71. CYCLE.

"O good Albano, why camest thou not? How much I had to say to thee! How I trembled for thy sake on Friday, when the frowning cloud pursued thee with itsthunder! Thou hast weaned me too much from sorrow, so strange and heavy has it become to me now. I was inconsolable the whole evening; at last, when night fell, the thought sank into my mind that thou hadst been oppressed as with presentiments, and that the lightning loved to strike the thunder-house. Why, indeed, art thou there? I hurried up, and knelt by my bed, and prayed to God, although the storm had long been dispersed, that he would have preserved thee. Smile at my tardy prayer; but I said to him, 'Thou knewest indeed, all-gracious One, that I would pray.' I was consoled, too, when I looked up to the stars, and the broken ray of joy trembled within me."But in the morning Rabette made me sad again. She had seen thee weeping on the road. A thousand times have I asked myself, whether I am to blame for that. Can it have come from this,—for she says so,—that I afflict thee too much with my death thoughts? Never more shalt thou hear them; the veil, too, is laid away; but I calculated upon thee according to my brother, to whom, as he himself says, the dusk of death is an evening-twilight, in which forms seem to him more lovely. Truly, I am quite blest; for thou art even so, and yet hast so little in having me,—only a small flower for thy heart, but I have thyself. Leave me my grave-mound; therefrom, as from a mountain, comes better, more fruitful soil into my valley. O how one loves, Albano, when all around us crumbles and sinks and melts away in smoke, and when, still, the bond and splendor of love stand firm and inviolate on the fleeting ground of life, as I have often seen with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a rainbow hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting, impetuous floods! O, would that the nightingales wereyet singing; now I could sing with them! Thy Æolian-harp, my harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my hand! My father was with us, and more cheerful and friendly toward all than ever. Lo, even he is kindly disposed! My parents surely send no tempest into our feast of roses. I readily did him the pleasure, therefore,—forgive it!—of promising him, that I would receive no visits from strangers in a strange house—because, he said, it was improper. I must go home for some days on account of the Prince's marriage; but I shall see thee soon. O forgive! When my father speaks softly, my soul cannot possibly say, No. Farewell, my noble one!L."P. S. Soon a little leaf will come fluttering again over to thy mountain. Only continue in perpetual joy! O God! why am I not stronger? What beings shouldst thou then take to thy heart!—Thou dear one!"

"But in the morning Rabette made me sad again. She had seen thee weeping on the road. A thousand times have I asked myself, whether I am to blame for that. Can it have come from this,—for she says so,—that I afflict thee too much with my death thoughts? Never more shalt thou hear them; the veil, too, is laid away; but I calculated upon thee according to my brother, to whom, as he himself says, the dusk of death is an evening-twilight, in which forms seem to him more lovely. Truly, I am quite blest; for thou art even so, and yet hast so little in having me,—only a small flower for thy heart, but I have thyself. Leave me my grave-mound; therefrom, as from a mountain, comes better, more fruitful soil into my valley. O how one loves, Albano, when all around us crumbles and sinks and melts away in smoke, and when, still, the bond and splendor of love stand firm and inviolate on the fleeting ground of life, as I have often seen with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a rainbow hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting, impetuous floods! O, would that the nightingales wereyet singing; now I could sing with them! Thy Æolian-harp, my harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my hand! My father was with us, and more cheerful and friendly toward all than ever. Lo, even he is kindly disposed! My parents surely send no tempest into our feast of roses. I readily did him the pleasure, therefore,—forgive it!—of promising him, that I would receive no visits from strangers in a strange house—because, he said, it was improper. I must go home for some days on account of the Prince's marriage; but I shall see thee soon. O forgive! When my father speaks softly, my soul cannot possibly say, No. Farewell, my noble one!

"P. S. Soon a little leaf will come fluttering again over to thy mountain. Only continue in perpetual joy! O God! why am I not stronger? What beings shouldst thou then take to thy heart!—Thou dear one!"

How was he shamed by this full-blooming love, which never rightly knows when it is misunderstood, and which presupposes no other fault than its own! How sadly did the thought of the commanded separation affect him now, after the voluntary one! He could now love her as a guarding angelbeforeParadise, how much more as a giving angelinit! But it is hard for a man, as the youth felt, clearly to distinguish in the female heart, especially in this one, intention from instinct, ideas from feelings, and in this dark, full heaven to count and arrange all the stars. Everything like hardness, every unpromising bud, arose at last as a flower; and her worth unfolded itself piece-wise like spring; whereas, generally, from other maidens, a traveller who visits them carries away with him directly at his first evening's departure a little completeflower-catalogue of all their charms and arts, as a Brocken-passenger gets at the tavern a neat nosegay of the various kinds of mosses which are found on the mountain.

He supposed she was now with her parents; and he followed, not as a pouting schoolboy, but as a harmonious man, the giant of destiny. In the garden rainy weather held sway, the crop of every heavy tempest, which, like a war, always devastates the scene of conflict.

The promised leaflet appeared: "Only be happy. We shall see each other very, very soon, and then most blissfully. Forgive me! Ah, I long exceedingly!"

Now he experienced what days they were which hadonce—that is, only a few days ago—passed before him as divine apparitions, and which now again were to come up in the East as returning stars! Why does a blessing, not till it is lost, cut its way like a sharp diamond so deeply into the heart? Why must we first have lamented a thing, before we ardently and painfully love it? Albano threw both past and future away from him, that he might dwell wholly and purely in that present which Liana had promised him.

On Sunday morning, when all the blue heavens stood open, and the earth was festally decked with pearls and twigs, a gentle finger tapped at Albano's door, which could belong to none but a female hand. It was Liana who entered at so early an hour; Rabette and Charles without uttered a loud greeting. On his exulting breast fell the beautiful maiden, blooming from, her walk, with blessed, bright eyes, a freshly bedewed rose-bud. It was his finest morning; he had a clear feeling of Liana's love.As the Æolian-harp sounded in, she looked towards it, remembered with a blush that fairest evening of the covenant, and listened in silence, and dried her eyes when she turned them again towards Albano. But he could not enter into this temple of joy without having cleansed and healed himself by a frank confession of his late errors. What a sweet rivalry ensued between them of confessing and forgiving, when Liana lovingly exclaimed and owned that she had not understood him lately, that only she was the blamable one, and that she would begin this very moment to speak better. She could not give herself any comfort about the secret pangs which she had caused her friend. As mahogany furniture cracks in no temperature, and contracts no spots, and needs no polishing, so was it with this heart, Albano's felt, as he now swore to himself always, even when he did not understand her, to say to himself, She is right.

She solved for him the riddle of her appearing to-day with those friendly looks which a good nature redoubles, when it has anything to sweeten,—namely, she was going back to Pestitz to-day; but the carriage would not come till late, till evening, in fact, about tea-time, and so there remained a whole day before them; and she hoped her father would not take this circuitous route through Lilar as a breach of her promise. A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold. Thereupon she sought to make him quite calm about the peaceful intentions of her father, and represented his strictness, in subjecting himself and others to convenience, as the reason of his prohibition, as well as of her being summoned back to the wedding-festival. Albano, so soon after the oath which he had just sworn to himself, kept it, and said, She is right.

