Part 32

"I'll just make it manifest," said he, and scoured away at a rose in the picture about the region of the heart. "My then Paphos-name _Loewenskiould_ lies _sub rosa_ and will be immediately forthcoming. Had I already scraped it open on the road, then you would have believed I had on the road for the first written myself in." As from a ghostly writing hand Albano started back shuddering, when actually an L and an Ö came forth from under the rose: "I shall clear away no further now," said Schoppe, "the rest I keep for her." Albano now poured out his heart before his honest heart's-friend; to him he could say and object that Julienne was his sister,--"against which I have nothing at all to say," said Schoppe,--and that Gaspard had approved an intended marriage between him and Linda. "There is no getting away from it," he added; "if she is his daughter, then I am not his son,--I cannot possibly make his sacred word of honor a lie--and, God! into what a monstrous pit and pool of crime must one then look down!" "Touching the word and the pool," said Schoppe, quite coldly, "there are specious proofs to be adduced (although, to be sure, I have before this spoken superfluously on the subject with thy father, and with the Countess), that the Baldhead, who, as he confessed to me, has been thy father's mass-assistant, groomsman, and bear-leader, was not a man of the freshest morals, but that he--although otherwise upright in many saddles _except_ the moral--had his hours and centuries when he acted as such a dog and highwayman, that my hound there is a calendar-saint and father of the Church to him. Only I ought not to have blown out the lamp of his life, which of course stank more than it shone."

Albano could not disguise from him his horror at the deed. "I cannot repent it; listen," said Schoppe, and gave this account: "Even in Valencia thy uncle told me that he had met in Madrid such and such a fellow,--exactly like the Baldhead,--who carried round for show a wax-figure-cabinet of nothing but crazy creatures; often the whole cabinet would speak, and he himself would sit therein too, and help discourse; thy superstitious uncle procured and lent him spirits, too, and made evil and frightful things out of it all.

"Once in a _Posada_[136] I heard in a sleeping chamber near mine all sorts of voices murmuring through each other and saying, 'Schoppe also is coming to us.' I rose; the strange chamber was shut. I listen and hear it again, the devilish cry, 'Schoppe comes in also.' My room had a balcony out of which I could, through the neighboring window, see by the moonlight into the noisy chamber. In horrible, frizzled shapes sat a mass of wax therein and spake, the waxen baldhead in the midst; but I sought the living one. The wax beasts exchange with one another their fixed ideas and slip me in among them: 'There is our honorary fellow-member peeping in,' said the wax baldhead. By Heaven! I must be short, my blood boils and burns again through my heart. I grow furious, take my weapon, and petition God for a peaceable, forbearing disposition. Unfortunately I observe, in a back corner not lighted by the moon, near a father of death and a pregnant woman of wax, a black cloak which stirs, and out of which peeps the living tone-leader, the Baldhead. 'Black master of ventriloquism,' cried I, 'hold thy tongue for God's sake; I see thee behind there and fire in.' I took it for ventriloquism.

"Now for the first time the crazy-house properly began; I heard it laugh,--call me in and dub me a comrade and member of the club. '_Presses_,' said I, 'I am notoriously a man, and see thee quite distinctly.' It availed nothing; the waxen baldhead so much the more replied, 'Yes, there sits brother Schoppe already,' and I actually saw myself also embossed and modelled on the spot. 'He is to be had here also,' cried I, grimly, and fired away at the master of the lodge, who tumbled bleeding to the floor.

"I made off with myself in the same hour. As to the uncle, I came across his track afterward for a short time. He dreads madmen, and would not have me long with him, for fear I myself should strike up a bargain with the aforesaid set. He asked me whether the director of the wax-figure travelling madhouse had encountered me. I could not place much confidence in him; I have the secret alone."

"Thou art a wild, true man," said Albano, with such an intense desire to embrace him; "thou dost much for others, and art, after all, much for thyself. I can now leave thee no more. My former life-island, with all its flowers, lies deep under water, and I must cast myself into the infinite sea of the world. Give me thy hand, and swim with me. We travel to-morrow to France."

