The first solitary minute which Albano found with his sister he devoted to an inquiry about her Latin intelligence that Linda's father would appear precisely on her marriage-day; but she referred him to his own father, who could tell him all about Linda's, and begged him "to indulge Linda, not only in her tenderness, but also in her characteristic shyness of marriage, which went very far. She could not, upon one occasion, accompany a female friend to the nuptial altar," Julienne added; "she called it the place of execution of woman's liberty, the funeral pile of the fairest, freest love, and said the heroic poem of love became then, at the highest, the pastoral poem of marriage. Of course she knows not whither such principles ultimately lead." "I hope, too, that thou trustest her," said Albano, making other and higher deductions from this singularity than his strict sister. She suddenly broke off, to impart to him a piece of advice which he was to take with him to Pestitz,—namely, to shun the Princess, who was, to the very core, cold, false, revengeful, and selfish. "She has something in view with thee, and, indeed, much; and her hatred toward the Countess must now be added. Linda clearly apprehends her, but yet she lets herself, out of passionateness, be carried away and made use of by all whom she foresees and surveys." Albano adhered to his old, milder judgment of the Princess,—so much the more, as he already knew Julienne's moral severity towards every woman of genius, from her misjudgment in the case of Liana,—but he readily gave her his word to shun the Princess, without telling her the reason,—namely, the love which the woman had for him, and of which it was so hard to disenchant her. To his tender feelings, there was no greater rudeness than this public breaking open and reading of a love-letter, this masculine catching and proclaiming of a woman's sigh of love through a speaking-trumpet for the people.
All came together again, encamped themselves upon a spot which commanded the lake and the Alps, and the shadows of the blossoms. The day cooled its glow, and sank from beauty to beauty down into evening. "On this exquisite island," said Dian, "already the Northern nature begins, and we shall soon find ourselves at home under a peaked roof." "Well, yes," said Julienne; "but, after all, one is glad too, at last, when one sees again a neat man, a blonde, and a shadow, and hears a bird or two."[108]"I think not here of Tivoli and Ischia and Posilippo," said Albano; "I think of my childhood and of the Alps. Over on the shore of the long lake (Lago Maggiore) of course the two sugar-loaves may not represent themselves to the best advantage, but, as a compensation for that, here from the sugar-loaf the shore and the lake appear so much the better, and for him who stands on this alp of the lake, it is, after all, made." "All is indifferent to me," said Linda; "for I find myself here entirely well. Remarking upon fine landscapes is also a Northern characteristic, because there one can become acquainted with them only through books. The Italian, who has them, enjoys them as he enjoys health, and is conscious only of the deprivation of them; for this reason he is not even a great landscape-painter."
"One should," said Dian, "celebrate in song the magnificent Italy, even upon the boundary-line, if one could get aguitarrefrom the Castellain." He went and brought one. He now began to improvisate in Italian. He sang: "Apollo felt his old love for his former pastoral land on the earth and for the lost, veiled Daphne, wake again within him; he came down from heaven to find both. Jupiter had given him Momus as a companion of his journey, who should show him all that was odious, that he might flee back. As a beautiful, smiling youth he went over the islands, through the ruins of the temples, through eternal blossoms; he passed along before divine paintings of an unknown, exalted virgin with a child, and before new tones of music, and moved as over the magic circle of a new and fairer earth. In vain did Momus show him the monks and pirates, and his temples prostrated by the hand of time, and quizzingly make him take columns of thermæ for temple-columns. The god looked up at the high, cold Olympus, and looked down upon this warm land, upon this great, golden sun, these clear, blue nights, these ever-blooming perfumes, these cypresses, these myrtle and laurel woods, and said, 'Here is elysium, not in the subterranean world, not on Olympus.' Then Momus gave him a laurel-twig from Virgil's grave,[109]and said, 'That is thy Daphne.' Now did his great sister Diana grow indignant. She gave Daphne her form and dress, as if she had come over out of the woods of the Pyrenees; but he recognized his beloved, and went back with her into Olympus." As Dian sang this, and let the strains fly with the tones of the strings, there stood high over in heaven the eternal, radiant mountains of ice; from the mountains fluttered streams and shadows into the bright lake, and the evening bestirred itself with kindling and enchanted glow. Then the silent Albano seized the strings, buried his eye in the gleaming of the mountains, and blushing, began: "Linger awhile, O singer, among the lofty spirits who marched, killing, dying, over the battle-field, and who built up the everlasting temples of humanity; linger among the pure diamonds that remained firm and bright under the hammer of destiny; linger in the olden time, in the sea of Rome, which bore upon its bosom one quarter of the world, and undermined the others; but flee before the time which sank its summit in its own crater. Linger, singer, on the heights, and look down into the garden of the world, which is the play of human life. The ruin becomes a rock, and the rock a ruin; on the high promontory the blossom breathes fragrance, below lies the sea with open jaws; over Scylla gleam beautiful houses and streets amidst the lair of frightful rocks. And the god flies over the land and sees the child on the temple-column by the shore, and the temples of the gods full of monks, the marshes full of nameless ruins, and the coasts full of blossoms and grottoes, and the blooming myrtles and grapes, and the fire mountains and the islands, and Ischia."
But the storm-sweptguitarresank from his hands, and his voice died away; his eye lost itself in the depths of heaven and of human life, and he withdrew himself to still his loud heart. In the cooling solitude he observed how far already the sun had flown down, as on Cupid's wings, through a colder heaven; he speedily turned back, and in the evening redness his parting-hour struck.
