Chapter VIII: Part 8

Unexpectedly there presented himself before this sickbed Gaspard's nearest and earliest kinsman, his brother. Albano stood by when the strange being came up and spake to the mortally sick man, and turned two stiff, glassy eyes, which looked as if they had been set in, quite away from him with whom he spake,--so fantastic, and yet full of the cold world toward his dying brother,--with loosely hanging face-skin upon significant face-bones,--a gray were-wolf on his hind legs, just charmed out of the beastly hide into the human skin,--like the destroying angel, a destroying man, and yet without passion. It stretched out toward Albano its long hand, but he, repelled by something unnamable, could not grasp it. This brother said he had come from Pestitz,--handed over two letters from there, one to Gaspard, one for the Princess,--and began to say something about his travels, which seemed uncommonly acute, fantastical, learned, incredible, and oft really unintelligible. Once Albano said, "That is a downright impossibility." He began the narration again, made it still more incredible, and insisted it was actually so. Thereupon he went away, to Greece, as he said, and took the coolest leave imaginable of his dying brother.

Gaspard now said to Albano, "I should like to have you, after my death, rightly estimate this strangeling, if he ever comes near you, or rather avoid him altogether, as he never says a true word, and that from a pure and disinterested delight in pure lies; still more," he continued, "shun the deep, deadly scorpion-sting of Bouverot, as well as his cheating hand at play." Albano was surprised at the aspect of this speech (agreeably so at its moral sharpness), for he had hitherto imagined that he found in his father quite other sentiments regarding Bouverot.

The next day he found his father already with his foot on the steps to come up out of the tomb. The express had been discharged,--all letters remanded,--the Prince Lauria stood there with beaming face. "Simply another's sickness has cured me of mine," said the father. The letter which his brother had brought him from Pestitz had contained the intelligence that his old friend, the reigning Prince, was swiftly approaching his last hour, because they had held his dropsy to be _embonpoint_, and had delayed the treatment of it. "I hope," said Gaspard, "to have been so wholesomely agitated by my sympathies in this matter, that I shall still be able to make the journey in season for the last hour of friendship." He added, that then this journey would make way again for Albano's to Naples.

Then came the Princess in consternation about the letter, which announced her husband's danger and her own departure. Gaspard answered by giving his son a hint expressive of his desire for a private interview with her. They remained alone together for a long time. At last the Princess came back quite changed, and begged him, with almost stammering hesitation, to accompany her to the _opera seria_. She was moved and embarrassed, her eyes glistening, her features inspired; his father, too, he found excited, but apparently strengthened.

Here a long beam of noonday shot through his whole previous labyrinthine wood, namely, the confirmed presumption of his father's love, which now, through the approaching dissolution of the marriage chain of the Princess, and in the debility of sickness had broken out more strongly; hence Gaspard's letter to the Princess, hence their keeping together in Rome and on the way thither, &c.

Never did Albano love his energetic father more than after this discovery of a tender sentiment; and toward the Princess his heart now grew from a friend to be all at once a son. Besides, as among the five prizes of hereditary human love he had gained only one,--a father (no mother, no brother, no sister, and no child),--so was he filled with this new delight at the gain of a mother. All that respect could do, warmth express, and hope betray, he indulged.

It was a night when in Rome spring already threw flowers again through the clouds of winter. At the theatre they gave Mozart's _Tito_. How on a foreign soil is one carried away by a strain from one's native land, which has followed him hither! The lark that sings over Roman ruins exactly as over German fields is the dove which, with her well-known song, brings us the olive-branch from our native land. Up to this time, Albano, on the Alpine road over ruins, had sent his eye eagerly forward only along the future race-ground of war, and had seldom raised it toward the heaven where the glorified Liana was, and he had forcibly dashed away every rising tear. But now his sick father had lifted the curtain of the bed under the ground where her remains slept; now did the clear stream of tones which had passed through the lands of his youth and his paradises come all at once strongly over the mountains, and murmur down so near to him with its old waters. At first his spirit defended itself against the old, slumbering days, which spoke in their sleep; but when at length the tones which Liana herself had once played and sung before him came across over the bier of the mountains, and hung down as shining tapestries of golden days,--when he reflected what hours he and Liana might have found here, but had not found,--then his dark grief ran up the scale of tones as an evil, plundering genius, and Albano saw his dreadful loss stand clearly in heaven. Then he turned not his eye toward the Princess, but in the consecration of music pressed the hand by which the departed saint was once to have come into these fields. By and by he said, "I shall, in the rich Naples, long more and more after my only female friend, and envy the happy man who is permitted to accompany her." She fell into great emotion at this new intelligence of his intended separation, and into a still greater at his passionate transformation, which she knew how to deduce, with the richest dowry for her tenderest hopes, from her departure, and even the approaching departure of her spouse. But she concealed the greater emotion behind the lesser. They parted from each other with mutual joys and errors. Albano was made more and more happy by the improvement of his father's health; the Princess was made so by the increase of the son's warmth, and her life mounted out of the ship of war into an express-balloon, an air-vessel winged with tidings of peace. Thus did both approach closer and closer to the curtain, whose pictures they took for the scenery of the stage itself, only to be so much the more astonished when it rose.