"To-morrow?" said Schoppe. "Well, yes! then I go this evening to the Countess, and then to Don Cesara." "Tell her," begged Albano, "that I would not visit her even as a brother, if I were such, not from coldness, but because I revere her great spirit; say that to her, and God help thee!" Albano was about to go, and leave him to wander alone into the neighboring Lilar. "No, accompany me, my master," said Schoppe, vehemently; "I have discharged the old churl over there in the woods by fair payment of escort-money, and should now be alone _vis-à-vis de moi_." "I do not understand thee," said Albano; "what art thou afraid of?" "Albano," said he, in a low and important tone, and his generally direct looks glanced shyly sidewise, and innumerable great wrinkles encircled his smiling mouth, "the 'I' might come; yes, yes!"

Wondering, and asking who that might be, Albano looked into his face. "Plague take it!" said Schoppe; "I apprehend you full well; you hold me to be not one eighth as rational as yourself, but mad. Wolf, come up! Thou, beast, wast frequently, on lonely roads and lanes, my exorcist and devil-catcher, against the 'I.' Sir, he who has read Fichte, and his vicar-general and brain-servant Schelling, out of sport as often as I, will make serious work enough out of it at last. The thing called 'I' presupposes itself, and the person called 'I,' together with that remainder which most call the world. When philosophers deduce anything--for example, an idea or themselves--out of themselves, so do they also deduce whatever else there is about them--the remaining universe--in the same manner. They are exactly that drunken churl who made water into a fountain, and stood there all night before it, because he heard no cessation, and of course set down all the subsequent continuing sound to his own account. The 'I' conceives itself; it is therefore ob-subject, and at the same time the residing-place of both. Gadzooks! there is an empiric and a pure 'I.' The last phrase which the crazy Swift, according to Sheridan and Oxford, uttered, shortly before his death, was, 'I am I.' Philosophical enough!"

"And what fearful conclusion dost thou draw from it all?" said Albano, with the deepest sorrow. "I can bear anything and everything," said Schoppe, "only not the _me_,--the pure, intellectual _me_,--the god of gods. How often have I not already changed my name, like my namesake and cousin in renown, _Scioppius_, or _Schoppe_, and become every year another person! but still the pure 'I' perceptibly runs after me and besets me. One sees this best on journeys, when one looks at one's legs, and sees them stride along, and then asks, Who in the world is that marching along so with me down below there? I tell you he is eternally talking with me; if he were once to start up in bodily presence before me, I should not be the last to grow weak and deadly pale. To be sure, no dog has occasion to use tooth-powder; but children one should paint up, it stands to reason and propriety. For my part, I have observed the age so so, and smile, because I say nothing. Men, like napkins, are broken up into the finest and greatest variety of forms,--into night-caps, pyramids, cross-bills--zounds, Albano! into what shape are they not folded? But the consequence, brother,--O heavens, the consequence! I say nothing: curse it, I am still as a mouse,--few as much so; but times may come when a gentleman shall haply remark, Men and music-notes, music-notes and men; short and sweet and plain, with both it is now heads up, now tails,--that is to say, when it has to go quick. These are similes, I am well aware, best friend; but the bakers announce a slack batch by a stony or clayey one in the shop, whereas men announce their hardest things, among which belongs the heart, by their softest, to which appertain words."

Speechless with astonishment at these effusions, Albano led him by the hand to Lilar before Linda's residence. All was dark therein; not a light was stirring. "Speak thy word softly up there, my Schoppe, and to-morrow we journey farther!" said Albano below, in a soft tone at parting, and left him to go up alone into the gloomy castle of mourning. "What a meeting!" said Albano, on his way back through the garden.

