Part 37

Thereupon he took also solemn leave of his former bride, the Prince's widow. "He held it as his bounden duty," he said to her, "to let her into the secret of the newest succession, since he had in some measure let himself be entangled in the progress of the business." Never was her look more proud and poisonous. "You seem," said she, composedly, "to have been led off into more than one error. If it so interests you, as you seem upon the whole to be interested for this land, then I take pleasure in telling you, that I dare no longer hesitate about making known the good fortune which I anticipate, of sparing the country, perhaps, by a son of their beloved, deceased Prince, the necessity of any change. At least, we cannot, before time has decided the thing, admit any foreign admixture." Gaspard, enraged at what he had expected, spoke in reply merely an infinitely impudent word--because he had a faculty of more easily forgetting and violating _sex_ than _rank_,--and thereupon took his courteous leave of her, with the assurance that he was certain, wherever he might be, to receive confirmation of this already so agreeable intelligence, and that it would then pain him to be obliged, out of love for the truth, to make public against her some extraordinary--judicial papers, which he would not gladly put in circulation. "You are a real devil," said the Princess, beside herself. "_Vis-à-vis d'un ange? Mais pourquoi non?_" replied he, and departed with the old ceremonies.--

Albano, whose heart had in all these depths and abysses naked, wounded roots and fibres, could not say a word. But his friend Siebenkäs declared, without further ceremony, that "Gaspard, at every step, and with his everlasting, fine dallying and hesitating,--as, for example, about the marriage of his daughter, and other things,--had betrayed nothing but the incarnate Spaniard, as Gundling, in the first part of his _Otia_, so well portrays him." Augusti wondered at this openness, while it seemed to him more tolerable and decorous than Schoppe's roughness. "What would strike me most," added Siebenkäs, who, as it seemed, had taken the world's history as a subordinate department, "would be the long concealment of so weighty a pedigree among so many partakers of the secret, if I did not know too well from Hume, that the Gunpowder Plot, under Charles I., had been kept secret for a whole year and a half by more than twenty conspirators."

Much wounded, and yet thoroughly cleansed, Albano departed, in the afternoon after these narrations, into the discordant kingdom, but with cheerful, holy boldness. He was conscious to himself of higher aims and powers than any of the hard souls would dispute with him; from the serene, free, ethereal sphere of eternal good he would not let himself be drawn down into the dirty isthmus of common existence; a higher realm than what a metallic sceptre sways, one which man first creates, in order to govern it, opened itself before him; in every, even the smallest country, was something great,--not population, but prosperity; the highest justice was his determination, and the promotion of old foes, particularly of the sensible Froulay. Thus did he now, full of confidence, leap out of his former slender vessel, propelled only by strange hands, on to a free earth, where he can move himself alone without strange rudder, and instead of the empty, bare watery way, find a firm, blooming land and object. And with this consolation he parted from the dead Schoppe and the living friend.

145. CYCLE.

In the twilight he came upon the mountain, whence he could overlook, but with other eyes than once, the city, which was to be the circus and the theatre of his powers. He belongs now to a German house,--the people around him are his kinsmen,--the prefiguring ideals, which he had once sketched to himself at the coronation of his brother, of the warm rays wherewith a prince as a constellation can enlighten and enrich lands, were now put into his hands for fulfilment. His pious father, still blessed by the grandchildren of the country, pointed to him the pure sun-track of his princely duty: only actions give life strength, only moderation gives it a charm. He thought of the beings who lay sunk in graves around him, hard and barren indeed as rocks, but high as rocks, too,--of the beings whom fate had sacrificed, who would fain have used the _milky-way_ of _infinity_ and the _rainbow_ of _fancy_ as a bow in the hand, without ever being able to draw a string across it. "Why did not, then, I, too, go down like those whom I esteemed? Did not, in me also, that scum of excess boil up and overspread the clearness?"

Fate now carried on again games of repetition with him; a flaming carriage rolled away on a road leading off sidewise from the Prince's garden; slowly moved the hearse of the brother with dead lights up the Blumenbühl mountain. "The slow carriage I know; whose is the swift one?" asked Albano of the Lector. "Herr von Cesara has left us," replied he. Albano was silent, but he experienced the last pang which the Knight would give him. He begged the Lector earnestly to let him go alone on the way to Blumenbühl, because he should take altogether circuitous routes.

