Part 27

When he came the next day into the paternal apartment, he found no one there but Julienne. She gave him a slight and almost imperceptible kiss, in order to be speedily ready with her intelligence, since her absence was limited to so many minutes as the Princess needed to go from the sick-bed of her husband to the apartment of the Princesse. "She will not marry thee," she began, softly, "notwithstanding that thy father expressed himself so strongly and finely to her, at the first reception after the journey, upon the new good fortune of his son, for which he had now nothing more to desire, he said, than the seal of perpetuity. It was still more finely silvered and gilded; I have forgotten the precise words. Thereupon she replied in her speech, which I never can retain, that her will and thine were the real seal; every other seal of policy imposed chains and slavery upon the fairest life."

Deeply was Albano hurt by an open refusal, which hitherto, coming upon him as a silent one and as philosophy, had floated about untouched, as a mere unsubstantial shadow. "That was not right; she might say _a good while hence_, but not _never_," said he, sensitively. "Moderation, friend!" said Julienne; "thereupon thy father reminded her, in a friendly manner, of the conditional appearance of her own, by saying that he could not but wish very much to transfer her fortunes out of his own hands into nearer ones. No arbitrary condition could compel or annihilate a will, she said. Thy father went on calmly, and added, he had sketched, in that case, the fairest plan of life for you two; but, in the other case, his approval of their love stood open only as long as his stay here, which would end at his friend's death. Then he went coolly and composedly out, as men are wont to do when they have provoked us to a real rage."

"Hesperia, Hesperia!" cried Albano, angrily. "But did Linda really repeat her no?" "O, too true! But, brother?" asked Julienne, with astonishment. "Suffer me," he replied; "for is it not unrighteous, this meddling of parents with the fairest, tenderest strings, whose vibration and melody they at once kill, in order to call forth from them a new tune? Is it not, then, sinful to degrade divine gifts into state-revenues and match-moneys,--yes, match[120]-moneys indeed? Good Linda, now we stand again on the ground, where they set up the flowers of love for sale as hay, and where there are no other trees in paradise than boundary-trees. No, thou free being! never through me shalt thou cease to be so!"

Julienne stepped back some paces, and said, "I will only laugh at thee," which she did, and then added, in earnest, "_She_, then,--is that thy will?--shall appoint _thee_ the day when the old father is to become visible?" "That does not follow by any means," said he. She calmly remarked, that an excited person always complained of the heat of another, and that Albano, in his very calmness, insisted too sternly upon his own and others' rights; that such people went on to demand, in passion, something beyond the right, as a pin, which fits too nicely into the clock, when warmed stops it by its size. Then she begged him affectionately just to leave the disentangling of the "whole snarl" to her fingers, and to remain mild and still, lest yet more people--perhaps, in fact, her _belle-sœur_--might interfere with their union. Albano took it in friendship, but begged her earnestly only not to make any plans, because he should be too honorable toward Linda for that, and should immediately tell her the whole word of the charade.

She disclosed to him that she had made no other plan whatever than a plan for a happy day to-morrow, namely, to visit with Linda the Princess Idoine in Arcadia, to whom she owed still greater things beside a visit, particularly half of her heart. "Thou wilt ride accidentally after us, and find us in the midst of pastoral life," she added, "and surprise thy Linda." He said very decidedly, "No," both out of a shrinking from Idoine's resemblance to Liana,--although he only knew that Liana had personated her in the Dream Temple, and not, also, that Idoine had counterfeited her before his sick-bed,--and because he disliked to come into the presence of the Minister's lady, from a dread as well of bitter as of sweet recollections, of both which, in such a case, Roquairol would have brought up the rear. Julienne mischievously objected: "Only have no fear for the Princesse; she was obliged, in order only to rid herself of the detested bridegroom, to engage with an oath to all her friends never to choose one below her rank,--and that she will keep, even with thee." He answered the joke merely with the serious repetition of his no. Well, then she should insist upon it, she replied, that he should at least come to meet them half-way, and await them in the "Prince's Garden,"--a park which had been laid out by Luigi as hereditary prince, and forgotten when he came into the princely chair. He assented to this proposition very joyfully.

She still asked, jocosely, as they parted, "Who has been presenting thee with a new sister, lately?" He said, "That is what my father could not draw from me." "Brother," said she, softly, "it was a gentleman who easily takes princesses for countesses, and who, in the next place, thinks to be still more crazy than he already is,--thy Schoppe," and flew off.