133. CYCLE.

Long did Albano wait for his friend on the following day; no one appeared, no man knew anything of him. On the second morning a report got wind that the Countess in the night, and Gaspard in the morning, had travelled off. "Has Schoppe driven both away by the truth?" he asked himself, forsaken and alone. In vain did he try to track Schoppe for several days after; not once had he been seen. "Thou, too, dear Schoppe!" said he, and shuddered at the barbarity of fate toward himself. As he thus surveyed himself, and looked out over the still, dark waste of his life, all at once it seemed to him as if his life suddenly lighted up, and a sun-glance fell upon the whole liquid mirror of the dark time which had elapsed. A voice, spake within him: "What has there been then? Men, dreams, blue days, black nights, have flown hither without me, without me flown away again, like the flitting summer, which the hand of man can neither weave nor hold fast. What is there left? A wide woe over the whole heart; but the heart, too, remains,--empty, of course, but firm, sound, hot. Loved ones are lost, not love itself; the blossoms are fallen, not the branches. Verily, I still wish; I still will; the past has not stolen from me the future. Arms I still have to embrace withal, and a hand to lay upon the sword, and an eye to survey the world. But what has gone down will come again, and flee again, and only that will remain true to thee which is forsaken,--thyself alone. Freedom is the glad eternity; calamity is for the slave the breaking out of a fire in the prison. No; I will _be_, not _have_. What! can the holy storm of tones only stir a particle of dust, while the rude, agitated air displaces mountains of ashes? Only where like tones and strings and hearts dwell, there do they move softly and invisibly. Only sound on, then, sacred string-music of the heart, but wish not to change anything in the rough, hard world, which owns and obeys only the winds, not tones."

At this moment, he was found by the Lector Augusti, who brought, by word of mouth, instant entreaties from the Princesse Julienne to go with him to Gaspard's chamber, where she had the weightiest words to say to him about Schoppe. He complied readily; he expected, first and chiefly, to find with her a key to his Schoppe's covered fate; he saw, too, from the bold choice of a messenger, how important to his poor sister his appearance must be.

In Gaspard's apartment Augusti suddenly left him to announce him, and--leave him, alone. Through his life rolled now a slow thunder; whether it came from heaven, from a stream, or only from a mill, as yet he knew not. Julienne burst in, weeping, unable to speak for the violent beating of her heart. "Thou art going away?" asked she. "Yes!" said he, and besought her to be less passionate; for he knew how easily another's impetuosity set him on fire, as he could not even play chess or fence, for any length of time, without becoming angry. She entreated him still more passionately only to stay till Gaspard came back. "Is he coming back?" asked Albano. "How otherwise? But not the unworthy bride," said she. "Julienne," replied he, seriously, "O, be not as hard against her as fate has been, and let me be silent!" "I hate now all men, and thee, too," said she. "That comes of your poetical souls. O, what honest bride would have let herself so easily be blinded by such a suicide? Who? But I see thou dost not know all." "But is it of any use?" he asked.

Surprised at this question, she began without reply the narration:--

On the day when Albano found Schoppe, Julienne would fain visit again her friend Linda whom she had not seen since the evening of the tragedy. All apartments in Lilar were closely curtained against daylight. Julienne found her sitting in darkness, with downcast, half-open eyelids, outwardly very tranquil, only at long intervals a little tear stole out from her eyes. The sweeping stream went high over the wheels of her life and they stood far under it and still. "Is it thou, Julienne?" she said, softly. "Pardon the darkness; night is green now, to my eyes. It pains me to see anything." The bridal torch of her existence was quenched; she wished now night for night.

Julienne put anxious questions of astonishment; she gave no answer to them. "Is there any trouble between thee and my brother?" asked Julienne, in whom relationship always created a warmer concern than friendship. "Only wait for the Knight," answered she; "I have sent an entreaty to him to come hither."

Just at that moment he entered. She begged him to accommodate himself to this short night. After some silence, she rose proudly from her seat; her black-dressed, tall form raised, in the presence of the Knight, whom she saw not, its great eyes to heaven, her proud life, hitherto enveloped in the winding-sheet, flung back the cloth and rose, blooming, from the dead, and she addressed the Knight: "Respected Gaspard, you promised me, as also did my father, that he would appear to me on my marriage day. The day is gone by. I am a widow: now let him appear to me."