When he came back, Linda was alone, for Julienne, under the pretext of inspecting the picture cabinet, had drawn away his Dian from the lovers, to whom, besides, only the shortest day of bliss had been to-day allotted, and his beloved looked on him significantly. "Dian, strictly speaking, sang better," said she, "and more epically, but your lyric nature I also hold very dear." She looked at him again and again, then into his eye; then she embraced him impulsively, and not a sound betrayed the sudden kiss. "We will go up on the terrace," said she, softly. They mounted the lovely height of the ten terraces, which fill the sight with laurel and citron trees, and with pyramids and colossal statues, and with the prospect of the distant shore surrounded with villages and alps, and where once Albano had seen his father flee. "Thou pleasest me more and more, Albano," said Linda. "I almost believe thou canst really love. Tell me thy first love; I have told thee my story." "O Linda," said he, "how much thou desirest! But I am true, and tell thee all. Thou wilt love her as she loved thee. See here thy picture, which with her dying hand she made and gave me!"
He handed her the little sketch, and her eye grew moist. Thereupon he began, in a low and solemn tone, the picture of his first love; how he had reverenced and sought her early, when she was yet unseen, and in the first morning beams of life, and how he found her; and how she made him happy, and was not so herself; how gentle she was, and he so wild and harsh; how he demanded of her his own impetuosity of heart; how barbarously he took her renunciation, and how she perished through him. "O, I have dealt hardly, good Linda!" said he. "No," said she, "I weep for you both." "I have great imperfections," said he. "I forgive thee all," said she, "if thou canst only love. But the lovely creature also committed many faults, and against love." She checked herself, then asked, in a low voice, "Albano, is she still in thy heart?" "Yes, Linda," said he. "O thou honest and true man!" cried she, with inspiration, and laid her head upon his breast and prayed, "Holy God, give thy immortals everything, only leave me forever this man's breast, that he may be really loved, inexpressibly, and that I may not sink!" "If thou wilt, dear," she whispered suddenly, and raised herself up, looking upon him with infinite love and resignation, "that I dwell in Lilar, only command it."
This womanly, waiting submission of so free, mighty a spirit, made him speechless. Like an eagle, the flame of love seized him and bore him aloft. He glowed on her blooming countenance, and the bridal torch of the setting sun darted in with great flames between the two. "Linda," he began at length, with trembling, solemn voice, "if we could know that we should ever lose or forsake each other! O Linda," he continued, with difficulty, through his tears and his kisses, "if that were possible, whether through my fault or through cold fate, were it not then better that we at this moment plunged into the lake and died in our love?" The glow of the sun burned in like an aurora, snatching away youths and virgins to the gods, and the twilight of life was kindled into a bright morning redness. "If thou knowest that," said Linda, "then die now with me!" Just then Julienne's distant voice awoke both; at last she came herself with Dian, to take leave. They looked round, awaking, dazzled with the sun and with love, and all was changed. The sun had sunk, the broad lake was overhung with misty shadows, and the world was chilly; only the lofty glaciers blazed still with rosy redness into the blue, like memorial pillars of the flaming covenant-hour.
Before Albano's soul stood even now the form of destiny, so coldly dividing human beings, the veiled rocky form, whose veil is also of stone, which no one raises. He would now fain have burst through it, and directly, without cowardly delay, dashed down into the midst of winter. "O till Hesperus has gone down, pardon me!" whispered Linda. He stayed; but neither had words any longer, only eyes; the reined-in eagles, which had formerly hurried the celestial Venus-car through the heavens, fluttered wildly in the traces. The evening star went down; the half-moon, in mid-heaven, touched the earth with her beams, as with magic wands, and transformed it into a pale, holy world of the heart. "Only let the great star go down now," said she, and looked upon him longingly. He did so. The nightingales skipped musically among the silvery twigs; only the human beings had a voiceless heaven and love.
"Only one little star more!" she begged. He obeyed, touched by the very expression, but she summoned up her resolution, and said, "No, go!" "We will, Dian!" said he. Dian, indulgent to love, led the way down the terraces. Long and ardently lay the brother and sister on each other's hearts, and wished each other a pleasant, undisturbed reunion. Linda gave him only her hand, and said not a word. As the still heaven of night covers its hot sun, so was her flaming heart concealed; and when he went, without looking after him, she clasped his sister to her heaving bosom.
Splendor and night and fragrance bestrewed the Jacob's-ladder of the terraces down which he passed. Lightly flew his boat through the snow of stars and blossoms, which drifted over the waves,—the nightingales of the two islands chimed together,—the seamen sang back to them glad songs,—a favorable wind bore the orange-perfumes after the little vessel,—but Albano, weeping, had his heart and face turned toward the sinking pyramid. His sister alone had looked after him from the eminence; then she, too, was lost to sight,—the nightingales still called faintly after him,—at last all was veiled. He turned himself round toward the pale-glimmering glaciers, as toward the light-houses of his voyage, and of the heaven of this day nothing was now left to him but the pilot, love, as the seaman follows the magnet, when the holy stars have concealed themselves and guide him no more.
