Part 24
This womanly, waiting submission of so free, mighty a spirit, made him speechless. Like an eagle, the flame of love seized him and bore him aloft. He glowed on her blooming countenance, and the bridal torch of the setting sun darted in with great flames between the two. "Linda," he began at length, with trembling, solemn voice, "if we could know that we should ever lose or forsake each other! O Linda," he continued, with difficulty, through his tears and his kisses, "if that were possible, whether through my fault or through cold fate, were it not then better that we at this moment plunged into the lake and died in our love?" The glow of the sun burned in like an aurora, snatching away youths and virgins to the gods, and the twilight of life was kindled into a bright morning redness. "If thou knowest that," said Linda, "then die now with me!" Just then Julienne's distant voice awoke both; at last she came herself with Dian, to take leave. They looked round, awaking, dazzled with the sun and with love, and all was changed. The sun had sunk, the broad lake was overhung with misty shadows, and the world was chilly; only the lofty glaciers blazed still with rosy redness into the blue, like memorial pillars of the flaming covenant-hour.
Before Albano's soul stood even now the form of destiny, so coldly dividing human beings, the veiled rocky form, whose veil is also of stone, which no one raises. He would now fain have burst through it, and directly, without cowardly delay, dashed down into the midst of winter. "O till Hesperus has gone down, pardon me!" whispered Linda. He stayed; but neither had words any longer, only eyes; the reined-in eagles, which had formerly hurried the celestial Venus-car through the heavens, fluttered wildly in the traces. The evening star went down; the half-moon, in mid-heaven, touched the earth with her beams, as with magic wands, and transformed it into a pale, holy world of the heart. "Only let the great star go down now," said she, and looked upon him longingly. He did so. The nightingales skipped musically among the silvery twigs; only the human beings had a voiceless heaven and love.
"Only one little star more!" she begged. He obeyed, touched by the very expression, but she summoned up her resolution, and said, "No, go!" "We will, Dian!" said he. Dian, indulgent to love, led the way down the terraces. Long and ardently lay the brother and sister on each other's hearts, and wished each other a pleasant, undisturbed reunion. Linda gave him only her hand, and said not a word. As the still heaven of night covers its hot sun, so was her flaming heart concealed; and when he went, without looking after him, she clasped his sister to her heaving bosom.
Splendor and night and fragrance bestrewed the Jacob's-ladder of the terraces down which he passed. Lightly flew his boat through the snow of stars and blossoms, which drifted over the waves,--the nightingales of the two islands chimed together,--the seamen sang back to them glad songs,--a favorable wind bore the orange-perfumes after the little vessel,--but Albano, weeping, had his heart and face turned toward the sinking pyramid. His sister alone had looked after him from the eminence; then she, too, was lost to sight,--the nightingales still called faintly after him,--at last all was veiled. He turned himself round toward the pale-glimmering glaciers, as toward the light-houses of his voyage, and of the heaven of this day nothing was now left to him but the pilot, love, as the seaman follows the magnet, when the holy stars have concealed themselves and guide him no more.
119. CYCLE.
Albano and Dian flew joyfully over the German fields to meet so many a precious heart, and nothing was disappointed except their dread of the length of the countries through which they had to travel. Instead of the black lava-sand and the burnt soil behind them, a bright, fresh green now decked the plains and cooled the dazzled eye. The waves of green grain-fields swept and tossed about as merrily as the waves of the blue-green sea. In thicker, longer, higher woods floated new shadows, like lovely little evenings, creeping away from before the light of day. The dark green of the Italian trees was replaced by the bright, laughing green of the German gardens, and new feathered choirs cradled themselves in clouds and in woods, and greeted the heart of man, and sent down to him their light and guileless joy.
From spring to spring went the happy Albano, with his dreams of love; as fast as a southern blossom fell behind him, a northern unfolded itself before him; and his travelling-carriage stopped on the variegated avenue among the blossom-shadows of a long garden.
