Albano had, during Linda's absence, received from Roquairol a request not to travel long just now, so that he might in a few days see his tragedy of "The Tragedian." Gaspard, whom he found displeased at Linda's shyness of marriage, gave him a singular note on a card for Linda, containing nothing but this, from her invisible father:—
"I approve thy love. I wait for thee to seal it, that I may at length embrace my daughter.
"The Future One."
So many weighty wishes of others concurring with his own, took away now from his tender sense of honor the suspicion of selfishness and importunity, if he should ask of her the fairest festival of his life. He gave his father great satisfaction by his resolution to do this. Gaspard communicated to him private war intelligence, and told him, jokingly, it would be soon time now, that he should help fight for his friends, the modern French. Albano said it was even his earnest purpose. He was glad to hear that from a youth, Gaspard said; war trained one to business, and the right or wrong of it had nothing to do with the case, and concerned others, namely, those who declared the war.
Albano took his journey, happy through remembrance, still happier through hope. He had now courage to imagine to himself the day when Linda, a queen, should entwine with the shining crown of her spirit the soft bridal-wreath,—when this sun should rise as a Luna,—when a father, whom his own father loved, should interrupt the high festival by one of the highest,—and when for once two beings might say to each other: Now we love each other forever. So blest, and with an infinite love and sunny-warm soul, he arrived at the Prince's garden.
He always, in his passionate punctuality, came much too early. No one was yet there but two—departing ones, Roquairol and the Princess. These two were now so often and so openly seen together, that the appearing seemed intentional. Roquairol came courteously to meet him and reminded him of the received billet. "This is the theatre, dear friend," said he, "where I next play; most of the preparations I have already made, particularly to-day. My excellent Princess has granted me this spot." "You are surely coming, too," said that lady in a friendly manner to Albano. "I have already promised him as much," said Albano, who felt two ice-cellars blowing upon him in the midst of his spring. Fraülein von Haltermann alone showed him great and decided scorn. "Shall we go first to my sister's?" asked Roquairol of the Princess, as he escorted her away. Albano did not understand that. The Princess nodded. They took leave of him. Fraülein von Haltermann seemed to forget him. They flew away, stopped up on a hill encircled by the whole blooming landscape, near a little flower-garden, and then rolled along down.
The Charles's-wain with the beloved maidens came now into the French princely garden. Ardently did Albano and Linda press each other to their hearts, which to-day,—just as if those hearts had been a second time created and adorned for each other by destiny,—they would once more, with new hopes and worlds, give each other in exchange! All was so resplendent around them, all new, rare, tranquil; the whole world a garden full of high, fluttering fountains, which, drunk with splendor, flung their rainbows through each other in the sun. Julienne drew him aside to tell him of Linda's fair resolve; but he anticipated her with the intelligence of his. She strengthened him with her intelligence, delighted at the singular playing together of the wheels of fortune.
When Albano and the bride were together again, they felt a new warmth of heart; not such as comes from a dull, consuming coal, which at last crumbles into blackness, but that of a higher sun, which out of loud flames makes peaceful rays, and which surrounds men with a warm, mild spring day. Albano neither delayed nor introduced the matter, but gave her the note of her father, and said during the reading, with trembling voice, "Thy father begs with me and for me." Linda's tears gushed,—the youth trembled,—Julienne cried: "Linda, see how he loves thee!" Albano took her to his heart,—Linda stammered, "Take, then, my dear freedom, and stay with me." "Till my last hour," said he. "And till mine, and thou goest to no war," said she, with a tenderly low voice. He pressed her confusedly and ardently to his heart. "Am I not right, thou promisest it, my dear?" she repeated.
"O thou divine one, think of something fairer now," said he. "Only yes! Albano, yes?" she continued. "All will be solved by our love," said he. "Yes? Say only yes!" She begged,—he was silent,—she was terrified. "Yes?" said she, more vehemently. "O Linda, Linda!" he stammered,—they sank out of each other's arms,—"I cannot," said he. "Human creatures, understand each other!" said Julienne. "Albano, speak thy word," said Linda, severely. "I have none," said he. Linda raised herself, offended, and said, "I, too, am proud,—I am going now, Julienne." No prayer of the sister could melt the astounded maiden or the astounded youth. Anger, with its speaking-trumpet and ear-trumpet, spoke and heard everything too strongly.
The Countess went out, and commanded to harness the horses. "O ye people, and thou obstinate one," said Julienne; "go, I pray, after her, and appease her." But the leaves of the sensitive-plant of his honor were now crushed; this (to him) new excitement, this shower of indignation had agitated him; he asked not after her. "Look up at that garden," said his sister, beside herself; "there lies buried thy first bride; O spare the second!" This worked exactly the opposite effect to what she had intended. "Liana," said he, coldly, "would not have been so; just go and attend the Countess!" "O ye men!" cried she, and went.