Albano and Dian flew joyfully over the German fields to meet so many a precious heart, and nothing was disappointed except their dread of the length of the countries through which they had to travel. Instead of the black lava-sand and the burnt soil behind them, a bright, fresh green now decked the plains and cooled the dazzled eye. The waves of green grain-fields swept and tossed about as merrily as the waves of the blue-green sea. In thicker, longer, higher woods floated new shadows, like lovely little evenings, creeping away from before the light of day. The dark green of the Italian trees was replaced by the bright, laughing green of the German gardens, and new feathered choirs cradled themselves in clouds and in woods, and greeted the heart of man, and sent down to him their light and guileless joy.
From spring to spring went the happy Albano, with his dreams of love; as fast as a southern blossom fell behind him, a northern unfolded itself before him; and his travelling-carriage stopped on the variegated avenue among the blossom-shadows of a long garden.
At length he stood before the house to which the garden conducted him, and before the linden-city; so stood he also in a former year on the heights before it, looking up at the cloud-procession of the future, without being able to divine to what the clouds were shaping themselves, whether into an aurora or into an evening tempest. How many old pangs darted now like shadows of clouds over the old landscape! He was going now, such was his reflection, to meet his father with the news of his fortune; to meet his apostate friend with the stolen beloved; to meet with old and new love his returning Schoppe, whose heart and fate were to him, now, at once so dark and so weighty; and to meet the singular time and hour, when the subterranean waters, whose rush and roar he had hitherto so often experienced, should lie at once uncovered, and with all their windings and springs laid open to the light of day; and to meet the sacred spot where he could take boldly to his heart the beloved, who now, on the German road and in the neighborhood of former trials, seemed to him still greater and more unattainable than on Epomeo, in the neighborhood of all that is sublime in heaven and on earth, and when he might enfold her in his arms forever without asking again, "Wilt thou love me?" Then he went back in thought to an image which Vesuvius[110]had furnished him, and said to Dian: "Behind man there works and travels onward a slow, fiery stream, which consumes and crushes if it overtakes him; but let man only stride boldly forward, and often look backward, and he comes off unscathed. My beloved teacher, so will I now do in my new and momentous relations; do thou, however, make me turn round toward the lava, if in pleasant scenes I should sometimes forget it!"
"Speak better and more propitious words," said Dian. "Hail to us; the gods are already favorable! Yonder comes your father up the palace hill, and looks more gay and happy than I ever before happened to find him!"
barstart
Gaspard received his son with the usual stately coldness of the first hour, as letters begin more coldly than they end. Not until this morning-frost had melted away and it grew warmer around him, did Albano disclose to him, without fear or pusillanimous blushing, and with matured manliness, the bond which he had forever concluded with Linda and with himself, and begged him for the third yes. "So after all," replied the Knight, "the old enchanter has carried it through at last; of course under the reinforcement of a young enchantress. That I shall never disturb thee in anything which thou seizest upon with whole soul and forever, that thou knowest already from a similar case in the last year." Albano grew red at the bitter mention of his first love, but had gained strength within a half-year to preserve a manly silence, in cases where he once spoke out like a youth. Gaspard, more glad and warm than usual towards him to-day, nevertheless went on, when he perceived his sensitiveness: "I pronounce it good! As the seal-engraver in the beginning stamps the arms in wax, and then, and not till then, etches them on the precious stone, so does man essay to impress his upon more than one heart, until he at last gets the firmest. It must be owned thou hast not made the worst choice in my ward, and I gladly give my word of assent to it."
Albano pressed the hand which drew the sweet knot of love still tighter, and said, in the entrancement of gratitude: "I found my sister, too, the Princess. I put no question to her, however, as lately, but count upon time." "Mocker!" said Gaspard, and assumed, seemingly by way of cooling him off, the cruel appearance of thinking his pure, noble son had been disposed to retort upon him the bantering allusion to having many love-affairs. "Only be silent about all in thy innermost heart, as I myself have hitherto been, and conceal thy knowledge from the court. Give me thy word of honor."
Albano said he had already given it to Julienne also. He was, however, driven back, by Gaspard's whole deportment, upon conclusions which placed moral garlands neither upon his father nor upon Julienne's mother.
Gaspard added, furthermore, that it was a misfortune for a man to be entangled with fantastic women,—as Albano already knew his mother to have been,—and, in fact, with three at once, and advised him to march on boldly, as hitherto, through all riddles, and leave them to solve themselves. Thereupon he proposed to him, as a test of the third female fancy-monger, the question whether he already knew that the Countess, notwithstanding his guardianship, had still her living father, who would appear for the first time on her wedding-day. He said, "Yes." Gaspard then continued: This reason, of itself,—in order that Linda might find her father, and all of them the peace of clearness at last,—decided him for an early, secret marriage of the two through the honorable Spener.
Albano, really terrified at the prospect of the near and speedy transformation of blissful hours into blissful years, and no more able to think of his Titaness as wife than to think of her as child, answered, modestly and with disinterested reference to Linda's dread of wedlock, that, as to the time of sealing his happiness, no one must or could decide but Linda herself.
Gaspard was well content. "I only insist upon your adjourning the matter awhile," he subjoined. "My friend the Prince is again near his end; the beneficial effect which a spiritual apparition had wrought upon him has gradually subsided, and he fears daily the return of the phantom, which has promised to foretell him his last hours. At such a time your festival does not serve my purpose. To speak in confidence, the poor patient had himself an eye to the fair bride. It is, after all, but fair to spare him the highest certainty of his loss. On his account I also postpone my departure."