107. CYCLE.

The dried-up bed of the Knight's life had been richly inundated again by the agitations of his heart. Even because, in well days, he held himself together, like mountains, with ice and moss, so in sick days, it seemed, did a real, internal commotion more easily restore his old energy and repose. He armed and equipped himself for travelling, which best built up and built upon his capricious body. The Princess put off her departure from day to day, merely in the firm and ardent expectation that Albano would impart to her, to take with her on her way, the fairest concluding word of her whole life. In Albano this blooming land awakened longings for--Spain, and Naples, he hoped, would appease them. Spring was already dawning upon Rome, and rising in Naples; the nightingale and man sang all night long, and the almond-trees were everywhere in bloom. But it seemed as if the three travellers were waiting for each other. Could the Princess hurry away from the heart upon which her being bloomed and took root,--she, like a torn-up rosemary twig, whose roots, at the same time with those of a germinating wheat-grain, take a double hold of the earth? Albano, too, would not hasten the hour which cast him into remote corners of the earth, far away at once from his father and his friend,--them into an after-winter, him into an early and latter spring,--and least of all just now. His spirit had appeased itself, and become reconciled with itself, by the resolution of war. His Portici was gloriously built up on the buried Herculaneum of his past.

A letter from Pestitz decided matters. The mortally sick Prince wrote to the Princess, and begged to see her again; the letter was like a fire, bursting the common ground and scattering all that stand thereupon; the three confederates formed the purpose to set off on one and the same day,--on one morning,--so that one dawn might shed its gold into three travelling-carriages at once.

Yet one thing the Princess desired on the evening previous to the departure, namely, Albano's company to the dome of St. Peter's in the morning; she wished to take Rome once more into her parting soul, when the dawn in its redness and splendor gilded the city. Albano, too, was glad to drink the must of a fiery hour, which might clear itself up into an eternal wine for the whole of life; for he knew not that the lively Princess,--made still more lively by Italy,--after waiting so long and impatiently for the fairest word from his lips, at last ventured indignantly upon a parting hour, in which it must escape from him.

Early before sunrise, when, in Rome, many more go to bed than get up, he waited upon her; only her faithful Haltermann accompanied them. She still glowed with her night-long vigils, and seemed very much moved. Rome still slept; occasionally they were met by coaches and families, which were just finishing their night. The sky stood cool and blue over the dawning morn, the fresh son of the fair night.

The wide circus before St. Peter's Church was solitary and dumb as the saints upon the columns; the fountains spoke: one constellation more went out above the obelisk. They went up by the winding stairway of a hundred and fifty steps to the roof of the church, and came out through a street of houses, columns, little cupolas and towers, through four doors into the monstrous dome,--into a vaulted night. In the depths below the temple rested, like a broad, gloomy, lonesome valley with houses and trees, a holy abyss, and they walked along close by the mosaic-giants, the broad colored clouds on the heaven of the dome. While they were ascending in the high vault, Aurora's golden foam glistened redder and redder on the windows, and fire and night swam into each other among the arches.

They hastened yet higher and looked out, just as a single living ray darted upon the world, as out of an eye, from behind the mountains; around the old Alban mountain smoked a hundred glowing clouds, as if his cold crater was again bringing forth a flame-day, and the eagles with golden wings baptized in the sun flew slowly along over the clouds. All at once the sun-god stood upon the fair ridge; he stood erect in heaven, and rent away the network of night from the covered earth; then burned the Obelisks and the Colosseum and Rome from hill to hill, and on the solitary Campagna sparkled in manifold windings the yellow giant snake of the world, the Tiber,--all clouds dissipated themselves into the depths of heaven, and golden light ran from Tusculum and from Tivoli, and from the vine-hills into the many-colored plains, over the scattered villas and cottages, into the citron and oak groves; low in the far west the sea was again as at evening, when the hot god visits it, full of splendor, ever kindled by him, and became his eternal dew.[86]

In the morning world below lay far and wide the great, still Rome,--no living city, a solitary, enormous, enchanted garden of the old, hidden, heroic spirits, laid out on twelve hills. The unpeopled pleasure-garden of spirits announced itself by its green meadows and cypresses between palaces, and by its broad, open stairways and columns and bridges, by its ruins and high fountains and garden of Adonis, and its green mountains and temples of the gods; the broad city avenues had passed away; the windows were barred up; on the roofs the stony dead looked steadfastly at each other; only the glistening fountain waters were awake and alive and active, and a single nightingale sighed, as if she would die at last.

"That is great," said Albano, at length, "that all is solitary down below and one sees no present. The old heroic spirits can pursue their existence in the vast vacuity, and march through their old arches and temples and play, up on the columns, with the ivy."

"Nothing," replied the Princess, "is wanting to the magnificence but this dome, which from the Capitol we might in fact see besides. But never shall I forget this spot."

"What were all beside?" said he. "The flat regions of life in general pass by without a memorial; from many a long past no echo reverberates, because no mountain breaks the broad surface! But Rome and this hour with you will live within us forever."

"Albano," said she, "why must we find each other so late and part so early? Yonder goes your way along by the Tiber,--God grant into no devouring sea!"

