Chapter VI: Part 6

"Poor brother," said Schoppe the next day, in noble indignation, "I swear to thee, thou shalt get thy peace to-day." The pale patient looked upon him imploringly. "Yes, by Heaven!" Schoppe swore, and almost wept.

98. CYCLE.

Schoppe had resolved not to trouble himself at all about the Knight,--who divided his evening between the Minister and Wehrfritz in Blumenbühl,--but to betake himself at once to the presence of the Princess Idoine with the great petition. First, however, he would get the Lector as porter or _billeteur_ of the locked court-doors, and as surety for his words. But Augusti was indescribably alarmed; he insisted the thing would not do,--a Princess and a sick young man, and an absolutely ridiculous ghost-scene, &c.; and his own father, indeed, already saw through it. Schoppe upon this became a spouting fire-engine, and left few curses or comparisons unused upon the man-murdering nonsense of courtly and female decorum,--said it was as beautifully shaped as a Greek fury,--it bound up the wound on a man's neck as the cook-women did on a goose's, not till after it had bled to death, so that the feathers might not be stained,--and he was as much of a _courtisan_, he concluded ambiguously, as Augusti, and knew what decency was. "May I not propose it to the Fürstinn, then, who certainly esteems him so highly?" Augusti said, "That does not alter the case." "Nor yet to Julienne?" "Nor yet to her," said he. "Nor yet to the most satanic Satan?" "There is surely a good angel between," replied Augusti, "whom you can at least with more propriety use as an intercessor, because she is under obligations to the Knight of the Fleece,--the Countess of Romeiro." "O, why not, indeed?" said Schoppe, struck with the idea.

The Lector--who was one of those men that never use their own hands, but love to do everything by a third, sixth, farthest possible one, after a system of _handing_ analogous to the fingering-system--urged upon the reflecting Schoppe his ready willingness to introduce him to Linda, and her ability to do something in this "_épineuse affaire_."

Schoppe went up and down in a state of unusual distraction between two opinions,--shook his head often and vehemently, and yet stopped suddenly,--fluttered and shook still more violently,--looked at the Lector with a glance of sharper inquiry,--at length he stood fast, struck down with both arms, and said: "Thunder and lightning seize the world! Done, then! So be it! I go right to her. Heavens, why am I then, so to speak, so ridiculous in your eyes--I mean just now?" The courtly Lector had, however, transformed the smile of the lips into a smile of the eyes only. On Schoppe's face stood the warmth and haste of the self-conqueror. As men can be at once hard of hearing amidst the common din of life, and yet open to the finest musical tones,[65] so were Schoppe's inner ears hardened against the vulgar noise of ordinary impulse, but drank in thirstily all soft, low melodies of holier souls.

The Lector--loving the Count far more heartily than he was loved by him--was for taking the Librarian by storm at once to the castle, because just now was the most favorable hour, of court-recess, from half past four to half past five. Schoppe said he was on hand. In the castle Augusti commanded a servant, who understood him, to usher Schoppe into the mirror-room. He did so; brought lights immediately after; and Schoppe went slowly up and down, with his annoying retinue of dumb, nimble orang-outangs-of-the-looking-glass, rehearsing his part and calculating the future. Singularly did he feel himself seized now with his young, fresh sense of that former freedom which he was just suspending. He recognized Liberty, held her fast, looked upon her, and said to her, "Go away, only for a little while; save him, and then come back again!"

The multiplication of himself in the mirrors disgusted him. "Must ye torment me, ye I's?" said he, and he now represented to himself how he was standing before the richest, brightest moment and finest gold-balance of his existence, how a grave and a great life lay in this balance, and how his "I" must vanish from him, like the copied glass I's round about him. Suddenly a joy darted through him, not beyond the worth of his resolve, but greater than its occasion.

At last, near doors flew open, and then the nearest. Then entered a tall form, with head still half turned back, all enveloped in long, black silk. Like an enraptured moon on high tops of foliage, there stood before him, on the dark, silken cloud, a luxuriantly blooming, unadorned head, full of life, with black eyes full of lightnings, with dark roses on the dazzling face, and with an enthroning, snowy brow under the brown, overhanging locks. It seemed to Schoppe, when she looked upon him, as if his life lay in full sunshine; and he felt, with embarrassment, that he stood very near the queen of souls. "Herr von Augusti," she began, earnestly, "has told me that you wished to put into my hands a petition for your sick friend. Name it to me clearly and freely. I will give you, with pleasure, a frank and decided answer."

All recollections of his part were sunk to the bottom, and dissolved within him; but the great guardian-genius, who flew along invisible beside his life, plunged with fiery wings into his heart, and he answered, with inspiration, "So, too, will I answer you. My Albano is mortally sick; he has been in a fever since last evening. He loved the departed Fraülein Liana. He lies bound to the condor's-wing of fever, and is swept to and fro. He falls upon his knees at every knell of the clock, and, lying close to the sunny side of fancy, prays more and more fervently, 'Appear to me, and give me peace!' He stands upright and dressed on the high pyre of the fantastic flame-circle, and pants and bakes with thirst, and dries and shrivels up dreadfully, as I can plainly see ..."

"_O, finissez donc?_" said the Countess, who had bent back with a shudder, and slowly shaken her Venus head. "Frightful! Your petition?"