He wished to visit in Tartarus the grave of the paternal heart without a breast. As he passed through the noisy suburbs, an old man stared at him for a long time, suddenly fled away with terror, and cried to a woman, who met him, "The old man is walking round!" The man had been in his youth a servant of the Prince, had become blind and had recovered again a short time since; therefore he took the son for the father whom he so resembled. In the city the usual public joy at change was making itself heard. In one house was a children's ball, in another a group of players at proverbs; while the public mourning shut up every dancing-hall and every theatre. Strange, merry sons of the muses were looking out of Roquairol's chamber. In the hotel of the Spaniard a boy had the jay by a string. He heard some people say in passing, "Who would have dreamed of it?" "Quite natural," replied the other; "I was helping make, at the very time, a wall to the princely vault, and saw him as I see thee." In the upper city all the rows of windows in the palace of mourning were brightly illuminated, as if there were a happier festival. In the house of the Minister all were dark; overhead among the statues on the roof a single little light crept round.

"No," thought Albano, "I need not reflect, why I, too, sank not with them. O enough, enough has fallen from me into graves. I must surely yearn forever after all the beings who have flown from me; like divers, the dead swim along with me below, and hold my life-bark or bear the anchor." He saw the old corpse-seeress standing out there on the Blumenbühl road, who once met him in the company of the Baldhead; she stared up after the lighted hearse and fancied she was seeing dreams and the future, when she was looking at reality. Everywhere in his path lay the quivering spider-feet which had been torn out from the crushed Tarantula of the past. He saw life through a veil, though not a black but a green one.

Passing through Tartarus, he longingly, but with a shudder, because the past with its spirits glided after him, arrived at the Moravian churchyard, where, in a garden without flowers, surrounded by sunken, slumbering mourning-birches, the white altar with the paternal heart and the golden inscription glimmered: "Take my last offering, all-gracious one!" Before the heart shut up in a breast of stone, in which nothing stirred, not even a particle of dust, he made his childlike prayer to God, and felt that he would have loved his parents, and swore to himself to please them, if their lofty eyes still looked down into the low vale of life. He pressed the cold stone like a breast to himself; and went away with soft steps, as if the old man were walking along beside him in this his own form, so like his.

He looked up from his road to the mountain where his father had found him at evening on Whitsuntide and Sacrament day, as to a Tabor of the past; and in his walk through the little birch wood he still recollected well the spot[157] where once two voices (his parents) had pronounced his name. Thus consecrated by the holy past, he arrived in the village of his childhood, and saw the church, as well as the house of Wehrfritz, filled with lights, the former, however, for a mournful object, and the latter for the glad one of welcoming of guests.

146. CYCLE.

Albano found in the glorification, wherein Heaven was to him only the magnifying mirror of a glimmering earth, and the past only the fatherland and mother-country of holy parents,--in this splendor of the soul he found the house of his boyhood, into which he entered, festal and like a temple, and everything common and clumsy refined or only represented as upon a stage. His mother Albina and his sister Rabette came with their glad looks as higher beings to his moved heart. They drew hastily back, Julienne flew down stairs and kissed her brother, for the first time openly, in a silent blending of pleasure and sadness. When she released him, the tolling began out of the gloom of the church-tower, as a signal that the dead brother was passing into the church; then she rushed back upon Albano, and wept infinitely. She went up with him, without saying whom he should find up there with his foster-father. An old flute-clock, whose laborious music was offered from time immemorial to rare guests, welled out to welcome him, as he opened the door, with the resonances of the days of his childhood.

A tall, black-dressed female form, with a veil falling down sidewise, who sat talking with his foster-father, turned round towards him as he entered. It was Idoine; but the old magic semblance passed again over his to-day so excited soul, as if it were Liana from heaven, arrayed in immortality, prouder and bolder in the possession of unearthly powers, retaining nothing more of her former earth than goodness and charms. Both met each other again here with mutual astonishment. Julienne--conscious to herself of her little concealments and arrangements--saw a little red cloud of displeasure flit across Idoine's mild face; it was, however, gone below the horizon, so soon as Idoine perceived that the sister during the tolling for her brother's funeral could not restrain her tears, and she went kindly to meet her, seeking her hand. Idoine, easily inclined by her severity to fits of vexation, that little skirmish of wrath, had freed herself by long, sharp exercise from this finest, but strongest poison of the soul's happiness, till she at last stood in her heaven as a pure, light moon, without a rainy and cloudy atmosphere of earth.

Albano, to whom the earth, filled with the past and the dead, had become an air-globe that soared into the ether, felt himself free amidst his stars, and without earthly anxiety. He approached Idoine,--although with the consciousness of the conflicting relations of his and her house, yet with holy courage. "Her last wish in the last garden," he said, "had been heard by Heaven." With maiden-like decision of perception she went through the wilderness wherein she had to bend aside, now flowers, now thorns, in order to be neither embarrassed nor injured. She answered him, "I rejoice from my heart that you have found your faithful sister forever." Wehrfritz was quite as much delighted as astonished at the frankness with which she honestly spoke the truth against all family relations. "So must one always lose much on the earth," Albano replied to her, "in order to gain much," and turned to his sister, as if he would thereby guard this word against a more ambiguous sense.