"And yonder goes yours over the bright mountains," said he. She took his hand, for his tone expressed and excited so much emotion. Divinely gleamed the world from the dark spring flowers even up to the lofty Capitol, and the bells sounded down the hours; the festal fires of day blazed on all heights; life was broad and high as the prospect; his eye stood under a tear,--no sad one, however, but such a tear as when the world's eye glances sunnily under the water, and has higher hues, which the dry world destroys. He pressed her hand, she his. "Princess, friend," said he, "how I esteem you! After this holy hour we separate. I would fain give you a sign that shall not pass away, and say a bold word to my father, which should express myself and my respect, and which, perhaps, might solve many a riddle."

Her eye fell, and she merely said, "May you venture?" "O forbid it not!" said he; "so many a divine bliss has been lost by one hour's hesitation. When shall man act extraordinarily, then, except in extraordinary situations?" She was silent, awaiting the morning-sound of love, and in a continued pressure of hands they went down from the lofty place. Alban's being was a trembling flame. The Princess comprehended not why he still deferred this spring-tone; no more did he see through her, unskilled in reading women and their broken words, those picture-poems, half form and only half speech. Just as if an eagle had flown down from his morning splendor, and, as a predatory genius, flapped his wings over his eyes; so had the flashing morn dazzled him so exceedingly that he meant to venture, now in the parting hour, to be mediator between his father and the Princess, by a word which should take away the partition-wall between their loves. His delicacy made many an objection against this proceeding, but when a weighty object was in sight, there was nothing he so abhorred as quailing caution; and daring he held to be worth as much to a man as winning.

The Princess, misunderstanding, but not mistrusting, followed him into his father's house with an expectation--bolder than his--that he would perhaps actually confess to the Knight his love for her. They found the father alone and very serious. Albano, although aware of his aversion to bodily signs of the heart, fell on his neck with the half-choked words of the wish: "Father! a mother!" To this childlike relation had his previous feelings raised and refined themselves. "Heavens, Count!" cried the Princess, astounded and enraged at Albano's assumed insinuation. The Knight, sparkling with wrath, and full of horror, seized a pistol, saying, "Unlucky--" but before one knew at which of the three he would shoot it off, his numbness seized and held him like a coiling snake imprisoned in a murderous embrace. "Count, did I understand you?" said the Princess, flinging the word at him, indifferent toward the petrified foe. "O God," said Albano, moved by the sight of the paternal form, "I meant no one!" "None were capable of that," said she, "but a base creature. Farewell. May I never meet you again!" So saying, she went off.

Albano stayed, unconcerned as to whether he himself was not meant by the pistol at the side of the sick man, who had stiffened exactly opposite to a man's corpse across the way which they were just busied in painting. Gradually life wrestled again out of winter, and the Knight, as cataleptics must, finished the address which he had begun with the word "Unlucky--" "woman, of whom art thou mother?" He came to himself and looked wakefully around; but soon the lava of wrath ran again through his snow: "Unlucky boy, what was the talk about?" Albano disclosed to him, with innocent soul, that he had cherished the hope, in the probable event of the Prince's death, of a union between his father and the Princess, and for himself, of the good fortune of having a mother.

"You young people always imagine one cannot have any genuine love without carrying it out and directing it to some one," replied Gaspard, and began to laugh hard and to find something very comic in the "sentimental misunderstanding"; but Albano asked him now very seriously about the origin of his misunderstanding. Gaspard gave him the following account: Lately, in his sickness, he had, upon the first news of the Prince's approaching death, a desperate battle with the Princess, who in the event of this death desired a regency,--or guardianship,--even on the bare ground of the possibility of an heir to the princely hat. The Knight said to her decidedly this _possibility_ was an impossibility, and he would, without further preamble, attack her with new proofs yet unknown to her. He gave her directly to understand that he was even armed against the case of an ocular demonstration of the contrary (a Hereditary Prince) being presented to him. The Princess replied with bitterness, she could not conceive why he need in the least concern himself any more about the Haarhaar line and succession, or take any more care for it than for that of Hohenfliess. He brought her even to tears, for he could unsparingly hurl the most barbarous words, like harpoons, deep into her heart; he had the perfect resolution of a statesman, who, like a great bird of prey, drives the victim, which he can neither conquer nor draw away, to a precipice, and beats it over the brink with his wings, in order that he may find it subdued for him down below. A life which even as it passes away, like the sinking glaciers, discovers old corpses! Just as the happy one spreads out his love of an individual warmingly over humanity, so does the misanthrope hold the stinging focus (or freezing-point) of his broad and general coldness toward humanity at _one_ great foe alone, whereas previously every smaller offence was forgiven the individual, and imputed only to mankind in a mass.

This, then, was that secret interview whose traces Albano had taken for fairer emotions than of hatred. "And now," said the Knight openly, in order to punish his high feeling with cutting impudence, "when thou madest to me the concise and obscure speech: 'A mother!' I could not but take thee for the father, and from this thou mayst easily explain the rest." "Father," said he, "that was a crying injustice to each"; and departed with three hot wounds, torn in him by the trident of fate. At his departure Gaspard reminded him to keep his word of returning in a month, and added jokingly, that the old man whom they were painting over yonder was a German gentleman, with whom he once carried on the joke of a sudden conversion.[87]

Before an hour Albano was travelling with his Dian out of the illuminated Rome. The blue heavens, floating down, undulated on the heights and on the dome of St. Peter's, and long shadows, begemmed with pearls of dew, still slept on the flowers; but the blessed morn had flown far back out of the hard day. They met before the gate a circular crowd, who stood around the beautiful form of one murdered, and who repeated, with a pleased expression, over the prostrate body, instead of casting the word with indignation in the teeth of the murderer, "_Quanto e' bello!_"[88] And Albano thought how often they had exclaimed behind his back, "_Quanto e' bello!_"

TWENTY-EIGHTH JUBILEE.