The Captain came in with the red-cheeked Rabette,whose eyes glistened with joy. The small apartment did not, by narrowness and confusion, make the pleasure less. Charles, generally so much like Vesuvius, which in the first hours of morning is still covered with snow, presented already a warm summit; he seated himself at the instrument and thundered into the noisy presence with a prestissimo (which lay open) of Haydn's,—that true hour-caller of rejoicing hours,—and played, to the astonishment of the females, the hardest part so easily, at sight, that he rather played into it, than from it, and kept composing much (for instance, the bass) himself; whereas Albano, with almost comic fidelity, gave you the exact truth in music quite as much as in history, which, again, always became in Charles's mouth a piece of his own personal biography. The morning added wings to all their souls, whereas noon always binds men's wings down,—hence Aurora goes with winged steeds, and the god of day with wingless ones. "But how now are our seven pleasure-stations to be made out?" inquired Charles, "for the day lies like a garden-hall, with nothing but pleasure-avenues on all sides open before us." "Charles, is it not, then, a matter of indifferencewherea man loves?" said Albano. Blessed one, whose heart needs nothing but one heart more, no park into the bargain, noopera seria, no Mozart, no Raphael, no eclipse of the moon, not so much as moonlight, and no read or acted romance!

"First, I must see my Chariton," said Liana. "Yes," added her brother, immediately, "she can bring our dinner after us into the gothic temple." He proposed, namely, on this lovely day, to dine in the twelfth century, and to sit by a sombre, motley window-light, and on sharp-cornered, heavy, thick furniture, and, as it were, darkly under the earth of a green present, glistening overhead,to sit with blooming faces; for thus did he overload the fullest enjoyments with external contrasts, and enjoyed every happy present most in the near gleam and reflection of the sharpened sickle which was to mow them away.[190]"God forbid and avert it, friend!" said Rabette. Albano, too, deemed the friendly Greek, her laughing children, and the neighboring rose-fields far preferable, and, with the aid of Liana, prevailed. Before the embowered cottage the children came running to meet them, Helena, with her little apron full of orange-blossoms, which she had picked up, for the breaking of them off had been forbidden her, and Pollux, in the last, light bandage of his broken arm, the hand of which had now been obliged to work with its companion, the right hand, at puckering up and cracking the rose-leaves. Both gave notice: "Mother was not ready yet, and had dressed them first." But presently, neat and simple as a priestess destined to dance around the altar of gods of joy, sprang Chariton to meet her Liana, and, as she came, continued adjusting her hastily donned clothes by a light hitching and twitching. "This," said Roquairol, after he had easily obtained from Rabette a nodding assent thereto, because she had not understood his French request for the same, "is my spouse since yesterday,"—and he enjoyed without further circumstance the right of thouing her, which she, since the friendly encouragement of the Minister, accepted the more fondly with maidenly presentiments.

When Liana kindly announced four noonday guests for Chariton, there stood in the dark eyes of the Greek gleams of joy, and the little face, with great arched Italian eyebrows, became a stereotype smile, which was not culinary embarrassment, but merely tongueless joy; which only made her white semicircle of teeth shine more broadly, when Charles spoke right out: "Surely thou canst help her, wife!" "Of course!" said Rabette, quite delighted; because her heart had no longer any other lips than her two hands, for which, if they could only lay hold of hard work, it was full as much as if they were pressed by the hand of a lover. Did she not again and again curse her awkward, hesitating throat, when Roquairol, in her presence, poured out his sounding and fiery torrents of speech? On this occasion, when he had again set off the surroundings with artificial, shadowy refinements, he insisted upon it, of course, that Chariton should be executive secretary, and Rabette only corresponding secretary. Liana, too, out of a like womanliness, would fain do something for her darling; but since she, as a maiden of rank, could not cook anything, but only bake a little, accordingly it was assigned her,—but reluctantly on the part of her friend, who never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else than, like other butterflies, by his side among the flowers,—at a quite late moment, and for a space of ten minutes, with her eyes and in extraordinary cases with her three writing-fingers, to co-operate in making the snow-balls, which were to close and crown the dessert.

Never had kitchen ball-queen a broader canopy, or a more beautifully carved sceptre and apple, or fairerdames d'atour[191]than Chariton, and vessels and fire were quite thrown into the shade thereby.

Now the happy couples—and the children too—went out into the joyful day, into the youthful garden, in order, like planets, with their moons, to stand now near each other, now far off, now in opposition, and now in conjunction, on their heavenly orbit around the same sun. "We will launch out at a venture," said Charles, in port, "and see whether we do not meet." Albano went with Liana after the children, who were already skipping along on the little houses through the rose-walks, on the bridge over the singing wood. He whose heart beats in such calm blissfulness, seeks in the invisible church no visible one: the whole temple of nature is the temple of love, and everywhere stand altars and pulpits. On the smoothly descending life-stream man stands without rudder, happy in his skiff, and leaves it to its own will.

Then the children, mindful of the maternal prohibition against excursions, led the way up along the right, over the bridged eminence, to the western triumphal arch; and Helena, merely as guide of the little convalescent, ran forward quite unexpectedly and wildly with his hand. How gladly did Albano follow the little pilots and pointers! Heavens! when they looked round them on the magnificent height, and into the rich outspread day, and then into each other's eyes, how freely and broadly did the arches of their life-bridge rear themselves, and ships, with swollen sails and proudly towering masts, sail away beneath! Rose-trees clambered up the triumphal arches, the children reached up, snatched roses from their summits, and trudged away (working out and proving the unusual obedience) over four gates, in order, from the fifth, to look down into the smooth, shining lake, and to descend into the "enchanted wood," where art, like the children, played her pranks.

Out of the entrance of the wood came forth Charles and Rabette, on their way back to Chariton over the arches, the former bound to the wine-cellar (he had something empty therefrom in his hand), and she intending to run a moment into the kitchen. He went blissfully, as if on wings, and said: "Life travels to-day in the constellation of the wain, far away through the blue." He turned round, however, to let thePleiadesrise before them, that is, the so-called "inverted rain," which ascends only for the space of five minutes, and properly only in an illumination. He led them all into the wondrous wood, through a light that lay in noonday slumber, glowing under free trees, whose stems, standing far asunder, only tendered each other their long twigs. At the focus of the picturesque paths, he let them await the play of the rain. The children sprang after him with their hopes, and, backed by the courage of the grown ones, sat down by them, on designated seats of the gods, or children's seats, between two little round lakes.

While Charles ran swiftly up and down in zigzag, attending to the hydraulic and other mechanism,—nearly according to the points of the labyrinth-garden in Versailles,—they could fly about through the magic wood that rose everywhere. An all-powerful arm of the Rosana, which swept by without, struck in among the flowers, and bore a heavy, rich world; now the water was a fixed mirror, now a winding, beating vein, now a gushing spring, now a flash of lightning behind flowers, or a dark eye behind leafy veils; tapering shores, short beds, children's gardens, round islands, little hills, and tongues of land lay between: they held their motley, blooming children on arm and bosom, and the blue eyes of the forget-me-not, and the full tulip-cheeks, and thewhite-cheeked lilies played together like brothers and sisters apart from strangers, but roses ran through all. Now they heard a murmuring and purling; the lakes beside them bubbled up; on a peeled May-tree, fenced in on an island, the yellow fir-needles began to drop from above; from the hanging birches on the tongue of land, an inner rain dripped and glided down; out of the two lakes beside them water-jets flew like flying-fishes toward heaven. Now it gushed everywhere, and rows of fountains, those water-children, played with the flower-children. Like birds, streams fluttered with broad wings out of the laurel-hedges, and fell into the groups of roses. On a hill full of oaks, a water-snake crawled up; victoriously shot out from all the mouths of the shores besieging arches to the summits; suddenly the cheated spectators found themselves overhung with rainbows, for the lakes flung their waters high across over them, so that the wavering sun blazed through the lattice-work of drops, as through a shivered jewel-world. The children screamed with a terror of joy. The scared birds cruised through the shower; night butterflies were cast down; the turtle-doves shook themselves on the ground, beaten down in the torrents; the banks and the beds held their blooming little ones beneath the heavens.