As if a man should enter into the new-created paradise, and all birds at once—nightingales and eagles and owls and birds-of-paradise and vultures and larks—should beset him, so confusedly did Albano feel himself excited by these mutually crossing prospects, and he perceived that there could be no dependence nor defence here, except in his own heart and Linda's.
Gaspard seemed to be impatient to see the Countess again, whom he called his only friend. "Unfortunately, I did not believe my brother in Rome," he added, "when he insisted on having met both ladies in Naples.Apropos, that brother passed through here some time ago, on his way to Spain; in Rome he asserted he was travelling to Greece. Thou seest with what poetic pleasure and geniality he carries on pure lying."
Gaspard parted from him very warmly, with the words, "Albano, I am very well satisfied with thee; I should be infinitely so if the purity of the youth had passed over into the man; I have not yet found it so." Albano was about to affirm and swear with emotion. "That is why," he continued, waving away the oath with a light motion of the hand, "thou foundest me so glad about thy good fortune, for the Princess's friend had already announced to me thy love in the morning. Take heed to thyself before her, for she hates thee without bounds."
With a hard and horrible aspect, like a new and extraordinary beast of prey behind the grating, does a real though unarmed hatred present itself for the first time before a good heart. Albano demanded no confirmation or explanation of this sad intelligence, for the love and error of the Princess, her acquaintance with his former coldness toward Linda, her silent bitterness toward Linda herself, were quite flames enough for her to cook the strongest poison by.
He took up his residence again, at the request of his father, at the house of Doctor Sphex, situated, unmeaningly to him, down in the valley; and Gaspard resumed his abode in the palace, near his sick friend. The Knight speedily presented him to the court, which soon observed and remarked the brown of travel, the sharper lightning of the eye, and the whole latest development of his great form. The Princess received him with the lightest, finest coldness, a sort ofaqua toffana, which seems only pure, tasteless water. The Prince sat upright in his sick-bed, with peevish face, before drawings of Herculaneum, and was letting himself be informed on the subject by Bouverot. As a face upon which, in the late, gray years of life, fair joyousness can still picture itself, announces a fair life and fair heart, so the saint never wears a more heavenly smile than on his sick-bed, nor the reprobate a more hard and painful one. Albano turned his eye away from the sickly, witheredbrother of his sister.
Languishing, he looked back toward the past Hesperia, and forward to the gate of paradise which was finally to open, and show Linda and his sister in Eden. "It will certainly meet your approval," Gaspard had said, "that, under the pretext of Luigi's sickness, I have had them both quartered in the old palace at Lilar, where thou canst see them more unobserved." He met the Minister Froulay, and the Lector came to meet him; with both came a dark, manifold shadowy retinue of hard, old recollections. He had not yet seen Captain Roquairol, who was now to him the evening cloud of a sunken spring day.
He carried as speedily as he could his dumb heart—which was an Æolian-harp in a dead calm—to his childhood's Blumenbühl, to greet the parental beings, and to read the papers of his soul's nearest neighbor, Schoppe, for whose promised return he now longed more than ever.
It was a fresh, blue, summer day when Albano went to his old Blumenbühl, without knowing that he did so precisely on the St. James's day, or paternal birthday, which he had once, in childhood, spent in such singular preludes of his life. In the old gardens and on the old heights round about, even over to Lilar's wood, lay everywhere, even now, the young, glistening dew of childhood, not yet dried up by the western sun; many tear-drops, too, stood among the drops of dew on the flowers; but his fresh, healing spirit was on its guard against effeminately floating away into soft transport, that Lethe of the present. In the village he was struck with the sight of a horse whom they were shoeing, for, by the caparison and all, he recognized it as Roquairol's festive steed. He introduced a festival into a festival, when he entered the noisy paternal apartment, full of birthday electors, blooming, fully developed, erect, a confirmed man, with determined look and gait. Rabette screamed out; Roquairol cried, "Aha!" and the old teacher Wehmeier, "God and my master!" and his childhood's angels, the parents, embraced him just as ever, and out of Albina's blue eyes ran the bright drops.
But a change had come over the youth of the others, compared with his. Rabette's countenance, the once full cheeks and blooming lips, had fallen in, and were overlaid and overgrown with the white veil, and she had two gray tears instead of eyes ; yet she smiled a great deal. Like his own Gorgon-head, Roquairol's face appeared pale and hard, as if chiselled on his gravestone; only naked piers stood in the water,—the light arches of the beautiful bridge were gone. Albina and Rabette looked up with a steady gaze at Albano's blooming figure; he seemed to be an Italian growth, a Neapolitan nerved by daily bathing in the gulf. Roquairol had his part immediately at command more easily than Albano his truth; he demeaned himself with the highest courteousness toward one who had broken in two for him the magic wand of life and thrown it away as a pair of beggar's sticks,—kissed him on the cheek, kept up the lightest, often a French tone of conversation, requested the latest intelligence about Italy, and retailed in turn the most edifying news from the country, as well, he said, as he could muster it up for a man with a Hesperian standard of measurement. He related, also, "that the Knight's brother had been there,—a man full of talent, especially the mimetic and that sort, and of the most singularly intense fancy with the highest coldness of character, though perhaps not always sufficiently true. For my tragedy," added he, "he would be worth his weight in gold. Dear brother, hold yourself forthwith as invited on the occasion. The play is called The Tragedian; I give it soon. Rabette is acquainted with it." She nodded. Albano glowed, but was silent. Among all parts, the Captain succeeded most perfectly in that of a world's-man; the show of coldness is more easy and true, also, than the show of warmth. Albano kept a proud distance. Roquairol could not gain in any respect by being opposite to the afflicted, faded Rabette, not even by the intercession of that form of his, full of the ruins of life. Albano found there something forever confused, and the wax wings crushed down into a lump; and it was as close and confining to him as to one who from the bright world creeps down at once into a low, damp cavern of a cellar.