Letter From Pestitz.--Mola.--The Heavenly Ascension
of a Monk.--Naples.--Ischia.--The New Gift of the Gods.

108. CYCLE.

A little light in our apartment can screen us against the blinding effect of the whole heaven-broad lightning-glare; so it needs in us only a single, constantly shining idea and tendency, that the rapid alternation of flame and light in the outer world may not dizzy us. Had not Albano had an end in view which could be seen far-off,--had he not kept before his eye an obelisk in his life-path,--how long would the last scene, with its pangs cutting through each other, have confounded him! Now he was like the kindled olive--and laurel-leaves around him, whose flames grow green as they are themselves. Dian, who drove away the pains of others, because he, being easily movable, soon grew from a spectator to a sharer of them, made Albano and himself gay by his ardent interest in every beautiful form, every ruin, every little joy. He had the rare and beautiful gift of being cheerful upon journeys, of plucking every flower, but no thistle; whereas the majority jog along with the night-cap under the hat; from station to station, gaping as they go on, and in grumbling war with every face, they travel through whole paradises as if they were antechambers of hell.

In the waste Pontine marshes, wherein only buffaloes thrive and men grow pale, Dian sought for all sorts of amusement, and even drew forth his letter-case, in order to get over the last fishing-water of the papal territory, out of the reach of Peter's fisherman successors, without falling into a deadly sleep. There he stumbled, with a modern Greek curse, upon a letter to Albano, which had been enclosed in one from Chariton, and which in Rome he had forgotten, in the hurry of departure, to hand over; but he soon laughed about it, and found it good that in this "Devil's-dale" one had something to read against sleep.

It was the following from Rabette:--

"Heartily loved brother, one longs to know whether thou still thinkest a little bit of thy friends in Blumenbühl, now that in the magnificent Italy thou art certainly quite in thy _essée_.[89] That thou livest in all our hearts, _that_ thou hast long known, and thou shouldst only know how long after thy departure we all wept for thee, as well thy mother as myself; and a certain one[90] thinks now-a-days quite differently of thee from what he did in old times. Much has happened this winter. The Minister's lady has separated from her husband, and lives on her estate, sometimes in Arcadia with the Princess Idoine. Our Prince is dangerously sick with the dropsy, and father can get a scrap of business from the province by this, as he says. Thy Schoppe has gone on a journey of a couple of months, leaving behind a letter to thee, which he has intrusted to father's care. He stayed latterly with us, and in thy room, and visited attentively the Countess Romeiro. It is a shame for him, for he means well; but Master Wehmeier and all of us in the place are convinced that he is, in short, mad, and he believes it, too, and says he shall therefore soon set his house in order. As touching the Countess Romeiro, she has gone off with Princess Julienne; none, however, knows whither. They say the Prince has shown her too marked attentions, and she would rather be off to Spain. Others talk of Greece, but the _certain one_ assures me she is gone to Rome to her guardian: of that now thou wilt know better than myself. The certain one undertook all that was within human possibility in order to win her, partly by letters, partly in person, to no purpose; not one smile could he gain as often as ever he addressed her even at _cour_. All this I have (wilt thou believe it?) from his mouth, for he is again often with me, and reveals to me his whole heart. Mine, however, I hold together fast, that not so much as the smallest drop of blood may trickle out from it, and God alone sees how it passes, and what a weeping there is therein. Ah, Albano, a poor girl who is in strong health must endure much before she can die. Often my eye can no longer remain dry, and I then say his talk does it, which, to be sure, is partly true, but to thee I show the _dessous des cartes_. Never, never more can I be his, for he has not dealt ingenuously with me, but altogether recklessly, and he knows it too. Nor is a single kiss allowed him; and I tell him, only for God's sake, not to take that as a coquette's manner to draw him to me. My good parents do not rightly know what they are to make of our intercourse, and I fear father may break out; then I shall have very bitter days. But shall I repel the poor, sick, pale spirit from myself, too? shall the glowing soul, exhaling like smoke, rise to heaven, and consume itself? Whose heart will not break when he is at a _Festin_, and she immediately, offended at his presence, goes home again?--as lately happened, and he said to me, in a perfect rage, 'Well, very well, Linda, _one day_, be sure, thine eye will be wet for me.' Then I know well that he means no good, and I spare him from an anxious dread on that account; for shall two, brother and sister, sink in their bloom? He would long ago have travelled after her, had he not daily hoped she was coming back. Ah, could I tear my loving heart out of my breast, and put it into hers instead of the other, that so she might love him with all my love, Albano, right gladly would I do it. But the paper comes to an end on this side, and mother wishes on the other to write a greeting. Farewell! is the wish of Thy faithful sister,

Rabette."