After five minutes the whole was over, and nothing remained, save that in all flowers and eyes the moist radiance trembled, and on the waves the stars continued to glisten. The children ran after the wonder-worker, Charles. "All is over outwardly," said Albano, "but not within us. I am to-day perfectly and peacefully happy; for thou lovest me, and the whole world, too, is friendly. Art thou, too, happy, Liana?" She answered, "Still more happy, and I must needs weep for joy if I told howhappy I am." But she was weeping already. "See! drops!" said she, naively, as he looked upon her, and wipedhis, which were the sprinklings of the rainbow, softly from his cheeks. His lips touched her holy, tender eye, but the other remained open, and her love looked out from it at him, and never did her holy soul hover nearer to him.

After a few minutes this inverted heavenward shower was also over. They went across the middle of the free gardens to the eastern parts and gates. How brightly lay the coasts of the future before them, with thick, high green, and nightingales flying around the shores! Rapture makes the manly heart more womanly. The voice of his full bosom spoke but softly to Liana, on whose countenance, turned sidewise and heavenward, lay a still, pious gratitude; his fiery glance moved but slowly, and rested on the beautiful world; and he went without hasty strides around the smallest points of land. The young nightingale whet her well-fed bill against the twig, and shook herself merrily; the old one sang a short lullaby, and skipped chanting after fresh food; and everywhere flew and screamed across each other's paths the children of spring and their parents. Little white peacocks ran, without their pride, like little children in the grass. Blissfully floated the swan between her waves, with the white arch over the eyes that dipped under, and blissfully hovered the glistening music-fly, like a fixed star, undisturbed in the air, over a distant, flowery bell. The butterflies, flying flowers, and the flowers, fettered butterflies, sought and sheltered each other, and laid their variegated wings to wings; and the bees exchanged flowers only for blossoms, and the rose which has no thorns for them they exchanged only for the linden.

"Liana," said Albano, "how I love the whole world to-day, on thy account! I could give the flowers a kiss, and press myself into the very heart of the full trees; I could not tread in the way of the long chafer down there." "Should one," she replied, "ever feel otherwise? How can a human being, I have often thought, who has a mother, and knows her love, so afflict and rend the heart of a brute mother? But Spener says, we do not forgive beasts even their virtues." "Let us go to him," said he.

They came out through the eastern gate on the mountain-way behind the flute-dell, up to the house of old Spener, which lay in noonday brightness; but, as they heard loud reading and praying, they chose rather to walk by at a great distance, in order not to throw so much as their shadow into his holy heaven.

They gazed into the fair, still flute-dell, and would fain go directly in; at length it spoke up to them with one flute. Their friends seemed to be down below there. The flute continued long to complain, as if lonely and forsaken; no sisters and no fountains murmured in with it. At last there rose, panting, in company with the flute, a timid, trembling singer's voice, struggling forth. It was Rabette, behind the tall bushes. She stirred both to the depths of the soul, because the poor creature, with the labor of her helpless voice, was rendering her loved one the meek sacrifice of obedience. "O my Albano," said Liana, twining around him with ecstasy, "what sweetness to think that my brother is happy, and has found peace of soul, andthatthrough thy sister!" "He deserves all my peace," said he, with emotion; "but we will not disturb the two, but go back the old way." For Rabette's tones were often cut short, but it was uncertain whether by fear, or by kisses, or by emotion.

When they came in again through the eastern gate, the songstress and Charles came out of the green portal to meet them, both with wet eyes. Charles, stepping impetuously over living beds, and with wandering eyes, grasped a hand of both with his, and said, "This is, for once in this rainy world, a day which does not look like a night. Brother, but when one is so deeply blest, and catches the music of the spheres, the tones are such as were once heard in token that from Mark Antony his patron deity, Hercules, was departing." Thus are joys, like other jewels, mechanical poisons, which only in the distance shine, but, when touched and swallowed, eat into us. But Albano replied, smiling, "Since thou now fearest, dear friend, thou hast nothing to fear; for thou art not perfectly happy. I, however, alas! fear nothing." "Bravo!" said Charles; "now go into your kitchen, maiden!" He went into the so-called "Temple of Dreams," but soon hastened after her into the forbidden kitchen.

Albano visited Liana's spring chamber. Here he painted to himself from memory that bright Sunday when Liana led him through Lilar, and he let the past soothingly glimmer into the present; but the latter overpowered the former with its beams. Out in the garden stood and shone, so it seemed to him, the pure pillars of his heaven, the supporters of his temple, the trees; and all that he here saw near him belonged again to his happiness, Liana's books and pictures and flowers, and every little mark of her tender hand.

At last the saint of the Rotunda herself—suffused with a virgin blush at this nearness and at his blushing—stepped in, to take him away into the cool dining-room. It was small and dusky, but the heart needs not for its heaven much space nor many stars therein, if only the star oflove has arisen. To the table-talk,—whereby alone an eating becomes a human one,—and to the jokes,—the finestentremets, the powdered sugar of conversation,—the children contributed their share, especially as they, unqualified to ascend from the forbiddenthoutoyou, always used thou-you at once. The deeply-red Chariton made extracts from Dian's letters and from the history of her life, and from the surgeon's bulletins in relation to Pollux's broken arm; she sought to extol the snow-balls, listened with a half-credulous, half-cunning look to the Captain, who spun out the sportive marriage-thou toward Rabette into five acts, and smiled with pleasure just where it was required. Especially did that music-barrel of all souls, Charles, spin joyously round; that Jupiter, around whom the eclipses of so many satellites were always flying, could show a great, serene splendor, when he and others wished. As often as Albano, according to the old way, would not come to his tragedy, he drew up the curtain of a comedy. To the good Rabette a word was as good as a look from him, although she only returned the latter, so as neither to fall into theThounor into theYou. Albano, knit with ears and eyes to one soul, could not produce with his lips much more than a smile of bliss; he could more easily have made a hymn than abon-mot, a grace at meat than a dinner speech. For his Liana was to-day too affectionate, so contentedly and exhilaratingly did the sweet maiden look round with such hearty play, acting the chatty, bantering hostess, that a man who saw it and thought of her firm death-belief, would only have been so much the more deeply affected by this dance around the grave with flowers on the head, though he should remark—or rather for the very reason of his remarking—that she was here merely carrying on a joke with jocosenessitself for the sake—according to her new moral funeral arrangement—of sweetening for her beloved every parting-hour, as well the next as the last of all. But this was hard to perceive, because in female souls every show easily becomes reality, whether it be a sad or a gay one.

How happy was her friend and every good being to think that the saint pronounced herself blest! And then she became, in turn, still more so. Thus does the radiance of joy dart to and fro between sympathizing hearts, as between two mirrors, in growing multiplication, and grows without end.

The hour of departure came rolling on with swifter and swifter wheels; more constellations of joy went down than came up. Thus do the blooming vineyards of life always grow green on the ups and downs of a mountainous way, never on a smooth plain. The two lovers needed quiet now, not walks. They took the nearest, the path to the thunder-house. They stepped into the glimmering vesper-grounds as into a new land; at mid-day man is awakened from one dream after another, and has always forgotten and sees things always new. In Albano the golden splendor of the strings of joy still lingered under the declining sun; he told her gladly, how often he would visit her at her parents', and how he certainly hoped to find them friendly. Liana, as a daughter and a lover, retouched all his hopes with her own. But now she let her hitherto light heart, which had been rocking itself on the flowers of sport, sink back upon the solid ground of earnest.

