FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[120]At the canonization of a saint, theDevilwas heard byattorney, in the shape of objections to the act. Jean Paul, with a slight variation of the sense of the old title, hints a converse process in Roquairol's case, making the better angel show cause why sentence ofdamnationshould not be absolutely pronounced against him.—Tr.[121]Here began Jean Paul's second volume of the Titan.—Tr.[122]Ottar of Roses.—Tr.[123]The above description of Roquairol reminds one of a GermanSinn-spruchon sensuality, from the Persian:—"Make his reason serve his passions,That is what man never should;To the Devil's kitchen, angelsNever carry wood."[124]Simon's Christian Antiquities. Mursinna, &c., p. 143.[125]Branch candlestick.—Tr.[126]Schlendrians,—of a slow fellow,—corresponding to ourold fogy.—Tr.[127]Or Black-book.—Tr.[128]Allusion to the mode of angling for frogs with a bit of red cloth.[129]Spazier-sitzerinnen,—notgängerinnen, i. e. street-walkers.—Tr.[130]Zwingermeans, originally, the narrow space between town-walls and town.—Tr.[131]Literally, press something before his brow.—Tr.[132]Overseer, a Lacedæmonian officer.—Tr.[133]Strangers who are frozen are placed by the monks, unburied, beside each other, each leaning on the next one's breast.[134]Linda de Romeiro.

[120]At the canonization of a saint, theDevilwas heard byattorney, in the shape of objections to the act. Jean Paul, with a slight variation of the sense of the old title, hints a converse process in Roquairol's case, making the better angel show cause why sentence ofdamnationshould not be absolutely pronounced against him.—Tr.

[121]Here began Jean Paul's second volume of the Titan.—Tr.

[122]Ottar of Roses.—Tr.

[123]The above description of Roquairol reminds one of a GermanSinn-spruchon sensuality, from the Persian:—"Make his reason serve his passions,That is what man never should;To the Devil's kitchen, angelsNever carry wood."

[123]The above description of Roquairol reminds one of a GermanSinn-spruchon sensuality, from the Persian:—

"Make his reason serve his passions,That is what man never should;To the Devil's kitchen, angelsNever carry wood."

[124]Simon's Christian Antiquities. Mursinna, &c., p. 143.

[125]Branch candlestick.—Tr.

[126]Schlendrians,—of a slow fellow,—corresponding to ourold fogy.—Tr.

[127]Or Black-book.—Tr.

[128]Allusion to the mode of angling for frogs with a bit of red cloth.

[129]Spazier-sitzerinnen,—notgängerinnen, i. e. street-walkers.—Tr.

[130]Zwingermeans, originally, the narrow space between town-walls and town.—Tr.

[131]Literally, press something before his brow.—Tr.

[132]Overseer, a Lacedæmonian officer.—Tr.

[133]Strangers who are frozen are placed by the monks, unburied, beside each other, each leaning on the next one's breast.

[134]Linda de Romeiro.

Embroidery.—Anglaise.—Cereus Serpens.—Musical Fantasies.

JJoyfully did Roquairol, on the first evening when he knew his father had gone a journey, bear to his friend the invitation to go with him to his mother. Albano blushed charmingly for the first time, at the thought of that fiery night which had wrung from him the oldest mystery; for hitherto neither of them, in the common hours of life, had retouched the sacred subject. Only the Captain could easily and willingly speak of Linda as well as of every other loss.

Joyfully did Roquairol, on the first evening when he knew his father had gone a journey, bear to his friend the invitation to go with him to his mother. Albano blushed charmingly for the first time, at the thought of that fiery night which had wrung from him the oldest mystery; for hitherto neither of them, in the common hours of life, had retouched the sacred subject. Only the Captain could easily and willingly speak of Linda as well as of every other loss.

Liana always beheld her brother—the creator and ruling spirit of her softest hours—with the heartiest joy, although he generally wanted to get something when he came; for joy she flew to meet him, with the book in her hand which she had been reading as her mother embroidered. She and her mother had spent the whole day pleasantly and alone, alternately relieving each other at embroidering and reading; as often as the Minister travelled, they were at once free from discord and from the visiting Charivari. With what emotion did Albano recognize the eastern chamber, from which he had seen, forthe first time, the dear maiden, only as a blind one, standing in the distance between watery columns! The good Liana received him more unconstrainedly than he could meet her, after Charles's initiation into his wishes. What a paradisiacal mingling of unaffected shyness and overflowing friendliness, stillness and fire, of bashfulness and grace of movement, of playful kindness, of silent consciousness! Therefore belongs to her the magnificent surname of Virgil, the maidenly. In our days of female Jordan-almonds, academical, strong-minded women, of hop-dances and double-quick-march steps in the flat-shoe, the Virgilian title is not often called for. Only for ten years (reckoning from the fourteenth) can I give it to a maiden; afterward she becomes more manneristic. Such a graceful being is usually at once thirteen and seventeen years old.

Why wast thou so bewitchingly unembarrassed, tender Liana! excepting because thou, like the Bourignon, didst not once know what was to be avoided, and because thy holy guilelessness excluded the suspicious spying out of remote designs, the bending of the ear toward the ground to listen for an approaching foe, and all coquettish manifestoes and warlike preparations? Men were as yet to thee commanding fathers and brothers; and therefore didst thou lift upon them, not yetproudly, but soaffectionately, that true pair of eyes!

And with this good-natured look, and with her smile,—whose continuance is often, onmen'sfaces, but not onmaidens', the title-vignette of falsehood,—she received our noble youth, but not him alone.

She seated herself at the embroidery-frame; and the mother soon launched the Count out into the cool, high sea of general conversation, into which only occasionallythe son threw up a green, warm island. Alban looked on to see how Liana made her mosaic flower-pieces grow; how the little white hand lay on the black satin ground (Froulay'sthoraxis to wear the flowers on his birthday), and how her pure brow, over which the curly hair transparently waved, bent forward, and how her face, when she spoke, or when she looked after new colors of silk, lifted itself up, animated with the higher glow of industry in the eye and on the cheek. Charles sometimes hastily stretched out his hand towards her. She willingly reached hers across; he laid it between his two, and turned it over, looked into the palm, pressed it with both hands, and the brother and sister smiled upon each other affectionately. And each time Albano turned from his conversation with the mother, and true-heartedly smiled with them. But poor hero! It is of itself a Herculean labor to sit idly by where fine work is going on, such as embroidery, miniature painting, &c.; but above all, with a spirit like thine, which has so many sails, together with a couple of storms in behind, to lie inactively at anchor beside the embroidery-frame, and not to be, say, a spinning Hercules (that were easy), but only one that sees spinning,—and that, too, in the presence of a great spring and sunset out of doors,—and, in addition to all this, in the company of a mother, so chary of her words (in fact, before any mother, it is of itself an impossibility to introduce an edifying conversation with the daughter),—these are sore things.

