Part 30

"There lies dear Anastasius," said Chariton to Dian, "my good friend Liana buried, and one knows not properly whereabouts in the garden, for one sees really nothing but flowers and flowers; however, she so ordered it." "That is very sad and fine," said Dian; "but let it be,--gone is gone, Chariton!" and led her aside, out of indulgence to the lovers. Albano, who overlooked nothing, and overheard everything, showed plainly enough how much he had been agitated by Chariton's words. Linda, too, perceived it. "Only speak out thy sadness," said she; "I do truly love _her_ too." "I am thinking upon the living," said he, collecting himself, and looked timidly, not upon the flower-garden, but upon the sun-enchanted[127] evening landscape; "can one, then, sufficiently forgive, and think no evil upon the earth? Linda, O how thou forgivest me to-day!"

"Friend," said she, "when you sin you shall receive forgiveness; but until then, I pray you be quiet!" He looked upon her significantly. "Hast thou not already forgiven, and have not I too? But couldst thou have known how intimately I lived with thee during these days on the way to my Schoppe, and brought over the divine past into the future--ah, can I then tell thee all in this place?" Fortunately she--like other women, attending less to words than to looks, gestures, and actions--heard more with the spiritual than the bodily ear, and stepped not over the brink of the abyss which his words laid open so near her. Thus did these two now play, like children, near the cold thunder-charged lightning-rod, out of which at the smallest nearer approach must dart the flashing scythe of death.

Both went on with their illusions near the lightning. The sun went down with his flames by the little mountain and the smooth flowery grave over into the distant plains. Out of the depths of the princely garden came tones fluttering up through the long evening rays and deified the golden landscape. The rays were solitary wings, that sought their heart, and joined it, and then flew onward--and the loving hearts became full of wings. The rays sank, the tones soared. Around Linda and Albano lay a golden circle of gardens and mountains and green valleys, and every flower rocked with its riches under the last lingering gold, and became the cradle of the eye, the cradle of the heart. The lovers looked at each other, and upon the earth, with inspired looks; the shining world appeared to them only in the magic mirror of their hearts, and they were, themselves, both, only floating images therein.

"Linda, I will be more gentle," said he. "I swear it by the saint in whose garden we stand!" "Be so, dear one; in Lilar thou wast not so!" said she. He understood it of his storminess toward Liana. "Bury this recollection in thy love!" said he, reddening. She looked upon him like a virgin,--her inner being had remained virginal and innocent,--as the peach turns its red and glowing side toward the sun, but keeps under the leaves the tender white. Her eye drank from his, his drank from hers; the heavens mingled with her heaven, the purple sun glimmered back out of the warm dew of loving eyes. "O that I might now kiss thee!" said Albano. "Ah, that thou mightest!" said Linda. "So goldenly did the sun once go down into the sea!" said he. "And afterward we gave each other the first kiss!" said she. "We will see each other now much oftener," said he. "Yes, indeed, and longer by day; by night I, poor one, have, indeed, no eye. Even now is my eye already going down yonder," said she, as the sun sank from sight.

It was a good, gentle spirit, or Liana's own,--that spirit which conducts man by the gradual transition of twilight over into night, which pours soothing tears into sorrow and into ecstasy, and which suffers not the short path of love's evening star to be overcast with clouds,--this spirit it was which saved their tongues and ears from the terrible sound which would at once have torn up the golden magic circle of evening into an all-surrounding blaze of hell.

"Who is that coming so hastily yonder?" said Linda. "My foe," said Albano. Roquairol had missed him, and had heard of Linda's arrival; in the hell-torment of anxiety, lest what had happened the night before might reveal itself before them this evening, he hurried, under the pretext of going to get Dian as a performer and Albano as a hearer, up the mountain. Like a centaur, half man, half wild beast, he broke in upon the melodious souls and joys with the hollow, confused war of his whole being. But hardly had he perceived in their looks the consecration of rapture, and seen that the black curtain still lay fast upon his murder, when the grim spirit of jealousy reared itself within him. "She is now my betrothed," he said to himself; and the solar eclipse of confused repentance was eclipsed by the tempest of chagrin. Linda, kindling into anger from an inward shudder at his similarity of voice, stood before him like a diamond, clear, sparkling, hard and cutting; but Albano, amidst the echoes of the harmony, stood gently on the churchyard of the sister of this brother, and not without some confusion. Roquairol was haunted again by yesterday's unclean suspicion, that perhaps Albano and Linda were no longer innocent.

