Chapter IV: Part 4

Since the extinction of the engagement, and since Gaspard's letters, Albano's eye had been directed toward the fairest ruins of time,--unless one excepts the earth itself,--to Italy; and his injured vision held fast to this new portal of his life, which was to usher him into the presence of the fairest and greatest which nature and man can create. How did the fire-mountains, and Rome's ruins, and her warm, golden-blue heavens, already unfold to him their splendor, when in fancy he led the suffering Liana before them, and her holy eyes refreshed themselves with measuring the heights! A man who travels with his beloved to Italy has in the very fact that he might do without one of the two, both double. And Albano hoped for this felicity, since all testimonies which he met with of Liana's restoration to health promised as much. As to Dr. Sphex,--the only one who opened a pit for her, and in it cast a death-bell, and swore to everybody, she would fall with the leaves of autumn,--him he saw no more. He wished, however,--he said to himself,--in this whole joint-tour, only her happiness, not at all her love. So did he see himself always in his self-mirror, namely, only veiled; so did he regard himself often as too stern, although he was so little of that; so did he take himself to be conqueror of his own heart, when his fair countenance already wore pale, sickly hues.

The present stood as yet dark above him, but its neighboring times, the future and the past, lay full of light. What a journey, in which a beloved, a father, a friend, a female friend, are of themselves, on the very road, the curiosities which others find only when they reach the end!

The Princess was the female friend. Since Gaspard's letters to her and to him, since the hope of a longer and nearer enjoyment of his society, she found more and more pleasure in subduing all clouds round about her, so as to smile and shine upon her friend only out of a blue heaven. She alone at court seemed to take mildly and rightly the blunt youth, whose proud frankness so often ran against the disguised pride of the Count, and particularly against the open pride of the Prince; she alone seemed--as nothing is seldomer guessed in and by _circles_ than fair sensibility, especially by courtly ones and especially manly sensibility--softly to spy out his, and to increase its warmth by her sympathy. She alone honored him with that strict, significant attention which mankind so seldom give, as well as can so seldom appreciate, because they never have occasion but for love and passion, in order to--render justice, incapable, otherwise than by comet-light, by warm-flames and fires of joy, to read the best hand. All that he was, she simply presupposed in him; his pre-eminent qualities were only her demands and his passports; she made his individuality neither her model nor her reflection; both were painters, no pictures. He heard often, indeed, that she had a masculine severity, especially in her dictatorial capacity, but not, however, that she was womanishly inhuman. To the customary vermin of courtlings, which gives itself elevation on its worm-rings only by crawling, she was repulsive and torturing; although, as a new-comer, she should, it would seem, have been a new-born child, that brings with it raisins to the older children. On Sunday, when at courts, as on the stage in Berlin, spiritual popular pieces are always brought out, she was (among the Sunday-born-children, who see more spirits than they have) a Monday's child, which wishes to find for itself one, who, whether he has ever been dubbed noble or not, at all events knows how to distinguish an original from the copy, as well in his own self as in a picture-gallery. On that account many lords, and still more ladies, thanked God, if they had occasion to say nothing more to her than "God bless you!"

In this way she appeared to the Count every day more worthy of his father. As into a warm spring sunshine did he enter for the first time into the flattering magic circle of female friendship, which even here cast and moulded two wings for love out of the wax-cells of the enjoyed honey; it was, however, with him love for Liana, to whom the friend could most easily give wings for Italy. He felt that soon an hour of overflowing esteem would strike, when he could confidingly open the high-walled cloister-garden of his former love. For she made room for him to be near her as often as the narrow compass of a throne and the all-betraying height of its location would admit. But something disturbed, watched, beset both,--a rival neighbor, as it seemed. It was the singular Julienne, who always, when things were getting on, stepped out of her box on to the stage of the Princess, and confounded the play. Frequently she came after him; sometimes he had gotten invitations from her just the moment before others from the Princess followed, which hers, therefore, as it seemed, must have anticipated. What did she mean? Would she possibly win from a youth whom she had so often provoked by her contempt of men, and by the lightning-like dartings of her indignation, his love, merely, perhaps, because he had always so warmly reciprocated her friendly glances, as those of so dear a--friend of his beloved? Or did she want of him only hatred for the honored Princess, and that indeed out of envy and the usual resemblance of women to ivory, whose _white_ hue so readily becomes _yellow_, and which only by a thorough warming gets the fair color again?

These questions were rather repeated than answered by an evening which he and Julienne spent at the Princess's. A good reading was to give the picture-exhibition of Goethe's Tasso. Fine art, and nothing but art, was with the Princess the art of Passau[35] against court- and life-wounds; and, in general, the world-system was to her only a complete picture-gallery and Pembroke cabinet and gallery of antiques. The reading parts were so distributed by the manager, the Princess, that she herself got the Princess, Julienne the _confidente_ Leonore, Albano the Poet Tasso, a youthful-cheeked Chamberlain the Duke, and Froulay Alphonso. This latter, who had learned to prefer works of artifice to works of art, and the princely cabinet to any cabinet of art, in spite of his heart stood ready there for a journey to the mountain of the muses, arrayed for that purpose by the Princess in a mountain-habit. Thus forced more and more every day into the poetical fashion, he looked, of course, like any other abortion, which has come into the world with pantaloons, queue, and the like all born on him, on purpose to condemn the modish way of the world, just like a street-sweeper in Cassel.