"Only the Princess Idoine," said he, coming to himself, "can fulfil it, and rescue him, by appearing to him, and whispering him peace, since she is said to be such a near ass-[66], cos-[67], copy, and mock-sun of the deceased." "Is that your petition?" said the Countess. "My greatest," said Schoppe. "Has his father sent you hither?" said she. "No, I," said he; "his father, to be clear and free and explicit with you, disapproves of it."

"Are you not the painter of the sneezing self-portrait?" she asked. He bowed, and said, "Most certainly." Having replied that in an hour he should hear the decision, she made him a short, respectful, leave-taking obeisance, and the simple, noble form left him gazing after her in rapture; and he was provoked that the childish mirrors round about should dare to send after the rare goddess so many shadows of herself.

At home he found, indeed, the crazed young man, whose ears alone lived any longer among realities, again on his knees at the sixth stroke of the clock; but his hope bloomed now under a warmer heaven. After an hour, the Lector appeared, and said, with a significant smile, the thing was going on right well; he was to get an opinion from the physician, and then the decision would be accordingly.

Herr von Augusti gave him, with courtier-like explicitness, the more definite intelligence, that the Countess had flown to the Princess, whose regard for her future travelling companion she knew, and told her she would, in Idoine's case, do it without hesitation. The Princess considered with herself a little, and said this was a thing which only her sister could decide. Both hastened to her, pictured to her the whole case, and Idoine asked, with alarm, how she could help her resemblance and her well-meant journey hither, that they should wish to draw her so deeply into such fantastic entanglements. At this moment Julienne came in, pale, and said she had only since morning received intelligence of this, and it was the duty of such a good soul to grant the apparition. Then Idoine, considering herself and everything, answered, with dignity, it was not at all the unusualness and impropriety of the thing which she dreaded, but the untruthfulness and unworthiness, as she would have to play false with the holy name of a departed soul, and cheat a sick man with a superficial similarity. The Countess said she knew of no answer to that, and yet her feelings were not against the thing. All were silent and perplexed. The conscientious Idoine was moved in the tenderest heart that ever hung trembling under the weight of such a decision upon a life. At last Linda said, with her sharp-sightedness, "Properly speaking, however, after all, there is no moral man to be deceived in the case, but a sleeper, a dreamer; and imagination and delusion are not, in fact, going to be strengthened in him, but to be subdued." Julienne drew Idoine aside, probably to portray to her more nearly the youth, whom she had not seen any more than Linda. Soon after, Idoine came back with her decision.

"If the physician will give a certificate that a human life hangs upon this, then I must conquer my feeling. God knows," she added, with emotion, "that I am quite as willing to do as to forbear, if I only know first what is right. It is my first untruth."

The Lector hastened from Schoppe to the Doctor, in order to bring back with him from the latter, among many turns of expression, just the most convenient certificate.

Schoppe waited long and anxiously. After seven o'clock came a note from Augusti: "Hold yourself in readiness; punctually at eight o'clock comes the privy person." Forthwith, by way of sparing the patient's feverish eyes, he put out the wax-candles, and lighted the magic hanging-lamp of isinglass in the chamber.

He kindled the sick youth to new fever with stories of people who had come back from the tomb, and advised him to kneel with long, ardent prayers before the fast gate of death, in order that her mild, merciful spirit might open it, and healingly touch him on the threshold.

Just before eight, the Princess and her sister came in their sedans. Schoppe was himself seized with a shudder at the sight of this risen Liana. With sparkling eye and firmly shut mouth, he led the fair sisters into the _coulisse_, whence they already heard, out on the adjoining stage, the youth praying. But Idoine's tender limbs trembled at the unpractised part in which her truthful spirit must belie itself. She wept upon it, and her fair, holy mouth was full of mute sighs. Her sister had to embrace her often in order to encourage her heart.

The clock struck. With a frightful fervor the frantic one within prayed for peace. The tongue of the hour was imperative. Idoine sent up a look as a prayer to God. Schoppe slowly opened the door.

Within, blooming in the magic dusk, with arms and eyes uplifted to heaven, knelt a beautiful son of the gods in the enchanted circle of madness, whose only and continual cry was, "O peace! peace!" Then, with inspiration, as if sent by God, the virgin stepped in, clothed in white, like the deceased in the dream-temple and on the bier, with the long veil at her side, but taller in stature, less rosy, and with a sharper, brighter starlight in the blue ether of the eye, and more resembling Liana among the blest, and sublimely, as if, like a renovated spring, she had come back again from the stars, so she appeared before him. His enchaining, fiery look terrified her. In a low and faltering tone, she stammered, "Albano, have peace!" "Liana?" groaned his whole breast, and, sinking down, he covered his weeping eyes. "Peace!" cried she, more strongly and courageously, because his eye no longer smote and staggered her; and she disappeared as a superhuman spirit vanishes from men.

The sisters departed silently, and full of high remembrance and satisfaction. Schoppe found him still kneeling, but looking away enraptured, like a storm-sick mariner on tropical seas, who, after long sleep, opens his eyes on a still, rosy-red evening, just before the going down of the blazing sun; and the dashing wake travels on, like a bed of roses and flames, into the sun, and the flashing cloud flies asunder in mute fire-balls, and the distant ships float high in the evening-red, and swim far away over the waves. So was it with the youth.

"I have my peace now, good Schoppe," he said, softly, "and now I will sleep in quiet." Transfigured, but pale, he rose, laid himself on the bed, and in a few minutes a heart wearied with so long a wading in the hot fever-sands sank down on the fresh, green oasis of slumber.

TWENTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.

The Dream.--The Journey.

99. CYCLE.

It was late when the Knight of the Fleece arrived. Schoppe showed him joyfully the sleeping countenance, whose rose-buds seemed to burst as in a moist, warm night. The Knight manifested great exhilaration at this, and still more did Doctor Sphex, who looked in quite late. The latter found the pulse not only full, but even slow, and on the way to a still greater repose. He appealed, at the same time, to _Chaudeson_, and several other professional examples, that great mental sufferings had often been relieved and removed very successfully by the internal opium of lethargy.

At last Schoppe acquainted the father with Idoine's whole method of cure. Gaspard haughtily replied, "You still, however, knew my opinion, Mr. Librarian?" "Certainly, but my own too," said, with bitterness, the disturbed Schoppe. The Knight, however, entered no further into anything,--quite after his manner of never giving the least light upon his real self, however much it might gain thereby,--but gave the friend a very cold signal of retreat.

The next morning, Schoppe found his beloved still in the soul's cradle of sleep. How he budded and bloomed! How slowly, yet strongly, like a freeman's, moved the breath in his unchained breast! Meanwhile, Gaspard's packed carriage, which was to trundle the youth away to Italy, stopped already, at this early hour, before the door, with its snorting, pawing horses, and the Knight expected every minute the waking up and the--jumping in.

The physician came also, praised crisis and pulse, added that the cream-o'-tartar (which he had prescribed among the rest) was the cream of life, and said, right to the father's face, when the latter was about to wake the youth for starting, he had never yet, in all his praxis, known any one who had so little acquaintance with critical points as he; any waker would be in this case a murderer, and, as physician, he most expressly forbade it.

From hour to hour Schoppe grew more and more out of humor with the father; he thanked God now--when he considered how the Knight's treatment had beat upon and washed over this fruit-bearing island--that Albano had not only the heat, but also the hardness of a rock.

Dr. Sphex, equally fond of his art and his reputation, watched like a threatening Esculapius-serpent over the pillow, and grew more hilarious. Schoppe lingered there, nerved against any degree of severity. The Knight took leave of every one in his son's name, and sent all soft hearts home; for the foster-mother, Albina and others, were not suffered so much as to see the sleeper,--because tears were to him a cold, disagreeable Scotch mist. The Princess and her retinue were already streaming along with the gay pennons of hope on their way to the shining Italy.

The evening was now irrevocably set for departure, especially as, in the night, the sleeping Liana was to be carried into the bed-chamber, which men never again open.

Already was the blooming Endymion overspread with smiles and radiance of joy, as a precursive morning-star of his waking day. His soul roamed, smiling, through the sparkling-cave of subterranean treasures, which the genius of dream unlocks; while the common waking eye stood blind before the spirit's Eldorado, so near and yet walled round by sleep. At last an unknown over-measure of bliss opened Albano's eye,--the youth immediately rose with vigor,--threw himself with the rapture of a first recognition on his father's breast, and seemed, in the first dreamy intoxication, not to remember the spent storm behind him, but only the blissful dream,--and in ecstasy related it thus:--

"I sailed in a white skiff on a dark stream which shot along between smooth, high marble walls. Chained to my solitary wave, I flew anxiously through the winding, rocky narrows, into which, at times, a thunderbolt darted. Suddenly the stream whirled round and descended, growing broader and wilder, over a winding stairway. There lay a broad, flat, gray land around me, tinged by the sickle of the sun with a loathsome, lurid, earthy light. Far from me stood a coiled-up Lethe-flood, which crawled round and round itself. On an immense stubble-field innumerable Walkyres,[68] on spider's-threads, shot by to and fro with arrowy swiftness, and sang, 'The fight of life 'tis we that weave'; then they let one flying summer after another soar invisibly to heaven.

"Overhead swept great worlds; on every one dwelt a human being; he stretched out his arms imploringly after another, who also stood on his world and looked across; but the globes ran with the hermits round the sun-sickle, and the prayers were in vain. I, too, felt a yearning. Infinitely far before me reposed an outstretched mountain-ridge, whose entire back, looming out of the clouds, glittered with gold and flowers. Painfully dragged the skiff through the flat, lazy waste of the shallow stream. Then came a sandy tract, and the stream squeezed through a narrow channel with my jammed-up skiff. And near me a plough turned up something long; but when it came up it was covered with a pall--and the dark cloth melted away again into a black sea.

"The mountain-ridge stood much nearer, but longer and higher before me, and cut through the lofty stars with its purple flowers, over which a green wild-fire flew to and fro. The worlds, with the solitary beings, swept away over the mountains, and came not back; and the heart yearned to mount up and soar away after them. 'I must, I will,' cried I, rowing. After me came stalking an angry giant, who mowed away the waves with a sharp moon-sickle; over me ran a little condensed tempest made out of the compressed atmosphere of the earth; it was called the poison-ball of heaven, and sent down incessant pealings.

"On the high mountain-ridge a friendly flower called me up; the mountain waded to meet and dam up the sea, but it almost reached now to the worlds that were flying over, and its great fire-flowers seemed only like red buds scattered through the deep ether. The water boiled,--the giant and the poison-ball grew grimmer,--two long clouds stood pointing down like raised drawbridges, and the rain rushed down over them in leaping waves; the water and my little bark rose, but not enough. 'No waterfall,' said the giant, laughing, 'runs _upward_ here!'