He looked down sharply at the embroidered Flora. "Nothing pains me so much," said he,—for he always philosophized, and everything useless on the earth troubled him grievously,—"as that so many thousand artificial ornaments should be created in vain in the world, withouta single eye ever meeting and enjoying them. It will touch me very nearly if this green leaflet here is not especially observed." With the same sorrow over fruitless, unenjoyed plantings of labor, he often shut his eyes upon wall-paper foliage, upon worked flowers, upon architectural decorations. Liana might have taken it as a painter's censure of the overladen stitch-garden, which, merely out of love for her father, she was sowing so full,—for Froulay, born in the days when they still trimmed the gold-lace with clothes, rather than the reverse, was fond of buttoning a little silk herbary round his body,—but she only smiled, and said, "Well, the little leaf has surely escaped that evil destiny: itisobserved."

"What matters a thing's being forgotten and useless?" said Roquairol, taking up the word, full of indifference to the Lector, who was just entering, and full of indifference to the opinion of his mother, to whom, as well as to his father, only the entreaties of his sister sometimes made him submissive. "Enough that a thingis. The birds sing and the stars move in majesty over the wildernesses, and no man sees the splendor. In fact, everywhere, in and out of man, more passes unseen than seen. Nature draws out of endless seas, and without exhausting them; we, too, are a nature, and should draw and pour out, and not be always anxiously reckoning upon the profit, for watering purposes, of every transient shower and rainbow. Just keep on embroidering, sister!" he concluded, ironically.

"The Princess comes to-day!" said the Lector, and, delighted with the prospect, Liana kissed her mother's hand. She looked up often and confidentially from her embroidery at the courtier, who seemed to be very intimate, but who, as a refined man, was full as muchrespected and as respectful as if he were there for the first time.

The announcement of the Princess set the Captain into a charming state of easy good-humor; a female part was to him as necessary for society as to the French for an opera, and the presence of a lady helped him as much in teaching, as the absence of a button did Kant.[135]By way of drawing his sister off from the flowers, he removed the red veil from a statue on the card-table, and threw it, like a little red dawn, over the lilies on the face of the embroideress; just then the door opened and Julienne entered. Liana, trying to remove the veil, in her haste to welcome her, entangled herself in the little red dawn. Albano mechanically reached out to her his hand to relieve her of the veil, and she gave it to him, and a dear, full look besides. O how his enraptured eye shone!

Julienne brought with her a train ofjeux d'esprit. The Captain, who, like a pyrotechnist, could give his fire all forms and colors, reinforced her with his; and his sister sowed, as it were, the flowers with which the zephyrettes of raillery could play. Julienne almost said no to yes, and yes to no; only toward the Minister's lady was she serious and submissive,—a sign that, on her arena of disputation, among the grains of sand particles of golden sand still lay, whereas for philosophers the arena is the prize and the ground,—at once the battle-field, theChamp de Mars, and theChamps Elysées. Upon the Count she fixed her passionate gaze as boldly as only princesses may venture to and love to; and when he returned the glanceof her brown eye, she cast it down; but she remembered him, from her old visit in Blumenbühl, and inquired after his friends. He now entered with pleasure upon something that was as ardent as his own soul,—encomiums. It is against the finest politeness to praise or blame persons with warmth,—things one may. While he portrayed with grateful remembrance his sister Rabette, Julienne became so earnestly and deeply absorbed in his eye, that she started, and asked the Lector about the steps of theAnglaisewhich he had led at the masquerade. When he had done his best to give an idea of it, she said she had not understood a word of what he had been saying; one must, after all, execute it.

And herewith I suddenly introduce my fair readers in a body to a domestic ball of two couples. See the two sisters-in-soul, side by side, like two wings ononedove, harmoniously flutter up and down. Albano had expected Julienne would form a contrast, by nimble and sprightly fluttering, to the still, hovering movement of her friend; but both undulated lightly, like waves, by and through each other, and there was not a motion too much nor too swift.

Hence I have so often wished that maidens might always dance exactly like the Graces and the Hours,—that is to say, only with one another, not with us gentlemen. The present union of the female wave-line with the masculine swallow-like zigzag, as well in dress as in motion, does not remarkably beautify the dance.

Liana assumed a new ethereal form, somewhat as an angel while flying back into heaven lays aside his graceful earthly one. The dancing-floor is to woman's beauty what the horse's back is to ours; on both the mutual enchantment unfolds itself, and only a rider can match adancing maiden. Fortunate Albano! thou who hardly dar'st take the finger-points of Liana's offered hand in thine! thou gettest enough. And only look at this friendly maiden, whose eyes and lips Charis so smilingly brightens for the dance, and who yet, on the other hand, appears so touchingly, because she is a little pale! How different from those capricious or inflexible step-sisters, who, with half a Cato of Utica on the wrinkled or tightly stretched face, hop, fall back, and slip round. Julienne flies joyfully to and fro; and it is hard to say before whose eyes she loves to flutter best, Liana's or Albano's.

When it was done, Julienne wanted to begin over again. Liana looked at her mother, and immediately begged her friend rather for a cooling off. A mere pretext! A female friend loves to be alone with a female friend; the two loved each other before people only with a veil upon their hearts, and longed for the dark arbor where it might fall off. Liana had a real loving impatience, till she could, with her duplicate-soul, her twin-heart, snatch moments free from witnesses in the garden of evening and May. They came back changed and full of tender seriousness. The lovely beings were perhaps as like each other in their innermost souls and in stillness as in the dance, and more so than they seemed.

And thus passed with our youth a fair-starred evening! Pardon him, however, that he grasped and pressed this nosegay so close as to feel some of the thorns. His heart, whose love grew painfully near another, could not help finding this other, where there was no sign of response, at oncehigherandfartheroff. Her love was love of man,—her smile was meant for every kind eye,—she was so cheerful. In Lilar she easily passed intoemotion and general contemplations; not so here,—of course she would look right sympathetically upon her wildly loving brother, who, since that confession-night, had twined himself as if with oak-roots around the darling; but her half-blind love for the brother might indeed be only, in the deceiving light of reflection, shining uponhisfriend. All this the modest one said to himself. But what he had enjoyed in full measure of ecstasy was the increasing, clear, tender, steadfast love of his soul's-brother.

As to Liana's secret inclination and Zesara's prospects I shall never once institute any conjectures, although I might erase them again before printing. I remember what came of it, when I and others, on a former occasion, covered over with our hands Hafenreffer's official reports upon matters of consequence, and undertook to unfold at length, by pure fancy, how things might have gone on;—it was of no use! And naturally enough; for women and Spanish houses have, to begin with, manydoorsand fewwindows, and it is easier togetinto their hearts than tolookinto them. Particularly maidens', I mean; since women, physiognomically and morally, are more strongly marked and boldly developed, I would rather undertake to guess at and so portray ten mothers than two daughters. The bodily portrait-painters make the same complaint.