The Captain rose, reminded him once more of his invitation to the "Tragedian," and springing on his festive horse rode away.
Behind his back every one was silent about him, as if embarrassed. The women, a little shy of Albano's brilliant presence, found some difficulty in venturing forth upon the subject of the old familiar past, while the foster-father, Wehrfritz, who having steadily grown on in his opinions and manners, and being still encased in the old cry of dogs and canary-birds, knew nothing at all about time, expressed his hearty thanks to his foster-son for the obliging recollection and choice of his birthday festival, which Albano necessarily and vainly declined, continued in his old thouing and patronizing, wrought himself into ecstasies on the subject of the French and their future victories, and bestowed more premiums of praise now on the older foster-son than he ever had on the younger, in order thereby, as he hoped, to give him as great pleasure as ever. The Magister backed the praise from a distance, although he could not let slip the opportunity, so soon as his pupil had pronounced Napel, Baia, Cuma, to pronounce Neapel, Baiæ, Cumæ. Albano was pure, true, human, frank, and hearty toward all; there was no vanity in his self-forgetting pride.
Rabette found at last a lifting-screw to wind her polished and yet familiar brother out of the receiving-room up into her or his former apartment, so as to be alone on his breast. As they stepped in, she immediately began, as she said, "Dost thou still know the chamber, Albano?" to weep infinitely, with the tears which had been so long gathering; and Albano showed her in his own, his long-cherished sympathy, but tore open thereby all the wounds of the past. She herself seized upon the remedy, namely, the telling of her story,—however earnestly he persisted that he knew, and, indeed, could well guess all,—and drying her eyes, informed him how all stood,—and that Charles was a good deal with his mother in Arcadia; that the Minister still acted the old tyrant toward his only child, and did not dole out to him a farthing more than ever, although he was always heaping up greater and greater debts, especially since there was no longer any Liana silently to wipe them away; that he borrowed everywhere, only, however, he never would accept anything from her; that he still continued to desire and know nothing but the Countess, and that God knew what all this would come to. Anticipating all inquiry, she added: "He knows the whole already, all thy intercourse with that same person. He behaves quietly and pleasantly about it, but I know him as well as I want to. Ah!" she sighed, in the fulness of anguish, and added immediately, with the same voice: "Thou lookest at me; is it not true thou findest me very haggard to what I once was?" "Yes, indeed, poor girl!" "I drank much vinegar on his account, because Charles loves slender figures; and grief has much to do with it too," said she.
Albano would have consoled her with the nearer possibility of a union of Charles with her, since the impossibility of every other union had been decided, and readily tendered his services for any prefatory word or coercive measure. "Before God and us, he is thy husband," said he. "That he never could have been," replied she, blushing, "for he never could have been honest; and did I not write thee that I am now too proud for it, too?" "Then cast him off forever!" said he. "Ah!" said she, fearfully, "do I know, then, that he meditates no harm against himself? Then I should reproach myself with it eternally." Involuntarily he could not but compare with this loving, holy fear, the hardness of the Princess, who could relate so gladly and proudly how many a love-smitten life had fallen a victim to her prudish heart and coquettish face. "What wilt thou do now?" he asked. "I weep," said she. "Ah, Albano, that is enough, indeed, that thou hast given me hearing and counsel; I am cheerful again. But be once more his friend."
He was silent, a little angry at the naughtiness of women, which, under pretence of seeking advice, only desires a hearing. "What is that?" he asked, showing her a leaf. "That is perfectly my hand, and I never wrote it!" She looked at it, and said Charles was often trying experiments with her in this way at handwriting. He wondered, and said: "Nothing, but imitating and counterfeiting all the time! But how canst thou think of my forgiving him?" Some descriptions of travels on her table, formerly so poor in books, met his eye. "I wanted to know, of course," said she, "how you might probably be faring in this, that, and the other place, and that is why I read the long stuff." "Thou art still my sister!" said he, and kissed her heartily. She still asked him much and urgently about his new connection; but chary of words with his full heart, he hastened down stairs.
The first word down below to the Provincial Director was a request for the "deposed letter of Schoppe's." Wehrfritz brought the broad letter, which had been laid up in the little iron box of bonds, and delivered it he hoped, he said, in good order. Hardly could Albano keep back his tears, when he held the crinkled but precious traces of the beloved hand, which certainly never in its life had swerved or stained itself, in his own. As he did not break the seal, they all began good-naturedly to portray to him his friend Schoppe, according to the presumptions and views which man so boldly and complacently indulges upon every higher spirit, with all his actions or colors, as if actions or colors were strokes and outlines. Wehrfritz and Wehmeier deplored that he was growing mad, if not already so. The Magister held back with his main-proof, till the Provincial Director should have contributed the lesser auxiliary ones.