Soon after he saw the two drive away. Gradually the wild horde of indignation scattered and vanished. But he could not, he felt, have done otherwise. He had journeyed to meet her and she him with such new tenderness,—neither knew of it on the other's part,—and hence the incomprehensible contrast enraged both so exceedingly. He hated, even in other men, begging, how much more in himself, and never was he capable of setting right a person who misunderstood him. He looked now around him; all sparkling fountains of joy had suddenly sunk, the skies were desolate, and the water murmured in its depths. He rode up to the garden where Liana's grave should be. Only flower-beds and a linden-tree with a circular bench did he see there, but no grave. Stunned and confounded, he looked in and around over the shining spaces. Obdurate,—tearless,—with a heart suffocated in the regurgitating stream of love,—gazing out into the wide future, which ran between mountains into crooked valleys and hid itself, he rode gloomily home. Here he lighted upon the following leaf from Schoppe, which the uncle, hastening on in advance from Spain, had left for him.
"It is all right,—I found the well-known portrait,—I bring it along with me in my hunting-pouch,—I come in a few days or weeks,—I have encountered the Baldhead, and killed him dead enough,—I am very much in my senses. Thy singular uncle travelled with me for a long time. S."
barstart
Linda had spent the whole subsequent day in silent anguish of spirit, thinking of the beloved, who seemed to her, as Liana had once seemed to him, not to live in the whole living fire of love, as she did,—she had been long besieged by the Princess, and then robbed by her of Julienne, whom she carried off on a pleasure-drive, and who could only throw her the intelligence, that Albano had also made an excursion to-day, in order the earlier to embrace Schoppe,—she had remained quiet, according to her principle, that female pride commands silence, calmness, and even oblivion,—when at evening she received by the blind maiden from Blumenbühl, whom she had taken into her service, the following letter:—
"Thou once mine! Be so again! I will still die, but only for thee, not for a people on the battle-field. Forgive yesterday and bless to-day. I have given up again my purpose of an excursion to meet a friend, in order to throw myself upon thy heart this very day and draw out of thy heaven and fill mine. I cannot wait until Julienne comes back; my heart burns for thee. To-morrow I must at all events be in the Prince's garden, where Roquairol at last gives his Tragedian. Come this evening—I implore thee by our love—at eight o'clock, either, if it is clear, into the cavern of Tartarus, whose gravedigger's finery and Orcus-furniture will certainly be only ridiculous to thee,—or, if it is cloudy, to the end of the flute-dell.
"Thou must take only thy blind maiden with thee. Thou well knowest the espionage that besets us on all sides. I expect and desire no answer from thee, but at the stroke of eight, I steal through Elysium to see where stands the goddess, my heaven, my sun, my bliss, thyself.
"Thy Albano."
As by a lightning beam from heaven, her whole being was melted into a soft, blissful glow; for she believed what the handwriting said, that the note was from Albano,—however unexpected so sudden a conversion appeared to her in him;—although it was really written by Roquairol. Let us go back even to the gloomy source of the rushing hell-flood which stretches out its ice-cold arm after innocence and heaven.
Roquairol had remained through the winter, with all the mortifications of his ungovernable wishes, tolerably happy and good; the evening star of love, although for him it rather waned than waxed, stood, however, not yet below the horizon, but only under clouds. But so soon as Linda had travelled off with Julienne—and indeed as he immediately guessed and early learned—to Italy; then did a new storm sweep through his life, which tore off his last blossoms and beclouded him with the long-laid dust; for he now, as he had himself predicted to Albano, saw the net coming up stream towardhimand the Countess, which should take both prisoners. The eating poison of his old passion for many gods and many mistresses ran round again hotly in all the veins of his heart:—he fell into extravagant expense, play, debts, as deeply as he possibly could,—set luck and life at stake,—threw his iron body into the jaws of death, who could not immediately destroy it,—and intoxicated himself with the sorrow of a savage over his murdered life and hopes in the funeral bowl of debauchery; a league which sensuality and despair have often before this struck with each other on earth, on theatres of war, and in great cities.
Only one thing still held the Captain upright, the expectation that Albano would keep his present distance from Linda, and then, that she would come back. At this stage the Princess returned, still keeping fresh all her hatred of the cold Albano, whose "dupe" she held herself to be. Roquairol easily induced his father to bring him nearer to her, as he hoped with her to find news about Albano and everything else. He soon became of consequence to her by the similarity of his voice and his former friendship for her foe, and still more by his rare tact of being to a woman always exactly what she desired.
As she had already known long since all his earlier connections and wishes, accordingly so soon as her telegraphs of Albano had given her the intelligence of his new love, she readily dropped him a hint on the subject. Despite the warm part which Roquairol had to play toward her, he was nevertheless furiously pale in her presence, breathless, alternately trembling and stiffening; "Is it so?" he asked, in a low tone. She showed him a letter. "Princess," said he, furiously pressing her hand to his lips, "thou wast right; forgive me all now."
How great an idea he had had of Albano he now for the first time saw, by his astonishment at what was the most natural thing in the world. Never does the heart hate more bitterly than when it is compelled at length to hate, without respecting, the object which it had formerly been compelled to respect amidst its very hatred; just as, on the same ground, the bad man is much more deeply and selfishly provoked by another's hypocrisy than the good man. Roquairol fancied now he had leave to make a real foe of the proud friend; he became, instead of a German ruin, an Italian one, full of scorpions. The Princess was the hot climate which makes the scorpions for the first time really poisonous. She related to him how Albano had so long sought to win her, and to decoy her over his deep-laid mines, merely in order, at their explosion, to have the enjoyment of coldness and contempt, and how indifferently he had spoken of the Captain, without condescending so much as to hate him.