Whoever observes the influence of night, will find that the doubts and anxieties which he had contracted the evening previous about the heroine of his life it has, for the most part, completely killed by the time it gets to be towards morning. Albano, in the spring morning, openedhis eyes upon life as in a triumphal car, and the fresh steeds stamped before it, and he could only let them have the reins.

He alighted with his friend at Liana's after a few years, that is, days; the Minister had not yet come back. Heavens! how new and bloomingly young was her form, and yet how unchanged her demeanor! Why is it, thought he, that I can get only her motions, not all her features, by heart? Why can I not imprint this face, even to the least smile, like a holy antique, cleanly and deeply upon my brain, that so it may float before me in eternal presence? For this reason, my dear: young and beautiful forms are the very ones which are hard for the memory as for the pencil; and coarse, old, masculine ones easier for both. Again he filled himself with joys and sighs by looking at her,—and these were increased by the nearness of the garden, wherein June with his evening splendor lay encamped. O, if onlyonemoment could come to him, in which his whole soul might speak its inspiration! Out of doors there lay the young, fiery spring, basking, like an Antinoüs, in the garden, and the moon, impatient for the fair June-night, stood already under the gate of the east, and found the living day and the lingering sun still in the field. But the mother refused to the asking look of Liana the sight of sunset,—"on account of the unwholesomeSerein."[136]Albano, with his heart full of manly blood, thought this maternal barrier around a child's health very small.

The hour for shutting gates upon to-day's Eden would have struck for him the next minute, had it not been for the Captain and theCereus serpens.

The Captain came running down from the Italian roof, and announced that the Cereus would bloom this evening at ten o'clock, the gardener said, and he should stay there. "And thou too," he said to Albano. All that the double limitations of forbearing tenderness toward sister and friend would allow he lovingly set at stake, for the sake of pleasing the latter. Liana herself begged him to wait for the blooming; she was so delighted to find it was so near! Her soul hung upon flowers, like bees and dew. Already had her friend, the pious Spener, who fixed an enraptured eye upon these living arabesques of God's throne, made her a friend to these mute, ever-sleeping children of the Infinite; but still more had her own maidenly and her suffering heart done it. Have you never met tender, female souls, into whose blossoming time fate had thrown cold clouds, and who now, like Rousseau, sought other flowers than those of joy, and who wearied themselves with stooping, in valleys and on rocks, to gather and to forget, and to fly from the deadPomonato the youngFlora? The thorough-bass and Latin, wherewithHermesproposes to divert maidens, must yield here to the broad, variegated hieroglyphics of Nature, the rich study of Botany.

A nameless tenderness for Liana came into Albano's soul at the little four-seated supper-table; it seemed to him as if he were now nearer to her, and a relative; and yet he comprehended not his kinswoman, when, from every serious mood into which her mother sank, she strove to win her back with pleasantries. Out of doors the nightingales were calling man into the lovely night; and no one pined more to be abroad than he.

For the soul's eyes, theblueof heaven is what thegreenof earth is to the bodily eyes, namely, an inward strengthening.When Zesara, at length, came free and clear out of the fetters of the room,—out of this spiritual house-arrest into the free realm of heaven, and beneath all the stars and on the magic Olympus of statues, at which he had so often longingly looked up,—then did his forcibly contracted breast elastically expand: how the constellations of life moved to meet each other in brighter forms; how did spring and night sit enthroned!

The old gardener, who, simply from a grateful attachment to "the good-souled, condescending Fräulein," had, with rare pains, forced these early blossoms from theCereus serpens, stood up there already, apparently as an observer of the flowers, but in fact as an expectant of the greatest praise, with a brown, indented, pitted, and serious face, which did not challenge praise with a single smile.

Liana thanked the gardener before she came to the blossoms; then she praised them and his pains. The old man merely waited for every other one of the company to be astonished also; then he went drowsily off to bed, with a firm faith that Liana would to-morrow remember him in such a way as to make him contented.

The exotic beads of nectar-fragrance which hung in five white calyxes, crowned as it were with brown leaf-work, seized the fancy. The odors from the spring of a hotter clime drew it away into remote dreams. Liana only stroked with a soft finger, as one glides over eyelids, the little incense-vases, without touching with predatory hand the full little garden of tender stamina which crowded together in the cup. "How lovely, how very tender!" said she, with childlike happiness. "What a cluster of five little evening stars! Why come they only by night,—the dear, shy little flowers?" Charles seemedto be on the point of breaking one. "O let it live!" she begged; "to-morrow they will all have died of themselves. Charles! thus does so much else fade," she added, in a lower tone. "Everything!" said he, sharply. But the mother, against Liana's will, had heard it. "Such death-thoughts," said she, "I love not in youth; they lame its wings." "And then," replied Liana, with a maiden-like turning of the tables, "it just stays with us, that's all, like the crane in Kleist's fable, whose wings they broke, so that he could not travel with the rest into the warm land."

This gay, motley veil of deep earnestness was not transparent enough for our friend. But by and by the good maiden took pains to look just as the careful mother wished. The benumbing lily which the earth wears on her breast, the moon; and the whole dazzling Pantheon of the starry heavens; and the city, with its pierced-work of night-lights; and the high, majestic, dark avenues; and on meadows and brooks the milk-white lunar-silver, wherewith the earth spun itself into an evening-star; and the nightingales singing out of distant gardens;—did not all this stir omnipotently every heart, till it would fain confess with tears its longing? And the softest heart of all which beat at this moment below the stars, could it have succeeded in wholly veiling itself? Almost! She had accustomed herself, before her mother, to dry away with her eye, so to speak, the tear, before it grew big enough to fall.

Singular was her appearance, the next minute, to the Count. The mother was speaking with her son; Liana stood, far from the latter, with face turned half aside, and a little discolored by the moon, near a white statue of the holy Virgin, and looking out into the night. All at onceshe looked upon him and smiled, just as if a living being had appeared to her in the abyss of ether, and her lip would speak. Earthly form more exalted and touching had never before met his eyes; the balustrade by which he held swayed to and fro (but it was he himself who shook it), and his whole soul cried, "To-day, now, I love the heavenly one with the highest, the deepest love I have felt." So he also said lately, and so will he say oftener: can man, with the innumerable waves of love, institute measurements of altitude, and point to that one which has mounted the highest? Thus does man, whereever he may be standing, always imagine himself standing in the centre of heaven.

Ah, at this moment he was again surprised, but it was with an "Ah!" Liana went to her mother, and whenshefelt in the hand of her darling a slight shudder, she importuned her to go out of the night-air, and would not give over till she left with her the magic spot.