His life beneath this palace-roof was uncovered and showed up, but in a friendly spirit. "He had hitherto"—so went the reports—"had no real or solid aim." Wehrfritz swore he had himself seen him reading the Literary Gazette, just as it was folded together half-sheetwise, and said he of course ascribed it less to insanity than to absence of mind, because he knew with what pleasure the man always took into his hands and understandingly perused the Imperial Advertiser, which the same declared to be the gate-key to the great imperial city, Germany. In the midst of company the Librarian had looked upon his hands with the words: "There sits a gentleman here in bodily presence, and I in him, but who is the same?" Of work he had done very little, seldom looked into a book of any importance, as Herr Wehmeier knew, but got along more easily with the worst of all stuff, for instance, whole volumes of dream-interpretations. His dearest society had been his wolf-dog, with whom for whole hours he would carry on regular discourse, and of whose growling he seriously asserted it sounded like a very distant thunder. He had been fond of sitting before the looking-glass, and had entered into a long conversation with himself. Sometimes he had looked into the camera-obscura, then on a sudden out into the landscape again, to compare the two, and had asserted, unoptically enough, that the busy, gliding images of the camera were magnified by the outer world, but deceptively imitated. "It was a shy bird," added the Director, "for all that. Divers of my acquaintances in the neighboring estates let him paint them, because he did it cheap; he always knew, however, how to slip something into the face so that one's physiognomy should appear quite ridiculous or simple, and that he called his flattering. Of course after that, no one could expect in the long run anythinghonnettefrom him."
"Were it permitted me," Wehmeier began, "I would now communicate to Mr. Count a fact in regard to Mr. Librarian, which, perhaps—such is at least my opinion—is asfrappantas many another. The school-house, as you certainly still well remember, stands close to the church." Thereupon he related, in a long narrative, the following: "Once, at dead of night, he heard the organ going. He listened at the church door, and distinctly heard Schoppe sing and play a short stanza of a popular hymn. Thereupon the said Schoppe came down, with a loud noise, from the choir, and mounted the pulpit, and commenced an occasional sermon to himself with the words: 'My devout hearer and friend in Christ.' In the exordium he touched upon the silent, but unhappily so fleeting bliss which one enjoyedbeforelife, although not according to correct Homiletic principles, since the second part almost repeated the introduction. Thereupon he sang a pulpit stanza to himself, and taking from the 3d chapter of Job, where the writer shows the happiness of non-existence, the 26th verse as his text, which reads thus: 'Was I not in safety, had I not rest, was I not quiet? Yet trouble came,'[111]—he proposed to himself as his theme the joys and sorrows of a Christian; in the first part the sorrows, in the second the joys. Thereupon he crowded together concisely, but in a droll style and speech, and yet with Scriptural expressions, too, all the misery and distress on earth,—under which he enumerated singular things: long sermons, the two poles, ugly faces, compliments, games, and the world's stupidity. Thereupon he passed over abruptly to the consolation in the second part, and described the future joys of a Christian, which, as he blasphemously said, consisted in a heavenly ascension into future nothingness, in the death after death, in an eternal deliverance from self. Then (shocking it was to hear it) he addressed the neighboring dead down below under the church and in the princely vault, and asked, whether they had aught to complain of? 'Arise,' said he; 'seat yourselves in the pews, and open your eyes, in case they are wet with weeping. But they are drier than your dust. O how still and lovely lies the infinite past world, swathed in its own shadow, softly laid on the bed of its own ashes, without a single remaining dream-limb upon which a wound can be inflicted. Swift, old Swift, thou who once in thy latter days wast not so very much in thy head, and didst read through, every birthday, the whole chapter from which the text of our harvest sermon is taken,—Swift, how contented thou now art and entirely restored, the hatred of thy bosom burnt out, the round pearl, thy Self, eaten up, at last, and dissolved in the hot tear of life, and the tear alone stands there sparkling! And thou, too, hadst once preached before the Sexton like me!' Here Schoppe wept, and excused himself for his emotion, God knows before whom. Thereupon he passed to the practical improvement, and sharply insisted on both hearer and preacher growing better; upon downright honest truthfulness; fidelity of friends; high-mindedness, bitter hatred of suavity, snake-like movements, and weak lasciviousness. Finally, he had concluded the devotions with a prayer to God, that, if it should be his lot some day to lose his health or understanding, or the like, he would still be pleased to let him die like a man, and darted at once out of the church door. He put me," added Wehmeir, "almost out of my senses for terror, when he all at once flew at me angrily; 'Mock corpse, why creepest thou about the grave?' and I, pale and hurried, made my way home without having made the least reply to him. But what says Mr. Count?"
Albano shook his head with vehemence without one enlightening word, with pain and tears on his face. He merely took a sudden leave of all, and begged them to pardon his haste; and sought the evening sun and freedom, in order to read the letter of the noble man, and learn the purpose of his journey. He struck into the old road to Lilar, where he hoped to find, on the joyous southern breast of his radiant Dian Southern gayety and Southern ways again; for his heart had been upheaved by an earthquake, because, after all, many a wild sign in this Schoppe, as it were an immoderate lightening and flashing of this star, seemed to him to announce a setting and doomsday, which to his extreme pain he was constrained to ascribe to the rising of the new star of love, which had kindled this world of his nature.
