75. CYCLE.

In the treaty of peace, concluding the usual chamber-war, the following private articles were adjusted between the married couple: The Count must be, on the Father's and Director's account, treated with the most courtly consideration, and shoved aside,—and Liana gently and gradually drawn away from Wehrfritz's house,—the whole dissolution of the engagement must seem to happen of itself without parental interference, merely through the breaking off of the daughter,—and the whole affair remain a mystery. Froulay hoped to keep the whole interlude or episode concealed from Liana's earlier-intended, the German gentleman, particularly as he, just now, in August, was more at the card-tables of the baths than at home.

So it stood; and into this cold, awful pass the friendly Liana moved on, when on that warm living Sunday she left the blessed, open Lilar. Refined and sanctified by joy,—for every Paradise was to her a purifying Purgatory,—she came nobly to her mother's bosom, without remarking the strange seriousness of the reception by reason of the earnest warmth of her own. Her easy confession of the garden-company opened the trying scene,—almost in thecoulisse. For the mother, who would fain have begun otherwise, had to mount the thunder-car at once, in order to thunder and lighten against such incomprehensible forgetfulness of female propriety; and yet she held in the thunder-steeds in mid-career, in order to enjoin upon Liana immediately, as the Minister might come any moment, a perfect silence on the subject of to-day's garden-party. Now she cast the deepest strengthening shade upon her previous mute falsehood towards a mother; for she arbitrarily transposed in her story the sowing and blossoming time of this love, even into thedays preceding the journey to the country. How did the warm soul shudder at the possibility of such an unkindness! She led her mother as far as she could up along the pure, light pearl-brook of her history and love, and told all that we know, but without giving much satisfaction, because she left out precisely the main point; for, out of forbearance toward her mother, she felt obliged to let the apparition of Caroline, who in the beginning had been the image-stormer of her love and then its inspiring muse and bride's-maid, together with the death-certificate of the future, remain out of sight in the narration.

She held, with fervent pressure, her mother's hand amidst more and more cheerful assurances, how she had always been disposed to tell her everything; she thought hopingly, she needed to save nothing but heropenheart. O thou hast more to save, thy warm, thy whole and living heart! Her mother now, from old habit, half believing her, found fault with nothing more than the whole affair, its impropriety, impossibility, folly. "O good mother," said Liana, simply remaining tender under the harsh picturing of the future Albano; "O he is not such, assuredly not!" Quite as tenderly did she far overlook the darkly-sketched future refusal of Don Gaspard, because to her faith the earth was only a blooming grave-mound hanging in the ether. "Ah!" said she, meaning how little time she was for this world, "our love is not so important!" Her mother took this word and the whole gentleness of her resistance, as preludes of an easy victory.

At this moment Albano's father-in-law came in with a kettle-drum, alarm-bell, fire-drum, and rattlesnake, in his girdle, in order therewith to make himself audible. First he inquired,—for he had been listening in vain,—in avery exasperated manner, of the Minister's lady, where she had stowed away his ear (it was the tin duplicate ear, wherein, as in a Venetian lion's-head, all mysteries and accusations of the whole service and family met); he said, he had a little occasion for it just now, particularly since the newest "adventures of his worthy daughter there." The Siamese physicians begin the healing of a patient with treading upon him, which they call softening. In a similar manner Froulay loved to soften, by way of moral pre-cure; and accordingly began, with the above-mentioned speaking-machines in his girdle, to declare his sentiments explicitly on the subject of degenerate children; upon their arts and artifices; and upon intrigues behind fathers' backs (so that no father can accompany a volume of love-poems with a prose preface); backed up many points with the strongest political grounds, which all had reference to himself and his interest, and wound up with a little cursing.

Liana heard him calmly, as one already accustomed to such daily returning equinoctial storm-bursts, without any other emotion, except that she often raised her downcast eye pityingly upon him, out of tender sympathy for the paternal dissatisfaction. In a calm he became loudest. "You will see to it, madam," said he, "that to-morrow forenoon she sends the Count what she has of his, together with a farewell, and notifies him of her new office, as an easy excuse; thou art to be court-dame to the reigning Princess, although thou didst not deserve that I should labor for thee!"

"That is hard!" cried Liana, with breaking heart, falling upon her mother. He supposed she meant the separation from Albano, not from her mother, and asked, angrily: "Why?" "Father, I would so gladly," said she,and turned only her face away from the embrace, "die near my mother!" He laughed; but the Minister's lady herself shut to the hell-gates upon the flames which he still would fain have vomited forth, and assured him it was enough, Liana would certainly obey her parents, and she herself would be surety for it. The preacher of the law came down his pulpit-stairs with an audible ejaculation about a better security, calling back, as he went, that his ear must be produced to-morrow, and though he should have to search for it in all chests and cupboards.