When there is peace and fulness in a man, he wishes not to enjoy anything else but himself; every motion, even of the body, jostles the full nectar-cup. They hastened out of the loud, lively garden into the still, dark thunder-house. But when, as if parted from the world, which lay out around the windows, brightly glistening and far receding, they stood alone together in the little twilight, and looked upon each other,—and when Albano's soul became like a sun-drunken mountain at evening, light, warm, firm, and fair, and Liana's soul like an up-gushing spring on the mountain, which glides away purely bright and cool and hidden, and only under the touch of the evening-beam glows in rosy redness,—and now that these souls had just found each other in the wide, unharmonious world,—then did a mighty joy thrill through them like a prayer, and they cast themselves upon each other's hearts, and glowed and wept and looked upon each other exaltedly in the embrace;—and, on the Æolian-harp, suddenly the folding doors of an inspired concert-hall flew open, and outswelling harmonies floated by, and suddenly again the gates shut to.

They seated themselves at the breezy eastern window, before which the mountains of Blumenbühl and Lilar's hills and paths lay in the sunlight. Around them was evening shade, and all was still, and the Æolian-harp breathed low. They only looked at each other, and felt joy to their innermost being that they loved and possessed each other. How ecstatically did they look, from the protection of this citadel, down into the sounding, stirring world! Down below the wind blew the blaze of poppies and tulips far and wide, and in among the heavy, yellow harvest. The silver-poplars, wearing eternal May-snow, fluttered with uptossing splendor; a flock of pigeons wentrustling away, and dipped into the blue; and overhead, amid flying clouds, stood those round temples of God, the mountains, in rows, beside each other, bearing alternate nights and days; and the pious father stood alone on his hill, and handed his roe tender branches.

"Thus may we ever remain!" said Albano, and pressed her dear hand with both of his to his heart. "Here and hereafter!" said she. "Albano, how often have I wished thou wert at the same time my female friend, that I might speak with thee of thyself! Who on the earth knows how I esteem thee, except myself alone?" "Here and hereafter? Liana, I am happier than thou, for I alone believe in ourlonglife here," said he, all at once changed.

Whatever, now, may have been the reason,—whether that man is not at all accustomed to be happy in a pure present, severed from all future and past, because his inner heaven, like the natural one, directly over his head and close to him, always looks dark-blue, and only round about the distant horizon radiant; or that there is a bliss so tender and unearthly as, like the moonshine, to be made too dark by every passing cloud, whereas a sturdy one, like daylight, can bear the broadest; or that Albano was too much like men who always in joy feel their powers so strongly that they would rather kick over the table of the gods than see a dish or a loaf of the heavenly bread less thereupon, rather be perfectly miserable than not perfectly happy;—suffice it, he could not and would not be guilty of longer fear and concealment.

So, when Liana, instead of answering, only embraced him, and was silent, because she meant to remain the whole day true to her promise not to dash the festal tapestry of fair days with a shade of mourning-cloth, then,as if urged on by a strange spirit, he spoke out: "Thou answerest nothing? Only joys, not sorrows, shall I share? Thou hast not thy veil? Wilt thou sparemeas a weakling? and thee alone shall thy death-belief continue to oppress? Liana, I will have pangs, too, and all thine,—tell all!"

"Truly, I only meant to keep my promise," said she, "and no more. But what then shall I say to thee, dear?"

"Dost thou believe, then, that thou art certainly to die after a year, superstitious one?—heavenly one!" said he.

"In so far as it is God's will, certainly," said she. "O my good Albano, how can I help my belief, much as it pains thee too?" And here she could no longer restrain her tears, and all the crucifixes of memory started up alive in the fair soul, and bled intensely.

"God's will?" asked he. "Quite as well might he at this moment precipitate a winter as an iceberg, into this happy summer. God?" he repeated, looked up, knelt down, and prayed, "O thou all-loving God—But thou shalt not die to me!" He turned, as if in anger, towards her, incapable of continuing his prayer, for the cry of his heart, and wiping hastily with both hands over his moist face. Now he prayed on, with a soft, trembling voice: "No, thou all-loving One! kill not this fair, young life! Leave us together long in purity and in peace."

She knelt involuntarily at his side;—to-day more exhausted with pleasures and unknown inner victories, even with long walking, so much the more intensely struck by a moving reality that she had been spoiled and softened by moving fancies, and inexpressibly afflicted at Albano's sorrow;—she could not speak; her head and neck bowed,as under a burden suddenly laid upon them; and thus, as one heavily overclouded by a whole life, she looked down upon the floor. The embracing death-flood sounded with one arm around her; then did she see, without looking up, her Caroline pass by somewhere in bridal dress, and with the white, gold-spangled veil trailing along far over life; and she saw clearly how the celestial shape, when Albano begged for her life, shook its head slowly to and fro. "Cease to pray!" she cried, inconsolably. "But listen to me, thou cold apparition, and only makehimhappy!" she prayed, but she saw nothing more; and, with inexpressible love, she hid her face, marked all over with the lines of agony, upon his breast.

Here her brother called up, that the carriage was ready. She threw down a quick, thin-voiced "Yes." "Must we part?" asked Albano; the fiery rain of ecstasy had now fallen back into his open soul, in the shape of a darker rain of ashes; and so he went on without any bounds to his anguish. "Then have we seen each other for the last time?" and under the closed eyelid his noble eye wept.

"No! in the name of the All-gracious, no!" said she, and rose to go. "Stay!" said he, and she staid, and embraced him again. "But do not accompany me!" she entreated. "Not!" said he, and held her for some time as she withdrew, by the tips of the fingers; it pained him so much, when he saw the sufferings which had been brought upon this still form, that these white wings of innocence had beaten themselves bloody against his cliffs and mountain-horns. He drew her again to himself, ere he let her and his salvation go from him. He looked after her as she slowly stole down along the sunny mountain, drying her eyes under the twigs, andwent with bowed head along all the gay, blooming paths of the forenoon's walk. But he gazed not after, when her carriage rolled away across the joyous wood; he stood at the eastern window, and saw his childhood's mountains tremble, because he had forgotten to dry his eyes.