125. CYCLE.

On the morning after the two friends took their journey to Arcadia, Julienne, although more troubled on account of the increased illness of her sick brother, cheered herself by her reliance upon a plan which, in spite of her assurance, she had sketched for the good fortune of the _well_ one, and which she was to carry out in Arcadia. She, unlike others who hide their heads behind the dark, mourning-fan of sorrow and sensibility, oftener hid her head, with its designs, behind the gay dress-fan of smiles, which turned to the spectators the painted side; amidst laughing and weeping she pursued and pondered them. Thus she had made the request to Albano to join in the visit to Idoine only for show, and in the certainty that he would refuse, or in case he should not, that then Idoine would; for she knew, from Idoine's visits in the previous winter, that she had frequently thought in conversations of the fair fever-patient who had been restored by her, and that she had just fled before his arrival, in order not to overshadow his bright, loving present, which had become known to her in the easiest manner through the Princess, by coming upon him like a cloud out of the past full of melancholy resemblances. Julienne had even ascertained that the Princess had vainly wished to keep and reserve the Princesse longer, in order, perhaps, by means of her, to remind, terrify, change, or punish the youth. Julienne's love for the Princesse would perhaps have been made as warm by that tender flight from Albano, as her love towards Linda was, had not this very love stood between; at least, this beautiful flight had given her an unlimited confidence--which is exactly the true and only kind--in the Princesse.

The day of the journey was a beautiful harvest morning, full of thickly-peopled cornfields, full of coolness and dew and zest. Linda expressed a childlike joy in Idoine, and gave the reasons in a glad tone. "First, because she saved thy brother's life,--and because she knew, after all, what she wanted, and insisted upon it with spirit, and did not, like other Princesses, transform herself into a victim to the Throne,--and because she is the most German Frenchwoman that I know except Madame Necker. Yes, in my eyes she belongs strictly, with all her fair youth, among old ladies, and these I have always sought out, for there is at least something to be learned from them. She loves thee exceedingly, me, I believe, less. To one who is such a charming medium between the nun and the married woman, I seem too worldly, though it is not the case."

The two companions arrived early in the beautiful, enchanted village in the afternoon before dinner, just as the neat children were already banding together to go to gleaning, and the wagons were already going out to meet the gatherers of the sheaves. Idoine's brother, the future hereditary Prince of Hohenfliess,--the Dwarf of Tivoli,--looked out of the window, and Julienne almost regretted the journey. Idoine flew to meet her, and clasped her heartily to her breast. When Julienne had before and upon her face that great blue eye and every transfigured feature of the form which once her brother had so blissfully and painfully loved, she fancied herself, now that she had become his sister, to receive, as his representative, the love of the representative of Liana; and she must needs, as she had done every time since that death at the first reception, weep heartily.

Linda was received by the Princess with such a deep tenderness that Julienne wondered, since the two generally lived in an alternation of coldness and love. There stood the Minister's lady, Froulay, so old with mourning, so cold, still, and courteous, so cold towards the occasion and the company (except the fac-simile of her daughter), particularly towards Linda, whose bold, decided, philosophical tone seemed to her unwomanly, and like a trumpet on two female lips.

The future hereditary Prince of Hohenfliess fortunately withdrew himself soon from so inconvenient a place, where he navigated a shipwreck plank instead of a gondola. After inquiring of Julienne with interest about the state of her brother, his present predecessor, and reminding her and Linda of her and his Italian tour, he became so fretful and out of tune at Julienne's frigidity, and at the moral discourses of the women, and at a certain oppressiveness premonitory of a moral tempest,--which sensualists experience in the presence of women, where everything rude, selfishness, arrogance, screams like discord,--and at the general, plaguy hypocrisy,--which he could not but immediately take it all to be,--that he was glad to break away, and relieve this pastoral life of the only wolf who had crept into it. Voluptuaries can never hold out long among _many_ noble women, tormented as they are by their many-sided, sharp observations, although they can more easily with one, because they hope to ensnare her. What made him feel worst of all was, that he was compelled to pronounce them all hypocrites. He found no good women, because he had faith in none; since we must believe in them in order to see them where they are, just as one must exercise virtue in order to be acquainted with it, though not the reverse.

With him a black cloud seemed to draw off out of this Eden and ether. The Minister's lady received a card from her son Roquairol, who had just arrived, and she went too, to the joy of Julienne, who found in her a little obstacle to her plan of conversion for Linda, because the latter looked upon the Minister's lady as a one-sided, narrow, anxious, unyielding nature. Idoine begged the two maidens to travel over her little kingdom with her. They went down into the clean, wide village. On the steps they were met by cheerful, obliging faces. From the distant apartments of the palace was heard now singing, now blowing of wind instruments. As on the bird the shining feathers slide swiftly and smoothly under each other and out again, so did all occupations move around Idoine; her economical machine was no clumsy, jarring steeple-clock, but a musical picture-watch, which conceals the hours behind tones, the wheels behind images.