He read the following letter from Schoppe:—
"Thy letter, my dear youth, came duly to hand. I praise thy tears and flames, which alternately sustain, instead of extinguishing each other. Only become something, much, too, but not everything, in order that thou mayest be able, in so extremely empty a thing as life is—(I should be glad to know who invented it)—to hold out for all the desolateness. A Homer, an Alexander, who have at length vanquished the whole world and got it under them, must needs be plagued often with the most tiresome and annoying hours, because their life, from being a bride, has now become a wife. Much as I had palisaded and fortified myself against that, in order not to mount over everybody's head, and sit up top as Factotum of the world; I nevertheless, after all, came out at last, unobserved and all standing, on the summit, merely because, under my long contemplation, the whole circle of the earth, full of foam-mountains and cloud-giants, had been melting down lower and lower and crawling together; and now I gazed alone and dry-shod down from my mountain-peak, wholly possessed with the bloodsuckers of disgust at the world.
"Brother, it has changed, however, during this year, and I am afloat. For that reason a long, and to me quite tiresome, letter is written thee here in February, which shall tell thee about my approaching grub- and chrysalis-state, where and how; for when I am once a shining chrysalis, then I can only feebly stir and show myself any longer.
"I will explain myselfmoreclearly,—the Germans add, when they have explained themselves clearly. It fits and hits most luckily—which I prize as much as another—that precisely the end of the year is the end of the paternal property upon which I have thus far lived, and consequently, if Amsterdam ceases to pay, I also fail, and have nothing more on hand than weak, chiromantic prophecies, and nothing in my body except my stomach. I would I could still live by my navel, as in my earlier times, and make myself such a soft bed.
"What, then, shall I do? As to accepting presents from my lords, men, year out and year in, I do not respect them enough for that; and the few, whom one does somewhat respect upon occasions, must in their turn respect me too highly to make such an offer. What! shall I be a flea, attached to the thinnest little golden chain, and a gentleman who has fastened me by it, that I may spring with him but not away from him, shall draw me up now and then upon his arm and say, 'Suck away, my little creature!' Devil! I will remain free upon so contemptible an earth,—no salary will I take, no orders in this great servants' apartment,—sound to the core, so as not to awaken any sympathy or any house-doctor,—yes, if one should knock off to me the heart of the Countess Romeiro on the condition of my kneeling down to it, I would take the heart, indeed, and kiss it, but immediately thereupon get up and run away (either into the new world or the next) before she had time to recapitulate the matter to herself and bring it before me.
"As to being something, and thereby earning in proportion, that I could, if one should propose it to me, of course undertake, without any special forfeiture of freedom and disparity. In fact, I see here from my centre three hundred and sixty roads radiate, and I hardly know how to choose among them, so that one would choose rather to flatten out the centre into a circumference, or to seek to draw the latter into the former, so as only to continue standing upon it.Serving, as the staff-officers of the regiments say, were, to be sure, next to commanding. Thou wilt thyself, as thou writest, take the field. (I have duly received thy letter, and found therein thy shyness and passion all right and good, and thyself entire.) And, in truth, if the Archangel Michael were to array a holy legion, alegio fulminatrixof some weak Septuagints, against the commonwealth of the world,—were he to proclaim a giant war against the domineering populace, in order to drive four or five quarters of the world out of the world or into prison by a sixth (on an island there would be good room for it), and to make all spiritual slaves bodily ones,—be assured, in that happy case I would plant myself foremost in the van, and would bring on the cannon, with the short, flying remark, that, as Handel first introduced cannon into music, so here for the first time, inversely, they were bringing music into cannon. When we at length came back in a body,—when the holy militia again swept hitherward,—then would God's throne stand upon the earth, and holy men, with lofty fires in their hands, should go up, much less to rule therefrom the world's body than to sacrifice to the soul of the worlds.
"With the flower of France, then, thou wilt, as thou writest, for thy individual self, for one man, hereafter stand up. Of course it is hard for me to think highly of five and twenty millions, of which it is true the cubic root must have grown and run up freely, but stem and twig have, after all, for whole centuries, been drying and withering in a slave's dungeon. He who was not, before the Revolution, a silent Revolutionist,—somewhat as Chamfort was, against whose fire-proof breast I once in Paris struck fire with mine, or like Montesquieu and J. J. Rousseau,—let him not, with his silly spatterings, spread himself out far beyond his house-door. Freedom, like everything godlike, is not learned and acquired, but inborn. Of course, all over France and Germany there sit young authors and sons of the muses, who admire and proclaim their own sudden worth, only they are cursedly astonished that they had not earlier felt their sense of freedom,—soft, sickly knaves, who look upon themselves as complete blowing whales, because they have found some bone or other of the said fish, and buckled it to their ribs. I should always, in a war such as these dead times can furnish, believe that I was fighting against fools, indeed, but for fools too.
"The cynical, naive, free nature's-men of the present day—Franks and Germans—are almost like the naked honorables, whom I have seen bathing in the Pleisse, Spree, and Saale. They were, as was said, very naked, white, and natural, and savages, but the black cue-tail of culture fell down over their white backs. Some great, tall men, and fathers of their times, like Rousseau, Diderot, Sidney, Ferguson, Plato, have laid aside their worn-out breeches, and their disciples have taken them and worn them, and because they sat so wide, long, and open upon their diminutive bodies, have called themselvessansculottes(men without breeches).