"How goes it with my most precious son? Is he prosperous, still good and well? Does he still think of his true foster-parents? This in the name of his father and in her own, asks and wishes,

His faithful mother,

Albina von W."

"P. S. His old teacher, Wehmeier, likewise greets his darling in strange lands; and we all rejoice in the prospect of his return. A."

"P. S. Brother, I, too, must make a P. S. Schoppe has painted _you know who_, and _scenes_, even, have arisen out of the circumstance. But more of this when we meet. The Princesse Idoine has visited our Princess often this winter. R."

As letters accommodate themselves more to the place, where they were born, than to that where they are delivered, it often happens that what went out as seed, arrives, after its long journey, already in a germinating state, and with roots, and inversely in the shape of blossoms rather than of dry seed; and every sheet is a double birth of two distant times, that of writing and that of reading. Thus was Albano, now under this serener sky, on this soil of a greater world of the past, and with a soul full of new springs, the less overtaken and darkened by Rabette's letter, through which the northern winter clouds had passed. The ingenuous Rabette, the mild Albina came after him in fancy but softly over the strange mountains and through the strange climes, and laid a cooling hand on his hot brow; his old Schoppe stood in his old worth before him, and Liana floated again through the lofty blue. Toward the weather-beaten Roquairol he felt not so much as compassion, but a hard contempt; and Linda's steadfast mind was exactly after his, like the proud look and gait of Roman women. He now thought over many things more cheerfully than ever, and even wished to look once in the magic-face of that Heroine.

In _Fondi_ the Neapolitan world-garden began, and when they entered upon the road to _Mola_, they went deeper and deeper into blossoms and flowers. In flying sheets--addressed, perhaps, to his father, still more probably to his Schoppe--his bliss and his soul expressed themselves; it treasured up, as it were, some stray orange-blossoms dropped out of the Eden through which they had so rapidly flown. Here they are:--

"Shortly before sundown on Ascension-day we arrived in Mola; the native Dian was full as much overcome with the green majesty, which he had not seen for a long time, as I, and I do not yet believe him when he says that it blooms and smells more finely about Naples. I did not go at all into the city, for the sun hung already toward the sea. Around me streams the incense smoke of reeking flowers from citron-woods and meadows of jessamin and narcissus. On my left the blue Apennine flings his fountain-waters from mountain to mountain, and on my right the mighty sea presses upon the mighty earth, and the earth stretches out a firm arm and holds a shining city[91] hung with gardens, far out into the multitudinous waves,--and into the unfathomable sea lofty islands have been cast as unfathomable mountains;[92] low in the south and east a glimmering mist-land, the coast of Sorrento, grasps round the sea like a crooked-up Jupiter's-arm, and behind the distant Naples stands Vesuvius, with a cloud in heaven under the moon. 'Fall on thy knees, fortunate one,' said Dian, 'before the sumptuous prospect!' O God, why not do it in earnest? For who can behold in the glow of evening the monstrous realm of waters, how yonder busy and restless motion grows still in the distance, and only sparkles, and at last, blue and golden, blends with the sky, and how the earth here shuts in the delicate, floating fire with her long lands into a rosy, steady earth-shadow, who can behold the fire-rain of infinite life, the weaving magic circle of all forces in the water, in the sky, on the earth, without kneeling down before the infinite spirit of Nature and saying, 'How near to me thou art, O Ineffable!' O here he is both near and far, bliss and hope come glimmering from the misty coast, and also from the neighboring fountains, which the hills pour down into the sea, and in the white blossoms over my head. O does not, then, this sun, around which burning waves flutter, and the blue overhead and over yonder, and the kindling lands of men, worlds within the world,--does not this distance call out the heart and all its aspiring wishes? Will it not create and grasp into the distance and snatch its life blossoms from the highest peak of heaven? But when it looks around itself upon its own ground, there too again is the girdle of Venus thrown around the blooming circumference, brightly green grows the tall myrtle-tree near its little dark myrtle, the orange glimmers in the high, cold grass, and overhead hangs its fragrant blossom, the wheat waves with broad leaves between the enamels of the almond and the narcissus, and far off stands the cypress, and the palm towers proudly;[93] all is flower and fruit, spring and harvest. 'Shall I go this way? shall I go that way?' asks the heart in its bliss.

"Thus did I see the sun go down under the waves,--the reddening coasts fled away under their misty veils,--the world went out, land after land, from one island to another,--the last gold-dust was wafted away from the heights,--and the prayer-bells of the convents led up the heart above the stars. O how happy and how wistful was my heart, at once a wish and a flame, and in my innermost being a prayer of gratitude went forth for this, that I was and am upon this earth.

"Never shall I forget that! If we throw away life as too small for our wishes, still do they not belong to life itself, and did they not come from it? If the crowned earth rears around us such blossoming shores, such sunny mountains, would she fain enclose therewith unhappy beings? Why is our heart narrower than our eye? why does a cloud hardly a mile long oppress us, when that very cloud stands itself under the stars of immensity? Is not every morning and every hope a beginning of spring? What are the thickest prison-walls of life but vine-trellises built up for the ripening of the wine-glow? And as life always cuts itself up into quarters, why must it be merely the last, and not quite as often the first, upon which a full-beaming moon follows? 'O God,' said I, as I went back through the green world which next morning becomes a glowing one, 'never let me ascribe thy eternity to any one time, except the most blissful; joy is eternal, but not pain, for this last thou hast not created.'