The mother kept silence now, and let her daughter softly weep on her neck; to both, after this drought of the soul, the draught of love was refreshment and medicine. They came out of each other's arms with cheered spirits, but both with entirely delusive hopes.

A hard, black morning; only the outward atmospheric morning was dark-blue; there was nothing loud and stormy, except perchance the swarms of bees in the linden-thicket; the heaven's ether seemed to flutter away high over the stony streets, so as to settle down low in the bright open Lilar upon all hill-tops and tree-tops, and, blue as peacock's plumage, to play its hues over the twigs.

Liana found on her writing-table a billet, folded in large quarto, wherein the Minister, ever-working, like a heart, sought even at this early hour of the morning, before raising out of the public documents for the several administration and exchequer counsellors the transient tempests which were necessary to fruitfulness, todescend upon his shuddering daughter with a cold morning rain-gust. In the decretal letter referred to, he developed more in detail, upon a sheet and a half what he had meant yesterday,—separation on the spot; and offered six grounds of separation,—first, his uncongenial relation with the Knight of the Fleece; secondly, her own and the Count's youth; thirdly, the approaching place of court-dame; fourthly, that she was his daughter, and this the first sacrifice to which he, her father, for all his previous ones, had ever laid claim; fifthly, she might perceive, by his indulgent "Yes," to the love of her brother, whose apparent improvement he held out to her as a model, that he lived and cared only for the welfare of his children; sixthly, he would send her to Fort * * * to his brother, the commandant, in case she were refractory, by way of exiling, punishing, and bringing her round; and neither weeping, nor falling at feet, nor mother, nor hell should bend him; and he gave her three days' time for reflection.

Mutely, and with wet eyes, she handed to her who had been hitherto her comforter the heavy sheet. But the comforter had become a judge: "What wilt thou do?" said the Minister's lady. "I will suffer," said Liana, "in order thathemay not suffer; how could I so sorely sin against him?" The mother, whether actually under the old notion of her easy conversion, or from dissimulation, took that "He" for the father, and asked: "Say'st thou nothing of me?" Liana blushed at the substitution, and said: "Ah! poor me, I will not indeed be happy,—only true!" How had she during this night prayingly lived and wept amidst the fearful wars of all her inner angels! A love so guiltless, consecrated by her holy friend in heaven,—a fidelity so exceedingly abridged by earlydeath; so sound-hearted a youth, shooting up with high, fruit-bearing summit heavenward, whom not even ghostly voices could scare or allure out of his faithful childhood's love toward her, insignificant one; the everlasting discomfort and grief which he would experience at the first, greatest lie against his heart; her short, straight path through life, and the nearness of that cross-way, at which she should wish to throw back,—not stones, but flowers upon the other pilgrims;—all these forms took her byonehand to draw her away from her mother, who called after her with the words: "See how ungratefully thou art going from me, and I have so long suffered and toiled for thee!" Then came Liana back again out of the dusky, warm rose-vale of love into the dry, flat earth-surface of a life, wherein nothing breaks the monotony save her last mound. O how imploringly did she look up to the stars, to see whether they did not move as the eyes of her Caroline, and tell herhowshe must sacrifice herself, whether for her lover or for her parents; but the stars stood friendly, cold, and still in the steadfast heavens.

But, when the morning sun again beamed upon her heart, it beat hopefully, newly strengthened with the resolution to endure this day for Albano full many sorrows,—ah yes, even the first. Could Caroline, thought she, approve a love to which I must be untrue?

Hardly had she left the lips of her mother with the morning greeting, when the latter sought, but more earnestly than yesterday, to draw up the roots of this steadfast heart out of its strange soil by a longer use of yesterday's flower-extractor. In her comparative anatomy of Albano and Roquairol, from the similarity of voice even to that of stature, she grew more and more cutting, tillLiana, with a maiden's wit, at once asked, "But why may my brother, then, love Rabette?" "Quelle comparaison!" said the mother. "Art thou nothing better than she?" "Shedoes, strictly speaking, much more than I," said she, quite candidly. "Didst thou never quarrel with the wild Zesara?" asked the mother. "Never, except when I was in the wrong," said she, innocently.

The mother was alarmed to perceive more and more clearly that she had to pull up deeper and stronger roots than light flowers strike into the soil. She concentrated all her maternal powers of attraction and lifting-machines upon one point, for the upturning of the still green myrtle. She disclosed to her the Minister's dark plan of an alliance with the German gentleman, her hitherto concealed strifes and sighs on the subject, her thus far effectual resistance, and the latest paternal stratagem, to make her a garrison-prisoner with his brother, and thereby probably Herr von Bouverot a besieger of the citadel.