Albano read with outward and inward glow, not toward the reading Princess, but toward the Princess she personated, from a habit of his heart which life always set a-glow; and the Princess read the _rôle_ of her _rôle_ very well, of course. Her artistic feeling told her, even without the prompting of tender sensibility, that in Goethe's Tasso,--which, for the most part, is related to the Italian Tasso, as the heavenly Jerusalem to the Jerusalem delivered,--the Princess is almost Princess of Princesses. Never did the god of the muses and of the sun pass more beautifully through the constellation Virgo than here. Never was veiled love more radiantly unveiled.

The Minister read off the powerful proser Alphonso, as he scolds at Tasso and Albano, as well as a trumpeter of cavalry reads the notes which are affixed to his sleeve; in fact, he found the man quite sensible.

The younger[36] Princess might, in the general poetic concert, have done her share of the talking some quarter of an hour, more or less, when she suddenly threw down, in a lively manner, the beautiful volume of Goethe's works, of which there were three copies there, and said, with her impetuosity, "A stupid part! I cannot abide it!" All the world was silent. The senior[37] Princess looked at her significantly; the junior Princess looked at _her_ still more significantly, and went out, without coming back again. A court dame took up the reading, and went calmly on.

To most of those present this interlude was properly the most interesting; and they willingly continued to think of it during the reading of the latter part. The Princess, who had long believed the Princess loved the Count, was delighted with the inconsiderateness of her adversary. Albano, although her warm eye had struck him of old, explained to himself the absconding on the ground of chagrin at the subordinateness of her part in the reading, and the general incompatibility of the two women; for while Julienne, at her own expense, slighted the Princess, and took little pains to conceal her opinion, so also did that of the Princess appear involuntarily. So soon as one party manifests its hatred, the second can hardly conceal its from the third.

When Albano came home, he found the following leaf on his table:--

"The P---- decoys thee; she loves thee. With _éclat_ she will send in the next place the M---- back, in order to give bold relief to her virtue, and produce an imposing effect upon thee. Shun her! I love thee, but differently and eternally.

"_Nous nous verrons un jour, mon frère_."

Who wrote it? Not even as to the admission-ticket of this cartel could the servant make any deposition. Who wrote it? Julienne; to this point, at least, all roads of probability converged; only in that case mysteries lay round about him. Significant was the French subscription, which stood in like manner exactly under the picture of his sister, which his father had given him on Isola Bella;[38] but that might be a coincidence. He investigated now these new silver-veins of his Diana-[39] and family-tree by the touchstone of his whole history. His mother and Julienne's had gone to Italy with his father in one and the same year; both had been uncommon women and mutual friends, and his father the friend of both. There was the possibility of a false step on the part of his father, which had been concealed. Quite as easily might the traces of this error have been shown to Julienne. Then, further, the hypothesis of her sisterly love would throw light on her whole previous winding course; her affectionate interest in Albano; her love-race with the Princess; her correspondence with his father; her enlisting of the Count's affection for Romeiro, which, as it seemed, heated her quite as much against the Princess as it chilled her toward Liana; above all, the singularity of her love for him, which never unfolded itself further and more openly;--all this gave ground to suspect that it might be only a sister's kindred blood which blazed so often on her round cheeks, when she had unconsciously gazed at him too long. After this step he made forthwith the leap; he now suspected, also, that she alone had sought to dazzle and delude him into the love of her Linda with the magic mirror of spiritual existences.

As respects the relation of the Princess to the Minister, every word upon that subject was to him a lie. He was quite as reluctant to let himself part with a good opinion of others as a bad one. Ordinary men readily give the good opinion away and hold the bad one fast; weaker ones are easily reconciled, and hardly parted. He was unlike either. Hitherto he had so easily ascribed in his own mind the Princess's friendship for the Minister, her visitation journeys with him through the land, and the like, to her manly prudence and foresight, which would fain at once keep watch over the future hereditary land of her brother and hold the key to it; and to this probability, as the Minister accommodated himself equally well to the related parts of a cicerone and an overseer, he still adhered.

The following week brought along a circumstance, which seemed to throw a greater light into the dark billet.

91. CYCLE.

The promised circumstance has its root again in older circumstances which occurred between the Princess and the Minister; these I here premise.

The Minister had been very soon furnished by his friend Bouverot--whose clammy woodpecker's tongue licked off unseen the vermin of all mysteries out of all musty cracks in the throne--with a description of all that the Princess concealed in herself in the shape of Phoenix ashes and rubbish: he had instructed him that she, cold as a piece of ice ground into a convex lens, never would melt herself, but only others; that she was one of those more rare coquettes who, like sweet wines, become sour through warmth, and only sweeter by cold; and that she therefore had about her one of the worst habits,--which made the most grievous jobs for every one. It was, namely, the following: She had a heart, and would never suffer it to lie in her bosom as dead capital; but it must pay interest, and circulate. So the lover became, in the beginning, more wide awake and gay from day to day, then from hour to hour; he knew all by-ways through wood and hollow, all thieves' paths and shorter cuts in this love-garden regularly by heart, and would foretell the critical[40] quarter of an hour on his repeating watch when he should arrive at the summer-house. It was not by any means unknown to him (but comical) what it signified, that the said lover would pass with her from sentences to glances, from these to kissing of the hand, then to kissing of the mouth, whereupon he would find himself caught, entrapped, and imprisoned in the Whistonian comet's-train of her ell-long (or mile-long) hair as in a bird-net (in which, however, the noose was also the berry-bait), and bent up in his prison to such a degree as to know what o'clock it had struck on his repeater. But just then, when all clouds seemed fallen from heaven, he himself would fall out of both into a basket from her;--that was the bad point. In fact, German princes of the oldest houses, who had made all other experiments, saw themselves made immoral, ay, ridiculous, and knew not at all what to think about it; for the Princess openly wondered at such monsters, gave all the world a copy of her challenge, showed all the world the redness and the loftiness of her turkey-hen's-neck, and suffered such an old tempter of a Prince, or whoever it was, never more in her haughty presence.