The friends stayed behind. According to Albano's reckoning, it would not, of course, have been too much, if, in this frank time, wherein our holier thoughts, hidden by the common light of day, reveal themselves like stars, they had all lingered on the roof till toward morning. The two walked for a time up and down in silence. At last the incense-altar of the five flowers held them fast. Albano clasped accidentally the neighboring statue with both hands, and said: "On high places, one wants to throw something down,—even himself oftentimes; and I, too, would fain throw myself off into the world, into far-distant lands, as often as I gaze into the nightly redness yonder, and as often as I come under orangery-blossoms, as under these. Brother, how is it with thee? The heavens and the earth open out so broadly: why, then,must the spirit so creep into itself?" "Just so do I feel," said he; "and in the head, generally, has the spirit more room than in the heart." But here, by a delicate guess, he arrived, through agreeably circuitous routes, at the accidental discovery of the reason why his sister had hurried down so soon.

"Even to obstinacy," said he, "she pushes her care for her mother. The last time, when she observed that mother saw her grow pale under the dance, she immediately ceased. To me alone she shows her whole heart, and every drop of blood, and all innocent tears therein; especially does she believe something in respect to the future, which she anxiously conceals from mother." "She smiled to herself just before she went away," said Albano, and drew Charles's hand over his eyes, "as if she saw up there a being from the veiled world." "Didst thou too see that?" replied Charles. "And then did her lip stir? O friend, God knows what infatuates her; but this is certain, she firmly believes she is to die next year." Albano would not let him speak further. Too intensely excited, he pressed himself to his friend's breast; his heart beat wildly, and he said: "O brother, remain always my friend!"

They went down. In the apartment which adjoined Liana's they found her piano-forte open. Now that was just what the Count had missed. In passion—even in mere fire of the brain—one grasps not so much at the pen as at the string; and in that state alone does musical fantasying succeed better than poetic. Albano, thanking, meanwhile, the muse of sweet sounds that there were forty-four transitions,[137]seated himself at the keys, with the intention now to beat a musical fire-drum, and roarlike a storm into the still ashes, and drive out a clear, sparkling swarm of tones. He did it, too, and well enough, and better and better; but the instrument struggled, rebelled. It was built for a female hand, and would only speak in female tones, with lute-plaints, as a woman with a friend of her own sex.

Charles had never heard him play so, and was astonished at such fulness. But the reason was, the Lector was not there; before certain persons—and he was one of them—the playing hand freezes, so that one only labors and lumbers to and fro in a pair of leaden gloves; and, secondly, before a multitude it is easier playing than before one, because the latter stands definitely before the soul, the former floats vaguely. And, besides all that, blessed Albano, thou knowest who hears thee. The morning air of hope flutters around thee in tones,—the wild life of youth stalks with vigorous limbs and loud strides up and down before thee,—the moonlight, undesecrated by any gross earthly light, hallows the sounding apartment. Liana's last songs lie open before thee, and the advancing moonshine will let thee read them soon,—and the nightingale in the mother's neighboring chamber contends with thy tones, as if summoned by the Tuba to the field.

Liana came in with her mother, not till late, because the heavy din of tones had something in it hard and painful to both. He could see the two sitting sidewise at the lower window, and how Liana held her mother's hand. Charles, after his manner, walked up and down with long steps, and sometimes stood still near him. Albano, in this nearness of the still soul, soon came out of the wilderness of harmony into simple moonlit passages, where only a few tones moved delicately like graces, and quite aslightly linked as they. The artistical hurly-burly of unharmoniousignes fatuiis only the forerunner of the melodious Charites; and these alone insinuate themselves into the softer souls. It seemed to him—the illusion was complete—as if he were speaking aloud with Liana; and when the tones, like lovers, went on ever repeating the same thing from heartiness and zest, did he not mean Liana, and say to her, "How I love thee! O how I love thee!" Did he not ask her, "Why mournest thou? why weepest thou?" And did he not say to her, "Look into this mute heart, and fly not from it, O pure, innocent one, my own!"

How did the good youth blush, when suddenly the caressing friend placed his hands overhisfriend's eyes, which hitherto, unseen in the darkness, had been overflowing for love! Charles stepped warmly to his sister, and she, of her own accord, took his hand and said words of love. Then Albano took refuge in the murmuring wilderness of sounds, until his eyes were dried enough for the leave-taking by lamp-light; by slow degrees he let the cradle of our heart cease rocking, and closed so mildly and faintly, and was silent for a little while, and then slowly rose. O, in this mute, young bosom lived every blessed thing which the most glorious love can bestow!

They parted seriously. No one spoke of the music. Liana seemed transfigured. Albano dared not, in this spirit-hour of the heart, with an eye which had so recently calmed itself, rest long upon her mild blue ones. Her deeply touched soul expressed itself, as maidens are wont, to her brother only, and that by a more ardent embrace. And from the holy youth she could not, in parting,conceal the tone and the look, which he will never forget.

That night he awoke often, and knew not what it was that so blissfully rocked his being. Ah! it was the tone whose echo rang through his slumber, and the dear eye which still looked upon him in his dreams.

FOOTNOTES:[135]He is said, in teaching, to have always looked at the spot on a student's coat where the button was gone; and was embarrassed when it was sewed on again.[136]The evening hour, which people in southern countries shun so much.[137]From one key to another.—Tr.

[135]He is said, in teaching, to have always looked at the spot on a student's coat where the button was gone; and was embarrassed when it was sewed on again.

[136]The evening hour, which people in southern countries shun so much.

[137]From one key to another.—Tr.

Froulay's Birthday and Projects.—Extra-Leaf.—Babette.—The Harmonica.—Night.—The pious Father.—The wondrous Stairway.—The Apparition.

HHappy Albano! thou wouldst not have remained so, hadst thou, on the birthday of the Minister, heard what he then proposed!

Happy Albano! thou wouldst not have remained so, hadst thou, on the birthday of the Minister, heard what he then proposed!

Already, for a considerable time, had Froulay been full of noticeable, stormy signs, and might any moment, one must needs fear, let the thunderbolt fly from him; that is to say, he was gay and mild. Thus, also, in the case of phlegmatic children, does great liveliness threaten an eruption of the chicken-pox. As he was a father and a despot,—(the Greeks had for both only the one word, despot,)—so was it expected of him, as connubial storm-maker,[138]that he would provide the usual storms and foul weather for his family. Connubial storm-material for the meretroublingof marriage can never be wanting, when one considers how little is required even for its dissolution; for instance, among theJews, merely that the woman scream too loud, burn the dinner, leave her shoes in the place for the man's, &c. Beside all this, there was much in the present case about which there was a good chance to thunder; e. g. Liana, upon whom one might visit the misdemeanor of the brother, because he obstinately stayed away and begged for no grace. One always loves to let his indignation loose upon wife, daughter, and son at once, and would rather be a land-rain than a transient shower; one child can more easily imbitter than sweeten a whole family.