The Princess allowed the Captain to mount up one step after another on her throne, till not another remained except her own person. She offered him even the last step on condition of avenging her. He said he would avenge her and himself, for Albano had solemnly in Tartarus resigned the Countess to him. Thus did both seem to hide their real love under the mask of revenge; the Princess hers for the Captain, he his for Linda.
She brought closer and closer before his eye a plan which he did not discern, however much she stimulated him by the remark that Albano was and would be a greater favorite with women than one had hitherto thought; that even her excellent, discreet sister Idoine, if one might judge by her silent questions in letters, and other signs, had almost lost through him both of the things which she had restored to him by his sick-bed,—health and peace; and that he must never hope to see or even to make the Countess inconstant.
At last she said, slowly, the fearful words, "Roquairol, you have his voice, and she has by night no eye." "Heaven and hell!" he exclaimed, turning alternately red and pale, and looking at once into heaven and hell, whose doors sprang open before him. "Va!"[124]he added, quickly, without having yet fathomed the black depth of this white-foaming sea. The Princess embraced him ardently, he her still more so. "In a poetic fiction," said he, "thythought would easily have come to me, but in actual life I have no cunning!" "O knave!" said she. As soon and as long as he might venture, he said Thou, because he knew the heart, especially woman's. Soon after, when they had been still more frank towards each other, said she: "If she remains innocent with you, then you have offended no one, and no one has lost; if not, then either shewas notso, or she deserved the proof and punishment of being deluded." "Yes, that is divine,—that fits into the magnificentTragedian, just before the end," said he, but would not explain himself on the subject.
Now was an object and centre supplied to the wild circles of his action. He coldly dissected Albano's love-letters into great and little characters, merely in order to copy them faithfully; hence it was that Albano once found at Rabette's his handwriting without his thoughts. He inquired of Rabette about all Albano's lesser relations, in order to elaborate his parts, even to the smallest particular, and even so he read all Italian tourists, in order to speak freely with Linda about every beautiful spot, where he, as the sham-Albano, had enjoyed with her Hesperian life. It tickled him that he could thus, with the flame in his breast, and with the cold ice-light in his head, now for once lay out and considerately manage, in real life, all theatrical preparations and complications, just as he had once done for the stage.
He saw Albano, whose haughty treatment he had experienced, come from his journey; he saw the blooming goddess walk in Lilar; he heard, through the spies of the Princess, of their engagement; high heaved his dead sea in heavy waves, and sought to drag down its victims from their flight, even from heaven. Immediately after the tragedy which he proposed to enact with Linda, his own was to come in the Prince's garden, which he from time to time promised and postponed; he had to wait and spy long till a time should appear into which so many teeth of a double machinery might catch at once.
At length the time appeared, and he wrote the above-exhibited letter to Linda. All was reckoned upon and settled, and every assistance of accident woven in with the plan. His tragedy had long been committed to memory by his acquaintances, although never rehearsed, because he, as he said, meant to surprise his fellow-players themselves with his part in the very midst of the play. The pleasure which he always had in bidding farewell,—because here the emotion refreshed him at once by its shortness and by its strength,—he now gave himself with as many as loved him. From Rabette he parted with so tempestuous a tenderness that she said to him, with alarm, "Charles, I hope this does not signify anything evil?" "All is evil in me, just now," said he.
Through the intercession of the Princess the most important spectators were invited for the next day to his tragedy, even Gaspard and Julienne, together with the court. The mystery took. Even from the Princess his part was concealed. Only his father, who would have been glad to follow the court, he struck off the list by putting him into a great rage, for he knew of no other way of keeping him back than by this thorn-hedge. His mother and Rabette he had conjured by their welfare, by his welfare, not to be spectators of his play.
A new wind of fortune had come to help him raise his flying-machine, through the singular brother of the Knight, who heard with such joy of the Iron Mask of his tragic mask, that he came to him with the proposal of introducing to him a new and wonderful player. "All the parts are taken up," said the poet. "Make a chorus between the acts, and give it to one," said the Spaniard. Roquairol asked after the player's name. The Spaniard led him to his hotel. No sooner had they entered, than a voice from within his chamber called, in a guttural, animal's voice, "Back again so soon, my master?" They found within nothing but a black jay. "Post the bird on the stage, let him be the Chorus; let him repeat in half-song,[125]mezza voce, only two or three lines; the effect will be felt," said the Spaniard.
Roquairol was astonished at the long recitations of the jay. The Spaniard begged him to dictate a still longer one, that he might with his own ears hear him drill it into the bird. Roquairol gave him, "In life dwells deception, not on the stage." The Spaniard gave out, at first, merely a word to be repeated, then another, repeated it three times, then said, snapping his fingers by way of incitement to the creature, "Allons diablesse!" and the animal stuttered out, in a deep, hollow tone, the whole line. Roquairol found in this comic bestial-mask something frightful, and accepted the proposal to compose some lines of a chorus and assign them to the bird, on one unique condition, namely, that the Spaniard would, the evening previous, draw away his nephew Albano from Pestitz, under some pretext or other, and then appear with him in the Prince's garden. The Spaniard said, "Sir Captain, I need no pretext; I have a true reason. I am to travel with him to meet his friend Schoppe, who will come to-morrow evening; he, too, will be one of your spectators."