"'Friend,' said Dian to me, on the way, when I could not well conceal from him my inner commotion, 'what may not your feelings be, then, when you look back upon Naples on the passage over to Ischia! For it is plain to perceive that you were born in a northern land.' 'Dear friend,' said I, 'every one is born _with_ his north or south; whether in an outer one beside, that is of little consequence.'"

So far his leaf upon Mola. But a wonderful circumstance seemed this very night to take him at his word in respect to the last assurance contained in his letter. In the yard of the inn were assembled many boatmen and others; all were contending violently about an opinion, and the most were continually saying: "To-day, to be sure, is Ascension Day, and _he_, too, has wrought miracles." "Ascension?" thought Albano, and remembered his birthday, which often fell on this festival. Dian came up and related, laughing, how the people were expecting down below the ascension of a monk, who had promised it this night, and many believed him for this reason, because he had already done a wonderful work, namely, given a dead man his speech for two hours, before all Mola. They both were agreed to witness the work. The multitude swelled,--the promised man came not, who was to lead them to the place of ascension,--all became angry rather than incredulous. At length late at night a mask appeared and gave, with a motion of the hand, a sign to follow it. All streamed after, even Albano and his friend. The pure moon shone fresh out of blue skies, the wide garden of the country slept in its blossoms, but all breathed fragrance, the slumbering and the waking flowers.

The mask led the crowd to the ruins of Cicero's house, or tower, and pointed upward. Overhead, on the wall, stood a trembling man. Albano found his face more and more familiar. At last the man said: "I am a father of death: may the Father of life be merciful to me. How it goes with me I know not. There stands one among you," he added at once in a strange, namely, in the Spanish language, "to whom I appeared one Good Friday on Isola Bella, and announced the death of his sister; let him journey on to Ischia, there will he find his sister."

Albano could not hear these words without excitement and indignation. The form of the Father of Death upon that island he saw now right clearly upon these ruins; and his promise to appear to him on a Good Friday came again to his mind. He tried now to work his way up to the ruins, so as to attack the monk. An inhabitant of Mola cried, when he heard the strange language: "The monk is talking with the Devil." The ascensionist said nothing to the contrary,--he trembled more violently,--but the people sought for him who had said it, and cried, "It is he with the mask, for he is no more to be found." At last the monk, quaking, begged they would be still when he vanished, and pray for him, and never seek his body. Albano was now close behind his back, unseen by Dian. Just then, high in the dark blue, came a flock of quails flying slowly along. The monk swiftly and staggeringly flung himself up, scattered the birds, cried out in the dark distance, "Pray!" and vanished away into the broad air.

The people cried and shouted with exultation, and part prayed; many believed now the Devil was in the play. Among the spectators lay a man with his face to the earth, and continually cried, "God have mercy on me!" But no man brought him to an explanation. Dian, privately a little superstitious, said his understanding was at a stand-still here. But Albano explained how a complot of ghosts had been long twitching and drawing at his life's curtain, but some day he should yet certainly thrust his hand successfully through the curtain, and he was firmly resolved immediately to cross over from Naples to Ischia, to see his sister. "Verily," he added, "in this mother country of wonder, fantasy, and everything great, one as easily believes in fair, enriching miracles of fate, as one does in the north in dreadful robbing miracles of spirits."

Dian was also for the earliest visit to the island of Ischia; "Because otherwise," he added, "when Albano had delivered his letters in Naples, and had been drawn in to the _Ricevimenti_,[94] or on Posilippo and Vesuvius, then there would be no getting away."

On the day following they departed from Mola. The lovely sea played hide-and-seek with them on their way, and only the golden sky never veiled itself. Naples' goblet of joy already intoxicated one from afar with its fragrance and spirit. Albano cast inspired looks at _Campania Felice_, at the Colosseum in Capua, and at the broad garden, full of gardens, and even at the rough Appian Way, which its old name made softer.

But he sighed for the island of Ischia, that Arcadia of the ocean, and that wonderful place where he was to find a sister. It was not in their power earlier than in the early part of Saturday night--if indeed waking and glancing life can be called night, particularly an Italian Saturday night--to reach _Aversa_. Albano insisted upon their continuing on in the night toward Naples. Dian was still reluctant. By chance there stood in the post-house a beautiful girl, who might be about fourteen years old, very much troubled at having missed the coach, and determined this very night to go on to Naples, in order to reach Ischia, where her parents were, early enough on the holy Sabbath. "She had come," she said, "from _Santa Agata_; her name was only _Agata_, and not _Santa_." "Probably her old joke," said Dian, but he was now--with his love of hovering about every fair form--himself quite in a mood for the night-ride, that so they might carry the black-eyed one along with them, who looked joyously and brightly into the fire of strange eyes. She accepted the invitation cheerfully, and prattled familiarly, like a naturalist, about Epomeo and Vesuvius, and predicted for them innumerable pleasures on the island, and altogether showed an intelligence and thoughtfulness far above her years. At last they all flew along under the bright stars out into the lovely night.