As princes (in such cases) know what they want, so of course they spread it about that she knew not what _she_ would have; and often not till long after an hereditary prince came the apanaged brother of the same court, and later the legitimated one. However, the thing remained the same; namely, she remained like the spherical concave mirror, which indeed images behind itself what stands close before it, as large and upright, but so soon as it comes into its focus, makes it invisible, and then out beyond that point hangs it quite diminished and topsy-turvy in the air. Her love was a fever of debility, in which Darwin, Weikard, and other Brownists, by _stimulating_ means--wine, for instance--produce a _slower_ pulse, and even promise therefrom a cure. So far Bouverot to the Minister!

But to the Minister came thereby an inexpressible favor. For princes' sins jumped not at all with his professional studies and trade. When, therefore, she had decided upon having his understanding and powerful physiognomy near her, and had named him Minister of her most intimate relations in Haarhaar, then was it solemnly laid down and sworn to within him, never, though she were kindness itself, to be the robber of her honor to her straw-widower. In the beginning, like all his predecessors, he got on easily with mere pure feelings and discourses; as yet there was nothing desired of him, except that he should sometimes unexpectedly dart at her a sly look full of loving tenderness; and he must also have a longing. He darted the look; he also got up longings; and so he felt himself comfortably enough insured for such a successful love affair.

But it stopped not here. Hardly had her Albano appeared, when the thorn-girdle and hair-shirt of the pure Minister was made disproportionately more rough and thorny, and the strongest requirements, namely, gifts, redoubled, in order that the poor Joseph might the more speedily assail her honor and therefore run into his ruin, which should be bait for the Count. By this time he had been already brought along so far that he wove and knotted in her flying hair (to him poisonous snake-hair),--he must needs blow out soap-bubbles of sighs from his pipe,--he must needs quite often be beside himself; yes, he must even (if he would not see himself chased away as a hypocritical rascal) be half-sensual, although still decent enough. Meanwhile he was not to be tempted into a temptation by the Devil himself. Whenever he even thought of the subject, shuddering, how the least misstep might hurl him from his ministerial post, then he would as soon have let himself be impaled and quartered as bewitched. For a third party, not for these two,--they were the sufferers,--it would perhaps have been a feast, to have seen how they (if I may use a too low comparison) resembled a pair of silk stockings drawn over each other, which for and by each other, when one keeps them distended[41] at a certain distance, ethereally blow themselves and fill, but immediately collapse, flat and flabby, when they touch each other.

Of course, in the long run, it fell heavily upon the old statesman to have to leap along before the dancing pageantry of love-gods as their arch-master, tackled into the triumphal car of the Cyprian,--a flower-garland on his state-peruke, in his eyes two Vauclusa fountains, the cavity of his breast a choked-up Dido's cave, wearing in his button-hole an arrow in a heart, or a heart on an arrow, and faring toward the capitol, in order there, after the Roman fashion, not so much to sacrifice as to be sacrificed. Nothing except the tin boxes which the government officers and exchequer messengers stowed away for him at home could fan fresh and cool again the stalemated man, who would fain be a checkmated one.

He read with her Catullus, she with him the better pictures out of the Prince's cabinet; it was allowed him to reward her by his Latinity for her artistic favors: but he remained, nevertheless, as he was.

When women wish to carry a point, and find hindrances constantly recurring, they grow at last blind and wild, and dare anything and everything. The tour to Italy approached so fast; still the Minister was no nearer to letting go his high consideration for his beloved,--although from just her own motive, that of the tour, with the nearness of which he animated himself to a cheerful endurance of so short a flame. Her passion for the Count increased with the Count's tranquillity, because coldness strengthens strong love, just as physical coldness makes strong people more vigorous and weak ones more puny. Froulay, as an old man, was, as it seemed, capable of creeping along so for a whole age to his object, without making one unnecessary leap, since old people, like ships, always move slower the longer they have been going, and on similar grounds, namely, that both, by the adhesion of filth, weeds, barnacles, and the like, have become unwieldy. In short, the Princess at last ceased to ask for anything, but matters went thus:--