Albano, in his perplexed frame of mind toward Linda, and in his impatient expectation of Schoppe, could not have accepted anything so readily as a little plan for an excursion, by which he might the earlier have this beloved Schoppe on his breast. Julienne was entreated by the Princess, in the presence of the sick Prince, to accompany her to Idoine, who waited for her half-way at a frontier castle, and to go back the next day into the Prince's garden. She declined. The sick brother, according to concert between him and the Princess, put in the petitions which had been requested of him. The sister fulfilled them.
And now all was arranged for the evening on which Roquairol was to see Linda. So glimmer by night in the sheds of an innocent hamlet the inserted brands of the incendiary; the storm-wind roars around the weary, sleeping inmates; the robbers stand on the mountains in the mists of evening, and look down in expectation of the moment when the fiery swords of the flames shall gleam out on all sides through the mist, and rob and murder with them, as they rush down on the dismayed and defenceless.
Linda read the letter innumerable times over, wept for sweet love, and never once thought of—forgiving. This breeze of love, which bends all the flowers and breaks none, she had herself so long wished; and now, all at once, after the foggy dead-calm of the heart, it came fresh and living, through the garden of her life. She could hardly wait for eight o'clock. She helped herself while away the time by selecting her dress, which at last consisted of the veil, hat, and all the things which she had worn when she found her lover for the first time on the island of Ischia.
She placed upon her beating bosom the paradise, or orange-blossoms, the indexes of that time and world, and went at the appointed hour, with the blind maiden on her arm, down into the garden. As well from hatred of Tartarus as from compliance with the letter, she took the road to the flute-dell. The night was obscure to her eye, and the blind maiden acted as her guide.
Overhead, on the altar-mount of Lilar, like the evil spirit on the battlement of Paradise, stood Roquairol, looking sharply down into the garden, to find Linda and her path. His festive-steed had been fastened down below in the deep thicket to some foreign shrubbery. Full of fury he saw Dian and Chariton still walking in the garden with the children, and up in the thunder-house a little light. He cursed every disturbing soul, for he was determined to murder this evening, in case of necessity, every stormer of his heaven. At last he saw Linda's tall, red-dressed form move toward the flute-dell, go up to the threshold of bush-work, and disappear behind it.
He hastened down the long, spiral mountain, warm as a poisoned snake. He heard behind him some one hurrying after in the long windings of the bushes. In a fury he drew a sword-cane, which, with a pocket-pistol, he had by him. At last he saw an odious form, like an evil spirit, running after him; it attacked him. It was the long-armed ape of the Princess. He run him through on the spot, in order not to be followed by him.
Below, in the open garden, he went slowly, in order not to awaken any suspicion. He stole softly as death, when on the thunder-car of a cloud he sails unheard through the air over a blossoming tree, beneath which a virgin leans, and hid the murderous thunder-bolt in his breast. He opened the high gate-shrubbery of the flute-dell; all was still within there and dark; only in the upper heavens a singular, roaring storm swept along and chased the herd of clouds, but on the earth it sounded low, and not a leaf stirred. "Is any one there?" asked the blind gate-keeper. "Good evening, maiden," said Roquairol, in order by the tone of his speech to pass for Albano.
Deep in the vale, which now grew narrower and more leafy, Linda was singing softly an old Spanish melody of her childhood's time. At last she was visible; the giant-snake made the poisonous spring at the sweet form, and she was entwined in a thousand-fold embrace.
He hung on her speechless, breathless; the cloud of his life broke; burning tears of passion and pain and joy gushed out; all the arms into which the stream of his love had hitherto run round in shallows, rushed together roaring, and grasped and boreoneform. "Weep not, my good Albano; we surely love each other again forever," said Linda, and the tender, beautiful lip gave him the first, fervent kiss. Then the fire-wheel of ecstasy whirled round and bore him with it, and around the head which hung lashed thereto the circling flames waved high. From a dread of being seen, if he should look, and from pleasure, he had closed his eyes; now he opened them,—and there, so near to him and in his arms, he beheld the lofty form, the proud, blooming countenance and the moist, warm eyes of love. "Thou heavenly one," said he, "kill me in this hour, that so I may die in heaven. How can I wish to live any longer after it? O that I could pour my soul into my tears and my life into thine, and then be no more!"
"Albano," said she, "why art thou to-day so altered, so sad, so tender?"
"Call me rather," said he, "bythyname, as lovers exchange names in Otaheite. Perhaps I have drunk a little, too; but I truly repent of yesterday, and I truly love thee anew. Ah, thou, dost thou, then, also love my very innermost self, Linda?"
"Sweet youth, can I then, now, choose but love thee eternally? I do, indeed, henceforth cleave to thee and thou to me."
"Ah, thou dost not know me. When does man know, then, that precisely he, this veryI, is meant and loved? Only forms are embraced, only the fleshly covering is enfolded in the arms; who, then, clasps a person to a person?Perchance God."