Angrily, he now invited Linda to make one of the spectators at his tragedy. "You told me," said she to Albano, "it concluded so tragically; I am no friend of that." "He is not at all acquainted with it," said Roquairol. "No," said Albano. As the serpent looked down upon the paradise of the first pair, so looked he with the pleasing consciousness that he could hand them the apple from the tree of knowledge which should immediately drive them out from theirs. "Besides," she subjoined, "I see badly in the evening, or not at all." Roquairol affected to be surprised at that, joked upon the gain which it would be to him as first lover in the play, if she only _heard_ him, and begged Dian to unite in entreating her. Not inborn, but acquired coldness, has at command the highest falsehood; the former is capable only of dissimulation, the latter of simulation also, because it at once knows and uses all ways and means of kindling a fire, and keeps its firm standing on slippery ice by the ashes of former heat. When Albano himself at length advised her to take part in the tragic enjoyment, and grant her friends of both sexes below there the fair, pure enjoyment of her presence, then she consented, not without wondering at his retraction.

She took Chariton into her carriage. The men walked on ahead. On the way Roquairol said to Dian, who had to play the character of Albano in the piece, "So soon as I have said, in the fourth act, 'Even spiritual love goes to meet sensual, and, after all, like a seafarer on his way eastward, arrives at last in the lands of sundown,' then you fall in." Dian laughed, and said, "I'll fall in. In Italy, however, the passage begins at once as a southerly and westerly one." Albano was silent for vexation, and repented having helped persuade Linda to this doubtful festival. The Princess cast sundry rapid glances of contempt at the cheated Linda, and she answered them with the like; distinguished women betray their sex most in hostile contact with distinguished ones.

130. CYCLE.

Most of the spectators had in the beginning come more for the sake of the spectators and performers than of the play; but soon they were attracted by the mystery and by the extraordinary stage itself. The scene was laid on the so-called Island of Slumber in the Prince's garden, which was covered with a wild, thick tangle of flowers, bushes, and high trees. Its eastern side showed an open, free foreground, on which the performance was to take place, with a white Sphinx on an empty tomb farther in among the green. The wings of the scenes were the dark leafy parts; pit and boxes the shore opposite, which was separated from the island by a lake, about as broad as a moderate-sized ship. From two trees of the two opposite shores hung down like a lantern out over the middle of the lake the cage of the jay or chorus, suspended there by way of bringing her deep, dull voice nearer to the spectators. "I am, to tell the truth, 'curious," said the Knight to his son, "to know whence you will draw the tragical." "Leave me alone for that!" said Roquairol, who had hitherto been walking backward and forward silently and uneasily, with his eyes on the ground; "only I must make a general request of the company to be pardoned the delay. When I address the moon in the fifth act, I can very well use the real one, if I only begin just so that her rising shall coincide with the last scene."

At length he embarked, with a face that was growing pale, in the Charon's boat, as he said, and ferried over alone. Then the other players sailed over one after another. All were lost behind the trees; and now, from behind in the embowered western parts of the island, the immortal overture from Mozart's Don Juan rose like an invisible spirit-realm slowly and grandly into the air.

"_Diablesse!_" cried thereupon the brother of the Knight to the jay, and clapped his hands at the same time as a signal.

"Open the coffin," the creature began, in a hollow voice, accompanied by single, lugubrious, tones of the orchestra,--"open the coffin in the churchyard, and show for the last time the breast of the corpse and his dry eyelid, and then shut it to forever."