The Prince had gone a journey, the Princess had been invited as god-mother out into the country. The castellain on one of her country castles, who had already the year before invited the Minister, had not been restrained by bashfulness from making his way still farther up on this rope-ladder, with his descendant under his arm, and up there on the throne laying his child of the land in the arms of her, the Princess herself. Princes love to let themselves down--on thin silk-worm threads--(as well as up); they value the good-natured, stupid people, and would fain in this way raise somewhat the poor creeping dwarf-beans,--for they well know how little it matters,--and, so to speak, pole them and boot them by means of the leg of the princely chair. Beside this, the Minister had been invited as grand-god-father (so called). The autumn day was only a brighter, more perfect spring, and the autumnal night stood under a brilliant full moon. Courts always long so exceedingly to be away in the country, among the idyls of murmuring rivulets, sighing branches, and tree-tops, and bleating Swisseries, and farmers; Courts--that is, courtiers, court-dames and official chamberlains'-staves, and others--yearn so for the society of human beings; as beasts are driven by the December hunger, so does a noble hunger drive them down from the throne-mountains into the flat plains; not that they would fly from _ennui_, but they desire only a different kind, as their very pastime consists in the abbreviation and alternation of their _ennui_.

Hardly had the Court appeased its first longing for the people with whom it stood for half a quarter of an hour on a confidential, conversational footing, when it came to itself again, and dispersed itself through the princely garden, in order to consume full as long a time in satisfying its longing after nature. A sponsoress of the sponsoress promised Christianity in the stead of Princess and child. The Princess herself attached the Minister to her as a chamberlain. The grand-god-father looked out into the prospect of a d--d long evening, in which he should be obliged to parade round her procession-banner. For the enjoyment of the evening there was a concert, and for the enjoyment of the concert card playing had been arranged; and for the enjoyment of the latter, the Princess had seated herself alone with Froulay, in order, during the general playing of cards and instruments, to have some inaudible conversation with him. Suddenly the two pounds which were hung up in his breast--for no heart, according to the anatomists, weighs more than that--became two hundred-weight heavier, when she asked him whether he was steadfast and could confide in her and dare for her. He swore that, if only as Princess, she might expect of his two-pounder any and every sacrifice and mark of veneration. She went on: she had some weighty things to intrust him with to-day about herself and the Prince; she wished, when the _Foule_ was gone, to speak with him alone; he need only go up the little stairway from the side of the garden to the door of the library-chamber; this was open; in the poetical bookcase on the left side was a spring in the wall, the pressure of which would open to him the tapestry door of the apartment, where he was to await her.

Immediately she rose, presuming upon an affirmative. How it fared now with the two pounds of his sixty-four-ounce-heart can gratify none but his deadly enemy to realize. So much lay written before him with long, thick, stony letters, as on an epitaphium, namely, that after a few hours, when the other lords, in other respects still greater sinners than he, could snore away quietly in the pleasant ministerial houses which formed the court of the Palace, that then for him, innocent knave, the wolf-hour, that is to say, the shepherd's hour,[42] would so soon strike, when he on the most flowery meadow must kneel beneath the butcher's knife. But he--angry that his faith in female and princely impudence should prove a soothsayer--made silently all kinds of oaths to himself, that, even if as much were imposed upon him as on the greatest saints and universal philosophers, he would nevertheless behave like both, for instance, like old Zeno and Franz.

The Princess sought him all the evening less than usual. At last he took his respectful leave of the whole court, but with the prospect of creeping, not, like them, under silk quilts, but under cold bowers. He even marched--sure of himself--up the stairway, opened the library-chamber, found the spring, touched it, and stepped through the tapestry door into the princely--bedchamber. "It is certain, then," said he, and cursed about him inwardly to his heart's content, lying prostrate and crushed quite flat beneath the love-letter weight. In the side chamber on the left hand he already heard her and a chambermaid, who was undressing her. On the right the door of a second but lighted chamber stood ajar. He stood long in doubt whether he should step into that, or stay where he was under the light-screen of a dark corner. At last he laid hold of the protection of night. During his suspense and her disrobing, he had time to rehearse or read over his part; now he came to an agreement with himself, in case of necessity,--and if he should find himself pushed too hard--and all the more, as the place would speak more against _her_ than against _him_, inasmuch as every one must needs ask, whether he could otherwise have possibly gained admission,--in such a case of necessity, where only the choice between a satire and a satyr was left him, he determined to transform himself on the spot into a respectful--Faun.

Directly the Princess strode in, but in the direction of the illuminated chamber. "I have no further occasion for thee," she called back to the chambermaid. "_Diable!_" screamed she, in the bedchamber, spying out the tall Minister; "who stands there? Hanna, a light! _Ciel!_" she continued, recognizing him, but continuing to speak French, because Hanna understood nothing of that. "_Mais, Monsieur! Me voila donc compromise! Quelle méprise! Vous vous etes trompé de chambres! Pardonnéz, Monsieur, que je sauve les déhors de mon sexe et de mon rang. Comment avez-vous-pu_--" She uttered all this, perhaps, by way of blinding the German witness, with an angry accent. The grand-godfather--who, after all previous gratifications, felt like a cock, who has gulped down many live chafers, and is now threatened with his life by their sticking in his distressed crop--kept not silence, but replied in German, opening the tapestry door, meanwhile, that he had, even as she commanded, laid the books out of the library in the lighted chamber, and had been caught _in transitu_. He went immediately through the tapestry; but she could hardly contain herself for terror, had the physician called in the morning, and sent back her retinue. Froulay--however much like the Spanish he found his romances, among which, according to Fisher's assertion, the thieves' literature is the best--at last did not know, himself, what to make of it.