But Froulay still continued the smiling John. Nay, did he not—I have the proofs—carry it so far, that when, on one occasion, his daughter, in taking leave of the Princess, fell upon her neck,—instead of representing to her, with flashing eyes, how one must only accept, not reciprocate, familiarities with superiors, and must take care not to forget one's self precisely then, whentheydo forget themselves,—and instead of sternly asking whether she had ever seen him, in his warmest love toward the Prince, offend againstthe Dehors,—instead, I say, of doing this, and hailing and storming the while, did he not merely break out that once into the fair words: "Child, thou art too affectionate toward thy distinguished friend; ask thy mother; she knows, too, what friendlyliaisonsare"?

Only Liana—although so often deceived by these calms—was full of unutterable hope and joy at the domestic peace, and believed in its permanence, especially as the paternal birthday was so near, that Olympiad and normal period upon which and by which the house reckoned so largely. During the whole year the Minister had been looking out for this day, in order, in the morning, when the congratulations came, not to forgetto make believe he had forgotten it, but to be astonished on the subject,—all owing to business, he said; and at evening, when the guests came,—on account of business he never dined, he said, to astonishthem. He was alternately the worshipper and image-breaker of etiquette, ministerial and opposition party thereof, as his vanity dictated.

Liana importuned her brother, till he promised to do something to please his father; he composed, for the purpose, a family-piece, in which he introduced the whole confession-night between himself and Albano, only he converted Albano into a sister. Liana gladly studied this part also for the birthday, although she had to deliver the blooming vest.

The Minister, contrary to expectation, accepted the vest, the Captain and his hand-bill for the evening's performance, graciously; for he was wont, on former occasions, like some other fathers, to growl the louder the more his children stroked him. He danced away like a Polack right merrily with his family, and stuck the rod[139]behind the fur. Nothing worse at this moment revolved in his head than the question, where it would be best to open the amateur theatre, whether in theSalon de Lectureor in theSalon des bains domestiques; for the two halls were entirely distinguished from one another, and from the other chambers, by their names.

The day came. Albano, whose invitation Charles had to extort, because the Minister, out of pride, hated his pride, brought with him, unfortunately, in his soul, the tone which Liana had given him the last time to carry home with him. His hope had hitherto lived upon thistone. O blame him not for it! The airy nothing of a sigh bears often a pastoral world or an orcus on its ephemeron's-wing. Everything weighty may, like a rock, be placed on a point, whereupon a child's finger can set it in rotation.

But the tone had died away. Liana knew no other way than that, in the visiting congregation,—of whose moral pneumatophobia,[140]after all, she was not aware in its full extent,—one should hide every religious emotion behind the church fan. Boxes, pit, and farthing gallery were, almost at the usual play-hour, set off and filled out with Gratulantes, all fit to be canons. The German gentleman was made particularly prominent by the rich and insolent ostentation of his circumstances. Of the visiting-company-lane it can, in passing, only be observed, that in it, as in the antiphlogistic system,oxygen[141]played the chief part, which, however, was given out less by the lungs than by the heart.

When the curtain rose, and Roquairol made that night of forgiveness and ecstasy pass by again in a still more glowing form than it had actually had; when this dreamy imitation seemed the first appearance of the actual reality, how hotly and deeply did he burn himself thereby into his friend's soul! (Good Albano! This art of being his ownrevenant, his own ghost, his mock- and mimic-self, and of counterfeiting the splendid edition of his own life, should have left thee smaller hopes!) The Count must needs, in this most grave society that ever sate around him, break out into an unseemly weeping. And why did Charles put Albano's words, of that memorable night, into the mouth of Liana, so bewitchingly interesting inher emotion, and thus make his love, wrought upon by so many charms, grow even to anguish?

The German gentleman himself gave to Liana, that white swan, floating, tinged with rosy redness, through the evening glow of Phœbus, several loud, and to the Count annoying signs of approbation. The Minister was chiefly glad that all this happened in his honor, and that the point of the last act was still going to throw a very special epigrammatic laurel-wreath on his crown.

He got the wreath. The pair of children were very favorably criticised by the Erlangen literary gazette[142]of spectators, and by the belles-lettres review, and covered over with crowns,—with noble martyrs' crowns. The German gentleman had and used the public right of ushering in the Coronation, and the Coronation-car. Base man! why should thy beetle's-eyes be permitted to creep gnawingly over the holy roses which emotion and sisterly love plants on Liana's cheeks? But how much gayer still was the old gentleman,—so much so that he flirted with the oldest ladies,—when he saw the knight bring out magnificently into full daylight his interest in Liana, not fantastically or sentimentally, but by still and steady advances and marked attention, by jokes and glances and sly addresses, and at last by something decisive! That is to say, the German gentleman drew the old man into a cabinet, and both came back out of it vehemently animated.

The lovely Liana, withdrawn into her own heart, fled from the upas-tree of the laurel away to her comforting mother. Liana had preserved, in the midst of the stormy mill-races of dailyassemblées, a low voice and a delicateear, and the tumult had driven her inward, and left her almost shy.

The fair soul seldom guessed anything, except a fair soul: she so easily divined her like; with such difficulty her counterpart. Bouverot's advances seemed to her the usual forward and side steps of manly courtesy; and his knightly celibacy did not allow her entirely to understand him. Do not the lilies of innocence bloom earlier than the roses of shame, as the purple color, in the beginning, only dyes pale, and not till afterward puts on the red glow, when it lies before the sun? She kept herself this evening near her mother, because she perceived in her an unwonted seriousness. When Froulay had taken off from his head the birthday garland, wherein were planted more thorns and stalks than flowers,—when he had taken off the crown of thorns, and stood in his night-cap amidst his family,—he addressed himself to the business whereupon he had been thinking all the evening. "My little dove," said he to his daughter, borrowing a good expression from the Bastile,[143]—"my little dove, leave me andGuillemettealone." He now laid bare his upper teeth by a characteristic grin, and said he had, as he hoped, something agreeable to communicate to her. "You know," he continued, "what I owe to the German gentleman." He meant not thanks, but money and consideration.

We love to dwell upon it as a matter of great praise in the family of the Quintii,[144]that they never possessed gold: I adduce—without arraying a thousand other families of whom the same is to be sworn—only Froulay's. Certain families, like antimony, have no chemical affinity whatever with that metal, however much they might wishit; certainly Froulay wished it: he looked very much to his interest (to nothing else), he willingly (although only in cases of collision) set conscience and honor aside; but he got no further than to great outlays and great projects, simply because he sought money, not as the end and aim of his ambition, but only as the means of ambition and enterprise. Even for some pictures which Bouverot had purchased for the Prince in Italy he still owed that individual the purchase-shilling which he had taken out of the treasury. By his bonds as if by circulars, he stood in widely-extended connections. He would gladly have transposed his marriage contract into a bond, and had, with his lady, at least that most intimate community—of goods; for, under present circumstances, divorce and bankruptcy stood in neighborly relations to each other; but, as was said, many men, with the best talons,—like the eagle of the Romish king,[145]—have nothing in them.