The funeral bell tolled on. The strange, happy and sad mingling of earthly lots gave all a solemn and free tone of spirit. Albina and Rabette came up, arrayed in festive dark dresses, for the procession to the burial church. Julienne divided herself between two brothers, and never did her heart, which stood at once in tears and flames, swell more romantically. She guessed how her friend Idoine thought respecting her brother Albano, for she knew her to have a steadier voice than to-day's was, and her sweet confusion was most easily evident to her from the short report which the open soul had made to her of meeting Albano again in Liana's garden; the slight maidenly recoil, too, of her pride to-day, when she was embarrassed to find herself taken everywhere for a risen Liana, that beloved of the youth, made Julienne not more doubtful, but more sure.

"On a fine evening," said Albano to Idoine, "I once looked down into your lovely Arcadia, but I was not in Arcadia." "The name," replied she, and her clear eyes sank again to the earth, "is nothing more than play; properly it is an alp, and yet only with herdsmen's huts in a vale." She raised not again her large eyes, when Julienne silently took her hand and drew her away, because now the funeral bell sounded out with single, sad strokes, as a sign that the funeral ceremony was coming on, in which Julienne could not possibly deny her sisterly heart the comfort of participating. "We are going to the church," said Idoine to the company. "So are we all, indeed," replied Wehrfritz, quickly. As the two maidens passed by Albano, he observed for the first time on Idoine three little freckles, as it were traces of earth and life, which made her a mortal. He looked after the lofty, noble form, with the long floating veil, who, beside his sister, appeared like Linda, quite as majestically, only more delicately built, and whose holy gait announced a priestess, who had been wont to walk in temples before gods.

Hardly had the two disappeared, when Albano's old acquaintances, especially the women, to whom Julienne's presence had always held near in view Albano's family-tree, crowded on his heart with all signs of long-repressed cordiality, full of wishes, joys, and tears. "Be my parents still," said Albano. "Bravery is everything in this world," said the Director. "I did my part like a mother," said Albina, "but who could have known _this!_" Rabette said nothing; her joy and love were overpowering as her recollections. "My sister Rabette," said Albano, "gave me, when I first went to Italy, the words embroidered on a purse, 'Think of us.' This prayer I will fulfil for you all in every vicissitude of fortune";--and here, although too modest to say it, he thought of things which he might perhaps do, as Prince, for his foster-father, among which came first the restoration of his reverting male fee. "Thus, then, is many a former sorrow of the heart, for us--" began Albina. "O, what's to do with hearts? what's to do with sorrows?" said Wehrfritz; "to-day all is right and smooth." But Rabette understood her mother very well.

All betook themselves on their way to the temple of mourning. They heard as they approached the church the music of the hymn, "How softly they rest"; at a considerable distance bugles were essaying gladder tones. Rabette pressed Albano's hand and said, very softly, "It has been well with me, because I have learned all." She had, since hearing how Roquairol had murdered a manifold happiness and himself, cast all her love after the wretched man into his grave to moulder with him, without shedding a tear as she did it. Her heart leaped at the thought of Idoine's goodness, of her resemblance, with the mention of which her father had to-day made the angel blush, and of her beautiful comforting of Julienne, who had wept incessantly before Albano's arrival. Albina praised Julienne more on account of her sisterly affection. Rabette was silent about her; the two were sisterly rivals; moreover, Julienne had, according to her sharp, inexorable system, looked upon her very coldly as a victim of the Roquairol whom she so despised; whereas Idoine, who, by her greater knowledge of human nature, had learned to unite mildness toward female errors of the heart and moment with severity toward men, had only been gentle and just.

When they stepped into the church full of mourning lamps, Albano stole away into an unlighted corner, so as neither to disturb nor be disturbed. At the bright altar stood the serene and venerable Spener, with his uncovered head full of silver locks; the long coffin of the brother stood before the altar between rows of lights. In the arch of the church hung night, and forms were lost in the gloom; below rays and bright shadows and people crossed each other. Albano saw the iron-grated door of the hereditary sepulchre, through which his blessed parents had gone down, standing open like a gate of death; and it was to him as if once more Schoppe's tumultuous spirit stalked in, to break into the last house of man. The thought of his brother affected him but little, but the neighborhood of his still parents, who had so long watched for him, and whom he had never thanked, and the incessant tears of his sister, whom he saw in the gallery over the gate of death, took mighty hold of his heart, out of which the deep, eternal tones of lamentation drew tears, like the warm blood of sorrow and of love. He saw Idoine, with her half red, half white Lancaster rose on the black silk, standing beside his sister, drawing the veil over her eyes against many a comparing look. Here, near such altar-lights, had once the oppressed Liana knelt while swearing the renunciation of her love. The whole constellation of his shining past, of his lofty beings, had gone down below the horizon, and only _one_ bright star of all the group stood glimmering still above the earth: Idoine.