The chambermaid had to make profession with the vow of silence, which she kept as strictly as she could, but not more so. Next morning very few alighted before their own doors, most before the doors of others, in order to land the news together with the injunction of the Princess not to make the thing _éclatant_, because in that case the Prince would hear of it.

If ever the nobility of Pestitz was happy _en masse_, it was this very morning. Nothing was wanting to universal joy but a chambermaid who should have only understood as much French as a hunting-dog.

92. CYCLE.

Albano heard the report; the Minister had long appeared to him contaminating, like a cold corpse of a soul; now he hated him still more as a tormenting, blood-sucking dead man. For the Princess his heart had hitherto stood security to him. She was to him a blue day-sky, wherein to others only a hot sun blazes, wherein he, however, through the mysterious depths of the soul and of friendship, had found soft constellations beaming. But now since the rumor, which, like the magicians in the presence of Moses, threw soot into her heaven, she stood, to his eyes, shining under new lights. The hatred which he by his very nature, i. e. from pride, had of all rumor, because it controls and is not to be controlled, worked in him with fresh fire; he resolved, even because Liana must be the daughter either of her hereditary foe or of her lover, and the Princess _her_ rival, to venture freely on the strength of his heart and what it knew, and at this very juncture to communicate openly to the Princess his prayer for her mediation in favor of Liana's company upon the journey,--in other words, of his heaven.

On the morning after, the Prince came back,--the Princess immediately had her carriage tackled,--toward evening she came with one carriage more into town. The report ran through all card-tables that the Spanish Countess Romeiro had arrived at the Palace. Reports are polypuses; wounding and mutilating only multiplies them; only sticking them into each other makes one out of two: the report of Linda's arrival swallowed up the report of Froulay's disgraceful attempt.

But Albano! Like the discovery of a new world, this turned his old one topsy-turvy. Linda, that foreign tropical bird, came flying in advance of his approaching father, who rose before him like a rich land out of the distance,--the soil where he had found so many thorns and flowers soon sank behind him, with all its treasures and days, below the horizon. Only Liana could not vanish with it; that muse of his youth must he lead with him into the land of youth. By those usual magic arts of the heart had Linda's nearness awakened in him an insuperable longing for Liana.

He was now decided to remind the Princess of her earlier promise to pour the life-balsam of a southern tour upon Liana's sick nerves, and through her now, betimes, before the confusion of the last pressing moments should prostrate anything, to put the Minister's lady in tune, and gain her over, who, like all court people, would certainly hardly resist a princely wish and a happy prospect.

If, however, Liana, from any fault of her own or of others, stayed behind, then was it his sworn determination, for no power, not even his father's, to stir from the native land of his eternal bride; but to root himself before her sick-cloister, until she either passed out therefrom free and cheerful again into open life, or buried herself, darkly veiled, in the gloomy nun-choir of the dead. O, to come back to seek her in the romantic grounds of olden time, and to find her nowhere but behind the speech-grating of the hereditary vault,--this was a thought his heart could not endure!

The Princess herself furnished him an opportunity of making his request; she sent him an invitation to an astronomical party at the observatory, through her faithful court-dame Haltermann: "I have to write to you, verbally, merely the following," wrote she. "Come this evening to the observatory; I and my good Haltermann are going thither." This Haltermann, a Fraülein of few charms of spiritual flag-feathers, but of many dogmas and premature wrinkles, had already for years hung indissolubly upon the Princess, keeping everything secret, and favoring all her "make-your-appearances" (_rendez-vous_) by merely saying, "My princess is as pure as gold, and only few know her as I do."

Nothing could happen more propitious to Albano's wishes. He stood earliest of all on the noble observatory, in the midst of the lovely night. It was some days after the full moon; that shining world was as yet hidden behind the earth, but the let-on jets of its rays shot up by fits and starts. On all mountain-peaks glimmered even now a pale light, as if the distant morning of super-terrestrial worlds were falling upon them. Through the valleys the light-shunning, black, earthly beast, Night, still stretched himself out, and reared himself up against the mountains. The mountain-castle of Liana was invisible, and showed, like a fixed star, only a light. Suddenly the autumnal purple upon all summits around the castle was bedewed with silver by the moon, and a shower of light came down on the white walls and along the white avenues of the garden; at last, a strange, pale morning, glimmering through all bowers, lay in the garden, as it were the tender gleaming of a high, perfectly pure spirit, who only in the holy, silent night trod the low earth, and then and there sought nothing but the pure, still Liana.

As Albano looked and dreamed and longed, the Princess came up, with her Haltermann. The Professor almost broke himself in two with his salam before them, and allowed the fixed suns no astrological influence upon his erect posture. Albano and the Princess met each other again with an increase of reciprocal warmth. But the first question of the Princess was, whether he had seen the Spanish countess. Indifferently he said, he had been invited by the Princesse since her arrival, but had not gone. "_Ma belle sœur_ admires her most," continued the Princess; "but she deserves it somewhat. She is majestically built, taller than I, and fair, especially her head, her eye, and her hair. She is, however, more plastically than picturesquely beautiful, rather resembling a Juno or Minerva than a Madonna. But she has her peculiarities. She cannot endure any women, except such as are simple, straightforward, and blindly good; hence her chamber-women live and die for her. Men she holds to be poor creatures, and says she should despise herself if she should ever become the wife or slave of a man; but she seeks them for the sake of information. To the Prince she has unnecessarily, though she was in the right as to the matter of fact, said bitter things. He laughs at it, and says there is nothing she does love, not even children and lap-dogs. You must see her. She reads much; she lives only with the Princesse, and seems, if one may judge by her dress, to count little upon any conquests, at least at our court."