"Then I thought of my death, and named softly a holy name. Suddenly there came swimming along high in heaven a white world under a veil, a single glistening tear fell from heaven into the sea, and it rose with a roar,--all waves fluttered with fins, broad wings grew on my little skiff, the white world went over me, and the long stream snatched itself up thundering, with the skiff on its head, out of its dry bed, and stood on its fountain and in heaven, and the flowery mountain-ridge beside it, and lightly glided my winged skiff through green rosy splendor and through soft, musical murmuring of a long flower-fragrance, into an immense radiant morning-land.

"What a broad, bright, enchanted Eden! A clear, glad morning sun, with no tears of night, expanded with an encircling rose-wreath, looked toward me and rose no higher. Up and down sparkled the meadows, bright with morning dew. 'Love's tears of joy lie down below there,' sang the hermits overhead on the long, sweeping worlds, 'and we, too, will shed them!' I flew to the shore, where honey bloomed, while on the other bloomed wine; and as I went, my gayly decorated little skiff, with broad flowers puffed out for sails, followed, dancing after me over the waves. I went into high blooming woods, where noon and night dwelt side by side, and into green vales full of flower-twilights, and up sunny heights, where blue days dwelt, and flew down again into the blooming skiff, and it floated on, deep in wave-lightnings, over precious stones, into the spring, to the rosy sun. All moved eastward, the breezes and the waves, and the butterflies and the flowers, which had wings, and the worlds overhead; and their giants sang down, 'We fondly look downward,--we fondly glide downward, to the land of love, to the golden land.'

"Then I saw my face in the waves, and it was a virgin's, full of high rapture and love. And the brook flowed with me, now through wheat-fields; now through a little, fragrant night, through which the sun was seen behind sparkling glow-worms; now through a twilight, wherein warbled a golden nightingale. Now the sun arched the tears of joy into a rainbow, and I sailed through, and behind me they sank down again, burning like dew. I drew nearer to the sun, and he wore already the harvest-wreath. 'It is already noon,' sang the hermits over my head.

"Slowly, as bees over honey-pastures, swam the thronging clouds in the dark blue, over the divine region. From the mountain-ridge a milky-way arched over, which sank into the sun. Bright lands unrolled themselves. Harps of light, strung with rays, rang in the fire; a tri-clang of three thunders agitated the land. A ringing storm-rain of dew and radiance filled with glitter the wide Eden; it dissolved in drops, like a weeping ecstasy. Pastoral songs floated through the pure blue air, and a few lingering, rosy clouds danced out of the tempest after the tones. Then the near morning-sun looked faintly out of a pale lily-garland, and the hermits sang up there, 'O bliss, O bliss! the evening blooms!' There was stillness, and twilight. The worlds held themselves in silence round the sun, and encircled him with their fair giants, resembling the human form, but higher and holier. As on the earth the noble form of man creeps downward by the dark mirror-chain of animal life, so did it, overhead there, mount up along a line of pure, bright, free gods, sent from God. The worlds touched the sun, and dissolved upon it; the sun, too, fell to pieces, in order to flow down into the land of love, and became a sea of radiance. Then the fair gods and the fair goddesses stretched out their arms towards each other, and touched each other, trembling for love; but, like vibrating strings, they disappeared from sight in their blissful trembling, and their being became only an invisible melody; and the tones sang to each other, 'I am with thee, and am with God'; and others sang, 'The sun was God.'

"Then the golden fields glistened with innumerable tears of joy, which had fallen during the invisible embrace; eternity grew still, and the breezes slept, and only the lingering, rosy light of the dissolved sun softly stirred the flowers.

"I was alone, looked round, and my lonely heart longed dyingly for a death. Then the white world with the veil passed slowly up the milky-way; like a soft moon, it still glimmered a little; then it sank down from heaven upon the holy land, and melted away upon the ground; only the high veil remained. Then the veil withdrew itself into the ether, and an exalted, godlike virgin, great as the other goddesses, stood upon the earth and in heaven. All rosy radiance of the swimming sun collected in her, and she burned in a robe of evening-red. All invisible voices addressed her, and asked, 'Who is the Father of men, and their Mother, and their Brother, and their Sister, and their Lover, and their Beloved, and their Friend?' The virgin lifted steadfastly her blue eye, and said, 'It is God!' And thereupon she looked at me tenderly out of the high splendors, and said, 'Thou knowest me not, Albano, for thou art yet living.' 'Unknown virgin,' said I, 'I gaze with the pangs of a measureless love upon thy exalted countenance. I have surely known thee; name thy name.' 'If I name it, thou wilt awake,' said she. 'Name it!' I cried. She answered, and I awoke."

100. CYCLE.

"Thou canst surely keep awake and travel one night?" With this question, his father hastily conducted him to the carriage that stood ready for the journey, in order to steal him away while yet in the midst of the glowing dream, with his recollections lulled to slumber, and in order especially to get the start of the pale bride, who this very night, by the same road, was to go home to the last heritage of humanity. "In the carriage thou shalt hear all," replied Gaspard to his son's mild question respecting their destination. Still entranced with the light of the shining land of dreams, Albano willingly and blindly obeyed. He still saw Liana in lofty, divine form, standing on the evening-red ground of the sun, which was bespangled with the dew-drops of joy, and his eye, full of splendor, reached not down into the earth-cellar, and to the narrow cast-off chrysalis-shell of the liberated and soaring Psyche.