109. CYCLE

Albano goes on in the description of his journey thus:--

"A night of unrivalled serenity! The stars alone of themselves illuminated the earth, and the milky-way was silvery. A single avenue, intertwined with vine-blossoms, led to the magnificent city. Everywhere one heard people, now near, talking, now distant, singing. Out of dark chestnut woods, on moonlit hills, the nightingales called to one another. A poor, sleeping maiden, whom we had taken with us, heard the melodies even down into her dream, and sang after them; and then, when she awoke herself therewith, looked round confusedly and with a sweet smile, with the whole melody and dream still in her breast. On a slender, light two-wheeled carriage, a wagoner, standing on the pole and singing, rolled merrily along by. Women were already bearing in the cool of the hour great baskets full of flowers into the city; in the distance, as we passed along, whole Paradises of flower-cups sent their fragrance; and the heart and the bosom drank in at once the love-draught of the sweet air. The moon had gone up bright as a sun in the high heaven, and the horizon was gilded with stars; and in the whole cloudless sky stood the dusky cloud-column of Vesuvius, alone, in the east.

"Far into the night, after two o'clock, we rolled in and through the long city of splendor, wherein the living day still bloomed on. Gay people filled the streets; the balconies sent each other songs; on the roofs bloomed flowers and trees between lamps, and the little bells of the hours prolonged the day; and the moon seemed to give warmth. Only now and then a man lay sleeping between the colonnades, as if he were taking his siesta. Dian, at home in all such matters, let the carriage stop on the southern side, toward the sea, and went far into the city, in order to arrange, through old acquaintances, the passage across to the island, so that we might have exactly at sundown out on the sea, the richest view of the stately city, with its bay and its long coasts. The Ischian girl wrapped herself up in her blue veil, to keep off the flies, and fell asleep on the black, sandy shore.

"I walked up and down alone; for me there was no night and no house. The sea slept, the earth seemed awake. In the fleeting glimmer (the moon was already sinking towards Posilippo) I looked up over this divine frontier city of the world of waters, over this rising mountain of palaces, to where the lofty Castle of St. Elmo looks, white, out of the green foliage. With two arms the earth embraced the lovely sea; on her right, on Posilippo, she bore blooming vine-hills far out into the waves, and on the left she held cities, and spanned round its waters and its ships, and drew them up to her breast. Like a sphinx lay the jagged Capri darkly on the horizon in the water, and guarded the gates of the bay. Behind the city the volcano smoked in the ether, and occasionally sparks played between the stars.

"Now the moon sank down behind the elms of Posilippo,--the city grew dark,--the din of the night died away,--fishermen disembarked, put out their torches, and laid themselves down on the bank,--the earth seemed to sink to sleep, but the sea to wake up. A wind from the coast of Sorrento ruffled the still waves; more brightly gleamed Sorrento's sickle with the reflection at once of the moon and of morning, like silver meadows; the smoke column of Vesuvius had blown away, and from the fire-mount streamed a long, clear morning redness over the coasts as over a strange world.

"O, it was the morning twilight, full of youthful omens! Do not landscape, mountain, coasts, like an echo, speak so many the more syllables to the soul the farther off they are? How young did I feel the world and myself, and the whole morning of my life was crowded into this!

"My friend came; all was arranged; the boatmen had arrived; Agata was awakened to the joy, and we embarked, just as the dawn kindled the mountains, and, her sails swelling with the morning breezes, our little vessel flew out into the sea.

"Before we had yet doubled the promontory of Posilippo, the crater of Vesuvius threw up its glowing child, the sun, slowly into the sky, and sea and earth blazed. The half earth-girdles of Naples, with morning-red palaces, its market-place of fluttering ships, the swarm of its country-houses on the mountains and up along the shore, and its green throne of St. Elmo, stood proudly between two mountains, before the sea.

"When we came round Posilippo, there stood Ischia's Epomeo, like a giant of the sea, in the distance, girdled about with a wood, and with bald, white head. Gradually appeared on the immeasurable plain the islands, one after another, like scattered villages, and wildly pressed and waded the promontories into the sea. Now, mightier and more alive than the dried-up, parcelled out, stiff land, the watery kingdom opened, whose powers all, from the streams and waves even to the drops, join hands and move in concert. Almighty, and yet gentle element! grimly thou leapest upon the lands, and swallowest them up, and, with thy undermining polypus-arms, liest stretching around the whole globe. But thou reinest the wild streams, and meltest them down into waves; softly thou playest with thy little children, the islands, and playest on the hand which hangs out of the light gondola, and sendest out thy little waves which play before us, then bear us along, and play behind us.

"When we came along by the little Nisita, where Brutus and Cato once sought shelter after Cæsar's death; when we passed by the enchanted Baja and the magic castle where once three Romans determined upon the division of the world, and before the whole promontory, where the country-seats of great Romans stood; and when we looked down towards the mountain of Cuma, behind which Scipio Africanus lived in his Linternum and died; then did the lofty life of the great ancients take possession of me, and I said to my friend: 'What men were those! Scarcely do we learn incidentally in Pliny or Cicero that one of them has a country-house yonder, or that there is a lovely Naples. Out of the midst of nature's sea of joys their laurels grow and bear as well as out of the ice-sea of Germany and England, or out of Arabia's sand. Alike in wildernesses and in paradises, their mighty hearts beat on. And for these world-souls there was no dwelling except the world; only with such souls are emotions worth almost more than actions. A Roman might here weep nobly for joy! Dian, say, what can a modern man do for it, that he lives so late after their ruins?'