Albano said, many of these traits were truly grand, and broke short off. During the conversation the Professor had diligently arranged and screwed up everything, and was now ready to commence. He remarked upon the bright, bland, summer-like night,--proceeded, after some introductory observations, into the moon, in order to lead the six eyes to the most considerable lunar spots,--foreshadowed, in a preliminary way, several shadows overhead there,--introduced them to the Crater of Bernoulli ("I make use of Scröter's nomenclature," said he),--the highest mountain range Dörfel ("it consists, of course, of three summits," said he),--the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel ("Hevel, however, calls it Mount Horeb," said he),--then Mont Blanc, and the ring-mountains in general; and concluded with the sly assurance, that the observatory was, to be sure, still very deficient in instruments.

The Haltermann longed indescribably after the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel in the moon, and endeavored to get at the telescope. "It is only a spot in the planet, my child!" said the Princess. "And is the Mont Blanc overhead, then, nothing but a spot, too?" asked she, disappointed. The Princess nodded, and looked into the telescope; the magic moon hung like a piece of day-world close to the glass. "How its fair, pale light and all its magic passes away when it is brought near! as when the future becomes present!" said she, to the astonishment of the Professor, who could never make anything out of the planet excepting precisely when it _was_ near. She interrogated him about Saturn's ring. "There are properly two, your Highness; but the observatory just at this time wants an instrument to see it," said he, and aimed again in the direction of the former shot.

Albano saw his life-gardens sparkling round about him with the warm glimmer of an after-spring; and his inner being trembled sweetly and sadly. He took a comet-seeker, and flew round among the stars, towards Blumenbühl, into the city, up the mountains, only not to the white castle with the illuminated corner-chamber and the little garden. His whole heart turned backward for shame and love before the gate of Paradise.

At this moment, the Haltermann, at a hint to retire, led the way down with the astronomer, in order to favor the Princess with a moment free from witnesses. Albano stood before her, noble in the moonlight; his eye was radiant; his features showed emotion. She grasped his hand, and said, "We certainly do not misunderstand each other, Count?" He pressed her hand, and his eyes gushed full. "No, Princess!" said he, softly. "You give me your friendship. I do not deserve it, if I do not trust it entirely. I give you now the proof of my open confidence. You know, perhaps, the history of my fortunes and my loss; you know the Minister." "Alas, alas!" said she; "even your hard history, noble man, has become familiar to me."

"No!" replied he, passionately; "I was more cruel than my fate. I tormented an innocent heart; I made an obedient daughter miserable, sick, and blind. But I have lost her," he continued, with rising emotion, and turned sidewise, in order not to see the glimmering heights of Liana's residence, "and bear it as I can, but without any secret way to repossession. Only the victim cannot be permitted to bleed to death over yonder, with her stern, narrow-hearted mother. O, the honey-drops of the pleasures, they and Italy's heaven, might well heal _her_. She dies if she stays, and I stay to look on. Friend, O how great is the favor I ask!"

"Gladly shall it be granted you! Day after to-morrow I visit the mother and daughter, and certainly will decide the latter for the journey, in so far as it depends upon me. I do it, however,--to be frank,--merely out of genuine friendship for you; for the girl does not please me entirely with her mysticism, and certainly does not love as you do. She does everything for people merely from love to God; and that I do not like."

"Ah, so thought I, too, once; but whom should the pious love, except God?" said he, absorbed in himself and the night, and in too hyberbolical a style for the taste of the Princess. His glimmering eye hung fast on the white mountain-palace, and spring-times floated down from the moon, and glided to and fro on the illuminated track of his vision; and the beautiful youth wept and pressed ardently the hand of the Princess, without being conscious of either. She respected his heart, and disturbed it not.

At last, they both came down the high stairway, where the astronomer joyfully awaited them, and confessed to both how very much, to speak freely, their attachment and devotion to astronomy not only gladdened, but even animated and inspired him.

"Day after to-morrow, certainly!" With these words, the Princess departed, in order to grant the pensive, full-hearted youth consolation and dreams.

TWENTY-SECOND JUBILEE.

Schoppe's Heart.--Dangerous Spiritual Acquaintances.

93. CYCLE.

Albano was now again lashed to the Ixion's wheels of the clock. The setting off of the Princess and her answer were to suddenly set up lights in the dark, wide cavern in which he had so long travelled, without knowing whether it harbored frightful formations and venomous beasts, or whether it was vaulted, and filled with glistening arches and subterranean pillared halls. Over Liana's condition two hands--Augusti's and that of the Minister's lady--had hitherto held fast the veil. Both were persons who never liked to answer the question, How do you do? However, he now let his whole soul rest upon the Princess, since the astronomical evening, in remembering which, he could hardly comprehend how it was that he was able at that time to speak to a female friend about his love as much and more than ever to a friend of his own sex. But man does not love to speak of his feelings before a man, and does love to before a woman. A woman, however, loves best to do so before a woman. Meanwhile, the Princess held him in bonds by the finest flattery which can be,--by decided and silent attention. He was as sick and sated of verbal praise as he was partial and tributary to that which came in a practical shape.