For some readers and relicts of the heavy, old-fashioned, golden age of morality, the remark is here introduced and printed, that a peculiar, cold, unsparing, often shocking and provoking, candor of remark upon the nearest relatives and the tenderest relations is so very much at home in the higher ranks, that even the fairer souls, among whom, surely, this mother belongs, cannot, absolutely, understand or do otherwise.

"O thou best mother!" cried Liana, agitated, but not by the thought of the rattle and the snaky breath of Bouverot, or of his murderous spring at her heart,—she thought with as much indifference of being betrothed to him as any innocent one does of his dying on a scaffold,—but by the thought of the long building over and crowding out of sight of the motherly tears, the streams of motherlylove, which had hitherto flowed nourishingly deep down under her flowers. She threw herself gratefully between those helpful arms. They closed not around her, because the Minister's lady was not to be made weak and soft by any washing wave and surge of sudden emotion.

Into this embrace the Minister struck or stepped in. "So!" said he, hastily. "My ear, madam," he continued, "cannot be found again at all among the domestics; I have that to tell you." For he had to-day posted himself upon a law-giving Sinai, and thundered into the ears of the service assembled at its foot the inquiry after his own ear, "because I must believe," he had said to them, "that you, for very good reasons, have stolen it from me." Then he had swept like a hail-storm, or a kitchen-smoke in windy weather, through the servants' apartments and corners, one by one, in quest of his ear. "And thou?" said he, in a half-friendly tone to Liana. She kissed his hand, which he, as the Pope does his foot, always despatched for kisses, as proxy and lip-bearer, agent, andde latere nuncioof his mouth.

"She continues disobedient," said the severe lady. "Then she is a little like you," said he, because the mistrustful one looked upon the embrace as a conspiracy against him and his Bouverot. Upon this, his ice-Hecla burst out, and flamed and flowed, now upon daughter, now upon wife. The former was absolutely a miserable creature, he said; and only the Captain was worth anything, whom he luckily had educated by himself alone. He saw through all, heard all, though they had hid away his ear-trumpet. There was, accordingly, as he saw, (he pointed to his unsealed morning-psalm,[208]) a communicationbetween the two colleges; but he invoked God to punish him if he did not—"my dear daughter, pray answer at last!" he begged.

"My father," said Liana, who, since the fraternization of Bouverot and the ill treatment from her mother, had begun to feel her heart wake up, which, however, could only despise and never hate, "my mother has to-day and yesterday told me all; but I have surely duties towards the Count!" A bolder liveliness than her parents had ever missed or found in her beamed under her upraised eye. "Ah, I will truly remain faithful to him just as long as I live," said she. "C'est bien peu," replied the Minister, astounded at such pertness.

Liana listened now, for the first time, after the word which had escaped her; then, in order to justify the past and her mother, she conceived the pleasant and ridiculous purpose, of moving and converting the old gentleman by her ghost-visions or dream-seeings. She begged of him a solitary interview, and afterward—when it was reluctantly granted—intreated him therein for his sacred promise to be silent towards her mother, because she feared to show to that loving one the clock-wheels of her death-bell rattling so near to the fatal stroke. The old gentleman could only, with a comic expression,—which made him look like one who with a bad cold wants to laugh,—vow that he would keep his word so far as was necessary, because never, so far as he could recollect, had his word been kept by him, only he had been often kept by his word. In such men, word and deed are like theatrical thunder and lightning, which, though generally occurring in close connection, and simultaneously in heaven, on the stage break forth out of separate corners, and by means of different operators.But Liana would not rest till he had put on a word-keeping, sincere face,—a painted window. Thereupon she began, after a kissing of the hand,[209]her ghostly history.

With unbroken seriousness, and firmly contracted muscles, he heard the extraordinary narration through; then, without saying a word, he took her by the hand and led her back into the presence of her mother, to whom he handed her over with a long psalm of praise and thanksgiving about her successful daughter's-school. "His boy's-school with Charles had not been blessed to him, at least in this degree," he added. As a proof, he frankly communicated to her—cold-bloodedly working up all Liana's pangs, as the coopers do cypress-branches into cask-hoops—the little which he had promised to bury in silence, because he always prostituted either himself or the other party, generally both. Liana sat there, deeply red, and growing hotter and hotter, with downcast eyes, and begged God to preserve her filial love towards her father.