"And I do thee," said Linda.
"O Linda, wilt thou still love me in my grave, when the chaff of life is flown away,—still love me in my hell, when I have deceived thee out of love to thee? Is love, then, love's justification?"
"I love thee always, so long as thou lovest me. Art thou the poison-flower; then am I the bee, and die on the sweet cup."
The bride sank on his neck. He clasped her passionately, and grew more and more like the glacier, which by very warmth rolls further onward, and in melting desolates. Around him danced the pleasures with heavenly faces, but showed him in their hands the masks of furies.
"Thou wilt die of love; I am already dead from love. O, thou knowest not how long ago I loved thee!" he answered.
"Glowing heart," said she, "think of this night when thou one day seest Idoine!" "Then shall I see only my risensister," said he, but instantly trembled at the truth's having escaped his lips. "One sees," he added, hastily, "the risen Herculaneum, but one dwells overhead in the blooming Portici. Thou and I saw in Baja's gold, under the sea, the sunken arches and gates, and we sailed on farther toward living cities. Is even Roquairol, I pray, like me in so many things, and does he love thee so much, and has he loved thee so long, and died once, too, like Liana?"
"But that creature I had never loved, and now am I thy eternal bride."
"Poor fellow! But I did wrong, however, I think, when I once, in the cavern of Tartarus, renounced thee, the unseen, beforehand, out of love toward my friend."
"Certainly not. But how have we both fallen upon the subject of this uncomfortable being?" said she, kissing him.
"Uncomfortable,[126]indeed," replied he, with bitter emphasis, blazing up in revengeful love, in a discord of rage and lust, and determined now to weave the funeral veil over her whole future. He beat his dark eagle's wings about his victim, and stifled and awakened kisses; he tore the orange-blossoms from her bosom and threw them behind him. "Love is living and dying and heaven and hell," said he; "love is murder and fire and death and pain and pleasure. Caligula would have placed his Cæsonia on the rack only for the sake of learning from her why he so loved her. I could also..."
"Divine Albano, do not drink so any more! Thou art too impetuous; even thy eyebrows storm! What art thou like?"
"All things at once, like a tempest full of glowing heat,—and my heaven is luminous with lightning,—and I throw cold hail, and one destruction after another; and a warm rain falls upon the flowers, and a still bow of peace knits together heaven and earth."
At this moment he saw in heaven the storm-clouds, like storm-birds, already flying more brightly between the stars and near the angry, bloody eye of Mars; the moon, that came to scare and betray him, soon threw upon him the judging eye of a god. In defiance of fate, he tore open for his violent kisses the nun's veil and saintly splendor of the virgin's bosom. Far off stood the beacon-tower of conscience enveloped in thick clouds. Linda wept, trembling and glowing, on his breast. "Be my good genius, Albano," said she. "And thy evil one. But call me only one single time Charles," said he, full of passion. "O, becalledCharles, but remain my former Albano, my holy Albano," said she.
Suddenly the flutes in the dell began, which the pious father caused to play at his evening devotions. Like tones of music on the battle-field, they called down murder. Then did Linda's golden throne of life and of happiness melt away, and the white, bridal garment of her innocence was rent and burnt to ashes.
"Now am I thine until my death!" said she, softly, with streams of tears. "Only till mine!" said he, and wept now softly with the weeping flutes. Upon the golden ball on the mountain already glimmered the moon, which, like an armed comet, like a one-eyed giant, pressed on, to drive the sinner out of his Eden. "Stay till the moon comes, that I may look into thy face," she begged. "No, thou divine one, my festive steed already neighs; the death-torch burns down into my hand," said he, in a low, tragic tone. The storm had passed from heaven down to the earth. She replied, "The storm is so loud, what saidst thou, love?" He wildly kissed again her lips and her bosom. He could not go; he could not stay. "Go not to-morrow," said he, "to the Tragedian, I entreat thee; the end, I hear, is too agitating."
"Besides, I never like such things. O, stay, stay longer; I am sure I shall not see thee again to-morrow." He pressed her to himself, closed her eyes with his face. The moon had already reared its Gorgon head in the east; he would let go life when he let her go from his arms; and yet every stammered word of love consumed the short moment. The storm labored in the torn trees, and the flute-tones glided away like butterflies, like innocent children beneath the great wing. Roquairol, as if confounded by such a presence, was near upon the point of saying, look at me, I am Roquairol; but the thought quickly placed itself between, she does not deserve that of thee; no, let her learn it for the first time in that hour when one forgives everything! Yet once more he held her passionately clasped to himself; already the moonlight fell in upon both; he repeated a thousand words of love and tenderness, thrust her back, turned swiftly round, and stalked away in Albano's dress through the vale.
"Good night, maiden," said he to the blind girl, in passing. Linda sang not again as before. The stars looked down upon him; the storm winds spake to him; the pleasures went along by him, but they had now the masks of the furies on their faces. An arm struck down from heaven, an arm grasped up from hell, and both would seize him, to tear him asunder. "Well, well," said he, "I was fortunate indeed, but I might have been still more so had I been her curséd Albano," and flung himself upon his festive horse, and flew the same night to the Prince's garden.