Pending the arrival of the decision, a confused time elapsed; like a man who travels in the night, he heard voices and saw lights; and it needed morning to decide upon their hostile or friendly significance. Rabette lay sick and bleeding away her faint heart; for not he had drawn out of it the astringent dagger,--namely, Charles's love,--but the latter had himself anticipated him with bitter-sweet tears over the bitterest.

Charles had met him once, with his hat drawn down over his brows, and grimly-stinging look, without a greeting. Everywhere he heard that Charles in vain besieged and blockaded Linda's and Julienne's double gate. This and Liana's illness made the tropical savage like a grownup wild boy of the woods. Even in the present state of separation,--on the death-field of _friendship_,--Albano felt it as a wound to _humanity_, that Charles did not take for granted--for to the contrary presumption he imputed the street-grimness--that he would not seek to see the Countess.

Even in the Librarian, for several days, a mystery seemed to have been lurking. He, however, since it had been growing lighter and lighter to Alban in Schoppe's depths, and he had looked in behind his comic mask, even to the honest eye and loving lips, became very near to his heart, especially after so many partings; for even the Lector, according to his custom never to court the love of any man, or, at least, faithless friend, kept himself aloof from him,--a thing which afflicted the very same youth, who inwardly approved it.

For several days, I say, Schoppe had been transposed into an entirely new tune, and become his own remainder and after-summer. It began with his blowing away at a miserable haying song a whole half-day on the bugle; the remaining half he sang it off vocally. Instead of reading and writing, he went up and down in the city and in his chamber. All that which he had formerly despatched with rapidity,--running, swallowing of victuals, speaking, smoking, starting up,--all this went now club-footed, and finally stood fast. His slow rousing up, and his tender, gentle step, might have seemed ludicrous to those who were acquainted with his former days. His large, noble wolf-dog, whom he had ten times a day suffered to hug him round the neck with his fore-paws, and whose breast, drawn up on the skin, he so fondly pressed to his own, when he held with him a Lange's and consistorial colloquy, he now neglected to such a degree that the dog became attentive, and did not know what to think of it. How little could he once endure the yelp of a cudgelled hound without sallying out of his house-door as protector and patron, because he conceived one might well treat men like dogs, but not dogs themselves so! Now he could hear their screaming, merely because, as it seemed, he did not hear it.

As he formerly often went to Albano merely to walk up and down, without a loud word,--because he said, "By this I recognize my friend, that he does not undertake to entertain me or himself, but will merely sit there,"--so now he came still more mute, often touched tenderly, like a playful child, the shoulder of Albano as he sat reading, and said, when the latter looked behind him, "Nothing!" Meanwhile, Albano inquired not about the change; for he knew he would surely unveil it to him in good time. Their hearts stood over against each other like open mirrors.

So lay the dark wood of life before Albano, with its paths running through each other and deep into the thicket, as he stood upon the cross-way of his future and waited for his genius, who, either as a hostile or as a good one, was to bring him Liana's decision. At last there came from the gloomy wood a genius, but it was the dark genius, and gave him this note from the Princess:--

"Dear Count: I am always true, and would rather be unsparing than _un_true. The sick Mademoiselle v. F. is no longer in a condition to make a tour or profit by it. I take a lively interest in the case. However fondly I could wish to-day myself to speak consolation to you, I hope, nevertheless, after this intelligence, not to have occasion to do so.

"Your Friend."

What a dark cloud-break out of the morning redness of youth! So then the secret joy which he had hitherto nourished had been the forerunner of the dreadful blow,[43] the soft murmuring before the waterfall.[44] That his very love was to be the blazing sword which pierced through her life: O, he dwelt upon that so constantly; _that_ pained him so! But there was no moisture in his eye; the wormwood of conscience embitters even sorrow.

When man is no longer his own friend, then he goes to his brother, who is a friend still, in order that _he_ may softly speak to him and restore his heart and soul; Albano went to his Schoppe.

He found not him, but something else. Schoppe, namely, kept a diary about "himself and the world," wherein his friend might read whatever and whenever he wished; only he must pardon it, if he carried away with him from the reading, since it was written throughout just as if no one were to see it again,--angry slaps of the fan, and that, too, with the hard end. "Why should I spare thee any more than myself?" said Schoppe. To this _thou_ they had come without being able to say when, chary as they generally were of this official style of the heart, this holiest dual of souls toward others; "for I thank God," said Schoppe, "that I live in a language in which I can sometimes say you, yes even (if men and monkeys are subjects for it) between every two commas, your Well-born, as well as your High-born, or Otherwise-born."

Albano found the diary open, and read with astonishment this:--"_Amandus-day_. A stupid and extremely remarkable day for the well-known Hesus or Hanus![45] I can hardly persuade myself that the poor Thunder-god deserved to walk along behind the tall Proserpine,[46] and at last to peep into her face, her brow, her lips, her neck! O God! If such a god had stayed now on the spot! As _Pastor fido_ he by good fortune rose up again and went on his way. O hell-goddess, heaven-stormer of Hesus, thou hast made thyself his heaven! Can he ever let thee go?