Schoppe accompanied him to the torch-lighted carriage, but in perfect silence, in order not to awaken his heart by intimating the destination of the journey. He pressed with warmth the hand of the beautiful and beloved youth, which returned the pressure, and said nothing but "We shall see each other again, brother!" Thereupon, honored by no parting look from the imperious father, he stepped back with emotion from his friend, who continued to wave his warm farewells; and the carriage rolled off, and, leaving a long gleam of torch-light behind it, flew out into the high, starry night.

Freshly and meaningly did the glimmering creation broaden out before the convalescent. Saturn was just rising, and the god of time set himself, as a soft, flashing jewel, in the glittering magic belt of heaven. With sealed eyes was the unconscious youth conducted down from the pastoral cottage of his early years, and out of the shepherd's vale of his first love, away where the great, eternal constellations of art beckoned, into the divine land, where the dark ether of heaven is golden, and the lofty ruins of the earth are clothed with grace, and the nights are days. No eye looked over to the heights of Blumenbühl, from which, at this very moment, a black train of coaches was passing slowly down, with upright-burning funeral torches, like a moving shadow-realm, to convey the still, good heart, wherein Albano and God lived, with its dead wounds, to the soft place of rest. Flaming rolled the torch-carriage up the mountain-road towards Italy.

Tearless and far-gazing, Albano's eye rested on the glimmering, ceaselessly moving fountain-wheel of time, eternally drawing up constellations in the east, and pouring them out in the west; and his childlike hand gently clasped his father's.

TWENTY-SIXTH JUBILEE.[69]

The Journey.--The Fountain.--Rome.--The Forum.

101. CYCLE.

So long as the night lasted, the images of Albano's dream went on gleaming with the constellations, and not until the bright morning rose were they all extinguished. Gaspard told him, smilingly, he was on his way to Italy. He received the intelligence of his going abroad with an unexpected composure. He merely asked where his Schoppe was. When told that _he_ had not been disposed to join them, then did he seem to see all at once in fancy's eye the Linden-city come following after him over the mountains and valleys, and his last friend standing in the middle of the market-place all alone, engaged in mock-play with himself, by way of quieting his true, strong heart, which would fain worry down its grief and hold fast its love. With this friend, whom he would not let go out of his soul, Albano drew after him, as by a Jupiter's-chain, the whole stage and world of his past, and every sad scene came close up to him. Cities and lands rolled along before him unseen. The waves which sorrow lashes up around us, stand high between us and the world, and make our ship solitary in the midst of a haven full of vessels. He turned away with a shudder from every beautiful virgin; she reminded him, like a dirge, of her who was pale in death; forever did Liana's white face, uncovered,--like a corpse in Italy,[70]--seem to be travelling along on the endless way to the grave, and only indistinguishable forms with masks followed after her alive. So is it with man and his grief; by a process the reverse of ship-drawing, in which the living drag the dead along with them, here the dead takes the living with him, and draws them after him far into his cold realm.

Time gradually unfolded his grief, instead of weakening it. His life had become a night, in which the moon is under the earth, and he could not believe that Luna would gradually return with an increasing bow of light. Not joys, but only actions,--those remote stars of night,--were now his aim. He held it unjust to keep back in the presence of his father the tears which often forced themselves from him in the midst of conversation, merely because his father took no interest in them; still he showed him, nevertheless, by the energy of his discourses and resolves, the vigorous youth. Only the reproach which he had cast upon himself for his guilt in Liana's death had suffered itself to be swallowed up in the peace which Idoine had given him, although he now held her apparition to have been only a feverish waking dream about Liana.

His father kept a profound silence about Idoine's appearance on the stage of action, as well as all disagreeable recollections. He spoke much, however, of Italy and of the spoils of art which Albano would acquire there, especially through the company of the Princess, the Counsellor of Arts, and the German gentleman, who had gone on before them, and whom one might soon overtake. The son turned to him at last with the bold inquiry whether he really had a sister still, and related the adventure with the Baldhead. "It might well be," said Gaspard, with a disagreeable jocosity, "that thou hadst still more sisters and brothers than I knew of. But what I know is, that thy twin-sister Severina died this year in her cloister. For what, then, dost thou take the night-adventure?" "I should almost think it a dream," he replied. Here, accidentally, his hand found its way to his pocket, and to his astonishment struck upon the half-ring which his sister had presented him. The strangeness of the whole thing sank deep among his sensations, and that night of horror passed swiftly and coldly through his noon. He and his father examined the ends of the divided ring, on each of which a broken-off signature ended abruptly. "There is _nothing_ miraculous, however," said the Knight. "How do we know, then, that there is anything natural?" said Albano. "Mystery," replied Gaspard, "or the spirit-world, dwells only in the spirit." "We must," the son continued, "even in the case of the commonest optical tricks, derive our pleasure from something else than the resolving of the deception of fancy into a deception of the senses, because otherwise the magic would necessarily please us more _after_ the solution than before. These are the points and poles of human nature, upon which the eternal polar clouds hang. Our maps of the kingdom of truth and spirits are the map-stones, which stand for ruins and villages; these are _lies_, but still they are _likenesses_. The spirit, forever an exile among bodies, desires spirits." "That is just about what I meant, too," said Gaspard.