He continued: "Now, perhaps, thisgénewill cease. Have you hitherto made any observations upon him?" She shook her head. "I have," he replied, "for a long time, and such as were really consoling to me,—j'avais le nez bon quant à cela,—he has a real liking for my Liana."

The Minister's lady here could draw no inference, and begged him, with disguised astonishment, to come to theagreeablematter. Comically on his face did the show of friendship wrestle with the expectation that he should be under the necessity immediately of being exasperated. He replied: "Is notthisan agreeable matter? The knight means it in earnest. He wished now to be privatelyespoused to her; after three years he retires from the order, and her fortune is made.Vous êtes, je l'espere, pour cette fois, un peu sur mes interêts, ils sont les vôtres."

Her maternal heart, so suddenly and deeply wounded, wept, and could hardly be concealed. "Herr von Froulay!" said she, when she had composed herself a little; "I do not disguise my astonishment. Such a disparity in years, in tastes, in religion."[146]

"That is the knight's affair, not ours," he replied, refreshed by her angry confusedness, and, like the weather, in his coldness threw only fine, sharp snow, no hail. "As to Liana's heart, I beg you just to sound that." "O, that innocent heart? You are mocking!" "Posito!so much the more gladly will theinnocentheart reconcile itself to make her father's fortune, if she is not the greatest egotist. I should never love to constrain an obedient daughter." "N'epuiséz pas ce chapitre; mon cœur est en presse.It will cost her her life, which already hangs by such frail threads." This allusion always struck the fire of wrath from his flint. "Tant mieux," said he; "then it will never go further than an engagement! I had almost said—Sacre!and who is to blame for that? So it fares with me at the hands of the Captain too,—in the beginning my children promise everything, then they turn out nothing. But, madam," he said, swiftly and venomously collecting himself; and, instead of compressing his lips and teeth, merely pinching moderately the auditory organs of a sleeping lap-dog; "you alone indeed know, by your influence upon Liana, how to dress and redress everything. Perhaps she belongs to you by a still prior claim than to me. I am not then compromittedwith the knight. The advantages I detail no further." His breast was here already warmed under the vulture-skin of rage.

But the noble lady now indignantly rose, and said: "Herr von Froulay! hitherto I have not spoken of myself. Never will I counsel or countenance or consent to it,—I will do the opposite. Herr von Bouverot is not worthy of my Liana."

The Minister, during this speech, had several times unnecessarily snapped-to the snuffers over the wax candles, and only beheaded the point of the flame; the fixed air of wrath now colored the roses of his lips (as the chemical does botanical ones) blue. "Bon!" he replied, "I travel; you can reflect on the subject,—but I give my word of honor, that I never consent to any other match; and though it were (whereupon he looked at the lady ironically) still more considerable[147]than the one just projected,—either the maiden obeys or she suffers,decidéz!Mais je me fie à l'amour que vous portéz au pere et à la fille; vous nous rendréz tous assêz contens." And then he went forth, not like a tempest, but like a rainbow, which he manufactured out of the eighth color only, namely, the black, and that with his eyebrows.

After some days of resentment with the mother and the daughter, he rode, as Luigi's business-agent, to Haarhaar to see the princely bride. The oppressed mother confided to her oldest and only friend, the Lector, the sad secret. The two had now a pure relation of friendship toward one another, which, in France, in consequence of the higher respect for women, is more common. In the first years of the ministerial forced marriage, which dawned not with morning dew, but with morningfrost, perhaps the hawk-moth[148]Cupid fluttered after them; but by and by children drove away this sphinx. The wife is often forgotten when she becomes the mother. She, therefore, with her characteristic cool and clear strength, took all that was ambiguous in her relation to Augusti forever out of the way; and he made her firmness more easy by his own, because he, with more love of honor than of women, grew not more red at any kind of braided-work than at that of a basket,[149]and erroneously believed that a man who receives it, has as much to be ashamed of as a woman who does.

The Lector could foresee that she would also, after her divorce,—which she postponed only for Liana's sake,—remain single, if only for this reason, in order not to deprive her daughter of an allodial estate, Klosterdorf, for the reservation of which she had now for one and twenty years exposed herself to the battering-ram and scythe-chariot and blunderbuss of the old Minister. Whether she was not even silently intending her dear Liana for a man so firm and tender, who differed from her in nothing but in a worldly coolness toward positive religion, is another and more delicate question. Such a reciprocal gift were worthy such a mother and friend, who must know from her heart, that combined feelings of tenderness and honor prepare for a loved soul a surer bliss than the love which genius offers, that alternation of flying heat and flying cold,—that fire which, like the electric, always twice destroys,—in the stroke and in the rebound. The Lector himself started not that question; for he never made rash, unsafe plans; and what one would have been more so than that of such a connection,in his poverty, or with such a father-in-law, in a country where, as in the Electorate of Saxony, a statute, so beneficial (for parents), can countermand even a marriage of many years' standing, which has been concluded without parental consent?

With moist eyes the Minister's lady showed him the new storm-clouds, which had again descended upon her and her Liana. She could build upon his fine eye for the world, upon his dumb lip and upon his ready hand for business. He said, as ever, he had foreseen all this; but proved to her that Bouverot, if only from avarice, would never exchange his knightly cross for the wedding-ring, whatever designs he might cherish with regard to Liana. He gave her to surmise, so far as a tender regard to her sore relations would tolerate, to what degree of readiness for compliance with Bouverot's wishes the very frailty of Liana's life might allure the Minister, in order to harvest it before it had done blooming. For Froulay could much more nimbly swallow demands against honor than injuries done to his vanity, as the victim of hydrophobia can much more easily get down solid morsels than fluids. Yet all this did not sound so immorally hard to the Minister's lady as readers of the middling classes might imagine; I appeal to the more sensible among the higher.

Augusti and the Minister's lady saw that something must certainly be done for Liana during the Minister's absence; and both wonderfully coincided in their project. Liana must go into the country this pleasant season,—she must muster up health for the wars that were in prospect,—she must be put out of the way of the knight's visits, which now the birthday would multiply fourfold,—even the Minister must have nothing to object to the place. And where can this be? Simply under the roofof the Director Wehrfritz, who cannot endure the German gentleman, because he knows his poisonous relation to the Prince. But of course there are first still other mountains to be climbed than that which lies on the way to Blumenbühl.