Just then the youth was seen by his friend Dian, who came hastening towards him. Without much ceremony, the Greek embraced him, and said, "Hail, hail to the beautiful transformation! There stands my Chariton; she, too, would greet thee after the manner of her speech."[158] But Chariton was looking continually at Idoine, on account of her resemblance. "Well, my good Dian, I have paid many a heart and fortune for it, and I wonder that fate has spared me thee," said Albano. Thereupon he asked him, as architect of the church, about the condition of the hereditary sepulchre, because he wished afterward to have the ashes of his parents uncovered, in order at least to kneel down before them in silent gratitude. "Of that," said Dian, surprised, "I know very little; but it is a shocking purpose, and what good is to come of it?"

The music ceased; Spener, in a low tone, began his discourse. He spoke not, however, of the Prince at his feet, nor yet of his loved ones in the hereditary tomb, but of the real life that knows no death, and which man must beget in himself. He said that, for himself, though an old man, he wished neither to die nor to live, because one could already, even here, be with God, so soon as one only had God within him, and that we ought to be able to see without grief our holiest wishes wither like sunflowers, because, after all, the lofty sun still beams on, which forever raises and nourishes new ones, and that a man must not so much prepare himself for eternity as plant in himself the eternity which is still, pure, light, deep, and everything.

Many a human breast in the church felt the poisonous point of the past broken off by this discourse. On Albano's rising sea it had poured smooth oil, and all about his life was even and radiant. Julienne's eyes had grown dry and full of serene light, and Idoine's had filled with glimmering moisture, for her heart had to-day been stirred too often not to weep in this sweet, devout, and exalting emotion. Once it seemed to Albano, as he looked towards her, as if she shone supernaturally, and as if, just as the sun from under the earth beams upon a moon, so Liana from the other world were beaming upon her countenance, and adorning this likeness of herself with a holiness beyond the reach of earth.

At the close of the discourse, Albano went quietly to the two friends, pressed his sister's hand, and begged her not to wait for the end of the sad festival. She was comforted and willing. As they stepped out of the church, a wondrous bright moonlight was spread over earth, like a sweet morning light of the higher world. Julienne begged them, instead of going in between four walls, into the prison of eyes and words, and the midst of all the din, rather to behold first the still, bright landscape.

All of them bore in their breasts the holy world of the serene old man out into the fair night. Not a speck of cloud, not a breath of air, stirred through the wide heaven; the stars reigned alone; earthly distances were lost in the depth of white shadows; and all mountains stood in the silvery fire of the moon. "O, how I love your serene, holy old man!" said Idoine to Albano, when she had already often pressed Julienne's hand. "How happy I am! Ah, life, like the water of the sea, is not quite sweet till it rises towards heaven." Suddenly distant bugle-tones came pealing out to them, which well-meaning country-folk sounded as a greeting before Albano's foster-home. "How comes it," said Julienne, "that in the open air and at night even the most insignificant music is pleasant and stirring?" "Perhaps because our inner music harmonizes with it more clearly and purely," said Idoine. "And because, before the spheral music of the universe, human art and human simplicity are, at last, equally great!" added Albano. "That is just what I meant, for that is also, after all, only within ourselves," said Idoine, and looked lovingly and frankly into his eyes, which sank before hers, as if the moon, the mild after-summer of the sun, now dazzled him with its splendor.

Since the church festival, she had addressed herself to him oftener; her sweet voice was more tender, though more tremulous; her maidenly shyness of the resemblance to Liana seemed conquered or forgotten, as on that evening in the last garden. During Spener's discourse, her existence had decided itself within her, and on her virgin love, as on a spring soil by one warm evening rain, all buds had been opened into bloom. As he now looked upon this clear, mild eye, under the pure, cloudless brow, and the fine mouth, with inexhaustible good-will towards every living thing breathing over it, he could hardly conceive that this delicate lily, this light incense exhaled from morning redness and morning flowers, was the habitation of that firm spirit which could rule life, just as the tender cloud or the little nightingale's breast contains the thrilling peal of sound.

They stood now on the bright mountain, covered with the evergreen of youthful remembrance, where Albano had once slumbered in dreams of the future, as on a light and lofty island in the midst of the shadow-sea of two vales. The mountain-ridges of the linden city, the eternal goal of his youthful days, were snowed over by the moon, and the constellations stood upon them gleaming and great. He looked now upon Idoine: how truly did this soul belong among the stars! "When the world is purged from this low day; when heaven, with its holiest, farthest suns, looks upon this earthly land; when the heart and the nightingale alone speak,--then only does her holy time come up in heaven; then is her lofty, tranquil spirit seen and understood, and by day only her charms," thought Albano.