Albano, however, insisted more distinctly upon his decision respecting the Baldhead and the sister. "Anything else," said the Knight, quite petulantly; "it is to me a very disagreeable conversation. Take the world in _thy_ way and be quiet!" "Dear father," asked Albano, with surprise, "do you mean at some future time to definitely enlighten me on the subject?" "So soon as I can," said the Knight, abruptly, with such sharp and stinging glances at the son, that the latter, flinching from them, as from arrows, hastily bent away his head out of the carriage; when he for the first time observed that his father did not mean him at all; for he still continued to look as sharply in the same direction as if he were close upon the point of falling into his old torpor.

Gaspard's expression about the indwelling of the spiritual world within the spirit, and his look, and the thought of his palsy lent a romantic awfulness to the hour and the silence in Albano's eyes. Down below on the bank of the stream stood a concourse of people, and one came running like a fugitive or a spokesman out of the crowd. A boy at some distance threw himself down on a hill, and laid his ear to the earth, in order to hear somewhat accurately the rolling of their carriage-wheels. In the village where they made their noonday halt there was an incessant tolling. Their host was at the same time a miller; the din of waves and wheels filled the whole house; and canary-birds sent their additional jargoning through the jargon.

There are moments when the two worlds, the earthly and the spiritual, sweep by near to each other, and when earthly day and heavenly night touch each other in twilights. As the shadows of the shining clouds of heaven run along over the blossoms and harvests of earth, so does heaven universally cast upon the common surface of reality its light shadows and reflections. So did Albano find it now. The ring and the mystic word of his cold father had dazzled him like lightning. Below at the house-door he found a maiden, who carried along before her a box of citrons. Suddenly and unpleasantly the tolling stopped; he looked up to the belfry, and a white hawk sat upon the vane. Soon came the bell-ringer himself, to get something to drink, and began upon the chamberlain with strong and yet not ill-meant curses, for having kept him tolling there these three weeks, and said he only wished that such a one as that distinguished personage himself had been the previous year had only been obliged to toll regularly three days after the decease of the blessed daughter. He urged the miller to "buy some of the citrons, because they were good, juicy, and had a thin rind; and he and the 'parson's boy'[71] must recognize them as coming from the burial of the gracious Fräulein; and in fourteen days, at all events, he would need some for the assembled clergy, as bride-father!" "What are the customs here?" asked Albano.

"Why, you see, when any one dies," said the sexton, very respectful and friendly, "then the parson and my littleness get a citron, and so does the corpse too; but if any one is married, then the clergy get the same, and so also the bride. This is the fashion with us, my most gracious master."

Albano went out into the garden back of the house, into which the exposed mill-wheels threw their silver sparks, and which was as if swallowed up in the splendor and uproar of the open water. While he looked into the glimmering, flying whirlpools, the citrons which the corpse as well as the bride got hovered before his excited mind. Emotion is full of similes. Time was, thought he, when Liana should have journeyed to the citron-land, and into the low woods where the snow of blossoms and the gold of fruits play together between green and blue, and there she was to have gained health and refreshment; now she holds the citron in her cold, dead hand, and she is not quickened.

He looked round, and seemed to stand in a strange world. In the blue of heaven an invisible storm without clouds swept along like a spirit; long rows of hills shifted and sparkled with red fruits and red leaves; out of the gay trees glowing apples were flung; and the storm flew from summit to summit, and down upon the earth, and roared along down the whole course of the disturbed stream. One could fancy spirits played around the earth, or would appear upon it, so singularly seemed the bright welkin stirred and illuminated. By this time, Albano had come unconsciously into a dark, wooded wilderness; therein leaped, unseen, unheard, a pure, light fountain out of the earth upon the earth; the storm without was still, only the fountain was heard. "The holy one is near me," said his heart. "Is not the fountain her image? Is it not the very image of her eternal tears? Does she not press upward out of the earth, where she dwells?" All at once he saw in his hand, as if another's hand had laid it therein, the sketch of Linda's head which Liana, with dying hands, had made and presented; but his fancy powerfully impressed upon the picture the resemblance to the artist, so clearly did he see Liana's soft face upon the paper.

He went forth again into the shining world. "How poor I am!" he cried. "I see her upon the golden cloud which sails from the evening sun toward morning; I see her in the cool fountain of the vale, and on the moon, and on the flower. I see her everywhere; and she rests only on one spot. O, how poor!" And he looked up to heaven, and a single long cloud was floating therein, swiftly and far away.

102. CYCLE.

Thus did the days, with their cities and landscapes, fly by, and the world mirrored itself in Albano's life as in a poem. One faculty after another, the whole bowed harvest of his inner being, gradually rose up again green and dripping; but, at the same time, the thorn of grief also grew strong. While his eye and spirit were filling themselves with the world and all spoils of knowledge, the evil spectre of pain still kept his abode in the ruins, and came forth when the heart was alone, and seized it.

He touched Vienna, where he must needs be pleased to be introduced to several distinguished friends of Gaspard, who here, for the first time, disclosed to him that he belonged not to the _Cavalleros del Turone_, but was an Austrian Knight of the Fleece. "It is so singularly familiar to me here," said Albano; "whence can this arise?" "From some resemblance to another city," said Gaspard; "whoever travels much comes out of like cities into like." Every day his father grew more dear and intelligible to him, and yet no more confidential or intimate. After a warm day and familiar conversation with Gaspard, one stood, at the next succeeding interview, again in the very antechamber of his acquaintance; as in the case of hard-natured maidens, after every May-month's day the melted May-frost begins to fall anew. Age respects love, but, unlike youth, it respects little the signs of love. However, Albano maintained the pride of letting his father see him wholly and with all his differences, without hiding his summer from the face of winter.