At length he stood before the house to which the garden conducted him, and before the linden-city; so stood he also in a former year on the heights before it, looking up at the cloud-procession of the future, without being able to divine to what the clouds were shaping themselves, whether into an aurora or into an evening tempest. How many old pangs darted now like shadows of clouds over the old landscape! He was going now, such was his reflection, to meet his father with the news of his fortune; to meet his apostate friend with the stolen beloved; to meet with old and new love his returning Schoppe, whose heart and fate were to him, now, at once so dark and so weighty; and to meet the singular time and hour, when the subterranean waters, whose rush and roar he had hitherto so often experienced, should lie at once uncovered, and with all their windings and springs laid open to the light of day; and to meet the sacred spot where he could take boldly to his heart the beloved, who now, on the German road and in the neighborhood of former trials, seemed to him still greater and more unattainable than on Epomeo, in the neighborhood of all that is sublime in heaven and on earth, and when he might enfold her in his arms forever without asking again, "Wilt thou love me?" Then he went back in thought to an image which Vesuvius[110] had furnished him, and said to Dian: "Behind man there works and travels onward a slow, fiery stream, which consumes and crushes if it overtakes him; but let man only stride boldly forward, and often look backward, and he comes off unscathed. My beloved teacher, so will I now do in my new and momentous relations; do thou, however, make me turn round toward the lava, if in pleasant scenes I should sometimes forget it!"
"Speak better and more propitious words," said Dian. "Hail to us; the gods are already favorable! Yonder comes your father up the palace hill, and looks more gay and happy than I ever before happened to find him!"
THIRTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
Pestitz.--Schoppe.--Dread of Marriage.--Arcadia.-- Idoine.--Entanglement.
120. CYCLE.
Gaspard received his son with the usual stately coldness of the first hour, as letters begin more coldly than they end. Not until this morning-frost had melted away and it grew warmer around him, did Albano disclose to him, without fear or pusillanimous blushing, and with matured manliness, the bond which he had forever concluded with Linda and with himself, and begged him for the third yes. "So after all," replied the Knight, "the old enchanter has carried it through at last; of course under the reinforcement of a young enchantress. That I shall never disturb thee in anything which thou seizest upon with whole soul and forever, that thou knowest already from a similar case in the last year." Albano grew red at the bitter mention of his first love, but had gained strength within a half-year to preserve a manly silence, in cases where he once spoke out like a youth. Gaspard, more glad and warm than usual towards him to-day, nevertheless went on, when he perceived his sensitiveness: "I pronounce it good! As the seal-engraver in the beginning stamps the arms in wax, and then, and not till then, etches them on the precious stone, so does man essay to impress his upon more than one heart, until he at last gets the firmest. It must be owned thou hast not made the worst choice in my ward, and I gladly give my word of assent to it."
Albano pressed the hand which drew the sweet knot of love still tighter, and said, in the entrancement of gratitude: "I found my sister, too, the Princess. I put no question to her, however, as lately, but count upon time." "Mocker!" said Gaspard, and assumed, seemingly by way of cooling him off, the cruel appearance of thinking his pure, noble son had been disposed to retort upon him the bantering allusion to having many love-affairs. "Only be silent about all in thy innermost heart, as I myself have hitherto been, and conceal thy knowledge from the court. Give me thy word of honor."
Albano said he had already given it to Julienne also. He was, however, driven back, by Gaspard's whole deportment, upon conclusions which placed moral garlands neither upon his father nor upon Julienne's mother.
Gaspard added, furthermore, that it was a misfortune for a man to be entangled with fantastic women,--as Albano already knew his mother to have been,--and, in fact, with three at once, and advised him to march on boldly, as hitherto, through all riddles, and leave them to solve themselves. Thereupon he proposed to him, as a test of the third female fancy-monger, the question whether he already knew that the Countess, notwithstanding his guardianship, had still her living father, who would appear for the first time on her wedding-day. He said, "Yes." Gaspard then continued: This reason, of itself,--in order that Linda might find her father, and all of them the peace of clearness at last,--decided him for an early, secret marriage of the two through the honorable Spener.