"Youth and ruins, tottering, crumbling past and eternal fulness of life, covered the shore of Misenum and the whole far-stretching coast. On the broken urns of dead gods, on the dismembered temples of Mercury and Diana, the frolicsome, light wave played, and the eternal sun; old, lonely bridge-posts in the sea, solitary temple-columns and arches, spoke, in the luxuriant splendor of life, a sober word; the old, holy names of the Elysian Fields, of Avernus, of the Dead Sea, lived still along the coast; ruins of rocks and temples lay in confusion upon the motley-colored lava; all bloomed and lived; the maidens and the boatmen sang; the mountains and the islands stood great in the young, fiery day; dolphins chased sportively along beside us; singing larks went whirling up in the ether above their narrow islands; and from all ends of the horizon ships came up and flew down again with arrowy speed. It was the divine over-fulness and intermingling of the world before me. Sounding-strings of life were stretched over the string-bridge of Vesuvius, even to Epomeo.

"Suddenly one peal of thunder passed along through the blue heaven over the sea. The maiden asked me, 'Why do you grow pale? it is only Vesuvius.' Then was a god near me; yes, heaven, earth, and sea stood before me as three divinities. The leaves of life's dream-book were murmuringly ruffled up by a divine morning-storm; and everywhere I read our dreams and the interpretations thereof.

"After some time, we came to a long land swallowing up the north, as it were the foot of a single mountain; it was already the lovely Ischia, and I went on shore intoxicated with bliss, and then, for the first time, I thought of the promise that I should there find a sister."

110. CYCLE.

With emotion, with a sort of festive solemnity, Albano trod the cool island. It was to him as if the breezes were always wafting to him the words, "The place of rest." Agata begged them both to stay with her parents, whose house lay on the shore, not far from the suburb-town.[95] As they went over the bridge, which connects the green rock wound round with houses to the shore and the city, she pointed out to them joyfully in the east the individual house. As they went along so slowly, and the high, round rock and the row of houses stood mirrored in the water; and upon the flat roofs the beautiful women who were trimming the festal lamps for evening spoke busily over to each other, and greeted and questioned the returning Agata; and all faces were so glad, all forms so comely, and the very poorest in silk; and the lively boys pulled down little chestnut-tops; and the old father of the isle, the tall Epomeo, stood before them all clad in vine-foliage and spring-flowers, out of whose sweet green only scattered, white pleasure-houses of happy mountain-dwellers peeped forth;--then was it to Albano as if the heavy pack of life had fallen off from his shoulders into the water, and the erect bosom drank in from afar the cool ether flowing in from Elysium. Across the sea lay the former stormy world, with its hot coasts.

Agata led the two into the home of her parents, on the eastern declivity of Epomeo; and immediately, amidst the loud, exulting welcome, cried out, quite as loudly: "Here are two fine gentlemen, who wish to come home with me." The father said, directly: "Welcome, your excellencies! You shall, with pleasure, keep the chambers, though many bathing-guests will come by and by. You will find nowhere better quarters. I was formerly only a _turner_ in the Fayence manufactory, but have been for these eight years a vine-dresser, and can afford to do a favor. When was there ever a better December and March[96] than this year? Your commands, excellencies!" Suddenly Agata wept; her mother had announced to her the interment of her youngest sister, for which solemnity, according to the fashion of the island, an eve of joy was appointed to-day, because they loved to congratulate each other upon the eternal, bliss-insuring ratification of a child's innocence by death. The old man would fain have gone at once right into narrations, when Dian begged his Albano, after so long a commotion of souls and bodies, to go to sleep till sunset, when he would wake him. Agata showed him the way to his cool chamber, and he went up.

Here, before the cooling sea-zephyr, the going to sleep was itself the slumber, and the echoing dream itself the sleep. His dream was an incessant song, which sang itself,--"The morning is a rose, the day a tulip, night is a lily, and evening is another morning."

He dreamed himself at last down into a long sleep. Late, in the dark, like an Adam in renovated youth, he opened his eyes in Paradise, but he knew not where he was. He heard distant, sweet music; unknown flower-scents swam through the air. He looked out; the dark heaven was strewed with golden stars, as with fiery blossoms; on the earth, on the sea, hovered hosts of lights; and in the depths of distance hung a clear flame steadily in the midst of heaven. A dream, of which the scene was unknown, confounded still the actual stage with one that had vanished; and Albano went through the silent, unpeopled house, dreaming on, out into the open air, as into an island of spirits.

Here nightingales, first of all, with their melody drew him into the world. He found the name Ischia again, and saw now that the castle on the rock and the long street of roofs in the shore-town stood full of burning lamps. He went up to the place whence the music proceeded, which was illuminated and surrounded with people, and found a chapel standing all in fires of joy. Before a Madonna and her child, in a niche, a night-music was playing, amidst the loquacious rustling of joy and devotion. Here he found again his hosts, who had all quite forgotten him in the jubilee; and Dian said, "I would have awaked you soon; the night and the pleasures last a great while yet."