No sympathizing eye shall be further pained with the opening of a new scene, when the ice of his irony broke, and became a raging stream, into which flowed tears of maternal indignation, also, at the thought of a precious being, and her feverish, fatal, dreaming of herself away into the last sleep. The object and the danger almost united the married couple for the second time; when there is a glazed frost, people go very much arm in arm. "Thou hast sent nothing to Lilar?" asked the father. "Without your permission I certainly should not do it," said she; but she meant her letters, not Albano's. He took advantage of the misunderstanding, and said, "Thou hast, however, surely." "I will gladly do, and let bedone everything," said she, "but only on condition the Count consents, in order that I may not appear to him disingenuous; he has my sacred word for my truth!" At this mild firmness, at this Peter's rock overgrown with tender flowers, the father stumbled the hardest. In addition to this, the transition of a haughty lover from his own wishes to those of his enemies, supposing they had allowed Liana the question to the Count, was so impossible on the one hand, and the solicitation of this change, whether it were granted or refused, absolutely so degrading on the other, that the astounded Minister's lady felt her pride rise, and asked again, "Is this thy last word to us, Liana?" And when Liana, weeping, answered, "I cannot help it; God be gracious to me!" she turned away indignantly toward the Minister, and said: "Do now what you take to beconvenable; I wash my hands in innocence!" "Not so entirely,ma chère; but very well!" said he, "thou wilt stay after to-morrow in thy chamber, till thou hast corrected thyself, and art more worthy of our presence!" he announced, as he went out, to Liana; firing at her meanwhile two eye-volleys, wherein, according to my estimate, far more reverberating fires, tormenting ghosts, eating, devouring medicaments, brain and heart-borers, were promised, than a man can generally hold to give or bear to receive.

Poor maiden! Thy last August is very hard, and no harvest-month day! Thou lookest out into the time, where thy little coffin stands, on which a cruel angel wipes away the still fresh flower-pieces of love running round it, in order that it may, all white, as rosy-white as thy soul or thy last form, be consigned to the grave!

This banishment by her mother into the desert of her cloister-chamber was quite as frightful to her, only notmore frightful than her anger, which she had to-day, only for the third time, experienced, though not deserved. It was to her as if now, after the warm sun had gone down, the bright evening glow had also sunk below the horizon, and it grew dark and cold in the world. She remained this whole day, which was yet allowed her, with her mother; gave, however, only answers, looked friendly, did everything cheerfully and readily, and—as she quickly dashed away, with her tiny finger, every gathering dew-drop out of the corner of her eyes, as if it were dust, because she thought, at night I can weep enough,—she had very dry eyes; and all that, in order not to be an additional burden to her oppressed mother. But she, as mothers so easily do, confounded a timid, loving stillness with the dawning of obduracy; and when Liana, with the innocent design of consolation, wished to have Caroline's picture brought for her from Lilar, this innocence also passed for hardness, and was punished and reciprocated with a corresponding on the part of the parent, namely, with the permission to send. Only the Minister's lady demanded the French prayers of her again, as if she were not worthy to lay them under her present heart. Never are human beings smaller than when they want to plague and punish without knowinghow.

As every one who rules, whether he sits on a chair of instruction or a princely one, or, like parents, on both, when the occupant of its footstool once leaves off his former obedience, imputes that obedience to him, not as a mitigation, but as an aggravation of his offence, so did the Minister's lady also toward her hitherto so uniformly docile child. She hated her pure love, which burned like ether, without ashes, smoke, or coal, so much the more,and held it to be either the author or the victim of an incendiary fire, particularly as her own married love hitherto had seldom been anything more than a showy chimney-piece.

Liana at last, too heavily constrained, since on the other side of the wall-tapestry the serene day, the loveliest sky was blooming, ascended to the Italian roof. She saw how people were travelling and riding back contentedly from their little places of pleasure, because the earth was one; on Lilar's bushy path the walkers were sauntering with a blissful slowness home,—in the streets there was a loud carpentering at the festive scaffoldings and Charles's-wains for the princely bride, and the finished wheels were rolled along for trial,—and everywhere were heard the drillings of the young music, which when grown up was to go before her. But when Liana looked upon herself, and saw her life alone standing here in dark raiment,—over yonder the empty house of her loved one, here her own, which to her had also become empty,—this very spot, which still reminded her of a lovelier, rarer blossoming than that of theCereus serpens,—and oh! this cold solitude, in which her heart to-day, for the first time, lived without a heart; for her brother, the chorister of her short song of gladness, had been sent off, and Julienne had for some time been incomprehensibly invisible to her,—no, she could not see the fair sun go down, who, so serene and white, was sinking to slumber with his high evening star,—or listen to the happy evening chorus of the long day, but left the shining eminence. O how does joy die a stranger in the untenanted, dark bosom, when she finds no sister and becomes a spectre there! Thus does the beautiful green, that spring color, when a cloud paints it, betoken nothing but long moisture.