"Truly, instead of the sword, I could also very well grasp the penknife, and, as writing Cæsar, rise, to better the world, and be useful to it, and use it. I shall always remember the conversation which I once held upon this subject with a universal German librarian of Berlin, as we walked quietly up and down in the menagerie. 'Every one should surely enrich his native land with his talents, which else would lie buried,' said the German librarian. 'To constitute a native land, it is necessary, first and foremost, that there should be someland,' said I. 'The Maltese librarian, however, who here speaks, first saw the light at sea under a pitch-black storm. Of knowledge I possess, of course, enough, and know that one has it, like a glassful of cow-pock rationally taken, only to inoculate one's self withal. The scholar, for his part, only swallows it again, in order to give it out from himself, and so it goes on. Thus does the light, like the glimmering brand in the game, "Kill the Fox, and Sell the Skin," pass from hand to hand, until, however, to be sure, the brand goes out in one,—mine,—and there remains.'
"'Droll enough!' said the universal German librarian. 'With such a humor as this only connect the study of bad men and good models, and then you create for us a second Rabener, to scourge fools.' 'Sir,' replied I, in a rage, 'I should prefer to transfer the first blow to the backs of the wise ones and you. Philosophers suffer themselves to be enlightened and washed, have always their insight into things, and are good fools, and just my people. Let a man like a universal German farrier, who takes the pulse of the muses' horse, holds his out to me, and I will feel it with great pleasure. But the rest and refuse of the world, sir? Who can skim off the world sea, if he does not break away its banks? Is it not a sorrow and a shame that all men of genius, from Plato even to Herder, have become noisy, and die printed, and frequently read and studied by the learned rabble and custom-house, without having the least power to change them? Librarian, call and whistle out, I pray you, all that lies in the critical dog-kennels on the watch beside those temples, and ask the whole body of greyhounds, bulldogs, and boar-hounds whether anything else is stirring in their souls than a potentiated maw, instead of a poetic and holy heart? In the mountain-cauldron they see the pudding-pot and brewer's-kettle, in the leaves the spades[112]on the play-cards, and the thunder has for them, as a greater electric spark, a very sour taste, which it afterward infuses into the March beer.'
"'Do you mean any allusion?' he asked. 'Assuredly!' said I. 'But further, Librarian, suppose we too were so lucky as to turn on our heels, and, with one whirl of a breath, to blow over all fools, as if they were infected with an arsenical fume, and lay them dead as a mouse: I cannot see, for all that, where the blessing is coming out, because, besides that we are still standing before each other, and have to breathe on ourselves too, I see, in all corners round about, women sitting, who will hatch the slain world anew.'
"'My dear fellow, best pair of bellows,[113]full of fire,' I continued, 'can this, however, call and stamp one very strongly to be of the satirical handicraft? O no! This is genuine humor with me, perhaps strange madness, also, perhaps—but O, will not the rare joke-maker, even in your uncommon library, resemble the porcupine-man in London (the son) who had the office under the beast-dealer, Brook, of acting as Cicerone to the stranger among the wild stock and through the park of outlandish beasts, and who commenced on the threshold with the observation that he showed himself as one of the species man? Consider it coolly and first of all! I still swing my satirical horsetail loosely and merrily, and perhaps against an occasional horse-fly; but let a book be tied to it, as in Poland they tie a cradle to the cow's tail, and the beast shall rock the cradle of the readers and give pleasure; the tail, however, becomes a slave.'
"'To such images,' said the Librarian, 'sure enough, the cultivated world could never be accustomed by any Rabener or Voltaire, and I now perceive myself that satire is not your department.' 'O, most true!' replied I, and we parted on very good terms.
"But to take things seriously, brother, what is there now left for a man (in the shape of prospects as well as of wishes) to whom the age is so over-salted and so bitter and briny as it is to me, and to whom life is made so by living men,—who is annoyed to death with the universal insipid hypocrisy and the glistening polish of the most poisonous wood,—and the horrible commonness of the German life-theatre, and the still greater commonness of the German theatre-life,—and the Pontine marshes of infamous and immoral Kotzebuean weakliness, which no Holy Father can drain and make into sound land,—and the murdered pride, together with the living vanity, that stalk about, so that I, only for the sake of drawing breath, can betake myself for whole hours to the plays of children and of cattle, because there I am assured, at least, that neither of them are coquetting with me, that, on the contrary, they have nothing in mind and are in love with nothing but their work,—what is there left, I asked at the top of this page, for one in whose nostrils, as was said, so many sorts of things stink, and especially this further particular, that improvement is hard, but deterioration not so by any means, because even the best do somewhat impose upon the worst, and thereby on themselves too, and because with their secret cursings of the age, and trimming and truckling to it, they dance at least for gold and glory, and in consideration thereof willingly let themselves be used by the more steady mass, as wine-casks are used for meat-barrels,—what is there, friend, I say, for a man in times when, as now, one makes in print, notblack white, indeed, but yet gray, and where one, as good catechists must, always avoids precisely the question, yes or no,—what remains except hatred of tyrants and slaves at once, and indignation at the maltreated no less than at the maltreatment? And what shall a man to whom the armor of life in such situations is worked thin or worn thin, seriously resolve upon?"
I, for my part, if the question is about myself, resolved, half in joke, upon inserting a fine-spun, lucid demand in the Imperial Advertiser, which you perhaps have already read in Rome, without even guessing the author.