In a meadow-garden the youngest children were playing wildly with each other. Moravian and Dutch neatness had scoured and painted the village to a sleek, bright fancy-shop. New and shiny hung the bucket over the well; under the linden-rotunda of the village the earth-floor was swept clean; everywhere were seen clean, whole, fair clothes, and happy eyes; and Idoine showed, under the unusual gayety, an earnest meaning in the looks with which she inspected her Arcadia, flower after flower.

She led her friends over the various Sunday dancing-places of the different ages, along before the house of the steward,--wherein the Minister's lady resided, and now, to Julienne's fear, her son was,--to the bright, plain church. Soon came the parson and steward, for whom her passing by had been a hint, following her into the church, and received commissions from her. Both were fair young men, with open brow and a little youthful pride. When the party were out of the church, she said through these young men she ruled over the place, and them she guided gently; that only young people were furnished with hatred and spirit against conventionalism, and with enthusiasm and faith. She added, jocosely, she governed nothing but a school of girls, upon which she laid more stress than upon the other, because education was the formation of habits and manners, and these a girl needed more than a boy, whom the world, after all, would not allow to have any; and she had, she said, some inclination to be a _la Bonne_, because she had, even when a girl, often been obliged to be one with her sisters.

Thereupon she introduced the two to several houses; everywhere they found well-whitened, neatly-ordered apartments, flowers and vine-clusters over the windows, fair women and children, and now a flute, now a violin, and nowhere a spinning child. In all she had charges to give, and what seemed a mere walk was also business. She showed a sharp insight through people, and their perverted, crooked ways, and a talent for business, which possessed and united at once the universal and the particular. "I should be glad, of course," said she, "to have only pleasures and amusements about me; but without labor and seriousness the best good of the world dies: not so much as a real play is possible without real earnestness." Linda commended her for training all to music,--that real moonlight in every gloomy night of life. "Without poesy and art," she added, "the spirit grows mossy and wooden in this earthly clime." "O what were mine without tones!" said Idoine, glowingly.

Linda inquired about the right of citizenship in this pleasant state. "It is mostly possessed by Swiss families," said Idoine, "with whom I became acquainted at hearth and home on my travels. Immediately after the French women I rank my Swiss." Julienne replied, "You repeat to me riddles." She solved them for her; and Linda, who had been in France shortly after her, confirmed it, that there, among the women of a certain higher tone, to whom no Crebillon had ever come up, a development prevailed, unusual in Germany, of the most delicate morality, almost holiness. "Only," added Linda, "they had in morality, as in art, prejudices of fine taste, and more delicacy than genius."

They went out through the village, toward the loveliest evening sun; Alpine horns responded to each other on the mountains, and in the vale gay old men went to light employments. These Idoine greeted with peculiar love. "Because," she said, "there was nothing more beautiful than cheerfulness on an old face; and among country people it was always the sign of a well-regulated and pious life."

Linda opened her heart to the golden scene before her, and said: "How must all this delight in a poem! But I know not what I have to object to the fact that it now exists so in the real reality."

"What has this same reality," said Idoine, playfully, "taken away from you or done to you? I love it; where then are _you_ to be found for us except in reality?" "I," said Julienne, "am thinking of something quite different; one is ashamed here, that one has yet done so little with all one's willing. From willing to doing is, however, to be sure, a long step here," she subjoined, while she placed her little finger on her _heart_, and stretched the fore-finger as if vainly attempting to span from there to her _head_. "Idoine, tell me, how then can one think of what is great and what is little at once?" "By thinking of the greatest first," said she; "when one looks into the sun, the dust and the midges become most visible. God is, surely, the sun of us all."

The earthly sun stood now looking toward them far down on an immeasurable plain amid mild roses of Heaven. A distant windmill flung its arms broadly through the fair purple glow; on the mountain declivities children sang near the pastured herds, and their smaller brothers and sisters were playing under their eye; the evening bell, which in Arcadia was always tolled at the farewell of the sun, rocked sun and earth to slumber with its vibrations; not only in youthful, but even in childlike beauty lay the soft little village and its world round about them. No storm, one said to one's self, can intrude into this soft land, no winter stalk in in heavy panoply of ice: here, one thought, only spring winds and rosy clouds come and go: no rains fall, except early rains, and no leaves, except those of the blossoms: only dust from the flowers rises here; and the rainbow,--only forget-me-nots and May-flowers hold it upon their little blue and white leaves; the landscape and life and all seemed here to be only a continuous morning twilight, so fresh and new, full of presentiment and contentment, without glow or glitter, and with a few stars over the morning red.

Children with wreaths of grain in their hands sat on other people's wagons full of sheaves, and rode proudly in.