At this moment Lilia (Chariton) and Carlos (Dian) stepped forth,--two lovers yet in the earliest time of the first love. No sad rain of tears yet swept away the golden morning dew, they are so true to each other. Lilia rejoices with him that her brother Hiort is just coming back from his travels to find his youthful friend Carlos her eternal one. "Perhaps he, too, is right fortunate," said Lilia. "O, certainly so," said Carlos; "he is indeed that, and everything else." At times both were silent in happy contemplation of each other; then tones went up out of the veiled west of the island and bore the mute joy into the ether, and showed it to them hovering and glorified. A sweet sympathy diffused itself among the spectators for Dian's and Chariton's imitation of their own fair reality, so delicate, yet mingled with southern glow; they heard and saw Greeks. All at once Lilia fled behind the flower-bushes, for her enemy, _Salera_, Carlos's father, came, personated by Bouverot.

Salera angrily announced to his son the arrival of his bride, _Athenais_. Carlos made known to him now the mystery of his earlier love, and showed himself armed against a whole future. Salera cried, with exasperation, "Would that she were not, as she is, beautiful, so that I might have the pleasant duty of forcing and punishing thee! But thou wilt see her, and obey me, and yet I shall hate thee." Carlos replied, "Father, I have already seen Lilia." Salera went off with angry repetitions, and Carlos wished now still more ardently for Hiort's return, in order with him more easily to abduct his sister through his persuasion and attendance. Here closed the first act.

The brother of the Knight called to the jay, "_Diablesse!_" and scraped with his foot, as a signal.

"Appear, pale man!" spake the creature; "the clock vibrates the hour; man of sorrow, land upon the still island!"

Hiort stepped forth, with his cheeks painted pale, with open breast, looked upon the tomb, and said, from his innermost soul, "At last!" The music played a dance. "Yes, indeed, island of slumber thou may'st well be called; our days end with a sleep," he added. Now came his Carlos. "Hiort, art thou dead?" cried he, in terror, over the corpse. "I am only pale," said he. "O, how dost thou come back so out of the beautiful, gay earth?" said Carlos. "Exhausted, Charles, with stillborn hopes; my present is disinherited by the past; the foliage of the sensual is fallen off; not even beautiful nature do I longer fancy, and clouds like mountains are more dear to me than real mountains. I have truly reaped the bitter weeds of life, and yet must I, in this empty breast, carry about with me a destroying angel, who eternally digs and writes, and every letter is a wound. No advice! You call it conscience. But bring me a little sleep-draught hither on the island of sleep, Charles!"

They brought wine. He now gave his friend an account of his life,--his faults, among which he adduced the very one in which he was just persisting, namely, drinking; his self-reproducing vanity, even with its self-acknowledgment; his conquests of women, which made him a magnetic mountain, full of the attracted nails from ships that had thereby fallen to pieces; his propensity, like Cardan, to offend his friends, to break in upon his own or another's good fortune, as, even when a child, he longed to interrupt the preacher,[128] or in the midst of the finest tune to smash the harpsichord, and in a fit of enthusiasm to think the most licentious thoughts.

"Once I had still, after all, two distinct and different selves,--one that promised and lied, and one that believed the other; now they both lie to each other, and neither believes." Carlos answered, "Horrible! But thy sorrow is verily itself a help and a gift." "Ah, what!" he replied. "Man condemns less his iniquity than the past situation wherein he committed it, while, in a fresh situation, he finds it new and sweet again, and loves it as much as ever. What lies cold yonder, that is my image [pointing to the Sphinx], that stirs itself, living, in my bloody breast. Help me! draw out the rending monster!"

Albano fired with rage in his innermost soul at the guilty repetition of that tender confessional night with him.[129] "He is bold enough," said Gaspard, in a whisper to Albano, "because, as I hear, he is really to personate himself; but when he sees himself so, he is surely better than he sees himself." "O," said Albano, "so I thought once! But is, then, the contemplation of a bad condition itself a good condition? Is he not so much the worse that he bears this consciousness, and so much the weaker that he sees an incurable cancer-sore growing upon him? The highest thing he has, at all events, lost,--innocence." "A fleeting cradle virtue! He has, after all, a bright, bold, reflecting faculty," said Gaspard. "Only effeminate, shameless, double-meaning, many-sided debility of heart he has; talks of power, and cannot tear through the thinnest mesh of pleasure," said Albano.