Albano, really terrified at the prospect of the near and speedy transformation of blissful hours into blissful years, and no more able to think of his Titaness as wife than to think of her as child, answered, modestly and with disinterested reference to Linda's dread of wedlock, that, as to the time of sealing his happiness, no one must or could decide but Linda herself.
Gaspard was well content. "I only insist upon your adjourning the matter awhile," he subjoined. "My friend the Prince is again near his end; the beneficial effect which a spiritual apparition had wrought upon him has gradually subsided, and he fears daily the return of the phantom, which has promised to foretell him his last hours. At such a time your festival does not serve my purpose. To speak in confidence, the poor patient had himself an eye to the fair bride. It is, after all, but fair to spare him the highest certainty of his loss. On his account I also postpone my departure."
As if a man should enter into the new-created paradise, and all birds at once--nightingales and eagles and owls and birds-of-paradise and vultures and larks--should beset him, so confusedly did Albano feel himself excited by these mutually crossing prospects, and he perceived that there could be no dependence nor defence here, except in his own heart and Linda's.
Gaspard seemed to be impatient to see the Countess again, whom he called his only friend. "Unfortunately, I did not believe my brother in Rome," he added, "when he insisted on having met both ladies in Naples. _Apropos_, that brother passed through here some time ago, on his way to Spain; in Rome he asserted he was travelling to Greece. Thou seest with what poetic pleasure and geniality he carries on pure lying."
Gaspard parted from him very warmly, with the words, "Albano, I am very well satisfied with thee; I should be infinitely so if the purity of the youth had passed over into the man; I have not yet found it so." Albano was about to affirm and swear with emotion. "That is why," he continued, waving away the oath with a light motion of the hand, "thou foundest me so glad about thy good fortune, for the Princess's friend had already announced to me thy love in the morning. Take heed to thyself before her, for she hates thee without bounds."
With a hard and horrible aspect, like a new and extraordinary beast of prey behind the grating, does a real though unarmed hatred present itself for the first time before a good heart. Albano demanded no confirmation or explanation of this sad intelligence, for the love and error of the Princess, her acquaintance with his former coldness toward Linda, her silent bitterness toward Linda herself, were quite flames enough for her to cook the strongest poison by.
He took up his residence again, at the request of his father, at the house of Doctor Sphex, situated, unmeaningly to him, down in the valley; and Gaspard resumed his abode in the palace, near his sick friend. The Knight speedily presented him to the court, which soon observed and remarked the brown of travel, the sharper lightning of the eye, and the whole latest development of his great form. The Princess received him with the lightest, finest coldness, a sort of _aqua toffana_, which seems only pure, tasteless water. The Prince sat upright in his sick-bed, with peevish face, before drawings of Herculaneum, and was letting himself be informed on the subject by Bouverot. As a face upon which, in the late, gray years of life, fair joyousness can still picture itself, announces a fair life and fair heart, so the saint never wears a more heavenly smile than on his sick-bed, nor the reprobate a more hard and painful one. Albano turned his eye away from the sickly, withered _brother of his sister_.
Languishing, he looked back toward the past Hesperia, and forward to the gate of paradise which was finally to open, and show Linda and his sister in Eden. "It will certainly meet your approval," Gaspard had said, "that, under the pretext of Luigi's sickness, I have had them both quartered in the old palace at Lilar, where thou canst see them more unobserved." He met the Minister Froulay, and the Lector came to meet him; with both came a dark, manifold shadowy retinue of hard, old recollections. He had not yet seen Captain Roquairol, who was now to him the evening cloud of a sunken spring day.