The reader himself must now get over a low one; and that is a short comico-tragic Extra-leaf upon

The following is certain: every owner of a very beautiful or very rich daughter keeps, as it were, a Pitt under his roof, which to himself is of no service, and which he must put to its first use after it has long lain idle, by selling it to aRegent.[150]Strictly and commercially speaking, daughters are not an article of trade; for the parental grand adventurers no one can confound with those female dealers in second-hand frippery, and stall-women, whose transit-business one does not love to name; but a stock, with which one gains in a South Sea, or a clod, wherewith one transfers symbolically (scortatione) real estate. "Je ne vends que mes paysages et donne les figures par dessus le marche,"[151]said Claude Lorraine, like a father,—and could easily say it, because he had the figures painted in his landscapes byothers;—even so in the purchase or marriage-contract only the knightly seats are supposed, and the bride who resides upon them is thrown into the bargain. Even so, higher up, is a princess merely a blooming twig, which a princely sponsor plucks off and carries home, not for the sake of thefruits, but because abee-swarmof lands and people has attached itself thereto.

If a father, like our Minister, has not much, then he can pawn his children, as the Egyptians did their parents (namely, the mummies of them), as mortgages and hand-pledges or imperial pawns, which are not redeemed.

At present the mercantile order, which formerly dealt only in foreign products, has got possession of this branch of commerce also; methinks, however, they might find room enough in their lower vaults to be selfish and damned, without going up stairs to the daughter. In Guinea only the nobility can trade; with us they are cut off and debarred from almost all trade, except the small trade in daughters, and the few other things which grow on their own estates; hence is it that they hold so fast to this liberty of trade, and that the noblesse seem here to be a Hanse alliance for this delicate branch of business; so that one may, in some manner, compare the high standing[152]of this class with thehigherone (in a literal sense) which marketable people in Rome were obliged to mount[153]in order to be seen.

It is a common objection of young and (so-called) sensitive hearts, that this sort of transaction very much constrains, or in fact crushes love; whereas nothing perhaps makes so good a preparation for it as this very thing. For when the bargain is once concluded and entered by the bookkeeper (the parson) in the ledger, then does the time truly come on when the daughter can consider and provide for her heart, namely, the fair season after marriage, which is universally assumed in France and Italy, and is gradually coming to be in Germany also, as the more suitable time for a female heart to choose freelyamong the host of men; her state then, like the Venetian, grows out of a commercial into a conquering one. The husband himself, too, is quite as little interrupted afterward as beforehand in his love by this short business transaction; all is, that now—as in Nuremberg every Jew is followed by an old woman—close upon the heels of our bridegroom a young one is seen. Nay, often, the nuptial tradesman conceives an inclination even for the article which he has carried home with him,—which is an uncommon piece of good fortune; and as Moses Mendelssohn, with his bundle of silken wares under his arm, thought out hislettersupon theaffections, so do better men, amidst their business, meditate love-letters on this branch of trade, and deal with the virgin—as merchants in Messina[154]do with the holy virgin—in Co.; but of course such profitable connections of love with business must always be rare birds, and are little to be counted upon.

The foregoing I wrote for parents who are fond of sporting with children's happiness; I will now out of their and my sport make something serious. I ask you, in the first place, about your right to prescribe for morally free beings their inclinations, or even the show of inclination, and by one act of despotism to stretch the poisonous leaden sceptre over a whole free life. Your ten years more of apprenticeship to life make as little distinction in the reciprocal liberty as talent or its want. Why do you not as well enjoin upon your daughtersfriendshipfor life? Why do you not, in the second marriage, exercise the same right? But you have even no right to reject, except in the age of minority, when the child has not yet any right to choose. Or do youdemand, upon their leaving the paternal roof, as pay for training them up to freedom, the sacrifice of this very freedom itself? You act as if you had been educators, without having been yourselves educated; whereas you are merely paying off to your children a heavy inherited debt to your parents, which you can never pay back tothem; and I know but one unpaid creditor in this respect, the first man, and but one insolvent debtor, the last. Or do you shield yourselves under the barbarously immoral Roman prejudice, which offers children for sale as white negroes of the parents, because the power allowed at an earlier period over the non-moral being slips over, unobserved from the gradualness of its development, into a power over the moral being?

If you may, out of love, force children to their happiness, so may they afterward, quite as well out of gratitude force you to yours. But what is, then, the happiness for which you are to throw away their whole heart, with all its dreams? Chieflyyour own;yourglory and aggrandizement,yourfeuds and friendships, are they to quench and buy with the offering of their innermost souls. Dare you own aloud your silent presuppositions in regard to the happiness of a forced marriage; for example, the dispensableness of love in wedlock, the hope of a death, the (perhaps) double infidelity, as well toward the connubial merchant as toward the extra-connubial lover? You must presuppose them sinners,[155]in order not to be yourselves robbers?

Tell me not that marriages of inclination often turn out ill, and forced marriages often well enough, as may beseen in the instance of the Moravians, the old Germans, and Orientals. Name me rather all barbaric times and nations, in which—for both indeed only reckon the man, never the wife—a happy marriage means nothing more than a happy husband. No one stands by near enough to hear and to count a woman's sighs; the unheard pang becomes at last speechless; new wounds weaken the bleeding of the oldest. Further: the ill-luck of fancy-marriages is chargeable upon your very opposition to them, and your war against the married couple. Still further: every forced marriage is, in fact, for the most part, half a marriage of fancy. Finally: the best marriages are in the middling class, where the bond is more apt to be love; and the worst in the higher, where it is more a mercenary motive; and as often as in these classes a prince should choose merely with his heart, he would get a heart, and never lose nor betray it.

Now, then, what sort of a hand is that into which you so often force the fairest, finest, richest, but rebellious one? Commonly, a black, old, withered, greedy fist. For decrepit, rich, or aspiring libertines have too much of the connoisseur, too much satiety and freedom, to steal any other than the most splendid creatures; the less perfect fall into the hands and homes of mere lovers and amateurs. But how base is a man, who, abandoned of his own character, backed merely by the despotic edict of a stranger, paying for his fortune with a stolen one, can now drag away the unprotected soul from the yearning eyes of a weeping love into a long, cold life, and clasp her to his arms as against the edges of frosty swords, and therein so near to his eye see her bleed and grow pale and quiver! The man of honor even gives with a blush, but he takes not with a blush; and the betterlion, the beast, spares woman;[156]but these soul-buyers extort from constrained beings at last even the testimony of free-will.

Mother of the poor heart, which thou wilt bless by misfortune, hear me! Suppose thy daughter should harden herself against the misery which is forced upon her, hast thou not reduced her rich dream of life to empty sleep, and taken out of it love's islands of the blest, and all that bloomed thereon; the fair days when one roamed over them, and the perpetual happy retrospect of them when they already lie with their blooming peaks low in the horizon? Mother, if this happy time was ever in thy breast, then snatch it not from thy daughter; and if it was barbarously torn from thee, then think of thy bitter pang, and bequeath it not!