"Charles," said Hiort, tenderly, as if answering him, "yes, there is yet one help. When on the ground of life one fresh color after another fades,--when existence is now nothing, neither comedy nor tragedy, only a stale show-piece,--still is there one heaven open to man, which shall receive him,--love. Let this close against him, and he is damned forever. Carlos, my Carlos, I could still be happy, for I have seen _Athenais_; but I can be still more unhappy than I am, for she loves me not. In my heart lies this blazing, but continually sharp-cutting diamond, upon which it bleeds as often as it beats." Everywhere now did Roquairol let Linda's image play in. At this crisis, Carlos at first threw his friend into an internal uproar, with the intelligence that Athenais had been selected by his father for _his_ bride, and was coming soon; but he calmed him, when his sister Lilia appeared, by quickly taking her hand, and saying, "This one only do I love." They spoke of the obstacles on the part of old Salera, whom Carlos called a glacier, which bore fruit under no sun, and could not be built upon. "Stand by me, Charles," said Hiort; "think what thou wrotest to me: 'Like two streams will we blend together, and grow, and bear, and dry up together.'"[130] Thus did the three beings mutually understand, bind, elevate each other; all had one end,--their common welfare. Carlos swore eternal rebellion against his father; Hiort, to protect his sister, and cried, "At last the empty cornucopia of Time, which hitherto has given out nothing but hollow sounds, pours out flowers again." "O, the women! How common and commonplace are almost all men! But almost every woman is new." Gaspard said, with a smile, "Women say the reverse of us and themselves." The second act closed in gladness and peace.

"_Diablesse!_" cried the Spaniard, and stretched his right hand high in the air.

"Fleeting," began the black jay, amid tones of music, "is man, more fleeting is his bliss, but earlier than all dies the friend with his word."

The third act followed immediately upon the heels of the preceding, and broke up, by the uninterrupted continuance of the artistic enchantment, which should belong to every play and every work of art that is to be read, all cold, prosaic astonishment, even that which arose from the wonderful speaking of the jay on the lake. A great, beautiful, proud lady appeared,--Athenais (personated by the merchant's wife, Roquairol's by-mistress), full of hope in her old friend Lilia, who called herself "the little Athenais," and, sweetly dreaming over the dream of former days, Lilia sinks into her arms with twofold tears; Athenais does indeed bear in her hand three heavens and three hells. "How beautiful thou returnest! My poor brother!" said Lilia softly. "Name him not," said she proudly, "he can die for me, but I cannot live for him." Here Carlos flies in to his Lilia,--stops and stiffens in his flight,--collects himself, and approaches Lilia. She says, "Count Salera,--Athenais--" He grew pale, she red. A constraining, painful confusion entangled them all three; every honey drop was taken from a thorn-hedge. Lilia, with a shudder, is made more and more strongly aware of Athenais's sudden victory over her fortune and love. Athenais went away. The two lovers look upon each other for a long time with trembling. "Am I right?" asked Lilia. "Am I in fault?" said Carlos. "No," said she, "for thou art a mortal, and, what is still worse, a man." "What shall I do, then?" replied Carlos. "Thou shalt," said she, solemnly, "after one year go into a garden on a hill, and look around thee and seek me in the garden,--in the garden--under the beds,--deep below one,--I know not how deep." She hastened away, as if frantic, and sang, "All over, all over with loving and living!"

Carlos stood some minutes with his wild look on the ground, and said, in a low, hollow tone, "God, it is thy work!" and went off,--met his friend, who called out impetuously and joyfully, "She is here!" but he hastened on proudly, and only called back, "Not now, Hiort!" To him came Lilia, weeping, and led him onward. "Come," said she, "do not look upon the tomb; we are both too unhappy."