FOOTNOTES:[180]The Titan was originally divided into four volumes.—Tr.[181]A musical term, meaning the compensation made by transferring to imperfect concords part of the beauty of the perfect ones.—Tr.[182]Every partial development of course works well for the whole; but only for this reason, because its opposite partial one balances it in a higher equation and sum total, so that all individual men are only the limbs of a single giant, such as the Swedenborgianmanis. But in so far as, in one individual, a want arises which helps out an opposite one in another,—so that the road of humanity plagues and trips equally much by hills and by hollows,—it will be seen that every one-sided fulness is, only a cure of the times, not their health; and that the higher law is, after all, a culture slower in the individual, but still harmonious; less in amount, indeed, but impartial, and thereby, in the long run, even more rapid. We always forget that—as in mechanics power and time are mutual supplements—eternity is the infinite power.[183]According to Borreux, the engineer, literally only every thousandth shot from small-arms hits. So is it in all cases; fear death, and then there stand flower-pots ready to fall from chamber-windows, lightnings from the blue sky, air-guns going off, polypuses in the heart, mad dogs, robbers, every gash in the finger,aqua toffana, proud flesh, &c., in short, all nature—that ever-going, crushing cochineal-mill—stands with innumerable open scissors of fate round about thee, and thou hast no consolation, save this, that—nevertheless people grow eighty years old. Fear impoverishment: then fire, flood, famine, and war, banditti and revolutions, set upon thee with greedy claws and fangs; and yet, thou rich man! the poor man—creeping along under the same birds of prey—becomes at last as rich as thou. March, therefore, boldly through the slumbering lion-herd of dangers, lying on the right and left, and go up to the fountain, only do not wantonly wake them up; of course a hell-god drags down individuals who feared nothing; but so, too, does a higher God draw up individuals who expected nothing; and fear and hope are swallowed in one common night.[184]Titan, 13. Cycle.[185]At the court of King Olaus, the royal youth Olo, dressed as a peasant, offered himself as a champion of the daughter against robbers. Then did the fire of the eyes and nobleness of form tell as proof of a high descent; thus did Suanhita, for example, recognize King Regner in a herdsman's guise by the beauty of his eye and face. The king's daughter looked searchingly into Olo's flaming eye, and came near swooning; she essayed a second look, and was senseless; and at the third, swooned. The divine youth therefore cast his eyelids down but uncovered his brow and his golden hair and the signs of his rank. See "The German and his Native Land," by Rosenthal and Karg, Vol. I. pp. 166, 167.[186]For what we call light is only an intenser white. No one sees, by night, the luminous stream which rushes upward along by the earth, pouring from the sun upon the full moon.[187]This warmer, tenderer, more timid, ever-praised sex, living more in the opinion of others than in its own, is poisonously pierced by a reproach which only pricksusso as to draw a little blood, as noxious beasts, in warm countries and months, poison, and in cold ones only wound. Therefore let the girls' schoolmaster consider that a dose which is satire upon the boy—who, besides, must withstand opinion—becomes a lampoon, when it lights upon his sister.[188]Poetic name for May.—Tr.[189]In which were always enclosed letters from Liana to Albano. Let every one see here, by two examples, how on the harmonica of love a brother must stand in front as key-bank for the sister, who would reach the bells. There should, therefore, always be a couple of couples, diametrically connected in sisterhood and affection.[190]"Such a character," writes Hafenreffer in this connection, "were desirable for romancing Kotzebues, for they, as he always will, according to his nature, create and raise the dignity of the situation by the accidental place thereof, might, under the cloak of his personality, humor entirely their own and disguise the weakness of the poet under the weakness of the hero." Methinks this is, so far as a biographer of romancers can decide, very striking.[191]Tiring-women.—Tr.

[180]The Titan was originally divided into four volumes.—Tr.

[181]A musical term, meaning the compensation made by transferring to imperfect concords part of the beauty of the perfect ones.—Tr.

[182]Every partial development of course works well for the whole; but only for this reason, because its opposite partial one balances it in a higher equation and sum total, so that all individual men are only the limbs of a single giant, such as the Swedenborgianmanis. But in so far as, in one individual, a want arises which helps out an opposite one in another,—so that the road of humanity plagues and trips equally much by hills and by hollows,—it will be seen that every one-sided fulness is, only a cure of the times, not their health; and that the higher law is, after all, a culture slower in the individual, but still harmonious; less in amount, indeed, but impartial, and thereby, in the long run, even more rapid. We always forget that—as in mechanics power and time are mutual supplements—eternity is the infinite power.

[183]According to Borreux, the engineer, literally only every thousandth shot from small-arms hits. So is it in all cases; fear death, and then there stand flower-pots ready to fall from chamber-windows, lightnings from the blue sky, air-guns going off, polypuses in the heart, mad dogs, robbers, every gash in the finger,aqua toffana, proud flesh, &c., in short, all nature—that ever-going, crushing cochineal-mill—stands with innumerable open scissors of fate round about thee, and thou hast no consolation, save this, that—nevertheless people grow eighty years old. Fear impoverishment: then fire, flood, famine, and war, banditti and revolutions, set upon thee with greedy claws and fangs; and yet, thou rich man! the poor man—creeping along under the same birds of prey—becomes at last as rich as thou. March, therefore, boldly through the slumbering lion-herd of dangers, lying on the right and left, and go up to the fountain, only do not wantonly wake them up; of course a hell-god drags down individuals who feared nothing; but so, too, does a higher God draw up individuals who expected nothing; and fear and hope are swallowed in one common night.

[184]Titan, 13. Cycle.

[185]At the court of King Olaus, the royal youth Olo, dressed as a peasant, offered himself as a champion of the daughter against robbers. Then did the fire of the eyes and nobleness of form tell as proof of a high descent; thus did Suanhita, for example, recognize King Regner in a herdsman's guise by the beauty of his eye and face. The king's daughter looked searchingly into Olo's flaming eye, and came near swooning; she essayed a second look, and was senseless; and at the third, swooned. The divine youth therefore cast his eyelids down but uncovered his brow and his golden hair and the signs of his rank. See "The German and his Native Land," by Rosenthal and Karg, Vol. I. pp. 166, 167.

[186]For what we call light is only an intenser white. No one sees, by night, the luminous stream which rushes upward along by the earth, pouring from the sun upon the full moon.

[187]This warmer, tenderer, more timid, ever-praised sex, living more in the opinion of others than in its own, is poisonously pierced by a reproach which only pricksusso as to draw a little blood, as noxious beasts, in warm countries and months, poison, and in cold ones only wound. Therefore let the girls' schoolmaster consider that a dose which is satire upon the boy—who, besides, must withstand opinion—becomes a lampoon, when it lights upon his sister.

[188]Poetic name for May.—Tr.

[189]In which were always enclosed letters from Liana to Albano. Let every one see here, by two examples, how on the harmonica of love a brother must stand in front as key-bank for the sister, who would reach the bells. There should, therefore, always be a couple of couples, diametrically connected in sisterhood and affection.

[190]"Such a character," writes Hafenreffer in this connection, "were desirable for romancing Kotzebues, for they, as he always will, according to his nature, create and raise the dignity of the situation by the accidental place thereof, might, under the cloak of his personality, humor entirely their own and disguise the weakness of the poet under the weakness of the hero." Methinks this is, so far as a biographer of romancers can decide, very striking.

[191]Tiring-women.—Tr.

The Sorrows of a Daughter.

CClouds like these last consisted with Albano less of falling drops than of settling dust. His life was yet a hothouse, and stood therefore toward the sunny side. Every day brought a new apology for the absent sweetheart, till at last she needed one no longer. But still he gave to every day its letter of indulgence for her silence; by and by they grew into letters of respite (moratories); finally, when she never let anything at all be heard or read from her; then he began to re-examine the afore-said apologies, and strike out many things therein.

Clouds like these last consisted with Albano less of falling drops than of settling dust. His life was yet a hothouse, and stood therefore toward the sunny side. Every day brought a new apology for the absent sweetheart, till at last she needed one no longer. But still he gave to every day its letter of indulgence for her silence; by and by they grew into letters of respite (moratories); finally, when she never let anything at all be heard or read from her; then he began to re-examine the afore-said apologies, and strike out many things therein.

Quite as little could he find for himself, or for a note, a way of access to her. Even the Captain had been gone for some days on a journey to Haarhaar. With faint hands he held the heavy, drained cup of joy, which, when empty, weighs the heaviest. The wild hypotheses which man in such a case trots[192]through him—as in this, for instance, that of Liana's being sick, having caught cold, her imprisonment, absence on a journey—are, in their alternation and value, to be compared with nothing, except with the quite as great wildness and number ofthe plans which he enlists and dismisses,—that of abduction, of hate, of a duel, of despair.