When she entered, soon, the asylum of day, the bedchamber, the heavens without flashed heat-lightning; O why just now, cruel fate?—But here, before the still-life of night, when life, covered with her veil, sounds more faintly,—here may all her tears, which a heavy day has been pressing,[210]gush forth freely. On the pillow, as if it bore the last, long sleep, rests this exhausted head more softly than on the bosom which reproachfully reckons up against it its tears; and it weeps softly, notupon, onlyforloved ones.

According to her custom, she was on the point of opening her mother's prayers, when she recollected, with a startled feeling, that they had been taken from her. Then she looked up with burning tears to God, and prepared alone out of her broken heart a prayer to him, and only angels counted the words and the tears.

The father had made this chamber-imprisonment a punitory mark of her refusal. With deep anguish she uttered this mute no, in the very fact that she voluntarily stayed in the chamber, and denied her mother the morning kiss. She had, in the course of the night, cast many an ardent look at the dead image of her counsellor Caroline, but no original, no fever-created form had appeared to her. Can I longer doubt, she inferred from this, that the divine apparition, which has spoken the assenting word to my love, was something higher than my own creation, since I must otherwise have been able to form it again over against her picture?

She had Albano's blooming letters in her desk, andopened it, in order to look over from her island into the remote orient land of warmer times; but she shut it to again; she was ashamed to be secretly happy, while her mother was sorrowful, who into these melancholy days had not even come, like her, out of pleasant ones.

Froulay did not long leave her alone, but soon sent for her; not, however, to sound her or pronounce her free, but for the purpose—which, as may well be conceived, required an unvarnished brow and cheek, whose fibrous network was as hard to be colored as his with the Turkish red of shame—of appointing her his mistress in artistic language, and taking her with him to the Prince's gallery, in order to learn from her the explanation of these frontispieces (for such they were to him) in this private deaf-and-dumb institution so well that he might be in a condition, so soon as the Princess should come to inspect it, to represent something better than a mute before the beauties of the pictures and the image-worshipping Regentess. Liana had to transfer an impression of every pictured limb, with the praise or blame appertaining thereunto, over into his serious brain, together with the name of the master. How delightedly and completely did she give this kallipædeia to her growling old cornute,[211]and would-beconnoisseurin painting, who paid her not a single thankful look as instruction-money!

At noon, for the first time, did the daughter find her longed-for mother, among the kitchen-servants, very serious and sad. She ventured not to kiss her mouth, but only her hand, and opened upon her her love-streaming eyes only timidly and a little. Dinner seemed a funeral-feast. Only the old gentleman, who on a battle-fieldwould have danced his marriage-minuet, and celebrated his birthday, was in good spirits and appetite, and full of salt. In case of a family jar, he usually ateen famille, and found in biting table-speeches, as common people do in winter and in famine, a sharper zest for food. Quarrelling, of itself, strengthens and animates, as physicians can electrify themselves merely by whipping something.[212]

Laughable, and yet lamentable, was it that poor Liana, who was all day long to keep a prison, was always called out of it just for to-day,—this time into the carriage again, which was to set down the sad heart and the smiling face before nothing but bright palaces. She had to go with her parents to the Princess, and look as happy as they, who, on the melancholy road, regarded her as if she were to be envied. So does the heart which has been born not far from the throne never bleed, except behind the curtain, and never laugh but when it rises; just as these same distinguished ones were formerly executed only in secret. The Prince, who was ridiculously loud on the subject of his marriage; Bouverot, just returned from card-tables or privateering planks, whom Liana now, since the latest intelligences, could only endure with a shudder; and the Princess herself; who excused her previous absence from her on account of the distraction of preparing for the festival, and who very strangely jested at once about love and men,—only to a Liana who guessed so little, suffered so much, and endured so willingly, could all these beings and incidents seem anything but the most intolerable.

Ah, what was intolerable, but the iron unchangeableness of these connections, the fixedness of such an eternalmountain-snow? Not the greatness, but the indefiniteness, of pain; not the minotaur of the labyrinth, its cellar-frost, sharp-cornered rocks, and vaults, make the breast contract and the blood curdle therein, but the long night and winding of its egress. Even under bodily maladies, therefore, unwonted new ones, whose last moment stretches away beyond our power of prediction, appear to us more ominous and oppressive than recurring ones, which, as neighboring frontier-enemies, are ever attacking us, and find us in arms.