"_Afternoon_. The _Pastor_ becomes his own baiting-house, he knows not how to stay; he lives now in all streets, in order to behold his _Jeanne d'Arc-en-ciel_,[47] and suffers enough. But, Hesus, are not sorrows the thorns, wherewith the buckle of love fastens? To-day Friday[48] went with the Princess to the observatory. The wind is south-east-east,[49]--read thirteen monthlies in one hour,--Spener sees life transfigured and poetic in the shining magnifying-mirror God, as well as another man.

"_Sabina's day_. With the _Pastor_ it grows worse, if I see right. He is in the way to work himself over into a _billet-doux-presser_, to powder himself by night in bed; and the knave already raises in the heat, like milk which is kept warm, poetic cream. Only may Heaven never grant him to fall into a rational discourse with his hell-goddess, face to face, breath to breath, and the two souls be confounded together! Verily, Flins[50] would snatch him away, Hesus would devour a millennial kingdom at once; I fear he would become too wild with the nectar, and too hard for me to control.

"_Evening_. Is it not already so far gone with the _Pastor_, that he has borrowed him an author out of the whining decade of the age (he is ashamed to name him), and will fain let himself be affected by the stupid stuff, while he muses upon the effect which the author had upon him in his fourteenth year. Of course he stumbles at him, in his present period of life, like a night-watchman by day; but still he cries back his cry, and has a new affection on the subject of his old. So does the declension of _cornu_ in the grammar still smile upon me, even to this hour, because I recollect how easily and glibly in the golden moons of childhood I retained the whole of the _Singular_.

"_Simon Jud_.[51] Curse on it! A fair face and a false Maxd'or make, in the course of a year, a couple of hundred knaves, who differ from each other only in this, that one wishes to keep and the other to get rid of the article. Hesus frowns, and charges home upon a million rivals already. Like button- and lace-makers, or like copper- and brass-founders, two so nearly of a trade cannot let each other get on.[52] Right! hell-goddess, that thou hatest all men! That is, to be sure, something for the _Pastor_,--a wound-salve! Scioppius, the two Scaligers, and the vigorous Schlegels, &c.--"

Here the diary passes to other matters. An old portrait, for which Schoppe had sat to himself, he had retouched. A notice to be inserted in the "Pestitz Weekly Advertiser" announced the purpose of the picture:--

"The undersigned, a portrait-painter of the Flemish school, makes known that he has taken up his residence in Pestitz, and that he is ready to paint all of every station and sex that may sit to him. As a sample of his execution may be seen at his studio a portrait of himself, which represents him sneezing, and which may be compared with the original on the spot. I also cut profiles.

"Peter Schoppe,

"No. 1778."

Probably that was to move the hell-goddess to sit for once to the sneezing painter. Albano could not but be astonished in the midst of deep pain. In the beginning, he had imagined, according to the simplicity of his nature, that he himself was meant by Hanus.

At this moment, Schoppe appeared. Albano spoke first, and said, softly, "I, too, have read thy diary." The Librarian started back with an exclamatory curse, and looked glowingly out of the window. "What is the matter, Schoppe?" asked his friend. He whirled round, stared at him, and said, twisting the skin of his face apart, like one who is cleaning his teeth, and drawing up his upper lip, like a boy who bites into his bread and butter, "I am in love," and ran up and down the chamber in a flame, bewailing, at the same time, that he must live to experience such a thing in himself in these his oldest days. "Read my diary no more," he continued. "Ask not about the name, brother; no devil, no angel, not the hell-goddess, shall know it. One day, perhaps, when I and she lie in Abraham's bosom, and I on hers--thou art so troubled, brother!"

"Fly gayly in the sun-atmosphere of love!" said his friend, in that sadness of conscience which makes man simple, calm, and lowly; "I will never ask nor disturb thee! Read that!" He gave him the note of the Princess, and said to him also, while he read, "Cursed be every joy where she has none! I stay here till it is decided whether she lives or not." "I stay here too," rejoined Schoppe, with an involuntarily comic expression. "Be serious!" said Albano. "Once I could," said he, tearfully; "since day before yesterday no more!"

Meanwhile, Albano approved Schoppe's separation from the travelling company; both secured to each other, even in friendship, the most precious freedom. Of tutors' attendance neither made account. Schoppe often ridiculed tutors of much information and manners, when they assumed he educated anything out of Albano or into him. He said: "The age educated, not a ninny; millions of men, not one; properly, at most, a pedagogical group of Pleiades sent their light after him,--namely, the seven ages of man, every age into the next following. The individual resembled very much the entire humanity, whose revolutions and improvements were nothing more than retouchings of a Schickaneder's magic flute by a Vulpius. Meanwhile, however, there hovered around the silly, discordant piece a melody of Mozart, in respect to which one outstrips father and language-master."

"Wherefore do we sinners creep and buzz about here? Let us to Ratto's!" said Schoppe. With extreme reluctance, Albano agreed to it; he said the cellar had in it for him something uncomfortable, and a sultry foreboding oppressed his bosom. Schoppe referred the presentiment to the pressure of the rafters of his ruined pleasure-castle, which still lay upon his breast, and the remembrance of that Roquairol, now flying in the abyss, who had once drunk his health in the cellar, and afterwards confessed to him in Lilar. Albano followed at last, but reminded him of the fulfilment of another presentiment, which he had had on the hill above Arcadia.