Albano and his uncle went on to meet the announced Schoppe from village to village. The uncle continually pushed back the hope before them like a horizon, farther and farther, as they advanced. Once, at evening, the Count fancied he heard Schoppe's voice close beside him; in vain, the beloved man came not yet to his heart, and with longing impatience Albano saw the clouds in heaven sail along over the way which his precious one was taking beneath them on the earth. The uncle told him a long story of a secret trouble which often weighed down the Librarian, and of his liability to attacks of madness, which had some time ago repelled him from him, because among all men there was none he dreaded so much as the madman. Of Romeiro's portrait he seemed to know nothing. Albano was silent with vexation, for the Spaniard was one of those insufferable men who, with sleek, steady face, and with screwed-up and helmed soul, can let another's contradiction flutter around them without any contradiction on their part, without echo, without a reflection or alteration, and to whom another's discourse is only a still dew, the fall of which wears away no stone. To this was added Albano's exasperation against his new falsehood about Schoppe's nearness, and against his own incapacity of listening for a good, long hour incredulously to what a liar is saying.
"Schoppe is, upon my word, already arrived at the Prince's garden by another route," said the Spaniard at last, in quite a lively mood, and advised turning back, in the comfortable enjoyment of that cool, impudent faculty he had of jamming up every one who did not do homage to him, between sharp, tedious ice-fields.
They arrived before the princely garden in the midst of nothing but carriages, out of which were alighting the spectators of to-day's dramatic festival. Albano found among them already his father, the Princess, and Julienne, and, among the actors, Bouverot, his old exercise-master Falterle, and the yellow-dressed merchant's lady in the red shawl, who had once been lessinthanonRoquairol's heart, and finally Roquairol himself. The Captain stepped up immediately, first and foremost, to the well-known Albano, and said, with elaborate ease, the play would begin soon, only Dian with his wife was still expected. Dian, always easily moved, most of all by an invitation, could least of all resist one when art was the occasion; through him Chariton also was soon gained for the play, but not without one condition,—that she was to play in the piece the part of a beloved to no one but her spouse. When Roquairol spoke with Albano, he found it hard to laugh easily, or to raise his eyelids, as if his face were frozen or swollen; and an avenging, humiliating spirit inwardly weighed his down to the earth before the pure and happy friend out of whose spring he had torn and cast away the bright sun, and over whose life he had hung an eternal plague-cloud.
Amidst the tumult of garden talk, and in the fruitless wish to impart to his sister Julienne three soft words for the Linda of whose presence he had been so long deprived, Albano saw the carriage of the Countess roll along on the heights up to Liana's last garden, there stop, and her and Dian and Chariton alight from it.
Then he thought of nothing but to fly to the long-missed loved one,—an act which, before the many eyes, easily assumed the appearance of a longing for Dian; and at this moment, in the thirst of love, he, in fact, asked no question about eyes. "Ah, here I am, after all!" said Linda, and came to meet him, interweaving the delicate vine-tendrils of soft glances with his, so shyly and so lovingly; and the evening blush of bashfulness, like a spring-redness in the night, mantled her heaven, and the white moon of innocence stood in the midst of it. Albano was dissolved with the melting wind of this forgiveness, reproached himself with his sweet joy at her conversion, as if it were a selfish pride in his victory, and could hardly, in the fair confusion of good fortune, command his sweet astonishment and his melting heart, which would fain dissipate itself before her like a tempest into evening dew. He threw his soul into his eye, and gave it to his beloved. Before Chariton he felt that he must veil himself. To Dian and Linda he said, as they looked into the setting sun, only the word, "Ischia!"
"There lies dear Anastasius," said Chariton to Dian, "my good friend Liana buried, and one knows not properly whereabouts in the garden, for one sees really nothing but flowers and flowers; however, she so ordered it." "That is very sad and fine," said Dian; "but let it be,—gone is gone, Chariton!" and led her aside, out of indulgence to the lovers. Albano, who overlooked nothing, and overheard everything, showed plainly enough how much he had been agitated by Chariton's words. Linda, too, perceived it. "Only speak out thy sadness," said she; "I do truly lovehertoo." "I am thinking upon the living," said he, collecting himself, and looked timidly, not upon the flower-garden, but upon the sun-enchanted[127]evening landscape; "can one, then, sufficiently forgive, and think no evil upon the earth? Linda, O how thou forgivest me to-day!"
"Friend," said she, "when you sin you shall receive forgiveness; but until then, I pray you be quiet!" He looked upon her significantly. "Hast thou not already forgiven, and have not I too? But couldst thou have known how intimately I lived with thee during these days on the way to my Schoppe, and brought over the divine past into the future—ah, can I then tell thee all in this place?" Fortunately she—like other women, attending less to words than to looks, gestures, and actions—heard more with the spiritual than the bodily ear, and stepped not over the brink of the abyss which his words laid open so near her. Thus did these two now play, like children, near the cold thunder-charged lightning-rod, out of which at the smallest nearer approach must dart the flashing scythe of death.