Thus stood the dumb Liana in a cloud, when the exulting Rabette, with a bosom full of old joys and new hope, came running into the house,—that sister of the holy youth who had been torn away from her, that confederate of such glorious days. She was honorably received, and constantly attended by a guard of honor,—the Minister's lady,—because she might, indeed, as likely be an ambassadress of the Count as an electress of her son. The cunning girl sought to snatch some solitary moments with Liana by boldly begging for her company to Blumenbühl. The company was granted, and even that of the mother freely offered, into the bargain. Liana led the way to Blumenbühl over the still-blooming churchyard of buried days. What a torrent of tears struggled upward in her breast when she parted from the still happy Rabette!Shehad innocently left to the house one of the greatest apples of discord for the evening meal which the Minister had ever plucked for his fruit-dish with his apple-gatherer. Therefore he supped againen famille. That is to say, a silly word had escaped Rabette about the Sunday's meeting at Lilar. "Of that," said Froulay, in a very friendly manner, "thou hast not made one word of remark, daughter." "I did to my mother immediately,"she replied, too fast. "I should be glad, too, to take an interest in thy amusements," said he, saving up his fury. In the pleasantest mood imaginable did this raftsman of so many tears and hewn-down blossoming branches, which he let float down thereupon, take his seat at the supper-table. He first asked servants and family for his auxiliary ear. Thereupon he passed over to the French, although the plate-exchangers found a rough translation thereof for themselves, aversio interlinearis, on his face, by way of giving notice that the distinguished Count had been there, and had inquired after mother and daughter. "With good right he asked for you both," continued the moral glacier, who loved to cool his warm food. "You are conspired, as I heard again to-day, to keep silence towards me; but why, then, shall I still trust you?" He hated from his heart every lie which he did not utter himself; so he seriously regarded himself as moral, disinterested, and gentle, merely for this reason, that he inexorably insisted upon all this in the case of others. With an abundant supply of the stinging nettles of persiflage,—the botanical ones also come forward best in cold and stony soil,—he covered over all his opening and closing lobster-claws, as we keep brook-crabs in nettles, and took first his tender child between the claws. Her soft, submissive smile he took for contempt and wickedness. How comes this soft one intelligibly by his paternal name, unless one assumes the old hypothesis, that children are usually most like that for which the pregnant mother vainly longed, which in this case was a soft spouse? Then he assailed, but more vehemently, the mother, in order by his mistrust to set her at variance with his daughter; yes, in order, perhaps, to torment the latter, by means of her mother's sufferings,into childlike sacrifices and resolutions. He very freely declared himself—for the egotist finds the most egotists, as love and Liana find only love, and no self-love—against the egotism around and beside him, and concealed not how very cordially he cursed them both for female egotists (as the old heathen did the Christians for atheists). The Minister's lady, accustomed to live with the Minister in no wedlock so little as in that of souls,—as Voltaire defines friendship,—said merely to Liana, "For whom do I suffer so?" "Ah, I know," she answered, meekly. And so he dismissed both full of the deepest sorrows, and thought afterward of his business matters.

This general distress was increased by something which should have lessened it. The Minister was vexed that he had daily, in the midst of his wrath, to consult the taste of the women upon his—exterior. He wanted, at the marriage festival,—for the sake of his beloved,—to be a true bird of paradise, a Paradeur, aVénus a belles fesses.[213]Of old he had loved to act the double part of statesman and courtier, and would fain, by way of monopolizing pride and vanity, grow into a Diogenes-Aristippus. Something of this, however, was not vanity; but that tormenting spirit of the male sex, the spirit of order and orthodoxy, would not go out of him. He was a man who would flourish against his very livery the clothes-switch wherewith the servant had let a few particles of dust settle on the state coat; still more dangerous was it—because he sat between two looking-glasses, the frizzling-glass and the large mirror in the stove-screen—to lay the dust rightly on his own wool; and hardest of all was it for him to be satisfied with thefixingof his children. Liana, as artist, had now tosuggest the proper color of a new surtout.Sachets, or smelling-bags, he directed to be filled, and with them his pockets; and a musk-plant pot placed in his window, not because he wished to use the leaves for perfume (that he expected of his fingers), but because he wished to anoint his fingers by rubbing the leaves together. Patent pomatum for the hands, and English pressed ornamental paper also for the same (when they wished to use abillet-douxpen), and other knickknacks, excited less attention than the snuff which he procured for himself; not, however, for his nose, but for his lips, in order to rub them red. In fact, he would have rendered himself quite ridiculous in the eyes of many a merry blade, if such a one had seen him draw privately out of his souvenir the hair-tweezers, and with them the hair out of his eyebrows, just where the saddle of life, as upon a horse's back, had worn it white; and only the Minister himself could look serious during the process, when he sat before the looking-glass, smiling through all the finest ways of smiling,—the best one he caught and kept,—or when he tried the most graceful modes of throwing one's self on the sofa,—how often he had to practise this!—and finally, in short, through all his operations upon himself.