Suppose, further, she makes the kidnapper of her soul happy, reckon now what she might have been to its darling; and whether she does not then deserve anything better than to gratify a jailer, locked in with her forever by one shutting of the prison-door. But it seldom fares so well as this; thou wilt heap a double disaster upon thy soul,—the long agony of thy daughter, and the growing coldness of her husband, who by and by comes to feel and resent refusals. Thou hast cast a shadow over the time when man first needs the morning-sun,—namely, youth. O, sooner make all other seasons of the day of life cloudy; they are all alike, the third and the fourth and fifth decades; only at sunrise let it not rain into life; only this one never returning, irredeemable time darken not!

But how, if thou shouldst be sacrificing not merely joys, relations, a happy marriage, hopes, a whole posterity, tothy plans and commands, but the very being herself[157]whom thou constrainest? Who can justify thee, or dry thy tears, when thy best daughter,—for she is the very one who will be most likely to obey, be dumb and die, as the monks of La Trappe see their cloister burn down, without one of them breaking the vow of silence,[158]—when she, I say, like a fruit half in the sun and half in the shade, blooms outwardly, and inwardly grows cold and pale; when she, dying after her lifeless heart, at last can no longer conceal anything from thee, but for years bears round the paleness and the pangs of decline in the very orient of life; and when thou canst not console her, because thou hast crushed her, and thy conscience cannot suppress the name of infanticide; and when at last the worn-out victim lies there under thy tears, and the wrestling creature, so affrighted and so young, so faint, and yet thirsting for life, forgiving and complaining, with languishing and longing looks, with painfully confused and conflicting emotions, sinks with her blooming limbs into the bottomless flood of death,—O guilty mother on the shore, thou who hast pushed her in, who will comfort thee? But I would call every guiltless one, and show her the bitter dying, and ask her, Shall thy child also perish thus?

It was a romantic day for Zesara, even outwardly; sun-sparks and rain-drops played dazzlingly through the heavens. He had received a letter from his father, dated at Madrid, which stamped at last the black seal of certainty on the threatened death of his sister, and in which there was nothing agreeable but the intelligence that Don Gaspard, with the Countess of Romeiro, whose guardianship he was now concluding, would travel in autumn (the Italian spring) to Italy. Two tones had been, in his life, stolen away from the musical scale of love; he had never known by experience what it was to love a brother or a sister. The coincidence of her death-night with that night in Tartarus, this whole clawing into the holy images and wishes of his heart, stirred up his spirit, and he felt with indignation how impotently a whole assailing world might seek to remove Liana's image from his soul; and again he painfully felt, that this very Liana herself believed in her near decline.

In this situation was he found by an unexpected invitation from the Minister's lady herself,—sun-sparks and rain-drops played in his heaven also. He flew; in the antechamber stood the angel who broke the six apocalyptic seals,—Rabette. She had run to meet him from a bashfulness before company, and had embraced him sooner than he her. How gladly did he look into the familiar, honest face! with tears he heard the name of brother, when he had lost a sister to-day!

The reason of her appearance was this: when the Director was at the Minister's lady's the last time, the latter had, with easy, disguised hand, opened her house to his daughter, "for the sake of a knowledge of empty citylife, and for change,"—in order that she might hereafter venture to knock athisdoor on her own daughter's behalf. He said he would "forward the female wild deer to her with pleasure, and all possible despatch." And as in Blumenbühl Rabette had answered him No, then Yes, then No, then Yes, and had held with her mother, even before midnight, an imperial-exchequer-revision, a mint-probation-day about everything which a human being from the country can wear in the city, she packed up there and unpacked here.

"Ah, I am afraid in there," said she to Albano; "they are all too clever, and I am now so stupid!" He found beside the domestic trio the Princess also, and the little Helena from Lilar, that lovely medallion of a fine day to his stirred heart. Indescribably was he smitten with Liana's womanly advances to Rabette, as if he shared her with her. With courtesy and tenderness, a mildness also, which was without falsehood or pride, came to the help of the embarrassed playmate, on whose face the inborn gayety and eloquence of nature now singularly contrasted with her artificial dumb gravity. Charles, with his ready familiarity, was more in a condition to entangle than to extricate her; only Liana gave to her soul and tongue, if only by the embroidery-frame, a free field; Rabette could write with the embroidering needle, no illuminated and initial letters, indeed, but still a good running-hand.

She gave—turning her face toward her brother's, in order to pluck courage therefrom—a clear report of the dangerous road and upsets, laughing all the while, after the manner of the people when they are telling their mishaps. Her brother was to her, at the company's expense, both company and world; upon him alone streamed forthher warmth and speech. She said she could from her chamber see him "play on the harpsichord." Liana immediately led both thither. How richly and sublimely, beyond Rabette's demands upon city-life, was the maidenlyhospitiumset out, from the tulip (not a blooming one, but a work-basket of Liana's,—although every tulip is such a basket for the finger of spring) even to the piano-forte, of which she, of course, for the present can use no more than seven treble-keys for half a waltz? Five moderate trunks of clothes—for therewith she thought to come out, and show the city that the country too could wear clothes—represented to him in their well-known flower-pieces and tin bands the old impressions (incunabula) of his earliest days of life; and to-day every trace of the old season of love refreshed him. She made him look for his windows, from one of which the Librarian was fixing a hard gaze on a paving-stone in the street to see how often he could hit it by spitting.

Here alone, in the presence only of the brother, Liana spoke more loudly to the sister the word of friendship, and assured her how happy she meant to make her, and how sincere she was in all that she promised. O look not into the flame of the pure, religious, sisterly love with any yellow eye of jealousy! Can you not comprehend that this fair soul even now distributes its rich flames among all sisterly hearts, until love concentrates them intoonesun; as, according to the ancients, the scattered lightnings of night gather themselves in the morning into one solid solar orb? She was, everywhere, an eye for every heart; like a mother, she never once forgot the little in the great; and she poured out (let no one deny me the privilege of printing this minute example) for little Helena the cup of coffee, which the Doctor forbade,half full of cream, in order that it might be without strength or harm.

The impatient Princess had already looked ten times toward the heavens, through which now beams of light, now rain-columns flew, till at length out of the consumed cloud-snow the broad fields of blue grew up, and Julienne could lead out the delighted young people into the garden, to the annoyance of the Minister's lady, who did not like to expose Liana to theSerein,—five or six blasts of the evening-wind, and the wading through rain-water that stood a nineteenth of a line[159]deep. She herself stayed behind. How new-born, glistening, and inviting was all down below! The larks soared out of the distant fields like tones, and warbled near over the garden,—in all the leaves hung stars, and the evening air threw the liquid jewelry, the trembling earrings, from the blossoms down upon the flowers, and bore sweet incense to meet the bees. The Idyl of the year, Spring, parcelled its sweet pastoral land among the young souls. Albano took his sister's hand, but he listened vacantly to her intelligence from home. Liana went far in advance with the Princess, and bathed herself in the open heavens of confidential communion.

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