Both went on with their illusions near the lightning. The sun went down with his flames by the little mountain and the smooth flowery grave over into the distant plains. Out of the depths of the princely garden came tones fluttering up through the long evening rays and deified the golden landscape. The rays were solitary wings, that sought their heart, and joined it, and then flew onward—and the loving hearts became full of wings. The rays sank, the tones soared. Around Linda and Albano lay a golden circle of gardens and mountains and green valleys, and every flower rocked with its riches under the last lingering gold, and became the cradle of the eye, the cradle of the heart. The lovers looked at each other, and upon the earth, with inspired looks; the shining world appeared to them only in the magic mirror of their hearts, and they were, themselves, both, only floating images therein.
"Linda, I will be more gentle," said he. "I swear it by the saint in whose garden we stand!" "Be so, dear one; in Lilar thou wast not so!" said she. He understood it of his storminess toward Liana. "Bury this recollection in thy love!" said he, reddening. She looked upon him like a virgin,—her inner being had remained virginal and innocent,—as the peach turns its red and glowing side toward the sun, but keeps under the leaves the tender white. Her eye drank from his, his drank from hers; the heavens mingled with her heaven, the purple sun glimmered back out of the warm dew of loving eyes. "O that I might now kiss thee!" said Albano. "Ah, that thou mightest!" said Linda. "So goldenly did the sun once go down into the sea!" said he. "And afterward we gave each other the first kiss!" said she. "We will see each other now much oftener," said he. "Yes, indeed, and longer by day; by night I, poor one, have, indeed, no eye. Even now is my eye already going down yonder," said she, as the sun sank from sight.
It was a good, gentle spirit, or Liana's own,—that spirit which conducts man by the gradual transition of twilight over into night, which pours soothing tears into sorrow and into ecstasy, and which suffers not the short path of love's evening star to be overcast with clouds,—this spirit it was which saved their tongues and ears from the terrible sound which would at once have torn up the golden magic circle of evening into an all-surrounding blaze of hell.
"Who is that coming so hastily yonder?" said Linda. "My foe," said Albano. Roquairol had missed him, and had heard of Linda's arrival; in the hell-torment of anxiety, lest what had happened the night before might reveal itself before them this evening, he hurried, under the pretext of going to get Dian as a performer and Albano as a hearer, up the mountain. Like a centaur, half man, half wild beast, he broke in upon the melodious souls and joys with the hollow, confused war of his whole being. But hardly had he perceived in their looks the consecration of rapture, and seen that the black curtain still lay fast upon his murder, when the grim spirit of jealousy reared itself within him. "She is now my betrothed," he said to himself; and the solar eclipse of confused repentance was eclipsed by the tempest of chagrin. Linda, kindling into anger from an inward shudder at his similarity of voice, stood before him like a diamond, clear, sparkling, hard and cutting; but Albano, amidst the echoes of the harmony, stood gently on the churchyard of the sister of this brother, and not without some confusion. Roquairol was haunted again by yesterday's unclean suspicion, that perhaps Albano and Linda were no longer innocent.
Angrily, he now invited Linda to make one of the spectators at his tragedy. "You told me," said she to Albano, "it concluded so tragically; I am no friend of that." "He is not at all acquainted with it," said Roquairol. "No," said Albano. As the serpent looked down upon the paradise of the first pair, so looked he with the pleasing consciousness that he could hand them the apple from the tree of knowledge which should immediately drive them out from theirs. "Besides," she subjoined, "I see badly in the evening, or not at all." Roquairol affected to be surprised at that, joked upon the gain which it would be to him as first lover in the play, if she onlyheardhim, and begged Dian to unite in entreating her. Not inborn, but acquired coldness, has at command the highest falsehood; the former is capable only of dissimulation, the latter of simulation also, because it at once knows and uses all ways and means of kindling a fire, and keeps its firm standing on slippery ice by the ashes of former heat. When Albano himself at length advised her to take part in the tragic enjoyment, and grant her friends of both sexes below there the fair, pure enjoyment of her presence, then she consented, not without wondering at his retraction.
She took Chariton into her carriage. The men walked on ahead. On the way Roquairol said to Dian, who had to play the character of Albano in the piece, "So soon as I have said, in the fourth act, 'Even spiritual love goes to meet sensual, and, after all, like a seafarer on his way eastward, arrives at last in the lands of sundown,' then you fall in." Dian laughed, and said, "I'll fall in. In Italy, however, the passage begins at once as a southerly and westerly one." Albano was silent for vexation, and repented having helped persuade Linda to this doubtful festival. The Princess cast sundry rapid glances of contempt at the cheated Linda, and she answered them with the like; distinguished women betray their sex most in hostile contact with distinguished ones.
Most of the spectators had in the beginning come more for the sake of the spectators and performers than of the play; but soon they were attracted by the mystery and by the extraordinary stage itself. The scene was laid on the so-called Island of Slumber in the Prince's garden, which was covered with a wild, thick tangle of flowers, bushes, and high trees. Its eastern side showed an open, free foreground, on which the performance was to take place, with a white Sphinx on an empty tomb farther in among the green. The wings of the scenes were the dark leafy parts; pit and boxes the shore opposite, which was separated from the island by a lake, about as broad as a moderate-sized ship. From two trees of the two opposite shores hung down like a lantern out over the middle of the lake the cage of the jay or chorus, suspended there by way of bringing her deep, dull voice nearer to the spectators. "I am, to tell the truth, 'curious," said the Knight to his son, "to know whence you will draw the tragical." "Leave me alone for that!" said Roquairol, who had hitherto been walking backward and forward silently and uneasily, with his eyes on the ground; "only I must make a general request of the company to be pardoned the delay. When I address the moon in the fifth act, I can very well use the real one, if I only begin just so that her rising shall coincide with the last scene."