Fortunately for the mother, the good Lector came; from the hand of this old friend she had so often taken, if not a Jacob's ladder, yet a mining-ladder, upon which to climb out of the abyss; hopefully she now laid before him all her trouble. He promised some help, upon the condition of speaking with Liana alone in her chamber. He went to her and declared tenderly his knowledge and her situation.

How did the childlike maiden blush at the sharp day-beamswhich smote the scented night-violet of her love! But the friend of her childhood spoke softly to this smitten heart, and of his equal love for her and her friend; of the temperament of her father, and of the necessity of considerate measures; and said the best was to make him a sacred vow that she would yield to her parent's wish of her strictly avoiding the Count, only until he had received from his father, to whom he himself, as attendant of the son, had long been obliged to communicate intelligence and inquiries about the new connection, the yes or no in respect to it; if it were "no,"—which he would not answer for,—then Albano must solve the riddle; if it were "yes," he himself would stand security for a second on the part of her parents; at the same time, however, he must lay claim to her profoundest silence toward them in relation to his inquiries, whereby they might perhaps find themselves compromitted. Thereby he rooted himself only the more deeply in her confidence.

She asked, trembling, how long the answer would tarry? "Six, eight, eleven days after the nuptials at most!" said he, reckoning. Yes, good Augusti! "Ah! we are all suffering, indeed," said she, and added, confidentially, and out of a weeping breast: "But is he well?" "He is diligent," was the reply.

So he brought her, burdened with two secrets, and for the present consenting to an interim-separation, back to her mother; but she bestowed only upon the Lector the reward of a friendly look. He desired, meantime,—after his Carthusian manner,—no other reward than the most good-natured silence toward the Minister on the subject of his interference, since the latter might hold his deserts in this connection much greater than they were.

The eight days' improvement and abstinence was announced to the Minister. He believed, however,—keeping in reserve a mistrust towards his lady,—that he could carry the war farther into the enemy's country with his own weapons; nevertheless, he contented himself, at the same time, with the new respite and Liana's disincarceration, for the sake of driving his daughter before him to his beloved at the nuptial festival, blooming and healthy as a sparkling pea-hen.

Roquairol at this moment came back, and ushered into the house a cloud or two full of beautiful, bright morning redness. He delivered to his father tidings and greetings from the Princess. To Liana he brought the echo of that beloved voice, which had once said to her heaven: "Let it be!"—ah! the last melody among the discords of the unharmonious time! He guessed easily—for he learned little from his mother, who neglected him, and nothing from her daughter—how all stood. When he was actually on the point of slipping Albano's letter to her, in the twilight of evening, into her work-bag, and she said, with an ah! of love, "No, it is against my word,—but at some future time, Charles!"—then he saw, as he expressed it, "with crying indignation, his sister, in Charon's open boat, sailing into the Tartarus of all sorrows." About his friend he thought less than of his sister. The friendly, flattering Minister—he presented, as a proof of it, a valuable saddle to the Captain—informed him of Rabette's visit, and gave hints about betrothment and the like. Charles said, boldly: "He postponed every thought of his own happiness, so long as his dear sister saw none before her." By way of drawing the old gentleman again into more interest for Liana, he suggested to him a romantic invention for themarriage festival, which Froulay did not dream of, when he already stood quite close to it; namely, Idoine (the sister of the bride) was strikingly like Liana. The Princess loved her inexpressibly, but saw her only seldom, because on account of her strong character, which once refused a royal marriage, she lived in a village built and governed by herself, in a courtly exile from court. He now proposed to his father the poetic question, whether, on the illumination night, Liana might not for a few minutes, in the dream-temple, which was entirely suited to this beautiful illusion, delight the Princess with the image of her beloved sister.

Whether it was that love toward the Princess made the Minister bolder, or he was intoxicated by the desire of brilliantly introducing Liana to her office of court-lady; suffice it, he found in the idea good sense. If anything supplied tobacco for the calumet of theex partepeace which he had made with his son, it was this theatrical part. He hastened immediately to the Prince and the Princess with the prayer for his permission and her sympathy; and then, when he had secured both, he hastened on to his Orestes, Bouverot, and said: "Il m'est venu une idée tres singulière qui peut-être l'est trop; cependant le prince l'a approuvée," etc.,—and finally—for he must not forget her either—to Liana.