From day to day Gaspard found letters to himself at the post-offices, particularly from Pestitz, as Albano saw externally by the post-marks, for not one was handed over to him. He desired more and more to overtake the Princess, who was now only one day's journey in advance of them. They saw already those giants of winter, the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps, in their encampment; those sons of the gods stood, armed with avalanches and cataracts and winters, sentinels around the divine land where gods and men reciprocally imitated each other. How often did Albano, when the sun at evening glowingly blended with the snow-clad Alpine heights, gaze with a pang of sadness at those thrones, which he had once beheld quite otherwise, much more golden, so hopefully and trustingly, from _Isola Bella_! The heights of thy past life, said he to himself, are also white, and no Alpine horns any longer sound up there, among serene, sunny days, and thou art deep in the valley!

They passed, even now, the popular festival of a belated vintage. The Knight informed himself about everything with the curiosity of a wine-dealer, and with the science of a vine-dresser. So did he botanize universally upon the earth after every spear and sprig of knowledge. Albano wondered at this, since he had heretofore believed that Gaspard sought and strove after nothing but the Paris--and Hesperides-apples of art, because, in his station, he could have no occasion for any other fruits, or need their meat and their kernel, either to enjoy or to plant them.

They sank into the depths of the mountains of Tyrol. The heights stood already wrapped in the close, white bier-cloth of winter, and through the valleys the cold storm went to and fro, the only living thing. Albano's longing after the mild land of youth grew, between the storms and the Alps, higher and higher; and Rome's image, the nearer it approached him, assumed more colossal dimensions. Gaspard made the journey go on wings, in order to anticipate the rain-clouds of autumn.

In a dark travelling night they worked their passage, as it were, away through the mountains, like their companion, the river Adige, which tears up a giant rock, and heaves it into the mild plain, and softly speeds on its level way. The sun appeared,--and Italy.

It had rained. A bland air fluttered from the cypress hills through the valley, and through the vine-festoons of the mulberry-trees, and had forced its way along between blossoms and the fruits of the Seville oranges. The Adige seemed to rest, like a curling giant-snake, upon the motley-colored landscape of country-houses and olive-groves, and to set rainbows upon one another. Life played in the ether; only summer birds floated in the light blue; only the Venus-chariot of pleasure rolled over the soft hills.

Albano's full soul gushed out, as it were, into the broad bed which led him from the mild plain to the magnificent Rome! "When we journey back," said Gaspard, "then remember thy approach." They stopped at a village with great stone houses. Albano was looking upon the warm out-o'-door life around him, the uncovered head, the naked breast, and the sparkling eyes of the men, the great sheep with silken wool, the little, black, lively pigs, and the black turkey-cocks, when he suddenly heard his name and a German greeting from a balcony overhead.

It was the Princess; her carriages stood just aside; Bouverot and Fraischdöfer were with her. How like balsam it steals through the heart, in a strange land, and though it were the loveliest, to meet again a brother or a sister inhabitant of a rougher land, as if one were meeting in the second world a kindred son of earth! The Adige, too, that had previously in the wild mountains accompanied him under the name of the Etsch, followed him with its fairer designation into the plain. The Princess seemed to him, he knew not why, to have become milder, more maidenly in form and look, and he reproached himself with his earlier error. But he only committed a later one. Beyond Vienna her strongly drawn physiognomy was surpassed by sharper southern ones, and the striking[72] colors in which she loved to array herself were outshone by the Italian. A strange soil is a masquerade ball-room or a watering-place hall, where only human relations, and no political ones, prevail, and in a strange land men are least strangers. All touched each other in friendliness, as strange hands feel after and grasp each other during the ascent of mountains. With what veneration did Albano look upon the Princess! For he thought, "She would fain have taken the departed one with her into the healing Eden. O, the saint would indeed be happy this morning, and her blue eye would weep for bliss." Then his did so, but not for bliss; and thus are the fire-works of life, like others, built always by and upon water. Then was the oath solemnly sworn within him before the beautiful face of the dead Liana: "I will be truly the friend of this her friend!" Man plays a new part in the drama of life most warmly and best; over our introductory sermons the Holy Spirit floats, brooding with the wings of a dove; only by and by do the eggs lie cold. Albano, never yet initiated into any friendship but a man's, worshipped that of woman as a rising star, and for this, as for the former, he found far more capacities of sacrifice treasured up in his warm soul than for love. Man is in friendship what woman is in love, and the reverse; namely, more covetous of the object than of the feeling for it.

With new swelling sails and flying streamers, in gayly decorated singing-vessels, with propitious side winds, did the gay passage fly through cities and pastures.

Nothing hangs out over the _corso_ of a long journey a finer festoon of fruits and flowers, for a carriage which goes before, than a couple of carriages coming after. What fellowship of joy and danger in night quarters! What bespeaking of lines of march! What joy over the adventures past and to come, namely, over the reports of the same! And how each loves the others!