Here the Knight interrupted her: "Gone by? O quite right! Is he, then, anything more discreet and moral than a man?" and jested, contrary to his usual manner, with a glow of indignation, because he supposed it was of Albano, whom he had so long trusted, that she was speaking.

"You misunderstand me," said Linda; "I speak of a deceased one." Suddenly before Julienne Roquairol's shadow passed; distant according tones from the Princess had ushered it in. "Almighty God!" she screamed, "the cursed suicide's play is true?" "He played what actually occurred," said Linda calmly. "We separate. I travel. I desire nothing but my father." Here Gaspard held out toward the Countess an arm petrified by palsy, as if armed with a drawn dagger,--the darkness made the apparition blacker and wilder,--but he broke the ice of death asunder again with cold hands, and stirred and answered with lamed tongue: "God and the Devil! Thy father is at hand. He will take it all--as it is. Does _he_ know it?" "Who?" asked Linda. "And what did he determine? Heavens! I mean Albano." Gaspard had, in a passion, at once Cromwell's imbecility of tongue and ingenuity of action; and remained therefore as averse and as far from every ebullition, even of love, as from tameness, which was to him (as he said) "even more odious than downright crime."

"I know not," said Linda. "I belong to the dead one alone, who has twice died for me. Say that to my father. O, I would have followed him long ago, the monster, into the deep realm; I would not stand here before the cold reproach of malice or Christian amazement, for there are still daggers to be used against life!--But I am a _mother_, and therefore I live!"

"I will see you again this evening," said Gaspard composedly, and hurried away. "I believe, dear Julienne," said Linda, "we now no longer quite understand each other, at least not to the highest point, just as we earlier differed about your _belle-sœur_, and you thought her coquetry, but I precisely her prudery, great and immoral." "That may well be true," said Julienne, coldly; "you are so truly poetic, I am so prosaic and old-maidishly pious and orthodox. To love a monster for this, because he cheats me as horribly as he does his regiment-treasury, or because he generally allows himself as much freedom as his regiment, or because after his death he still leaves parts for the remaining players, or letters to me, deceived one--" "Did he so?" asked Albano. "She praised it even as a sign of genius in him," replied Julienne. "To love such a one, said I, or such people as love him, I cannot find it in my heart to do that. Fare you then as well as may be." Linda answered, "I hate all wishes"; gave her her hand, pressed not hers, and remained in profound silence, looking into her night. She knew little of the easy and careless departure of her lost friend.

That same night Linda, after a long private talk with the Knight, travelled off entirely alone, wrapped in her veil, in a carriage without torches, and no one knew whether she had wept or not.--

When Albano had heard his sister out, he said, with a soft voice of emotion: "Make peace with the past; man cannot assail it. Leave to the great unhappy one the night into which she of herself has been drawn. But why were you so eager to have me with you? Particularly if thou knowest aught of my Schoppe, I entreat thee to impart it." "I will answer thee," said she, weeping and wondering; "but, brother, assure me that thy silence is not again the curtain of a new misfortune. I recognize you men by that, one must hate you all, and I do so, too." "I have nothing sad in my mind; before God I affirm it. You women, you who will only quench your hell with tears, and kindle it with the breath of sighs, comprehend not, that often a single hour's thinking can give a man a staff or wings, which shall lift him at once out of hell, and then it may burn on for all him." "Show me, then," said she, in a tearfully comic manner, "_thy_ wing." "This," replied he, "that I build not upon man, but upon God in me and above me. The foreign ivy winds around us, runs up on us, stands as a second summit beside ours, and it is thereby withered. Spirits should grow beside each other, not upon each other. We should, like God, as imperishable ones, love the perishable."

"Very good," said she, "if it only insures thee peace. As touching thy poor Schoppe, he has been thrust into the madhouse by way of punishment; but first let me give you a regular account. He dressed up a story about a second sister of thine before thy already so much excited father. One could have let this new distraction of intellect pass; but thy uncle was called, who told him to his face he had murdered the Baldhead; and the choice was haughtily left him between imprisonment and the madhouse; so he betook himself to the latter. Stay, stay! The weightiest is to come. Whatever I may think of him, I see he is thy honest friend; and to speak out freely, even Linda, before her departure, inserted in her last letter to me an intercession for him. He not only made the farcical journey to Spain for thee, he also effected thy cure; perhaps thou owest him thy life. I wonder that I, or somebody or other, has never before mentioned it to thee."