He carried as speedily as he could his dumb heart--which was an Æolian-harp in a dead calm--to his childhood's Blumenbühl, to greet the parental beings, and to read the papers of his soul's nearest neighbor, Schoppe, for whose promised return he now longed more than ever.
121. CYCLE.
It was a fresh, blue, summer day when Albano went to his old Blumenbühl, without knowing that he did so precisely on the St. James's day, or paternal birthday, which he had once, in childhood, spent in such singular preludes of his life. In the old gardens and on the old heights round about, even over to Lilar's wood, lay everywhere, even now, the young, glistening dew of childhood, not yet dried up by the western sun; many tear-drops, too, stood among the drops of dew on the flowers; but his fresh, healing spirit was on its guard against effeminately floating away into soft transport, that Lethe of the present. In the village he was struck with the sight of a horse whom they were shoeing, for, by the caparison and all, he recognized it as Roquairol's festive steed. He introduced a festival into a festival, when he entered the noisy paternal apartment, full of birthday electors, blooming, fully developed, erect, a confirmed man, with determined look and gait. Rabette screamed out; Roquairol cried, "Aha!" and the old teacher Wehmeier, "God and my master!" and his childhood's angels, the parents, embraced him just as ever, and out of Albina's blue eyes ran the bright drops.
But a change had come over the youth of the others, compared with his. Rabette's countenance, the once full cheeks and blooming lips, had fallen in, and were overlaid and overgrown with the white veil, and she had two gray tears instead of eyes ; yet she smiled a great deal. Like his own Gorgon-head, Roquairol's face appeared pale and hard, as if chiselled on his gravestone; only naked piers stood in the water,--the light arches of the beautiful bridge were gone. Albina and Rabette looked up with a steady gaze at Albano's blooming figure; he seemed to be an Italian growth, a Neapolitan nerved by daily bathing in the gulf. Roquairol had his part immediately at command more easily than Albano his truth; he demeaned himself with the highest courteousness toward one who had broken in two for him the magic wand of life and thrown it away as a pair of beggar's sticks,--kissed him on the cheek, kept up the lightest, often a French tone of conversation, requested the latest intelligence about Italy, and retailed in turn the most edifying news from the country, as well, he said, as he could muster it up for a man with a Hesperian standard of measurement. He related, also, "that the Knight's brother had been there,--a man full of talent, especially the mimetic and that sort, and of the most singularly intense fancy with the highest coldness of character, though perhaps not always sufficiently true. For my tragedy," added he, "he would be worth his weight in gold. Dear brother, hold yourself forthwith as invited on the occasion. The play is called The Tragedian; I give it soon. Rabette is acquainted with it." She nodded. Albano glowed, but was silent. Among all parts, the Captain succeeded most perfectly in that of a world's-man; the show of coldness is more easy and true, also, than the show of warmth. Albano kept a proud distance. Roquairol could not gain in any respect by being opposite to the afflicted, faded Rabette, not even by the intercession of that form of his, full of the ruins of life. Albano found there something forever confused, and the wax wings crushed down into a lump; and it was as close and confining to him as to one who from the bright world creeps down at once into a low, damp cavern of a cellar.
The Captain rose, reminded him once more of his invitation to the "Tragedian," and springing on his festive horse rode away.
Behind his back every one was silent about him, as if embarrassed. The women, a little shy of Albano's brilliant presence, found some difficulty in venturing forth upon the subject of the old familiar past, while the foster-father, Wehrfritz, who having steadily grown on in his opinions and manners, and being still encased in the old cry of dogs and canary-birds, knew nothing at all about time, expressed his hearty thanks to his foster-son for the obliging recollection and choice of his birthday festival, which Albano necessarily and vainly declined, continued in his old thouing and patronizing, wrought himself into ecstasies on the subject of the French and their future victories, and bestowed more premiums of praise now on the older foster-son than he ever had on the younger, in order thereby, as he hoped, to give him as great pleasure as ever. The Magister backed the praise from a distance, although he could not let slip the opportunity, so soon as his pupil had pronounced Napel, Baia, Cuma, to pronounce Neapel, Baiæ, Cumæ. Albano was pure, true, human, frank, and hearty toward all; there was no vanity in his self-forgetting pride.