Idoine hung with hearty love, as if this evening made it all new, upon the double groups. "Only the countryman is so fortunate," said she, "as to live on in all the Arcadian relations of his childhood. The old man sees nothing around him but implements and labors which as a child he also saw and plied. At last he goes up into that garden over yonder, and sleeps it out." She pointed to the churchyard on the hill, which was a veritable garden, with flower-beds and a wall of fruit-trees. Julienne looked thither with agitation,--she saw the dark curtain tremble behind which her sick brother was soon to be borne.

Transparent evening gold-dust was wafted over the garden; the loud day was muffled, and life peaceful; olive-branches and their blossoms sank slowly down out of the quiet heavens. "There is the only place," said Idoine, "where man concludes an eternal peace with himself and others, as a French clergyman so beautifully said to me." "Such Christian-catholic night-thoughts," replied Linda, "are as disagreeable to me as the clergymen themselves. We can as little experience an immortality as an annihilation." "I do not understand that," said Julienne. "Ah, Idoine, if now there were no immortality, what would you do?" "_J'aimerais_," said she to her, in a low voice.

Suddenly they heard some one singing before them, as at a great distance: "Taste"--then after some time--"of life's"--at last--"pleasure."[121] "That is the echo from the churchyard," said Idoine, and endeavored to persuade the party to return. "Echo and moonshine and churchyard together," she continued playfully, "may well be too strong for female hearts." At the same time she touched her eye, with a hint to Julienne, as much as to say how sorry she was that the eyes of the Countess could only see through a mist the beautiful evening coming on afar off. "The singing voice sounds so familiar to me," said Linda. "It's Roquairol, that's all; shall we go on?" said Julienne. But Linda begged to stay, and Idoine courteously agreed.

Now did the echo--the moonlight of sound--give back tones like dirges from the funeral choir; and it was as if the united shades of the departed sang them over in their holy-week under the ground,--as if the corpse-veil stirred on the white lip, and out of the last hollows sounded again a hollow life. The singing ceased; Alpine horns began on the mountains; then the echo of the concert came over again in enchanting tones, as if the departed still played behind the breastwork of the grave-mound, and rehabilitated themselves in echoed tones,[122] All men bear dead or dying ones in their breast; so did the three maidens. Tones are the garments of the past fluttering back with a glimmer, and they excite the heart too much thereby.

They wept, and neither could say whether for sadness or joy. The hitherto so moderate Idoine grasped Linda's hand, and laid it softly on her heart, and let it sink again. They turned round silently and with one accord. Idoine held Linda by the hand. The subterranean waters of the echoes of the dead and the Alpine horns murmured after them, though more distantly. It did not escape Julienne how Idoine continually turned her face, merely in order to withdraw it from _her_, with the great drops in her large eyes, towards the thickly-veiled Linda; and she inferred therefrom that Idoine knew and was acquainted with much, and respected the bride of the youth to whom she had by her fair resemblance given back a happy life.

"What now do we get from all this?" said Idoine, by and by, and near the village. "We foresee that we should be too tender, and yet we give ourselves up. For that very reason men call us weak. They prepare themselves for their future by mere hardenings, and only we do it with mere softening processes." "What shall one do, then," said Julienne,--"leap into rivers, up mountains, on horseback, and so on?" "No," said Idoine. "For I see it by my peasant-women: they suffer in their nerves, with all their muscular labor, as well as others. With the mind, I imagine, we must all do and seek more; but we always let only the fingers and eyes exercise and stir themselves. The heart itself knows nothing thereof, and does what it pleases the while: it dreams, weeps, bleeds, dances. A little philosophizing would be of service to us; but, as it is, we give ourselves up, bound, to all feelings, and if we think, it is merely to give them additional aid."

They came back into the village; it was full of busy evening noise. Children came dancing to meet Idoine; alp-horns sounded in from the heights, and from the houses flutes and songs. Idoine gave cheerfully evening commands. "How easily, after all," said she, "outward tranquillity breaks up the internal. A busied heart is like a vessel of water swung round; hold it still, and it runs over."

Julienne had already several times, but in vain, snatched at the helm of the hour and the conversation, to carry out her plan; now, when she observed Linda's silence, emotion, and dreaminess, she fancied she had hit upon the long-expected, favorable moment when some words which Idoine let drop on the subject of marriage would find in Linda a softened soil for their roots. By the easy turn of a eulogy which she pronounced upon Idoine for her spirited opposition against launching into a hated princely marriage, and her gain of a perpetual young life, she brought the Countess to the point of expressing her heretical hatred of marriage, and saying that it laid the flower painfully fastened with a sharp iron ring to its frame; that love without freedom, and from duty, was nothing but hypocrisy and hatred; and that acting according to morality, so called, was as much as if one should choose to think or poetize according to a system of logic which he had before him, and that the energy, the will, the heart of love, was something higher than morals and logic.