal, radiant mountains of ice; from the mountains fluttered streams and shadows into the bright lake, and the evening bestirred itself with kindling and enchanted glow. Then the silent Albano seized the strings, buried his eye in the gleaming of the mountains, and blushing, began: "Linger awhile, O singer, among the lofty spirits who marched, killing, dying, over the battle-field, and who built up the everlasting temples of humanity; linger among the pure diamonds that remained firm and bright under the hammer of destiny; linger in the olden time, in the sea of Rome, which bore upon its bosom one quarter of the world, and undermined the others; but flee before the time which sank its summit in its own crater. Linger, singer, on the heights, and look down into the garden of the world, which is the play of human life. The ruin becomes a rock, and the rock a ruin; on the high promontory the blossom breathes fragrance, below lies the sea with open jaws; over Scylla gleam beautiful houses and streets amidst the lair of frightful rocks. And the god flies over the land and sees the child on the temple-column by the shore, and the temples of the gods full of monks, the marshes full of nameless ruins, and the coasts full of blossoms and grottoes, and the blooming myrtles and grapes, and the fire mountains and the islands, and Ischia."

But the storm-swept _guitarre_ sank from his hands, and his voice died away; his eye lost itself in the depths of heaven and of human life, and he withdrew himself to still his loud heart. In the cooling solitude he observed how far already the sun had flown down, as on Cupid's wings, through a colder heaven; he speedily turned back, and in the evening redness his parting-hour struck.

When he came back, Linda was alone, for Julienne, under the pretext of inspecting the picture cabinet, had drawn away his Dian from the lovers, to whom, besides, only the shortest day of bliss had been to-day allotted, and his beloved looked on him significantly. "Dian, strictly speaking, sang better," said she, "and more epically, but your lyric nature I also hold very dear." She looked at him again and again, then into his eye; then she embraced him impulsively, and not a sound betrayed the sudden kiss. "We will go up on the terrace," said she, softly. They mounted the lovely height of the ten terraces, which fill the sight with laurel and citron trees, and with pyramids and colossal statues, and with the prospect of the distant shore surrounded with villages and alps, and where once Albano had seen his father flee. "Thou pleasest me more and more, Albano," said Linda. "I almost believe thou canst really love. Tell me thy first love; I have told thee my story." "O Linda," said he, "how much thou desirest! But I am true, and tell thee all. Thou wilt love her as she loved thee. See here thy picture, which with her dying hand she made and gave me!"

He handed her the little sketch, and her eye grew moist. Thereupon he began, in a low and solemn tone, the picture of his first love; how he had reverenced and sought her early, when she was yet unseen, and in the first morning beams of life, and how he found her; and how she made him happy, and was not so herself; how gentle she was, and he so wild and harsh; how he demanded of her his own impetuosity of heart; how barbarously he took her renunciation, and how she perished through him. "O, I have dealt hardly, good Linda!" said he. "No," said she, "I weep for you both." "I have great imperfections," said he. "I forgive thee all," said she, "if thou canst only love. But the lovely creature also committed many faults, and against love." She checked herself, then asked, in a low voice, "Albano, is she still in thy heart?" "Yes, Linda," said he. "O thou honest and true man!" cried she, with inspiration, and laid her head upon his breast and prayed, "Holy God, give thy immortals everything, only leave me forever this man's breast, that he may be really loved, inexpressibly, and that I may not sink!" "If thou wilt, dear," she whispered suddenly, and raised herself up, looking upon him with infinite love and resignation, "that I dwell in Lilar, only command it."