She began now upon Idoine's sound and generous character, her Arcadia, and the last day she had spent with her and looked into her clear soul. She passed on to his bed of fever and his mourning beside Liana's bier, and old Schoppe's talks and runnings to and fro, and his noble victory, when he had brought at length the glorified Liana, in Idoine's form, before his eye, that she might pronounce the healing words: "Have peace!"

Now was he in a storm, and Julienne at peace. "Therefore," she continued, "I hold it to be my duty to interest myself a little in thy friend. The poor devil is innocent,--through stingings of conscience and even by his present situation he may completely lose what understanding he still has,--altogether innocent, I say; for thy uncle, whom I have long hated, and who only a short time ago for the first time, but in vain, sought to come as a ghostly and murderous apparition to my sick brother,--he would also have probably done the same with Liana, if she had lived to admit of it,--this man is--(why may I not make it notorious, now that all has changed and revolutionized itself?)--one and the selfsame person with the Baldhead, and is a ventriloquist! Brother?"

But Albano had already flown from her.

134. CYCLE.

Albano would fain set his friend free before avenging him; therefore he would hasten first to Schoppe and then to his uncle. But as he passed by the lighted apartments of the latter, a sudden indignation seized him, and he must needs go up. The tall, haggard uncle came slowly to meet the excited youth, with the jay on his hand. Albano, without any circumstances, with flaming eyes, charged him with his double part, his heaven-crying destruction of Schoppe, and the illusory operations against himself, and demanded answer and satisfaction. "Yes, yes," said the Spaniard, stroking his _diablesse_; "I have the pistols: I have no time,--no time for talking." "You must have it," said Albano. "I have none, _Deo patre et filio et spiritu sancto testibus_; it will soon be between eleven and twelve, and the gloomy one stands here." "Heavens! why this silly, tragic scenery? O God, is it not possible, then, that you are even a man,"--looking with horror at the skin of his face, which absolutely could not look joyful or loving,--"so that you can tremble, blush, repent, exult? What knew you of my Schoppe, when you once in Ratto's cellar made believe as if you knew a frightful deed of his?" "No one needs know anything," he replied; "one says to a man, 'I am acquainted with thy villanous deed'; the man sends his thoughts back, he finds such a one." "But what had he done to you?" asked Albano, with agitation. Dryly he replied, "He said to me, 'Thou hound!' It strikes eleven o'clock; I say nothing more than what I will."

Here the Spaniard brought two pistols and a bag, showed him that they were not loaded, asked him to load one (giving him powder and lead), but not the other. "Into the bag, each into the bag," said he; "we draw lots!" The bolder, the better, thought Albano. The Spaniard shook both up, and requested Albano to tread upon one of them, as a sign of his choice. He did so. "We shoot at the same time," said the uncle, "as soon as it has struck the two quarters." "No," said Albano, "you fire at the first stroke, I at the second." "Why not?" replied he.

They posted themselves over against each other in opposite corners of the chamber, with the pistols in their hands, awaiting the stroke of half past eleven. The Spaniard closed his eyes in dumb listening. As Albano looked into this blind, bust-like face, it seemed to him as if no sin at all could be committed upon such a being, least of all a death-stroke. Suddenly there was a murmuring in the still chamber of five voices among each other, as if they came from the old philosophers' busts on the walls; the father of death, the Baldhead, the jay seemed to speak, and an unknown voice, as if it were the so-called Gloomy One. They said to one another, "Gloomy One, is it not so, have I told any falsehood? I bring five tears, but cold ones,--I bear the wheels of the hearse on my head,--I lead the panther by the noose,--I cut him free,--I point with white finger at _him_,--I bring the mist,--I bring the coldest frost,--I bring the terrible thing!"