Then came out old Salera with Athenais,--seized on ice for fire, and took his cold coin for warm,--praised her like a man, and his son like a father,--and said, as in a play, There comes himself. "Here, son," said he, "I set before thee thy happiness, if thou canst deserve it." Carlos had lost Lilia's heart,--his father's wish, the might of beauty, the omnipotence of loving beauty, stood before him, his longing and the thought of cruelty toward this goddess, and finally a world within him, which stood so near to her sun, prevailed over a double fidelity;--he sank on his knee before her, and said, "I am guiltless, if I am happy." The pair go off on one side; Salera on the other, and encounters Lilia, whose hand he takes, with the words, "You, as a friend of my house and son, certainly take the deepest interest in his latest happiness as the possessor of Athenais." So ended the third act, which, by its unjust, all-distorting allusions, filled and fired Albano with an exasperated desire for the end, merely that he might call Roquairol to account for this assassin-like brandishing of the tragic dagger. "The old fellow,"[131] said Gaspard, laughing, "fancies he is painting me too herein; I wish, however, he would take stronger colors."

Before the fourth act commenced, the Spaniard threw up his left hand, and the black jay spoke immediately: "Sin punishes sin, and the foe the foe; untamable is love, untamable also vengeance. See, now comes the man whom they no more love, and brings with him his wounds and his wrath." There stood Hiort, as if before his grave, which drew down his head,--weeping and drinking enormously,--soft evening tones of music melted away with his dissolving life. "Ah, so it is," cried he, out of a deep, agonized breast,--"only throw them away at length, the two last roses of life:[132] too many bees and thorns lurk in them; they draw thy blood and give thee poison-- O, how I loved! thou Almighty One on high, how I loved!--but ah, not thee! And so now I stand empty and poor and old: nothing, nothing is left me,-not a single heart,--no, not my own: that is already gone down into the grave. The wick is drawn out of my life, and it runs away in darkness. O ye children of men! ye stupid children of men! why do ye then believe that there is still any love here below? Look at me, I have none. An airy colored ribbon of love, a rainbow, draws itself out and winds itself around under us shifting clouds, as if it would bind the clouds and bear them. Ridiculous! it is itself cloud and mere falling weather,--in the beginning glisten gay drops of gladness, then dash down black drops of rain!"

He was silent,--went slowly up and down,--looked seriously at a war-dance and masquerade of internal spectres,--then stopped. The shadows of dark deeds played through each other around him: suddenly he started up; a lightning-flash of a thought had darted into his heart; he ran to and fro, cried, "Music! let me have horrible music!" and the wedding music from Don Juan, which had hitherto accompanied him, raised the murder-cry of terror. "Divine!" said he; and only single words, only tiger spots, appeared and vanished on the monster as he passed by. "Devilish! the rose's being, the blossom's being,--aye, well! I will bury myself in the avalanche, and roll down; and then I die beautifully on my slumber-island," he concluded, in a soft, faint voice.

"O Lilia! insure me one prayer!" cried he, going to meet his approaching sister. "Any one which hinders not my dying," said she. He laid before her the prayer, that she would this very night persuade her friend Athenais into the "night-arbor" of the island, under the pretext that her bridegroom, Carlos, wished to show her to-day two mysteries about Lilia. "I have," he added, "Carlos's voice; with it I can declare to her my loving heart, and then, if she loves me, I will call myself Hiort." "Is thy request sincere?" asked the sister. "As true as that I will be still alive to-morrow," said he. "Then is it soon fulfilled, for Athenais expects me even in the night-arbor; only follow me after seven minutes." She went; he looked after her, and said to himself, "Hasten, arrange the heaven! Fair slumber-island, at once the sleeping-place for the bridal-chamber and for the eternal sleep. O, how few minutes stand between me and her heart!"

"Thou art still here, surely?" said he, and looked for his pistol. "Now," cried he, solemnly, in departing, "is the time for the _clear-obscure_ deed, then the bier-cloth is thrown over it," and went swiftly into the arbor.

The Spaniard threw a twig into the water, and the black jay spake, in a low tone, "Silent is bliss; silent is death."

"The man," said Gaspard, "has something through the whole play like real earnest. I will not answer that he does not shoot himself dead before us all." "Impossible!" said Albano, alarmed; "he has not the force for such a reality." Nevertheless, he could not, after all, properly free himself from the anxious thought of this possibility.