The Captain had already sought to persuade her beforehand. The mother opposed the dramatic imitation from self-respect, and Liana from humility; such a representation seemed to her a piece of presumption. But at last she gave in, simply because the sisterly love of the Princess had seemed to her so great and unattainable, just as if she did not cherish a similar sentiment in her own heart; thus she always regarded only the imagein the mirror, not herself, as beautiful; just as the astronomer thinks the same evening, with its red splendors and night shadows, more sublime and enchanting, when he finds it in the moon, than when he stands in the midst of it on the earth. Perhaps, too, there entered another element of secret sweetness into Liana's love for the Prince's bride, namely, a step-daughter's affection; because she should once have been the bride of the Knight Gaspard. Women regard relationship more than we; hence, too, their ancestral pride is always several ancestors older than ours.

Thus, then, did she make ready her oppressed heart for the light plays of the shining festival, which the coming Cycles are to present on the New-Year's holiday, as it were, of a new Jubilee.

Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

FOOTNOTES:[192]This is Jean Paul's own image.—Tr.[193]That is, of course, some lights of hope.—Tr.[194]A German or Suabian dance.—Tr.[195]His Moral Treatises, Vol. II. p. 96.[196]The Germans call the dash thestroke of thought. Here it implies an emphatic pause, as much as to say, "What do you think is coming?"—Tr.[197]At the Prince's marriage.[198]With the Egyptians the enchanters were only learned men; with him the learned women were enchantresses.[199]Mémoires secrets sur les Règnes de Louis XIV., etc. Par Duclos. Tom. I.[200]It is well known that a cut is made in a fowl left whole as a sign that it has been upon the Prince's table, so that it may not be set on again, but otherwise enjoyed.[201]In German,Schutz- und Stich-blatt,—literally, a plate to defend the hand in parrying and thrusting,—Blatt, meaningleaf(of paper) also, conveys apunnot easily translated.—Tr.[202]The blind-passenger in the German stage-coach corresponds to ourdead-headin stage or steamboat.—Tr.[203]See Klockenbring's collected Essays.[204](In German,Spring-wurzel.) The juice of some plant (perhaps Devil's-milk) highly and quickly corrosive.—Tr.[205]News by hand.—Tr.[206]The King had todamer, or make a dame of an unmarried maiden of rank, before she could go to Versailles to court.[207]Not so miserable perhaps as a French mangling the translator remembers to have seen.—Tr.[208]He refers to the letter he had left on Liana's table, and which she had shown to her mother.—Tr.[209]Fistin the original.—Tr.[210]I.e. as in a wine-press.—Tr.[211]Alluding to the horned hat once worn by graduated printers' apprentices.—Tr.[212]Beseke discovered it. See "On the Elemental Fire," by him, 1786.[213]Venus with beautiful thighs.—Tr.

[192]This is Jean Paul's own image.—Tr.

[193]That is, of course, some lights of hope.—Tr.

[194]A German or Suabian dance.—Tr.

[195]His Moral Treatises, Vol. II. p. 96.

[196]The Germans call the dash thestroke of thought. Here it implies an emphatic pause, as much as to say, "What do you think is coming?"—Tr.

[197]At the Prince's marriage.

[198]With the Egyptians the enchanters were only learned men; with him the learned women were enchantresses.

[199]Mémoires secrets sur les Règnes de Louis XIV., etc. Par Duclos. Tom. I.

[200]It is well known that a cut is made in a fowl left whole as a sign that it has been upon the Prince's table, so that it may not be set on again, but otherwise enjoyed.

[201]In German,Schutz- und Stich-blatt,—literally, a plate to defend the hand in parrying and thrusting,—Blatt, meaningleaf(of paper) also, conveys apunnot easily translated.—Tr.

[202]The blind-passenger in the German stage-coach corresponds to ourdead-headin stage or steamboat.—Tr.

[203]See Klockenbring's collected Essays.

[204](In German,Spring-wurzel.) The juice of some plant (perhaps Devil's-milk) highly and quickly corrosive.—Tr.

[205]News by hand.—Tr.

[206]The King had todamer, or make a dame of an unmarried maiden of rank, before she could go to Versailles to court.

[207]Not so miserable perhaps as a French mangling the translator remembers to have seen.—Tr.

[208]He refers to the letter he had left on Liana's table, and which she had shown to her mother.—Tr.

[209]Fistin the original.—Tr.

[210]I.e. as in a wine-press.—Tr.

[211]Alluding to the horned hat once worn by graduated printers' apprentices.—Tr.

[212]Beseke discovered it. See "On the Elemental Fire," by him, 1786.

[213]Venus with beautiful thighs.—Tr.

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