Only toward Bouverot Albano showed a steady coldness; but the Knight was friendly. Albano, brought up more among books than among men, often wondered within himself, that in the former the same difference of sentiments passed by him so lightly, which among the latter assailed him so sharply. At last his father asked him upon one occasion, "Why dost thou demean thyself so strangely toward Herr von Bouverot? Nothing exasperates more than a considerate, quiet hatred; a passionate hatred does so far less." "Because it is my law," he answered, "to flee and to hate the everlasting untruthfulness of men in their connections with each other. Out of mere humanity to place one's self on a par with unlike persons, designedly to make a friendly face to any one, to have such a feeling towards a man, that one is not at liberty to speak it out to him on the spot, that may well be deemed complete slavery, and confounds the purest." "Whoso will love nothing but his likeness," replied Gaspard, "has nothing but himself to love. Von Bouverot," he added, laughing, "is, after all, a brave host and travelling _compagnon_." Albano, who could withstand even people whom he respected, made no inquisition upon his father, but thought the German gentleman only the more despicable.

That gentleman, born a pettifogger and pedler, had, it must be observed, cleared a pathway of deep footprints for himself in the snow of the Knight and the Princess,--both of whom, like all long travellers,[73] were uncommonly avaricious,--by overseeing and overreaching all hosts and Italians in settling up the _Patto_,[74] and even by his understanding the art of being profoundly coarse just at the right time, whereas upon turning from the host to the Princess he would become as much a man of the world again as Fontenelle or any Frenchman, who in such cases always counts up and curses longer than he eats. The Knight of the Fleece, who, as he confessed, had never travelled so cheaply, covered him, therefore, with the laurel which grew all about here, and looked as gay as he had never looked before. Only to his son was the cold, wrathful, coarse man a volcano, ejecting slime and water. Ride a mile ahead of a crowned head or a classic author, who is also one, and in general before people who have money, but not to spare, and only save them a few gold pieces a day,--never shall you have seen the said heads more glad or grateful than in such a case!

Everywhere Albano would fain have alighted, and stepped in among great ruins and into the splendor of the scattered insignia, which had been lost by the conquerors of the world out of their triumphal chariots on the way to Rome. But the Knight advised him to spare and save his eyes and inspiration for Rome itself. How his heart beat, when at last in the waste _Campagna_, which lay full of lava-eruptions around the nest of the Roman eagles, those world-driven storm-birds, they rolled along over the Flaminian road! But he and Gaspard felt themselves wonderfully oppressed. One seemed to be wading through the stagnant lake of a sultry sulphurous atmosphere, which his father ascribed to the brimstone huts at Baccano,--he thirsted for the snow on the distant mountains,--the heavens were dark-blue and still,--single lofty clouds flew arrow-swift through the silent wilderness. A man in the distance set down again an urn which he had dug up, and prayed, anxiously looking to heaven, and telling his beads. Albano turned toward the mountains, to which the evening sun was sinking, as if dissolved in piercing splendor. All at once the Knight ordered the postilion to stop, who passionately threw up his arms toward heaven, while it went on rumbling under the carriage, and exclaimed, "Holy mother of God, an earthquake!" But Gaspard touched his son, who seemed intoxicated with the splendors of sunset, and said, pointing, "_Ecco Roma!_" Albano looked, and saw in the depths of the distance the dome of St. Peter's gleaming in the sun. The sun went down, the earth quaked once more, but in his spirit nothing was save Rome.

103. CYCLE.

Half an hour after the earthquake, the heavens swathed themselves in seas and dashed them down in masses and in torrents. The naked _Campagna_ and heath were covered with the mantle of rain. Gaspard was silent,--the heavens black,--the great thought stood alone in Albano, that he was hastening on towards the bloody scaffold and the throne scaffolding of humanity, the heart of a cold, dead, heathen-world, the eternal Rome; and when he heard, on the _Ponte Molle_, that he was now going across the Tiber, he felt as if the past had risen from the dead,--as if the stream of time ran backward, and he were sailing on it; under the streams of heaven he heard the seven old mountain-streams rushing and roaring, which once came down from Rome's hills, and with seven arms uphove the world from its foundations.

At length the constellation of the mountain city of God, that stood so broad before him, opened out into nights; cities with scattered lights lay up and down, and the bells (which to his ear were alarm-bells) sounded out the fourth[75] hour, when the carriage rolled through the triumphal gate of the city, the _Porta del Popolo_; then the moon rent her black heavens, and poured down out of the cleft clouds the splendor of a whole sky. There stood the Egyptian obelisk of the gateway, high as the clouds in the night, and three streets ran gleaming apart. "So," said Albano to himself, as they passed through the long _corso_ to the Tenth Ward, "thou art veritably in the camp of the god of war; here, where he grasped the hilt of the monstrous war-sword, and with the point made the three wounds in three quarters of the world." Rain and splendor gushed through the vast, broad streets,--occasionally he passed suddenly along by gardens and into broad city-deserts and market-places of the past. The rolling of the chariot amidst the rush and roar of the rain resembled the thunder, whose days were once holy to this heroic city, like the thundering heaven to the thundering earth; muffled-up forms, with little lights, stole through the dark streets; often there stood a long palace with colonnades in the fire of the moon, often a solitary gray column, often a single high fir-tree, or a statue behind cypresses. Once, when there was neither rain nor moonshine, the carriage went round the corner of a large house, on whose roof a tall, blooming virgin, with an uplooking child on her arm, herself directed a little hand-light, now toward a white statue, now toward the child, and so alternately illuminated the whole group. The friendly company made its way to the very centre of his exalted soul and brought with it to him many a recollection; particularly was a Roman child to him a wholly new and mighty idea.