Rabette found at last a lifting-screw to wind her polished and yet familiar brother out of the receiving-room up into her or his former apartment, so as to be alone on his breast. As they stepped in, she immediately began, as she said, "Dost thou still know the chamber, Albano?" to weep infinitely, with the tears which had been so long gathering; and Albano showed her in his own, his long-cherished sympathy, but tore open thereby all the wounds of the past. She herself seized upon the remedy, namely, the telling of her story,--however earnestly he persisted that he knew, and, indeed, could well guess all,--and drying her eyes, informed him how all stood,--and that Charles was a good deal with his mother in Arcadia; that the Minister still acted the old tyrant toward his only child, and did not dole out to him a farthing more than ever, although he was always heaping up greater and greater debts, especially since there was no longer any Liana silently to wipe them away; that he borrowed everywhere, only, however, he never would accept anything from her; that he still continued to desire and know nothing but the Countess, and that God knew what all this would come to. Anticipating all inquiry, she added: "He knows the whole already, all thy intercourse with that same person. He behaves quietly and pleasantly about it, but I know him as well as I want to. Ah!" she sighed, in the fulness of anguish, and added immediately, with the same voice: "Thou lookest at me; is it not true thou findest me very haggard to what I once was?" "Yes, indeed, poor girl!" "I drank much vinegar on his account, because Charles loves slender figures; and grief has much to do with it too," said she.
Albano would have consoled her with the nearer possibility of a union of Charles with her, since the impossibility of every other union had been decided, and readily tendered his services for any prefatory word or coercive measure. "Before God and us, he is thy husband," said he. "That he never could have been," replied she, blushing, "for he never could have been honest; and did I not write thee that I am now too proud for it, too?" "Then cast him off forever!" said he. "Ah!" said she, fearfully, "do I know, then, that he meditates no harm against himself? Then I should reproach myself with it eternally." Involuntarily he could not but compare with this loving, holy fear, the hardness of the Princess, who could relate so gladly and proudly how many a love-smitten life had fallen a victim to her prudish heart and coquettish face. "What wilt thou do now?" he asked. "I weep," said she. "Ah, Albano, that is enough, indeed, that thou hast given me hearing and counsel; I am cheerful again. But be once more his friend."
He was silent, a little angry at the naughtiness of women, which, under pretence of seeking advice, only desires a hearing. "What is that?" he asked, showing her a leaf. "That is perfectly my hand, and I never wrote it!" She looked at it, and said Charles was often trying experiments with her in this way at handwriting. He wondered, and said: "Nothing, but imitating and counterfeiting all the time! But how canst thou think of my forgiving him?" Some descriptions of travels on her table, formerly so poor in books, met his eye. "I wanted to know, of course," said she, "how you might probably be faring in this, that, and the other place, and that is why I read the long stuff." "Thou art still my sister!" said he, and kissed her heartily. She still asked him much and urgently about his new connection; but chary of words with his full heart, he hastened down stairs.
The first word down below to the Provincial Director was a request for the "deposed letter of Schoppe's." Wehrfritz brought the broad letter, which had been laid up in the little iron box of bonds, and delivered it he hoped, he said, in good order. Hardly could Albano keep back his tears, when he held the crinkled but precious traces of the beloved hand, which certainly never in its life had swerved or stained itself, in his own. As he did not break the seal, they all began good-naturedly to portray to him his friend Schoppe, according to the presumptions and views which man so boldly and complacently indulges upon every higher spirit, with all his actions or colors, as if actions or colors were strokes and outlines. Wehrfritz and Wehmeier deplored that he was growing mad, if not already so. The Magister held back with his main-proof, till the Provincial Director should have contributed the lesser auxiliary ones.