The terrible motionless time had no gnomon on its dial-plate. He stood as near his fate as man does to his dreams, without being able to recognize or prepare for its form, any more than one can for that which dreams will take. He went often into the city, through all whose streets there was riding, running, and driving, because they were about bringing and nailing together the beams for the grandest throne-scaffolding, on which the princely bride at her introductory compliment in the land, might look round the farthest; but he heard nothing there of his own bride, except that she quite often visited the picture-gallery with the Minister.

Hereby two distressing hypotheses, that of her sickness, and that of her being at war with her family, seemed to lose their stings. The best, though the hardest thing was, to go straight to the Minister, as to Vesuvius, in order there to have the fairest prospect. He visited the Vesuvius. In fact this volcano was never more still and green. He asked after everything, and expressed himself upon much which immediately concerned the marriage festival; nor did he seek to conceal his hopes and wishes that the Count would help welcome the admirable bride.

At last the latter, too, must venture to unfoldhishopes and wishes about the ladies. The Minister replied, with uncommon pleasantness, that the two had just carried back the "charming Mademoiselle von Wehrfritz" to Blumenbühl; and indulged himself forthwith in a eulogium of that "unsophisticated nature." Albano soon took his leave, but much happier than when he came. A few street-lamps[193]certainly were now burning on his path.

But in the morning he fell into a little obscure alley, where there was not a single one; in other words, Rabette, the little reindeer, came running to Lilar, as she yesterday had to Pestitz,—for what is a race of a mile to a country-girl, else than a simpleAllemande?[194]—and shook and shook her heart before him, even to its very ears, but nothing fell out of it except pleasant images, a few heavens, a complete wedding-day, a couple of parents-in-law, and a Captain's wife. "The Minister had been so courteous toward me, but—the mother afterward still more so toward my parents; and they have mentioned and praised the Captain so much,—in short, they of course know all, my glorious, heartily-loved brother!" said she,—but of Liana she had nothing to bring to her glorious brother, except a bill of her health; her joyous eye had not turned toward any dark region whatever. "We were not alone a minute, that is the reason of it," she added, and came again upon the subject of her Captain, whom the Minister had sent out on the Haarhaar road, as chief marshal of the escort of the Princess; yet she referred him to the illumination night in Lilar, when she and Liana, and the parents on both sides, had arranged to be there. Thou good creature! who is so cruel as to begrudge thee the glittering ring of joy, which thou contemplatest on thy brown and hard-boiled hand, and who does not fondly wish that its stones may never fall out?

Soon after, the brother of the past festivals flew to the heart of the deserted one,—Charles. He repeated almost exactly Rabette's deposition, although not her rapture; he said,—but without special emotion,—that his father actually threw him the brotherly hand kiss throughseveral rooms, distinguished and designated him quite particularly, and kindly made use of him for business purposes; and all this merely since he had become acquainted with his love for Rabette, and the silent assent of the parents; for with his father, though the heart was of no account, yet Rabette's fief was, especially as one could not trust, with all the romantic stock-jobbing of his heart, that he would not himself one day realize the poorest result.

With a sighing breast, which would gladly have imparted more to an expecting one, Charles merely related that he had found Liana well and quiet, but not alone for one minute. The association of another's want with his own open, rich fortune was, so Albano believed, the fair, tender reason why Charles glided with such cool, fleeting pleasure over the parental benediction of his soul's bond. O, how he loved him at this moment! Could he have loved him ever so much more, he would have done it, though Liana had been actually lost to the sum of his happiness, merely to show himself and him that holy friendship wants no third heart in order to love a second.

This cloud of silence lay fixed for weeks, and grew more and more dark around his fairest heights; and the guiltless one went round and round through the darkness in a circle of contradictions. How must this youth have harassed himself when he thought, as he soon did, that the parents would, in all probability, reject an alliance with him, as he, indeed, thought himself obliged rather to forget than to reciprocate their advances, and that they might sacrifice two hearts to political heartlessness; or when he let fall upon the innocent Liana the suspicion of giving way before parental assaults, which suspicion received reinforcement from the past through the conjecturethat she had embraced him rather in poetical enthusiasm and from goodness, and more with wings than with arms, and that, in fact, accustomed to such long submissions, she could hardly distinguish sacrifices and inclinations, and might take one for the other; or when, as he soon and oftenest did, he turned the point of all these weapons against his own breast, and asked himself why he had such a firm confidence in friendship, and such a wavering one in love. Then this reproach led him to a second, upon every previous one, which he had cast upon the good soul merely for the sake, according to the proselyting system and reforming mania which men exercise more upon their wives than upon their friends, of melting her down for his own mould. This last he might rue; as Holberg[195]observes that men do not keep estates so well as women, because the former are always wanting to improve them more than the latter; on the same ground, also, lovers spoil women more than these do them.

For the sake merely of getting more expeditiously from the tedious tribunal of the future his sentence of death, or a more agreeable document, he went again to the ministerial house. He was again smilingly received by the Minister, and seriously by the mother; and, in reply to his question, Liana was not quite well. He laid before old Schoppe (who now pressed his friendship upon him more warmly, and who, for some time near the dissecting-knife of the Doctor, had not studied any other heart than that which was to be spattered to pieces and prepared) a short question about the Doctor's visits at the Minister's. How was he astonished when he heard that no one out of the house any longer made any visits to it,(while Liana, quite blooming, went into all circles,) except merely the Lector, who made very frequent ones!

He well comprehended that only the Medusa's-heads of the parents could turn the softest heart into stone against him; but even this he found not right. He boldly demanded that she should love him more than her parents, "not from egotism," said he to himself, "not on my account, but on her own." A lover wishes a great, indescribable love, of which he thinks himself always only the accidental and unworthy object, merely for the sake of tendering the highest himself.

Even the silent Lector, who generally placed all newly rising lights behind light-shades and fire-screens, communicated unbidden to the Count the novel tidings that Liana would be, under the administration of the coming Princess, something—[196]maid of honor. His old jealous suspicion of Augusti's wishes or relations allowed him no answer to that.

Now his spirit manned itself, and he wrote straight to the soul that belonged to him, and sent the letter to her brother for delivery. The latter came the next day, but seemed to him not to have any answer yet, because he would otherwise have given it with the first greeting. Charles introduced him to the Haarhaar court, where he had lately been; said every nerve there had on jack-boots, and every heart a hoop-petticoat; then went on to eulogize the youngest, but most unpopular Princess,Idoine; declared she possessed, in addition to all her other advantages,—for instance, purity, kindness, decision of character, which even on the throne selects for itselfits own lot and life,—the further grace of amiableness, since even the princely bride, who loved no one else, hung upon her heart, and—last, not least—the advantage of a very deceptive similarity to Liana.

"Has Liana received my letter yet?" asked Albano. Charles handed it back to him. "By Heaven!" said he, ardently, and yet ambiguously, "I could not get it to her just now. But, brother, canst thou believe, only for one minute, that she does not remain forever most thine?" "I do not believe anything at all!" said Albano, offended, and tore his leaf on the spot into little bits no bigger than the letters. "Onlywewill," he continued, with a tone of emotion, "remain, as we are, firm as iron, and flexible as iron when it comes out of the furnace." The deeply touched friend sought to console him with the following: "Only wait, I pray, the illumination evening;[197]then she will speak with thee. She must certainly appear, and thou wilt wonder in what character, and for whom." He nodded silently; he easily gathered her part from her resemblance to Idoine, and from her expected office at court. But what help was it to his fortune?

With the return of his note, which he despatched against his pride, that same pride came back in renewed strength. Now was a hot seal stamped on Albano's bleeding lip; he had now nothing for and before him, except time, which was now his poison, and would by and by, as he hoped, be his antidote. Nothing was ever master over his sense of honor, when it was once roused. He could look forward to a scaffold on which blood spurted out, but he could not look upon a pillory where, under the heavy, poisonous, murderous pain of scorn and self-contempt, a downcast, distracted face hung on the sinful breast.

Charles sometimes approached with a few lights the long night-like riddle; but Albano, however much he wished them, staggered him by opposition, and sought not even to hear him, much less to ask him questions. So he lay on hard, youthful, thorny rose-buds, which a single hour can open into tender roses. Victories beget victories, as defeats do defeats; he found now, if not a complete relief from the emotions which besieged him, nevertheless a mountain-fortification against them, provisioned for a little eternity, in the shape of an astronomical observatory. With an entire and firmly collected soul he threw himself upon theoretical astronomy, in order not to see daylight, and upon practical astronomy in order not to see night. The watch-tower stood indeed upon a mountain intermediate between the city and Blumenbühl, and commanded a view of both; but he cast his eyes only upon the constellations, not upon those rosy-red spots of the earth, where they now could have sucked out of the cold flower-cups only water instead of honey. Thus amid the festive preparations in Lilar did he go armed to meet the long delaying evening when the presence of the fairest soul should either bless or destroy him, vainly looking from time to time at the distant telegraph of his destiny, which was constantly moving, uncertain whether with peaceful or hostile significance.

To remove the seals from the enrolled acts of the foregoing history for the purpose of looking into it,—or to push back the blinds and shove up the windows of the same,—or to uncover so many covered ways and vehicles,—or, in fine, the whole matter,—all that is meremetaphors,—and the most inappropriate ones, too,—which cannot serve any other purpose than only to hold off still longer and more tediously the long-expected solution, which they would fain describe; much rather and better, methinks, will the whole war and peace position in the ministerial palace be at once freely laid bare as follows:—

Herr Von Froulay had, as has been already mentioned, come home from Haarhaar with aBelle-vuein his face, and with amon-plaisirin his heart (provided these tropes do not seem more elaborate than exquisite). He told his lady openly, what had hitherto detained and enchanted him so long,—the future Princess, who had conceived for him a more than ordinary fancy. He threw a full, glorifying light on her enriched understanding,—he never praised anything beyond this in ladies,[198]—as well as a faint streak of shade upon his ownher's; and pronounced himself fortunate in the possession of a person whose fine, persistent coquetry (he said) he for his part could recommend as a model, and whose attachment he, in fact, (that he pretended not to conceal,) reciprocated half-way, but only half-way, for it was perfectly true, what the Duke of Lauzun[199]asserted: in order to keep the love of Princesses, one must just hold them in right hard and short. In the old man accordingly there shoots up, as we see, quite late,—not unlike the case of fresh teeth,—which oftentimes old men do not cut till they are nonagenarians,—a lover's heart beneath the star; only it is more to be wished than hoped, he will especially play theridiculous in the matter. For as he all the week long holds the helm of state, either on the rower's bench, to keep it in motion, or on the cabinet-maker's bench, to trim it down into a fine and light shape for the Prince; the consequence is, he is so tired when Saturday comes, that no Virgil and no tempest could persuade him—and though his feet had not more steps to take for the purpose than the number of feet in Virgil's hexameter, or of commandments in the Decalogue of Moses—to accompany a Dido out of the storm into the nearest cave. He does no such thing. He remains quite as free from sentimental and pathetic love as from sensual, especially as he apprehends that the former would in the end entangle him in the latter, because like a minor-tone it has quite a different returning scale from its ascending one. The ironical and stinging element in the man made every marriage—even that of souls—to him as well as to other world's people as disagreeable in the end as the spines of the hedgehogs make theirs. He lays up, therefore, in the future for the Princess only a cold, politic, coquettish, courtly love, such as she herself haply has, and such as he has occasion for, in order less to gain her than to gain from her, and to gain first of all the entire Prince. I promise myself cosmopolitan readers, who, I hope, find no offence to this personage in Froulay's partiality for his lady; for so soon as the court-preacher has but once laid his joining hand on the Princess, then has this house-steward made, as it were, the cut in the pea-hen,[200]and she can then be taken off untouched, and be feasted on in other places.

I have already (in the second volume) intimated the anxiety of the Minister's lady lest the Minister, if he should (in this volume) come back and not find Liana at home, should chafe; but, contrary to expectation, he approved; her use of the country air-bath fell in exactly with his design of sending her into the vapor-bath of the court atmosphere. He told her mother that it by no means displeased him that she should now be entirely well, since the new Princess would select her for her maid of honor, whenever he should say the word. He could not for three minutes see a sceptre or a sceptrelet lying by him without proving its polarity for himself, and either attracting or repelling something with it. As the famous theologian, Spener,—a predecessor of our Spener,—prayed to God so beautifully thrice a day for his friends, one finds with similar pleasure that the courtier daily prays a little for his friends before his god, the Prince, and seeks to obtain something.

The Minister's lady, never opposing his changeable plans in the sketch, but only in the execution, easily became reconciled with his latest one, because it at least seemed rather to stand in no auxiliary relation to the old one of the bethrothal to Bouverot.

One evening, unfortunately, the fatal, anxious Lector—who pasted the smallest visiting-card to a Fulda's historic chart—arrived in her presence with his packet-ship, and came ashore having under his two arms the state and imperial advertisements of her two children; he had one of them under each; and yet why do I fly out upon the man? Could a double-romance, especially when played in the open air, remain better concealed than a single one?

Her astonishment can be compared with the greaterastonishment of her husband, who happened to have just been screwing on in the third chamber his tin ear,—made by Schropp of Magdeburg,—in order to listen to the servants, and who now caught a number of things. Nevertheless, the double-ear, with the broad meshes of its nocturnal lark-net, had only fished up from Augusti's low, whispering, courtly lips single, long, proper names,—such as Roquairol and Zesara. Hardly had the soft-spoken Lector gone out, when he stepped gayly into the chamber, with his ear in his hand, and demanded of her a report of the reports. He held it beneath his dignity either to patch up or disguise his suspicion,—which, even in the friendliest and gayest mood, would never shut its Argus ears and eyes,—or to dissemble his eavesdropping, with so much as a syllable or a blush of shame; the fair lilies of the most colorless impudence were not painted, but branded on him. The Minister's lady immediately seized upon the female expedient, of telling the truth—half-way; namely, the agreeable truth of Roquairol's well-received advances at the house of Wehrfritz, whose estate and provincial directorship had been cast into a very fitting shape for a father-in-law. Meanwhile the Minister had seen in his lady's face the mourning-border around this pleasant notification-document, far too clearly and broadly not to inquire about that prominent word "Zesara," which his delicate tin searcher had also caught up, but he inquired in vain; for the mother held her good daughter too dear to set this wolf on the scent for her into her Eden; she hoped to get her out of it in a gentler way, by a divine voice and angels; and so evaded his question.

But the wolf now ran farther on in his track; he got the gout in his stomach,—so it was reported to Dr.Sphex,—demanded of him speedy aid, and also some intelligence of his tenant, the Count. Doctor and Madam Sphex had already a grudge against the inflated youth; through their four juvenile envoys, asenfans perdusin every sense, as four hearing-organs of every city rumor, much might be brought in on advice-yachts from Blumenbühl and Lilar. In short, the auricular organs fitted in so well to those of others, that Froulay, in a few days, was in a situation to ask, with his lily brow, the Greek woman for a letter to his son, which he offered to take along with him.

He found one, which he broke open with great joy, without, however, finding anything therein from Albano's or Liana's hand, but only some stupid allusion of Rabette to that couple, which, to the Minister, were as much as if, with his sharp exciseman's-probes, he had bored into Liana's heart and lighted upon contraband there. Without any long, slavish copying of the former seal, he set a second upon the letter, and went away enlightened by it.

We can all follow him, when we have detained ourselves only a few minutes for his justification, with my

Whether the examination of other people's letters pertains to old Froulay as minister or father,—(although the latter presupposes the former, the father of the country implying every other father and his own too,)—I will not decide, except by the parenthesis just inserted. Thestate which tackles on the post-horses before letters has, it should seem, the right to examine more narrowly, under the closed visor of the seal, these not so muchblindas blindingpassengers,[202]in order to know whether it is not using its horses in the service of its enemies. The state, an ever-drawing light-magnet, means certainly only to have light in the case, and particularly light upon all light in general; it requires only the naked truth, without cover or covering. All that rides and fares through its gates must, though it were dressed in a surtout, just open itsredmouth, and say what name and business.

As the common soldier must first show his letters to his officer, the garrison-soldier of the Bastile to the governor, the monk his to the prior, the American colonist his to the Dutchman,[203]—in order that he may burn them up, if they find fault with him,—so, surely, can no statesman, whether he regards the state as a barrack, or as an Engelsburg, or as amonasterium duplex, or as aEuropean possession in Europe, deny it the right to keep all its letters as open as bills of lading, patents of nobility, bills of sale, and apostolic epistles are. The only mistake is, that it does not get hold of the letters before they are enveloped and sealed. That is immoral enough; for it necessitates the government to open and shut,—to draw the letter out of the case, and put it back again, as the cook with pains turns the snail out of his shell, and then, when he is once taken off from the fire, shoves him back again into it, to serve him up therein.

This last is the point of the compass and cardinal windwhich is to guide us onward; for universally acknowledged as it is, just as custom and observance are, that the government, on the same ground on which it opens thelastwill, must have the power to unseal also the last but one, and the one before that, and finally the very first, before its heir can do it, and that a prince must be able still more readily to bring servants' letters into the same deciphering chancery (and into their antechamber, the unsealing chamber), wherein the letters of princes and legates fly open before the caper-spurge,[204]nevertheless the cork-drawing of letters,—the joint seal, the vicariate seal, the laborious imitation of the L. S., orloco sigilli,—all this is something very annoying and almost detestable; out of the wrong a right must therefore be made by constitutional repetition.

Something of the kind might be brought about, I flatter myself, if it were commanded to write letters only on stamp-paper. An inspecting and stamping office appointed for that purpose would then read everything over beforehand.

Or one might prohibit in future all private seals, just as they do mint-stamps for private coin. A seal-department would then interfere, with full rights, and seal up, as they now do the legacies of the deceased, so in that case those of the living.

Or—which is perhaps preferable—an epistolarycensorshipmust commence. Unprinted newspapers,nouvelles à la main,[205]—that is, letters,—can never, inasmuch as they divulge still greater mysteries, demand a greater freedom of censorship than printed newspapers; especiallyas every letter, now-a-days, so easily becomes a circular, going everywhere. A catalogue of prohibited letters (index expurgandarum) would always be, in that case, aword to correspondents.

Or let the postmasters be put under oath that they will be faithful referendaries of whatever they find weighty or considerable in the letters, which, before despatching, they have laid in the mental letter-balance, and closed again, with the hope, according to the Leibnitzian principle of the non-distinguishable seal, of speeding them far and wide.

If the State finds all these ways of reading and closing letters new and difficult, then it may go on in its own way—of opening them.

Froulay flew, laughing, to his lady, and assured her her falsehood towards him was no news to him at all. Her present plan, merely to work against Herr von Bouverot and himself, he understood full well. Hence it was that Rabette had had to come in, and the daughter to go out. Meanwhile he would show the hypocrite and bigot, or whoever it might be, that she had not merely a mother, but a father too. "She must immediately come home;je la ferai damer,[206]mais sans vous et sans M. le Compte," he concluded, with an allusion to the office of court-dame.

But the Minister's lady began, in accordance with her vehement contempt of his projects and powers, with that coldness which would have more exasperated every ardent one than this cold one, to say to him that she must needs disapprove and oppose Liana's and the Count's love still more than he did; that she had merely, in an excessiveand otherwise never disappointed confidence in Liana's openness of soul, believed her rather than herself, and, notwithstanding so many signs of Albano's partiality, let her go to Blumenbühl; that she would, however, give him her word on the spot to act with as much energy and spirit against the Count as against the German gentleman, and that she was, as surely as she knew Liana, almost certain of the easiest and happiest result.

Of course this was unexpected to him and—incredible, especially after the previous concealment; only the finest man's soul distinguishes in the female the blending boundaries of self-deception and wilful delusion, weakness and deceit, accident and intent; besides, the Minister's lady was one of those women whom one must first love in order to know them, a case which is generally reversed. He readily accepted on the one hand the confession of her agreement and co-operation,—merely for the sake, hereafter, of turning it as a weapon against her;—but he could not conceal, on the other hand, thatthere again(that was always his phrase) she had, according to her own confession, neglected to watch over her children from a want of jealousy. He retained the habit, when an open-hearted soul showed him its breaches, of marching in upon it through those breaches, as if he himself had made them. The penitent who knelt before him for forgiveness he would crush still lower, and instead of the key of absolution draw forth the hammer of the law.

I owe it here to the Spaniards, who will one day become acquainted with me through miserable translations,[207]and to the Austrian knighthood of the Golden Fleece, who perhaps read the original in a counterfeit edition, toassign the reasons why the house of Froulay did not bespeak feasts of joy—instead of court-mourning—on the occasion of these advances by a son of their order, a Spanish Grandee, who often lays upon himself a German princely sceptre as a yardstick to measure himself withal. For every Spaniard must have hitherto wondered about this.

I answer every nation. The Froulays had, in the first place, nothing against the union except the—certainty of separation; since on the same ground, which the Knights of the Fleece and the Spaniards have opposed to me, old Gaspard de Zesara can in no wise suffer a bridge to be thrown over from his Gothard to the Jungfrau [virgin]. Secondly, on this very ground the Minister could oppose to this romantic love a much older, wiser, which he bore toward the German gentleman and his moneys andliaisons, as well as the old grudge of the Knight of the Fleece. Thirdly, the Minister's lady had, beside these same grounds,—and besides several in favor of the Lector, perhaps,—one quite decisive one, and that was, she could not endure the Count; not merely and solely for the reason that she discovered a painful similarity between him and her son, and even husband, in pride, in excitability, in the characteristic fierceness of genius against poor married women, in want of religious humility and devoutness; but the principal reason why she could not well endure him was this: that she could not bear him. As the system of Predestination sentences some men to hell, whether they afterward deserve heaven or not, so a woman never takes back an enmity to which she has once doomed any one, all that country and city, God, time, and the individual's virtues may say to the contrary, notwithstanding.

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