At length he embarked, with a face that was growing pale, in the Charon's boat, as he said, and ferried over alone. Then the other players sailed over one after another. All were lost behind the trees; and now, from behind in the embowered western parts of the island, the immortal overture from Mozart's Don Juan rose like an invisible spirit-realm slowly and grandly into the air.
"Diablesse!" cried thereupon the brother of the Knight to the jay, and clapped his hands at the same time as a signal.
"Open the coffin," the creature began, in a hollow voice, accompanied by single, lugubrious, tones of the orchestra,—"open the coffin in the churchyard, and show for the last time the breast of the corpse and his dry eyelid, and then shut it to forever."
At this moment Lilia (Chariton) and Carlos (Dian) stepped forth,—two lovers yet in the earliest time of the first love. No sad rain of tears yet swept away the golden morning dew, they are so true to each other. Lilia rejoices with him that her brother Hiort is just coming back from his travels to find his youthful friend Carlos her eternal one. "Perhaps he, too, is right fortunate," said Lilia. "O, certainly so," said Carlos; "he is indeed that, and everything else." At times both were silent in happy contemplation of each other; then tones went up out of the veiled west of the island and bore the mute joy into the ether, and showed it to them hovering and glorified. A sweet sympathy diffused itself among the spectators for Dian's and Chariton's imitation of their own fair reality, so delicate, yet mingled with southern glow; they heard and saw Greeks. All at once Lilia fled behind the flower-bushes, for her enemy,Salera, Carlos's father, came, personated by Bouverot.
Salera angrily announced to his son the arrival of his bride,Athenais. Carlos made known to him now the mystery of his earlier love, and showed himself armed against a whole future. Salera cried, with exasperation, "Would that she were not, as she is, beautiful, so that I might have the pleasant duty of forcing and punishing thee! But thou wilt see her, and obey me, and yet I shall hate thee." Carlos replied, "Father, I have already seen Lilia." Salera went off with angry repetitions, and Carlos wished now still more ardently for Hiort's return, in order with him more easily to abduct his sister through his persuasion and attendance. Here closed the first act.
The brother of the Knight called to the jay, "Diablesse!" and scraped with his foot, as a signal.
"Appear, pale man!" spake the creature; "the clock vibrates the hour; man of sorrow, land upon the still island!"
Hiort stepped forth, with his cheeks painted pale, with open breast, looked upon the tomb, and said, from his innermost soul, "At last!" The music played a dance. "Yes, indeed, island of slumber thou may'st well be called; our days end with a sleep," he added. Now came his Carlos. "Hiort, art thou dead?" cried he, in terror, over the corpse. "I am only pale," said he. "O, how dost thou come back so out of the beautiful, gay earth?" said Carlos. "Exhausted, Charles, with stillborn hopes; my present is disinherited by the past; the foliage of the sensual is fallen off; not even beautiful nature do I longer fancy, and clouds like mountains are more dear to me than real mountains. I have truly reaped the bitter weeds of life, and yet must I, in this empty breast, carry about with me a destroying angel, who eternally digs and writes, and every letter is a wound. No advice! You call it conscience. But bring me a little sleep-draught hither on the island of sleep, Charles!"
They brought wine. He now gave his friend an account of his life,—his faults, among which he adduced the very one in which he was just persisting, namely, drinking; his self-reproducing vanity, even with its self-acknowledgment; his conquests of women, which made him a magnetic mountain, full of the attracted nails from ships that had thereby fallen to pieces; his propensity, like Cardan, to offend his friends, to break in upon his own or another's good fortune, as, even when a child, he longed to interrupt the preacher,[128]or in the midst of the finest tune to smash the harpsichord, and in a fit of enthusiasm to think the most licentious thoughts.
"Once I had still, after all, two distinct and different selves,—one that promised and lied, and one that believed the other; now they both lie to each other, and neither believes." Carlos answered, "Horrible! But thy sorrow is verily itself a help and a gift." "Ah, what!" he replied. "Man condemns less his iniquity than the past situation wherein he committed it, while, in a fresh situation, he finds it new and sweet again, and loves it as much as ever. What lies cold yonder, that is my image [pointing to the Sphinx], that stirs itself, living, in my bloody breast. Help me! draw out the rending monster!"
Albano fired with rage in his innermost soul at the guilty repetition of that tender confessional night with him.[129]"He is bold enough," said Gaspard, in a whisper to Albano, "because, as I hear, he is really to personate himself; but when he sees himself so, he is surely better than he sees himself." "O," said Albano, "so I thought once! But is, then, the contemplation of a bad condition itself a good condition? Is he not so much the worse that he bears this consciousness, and so much the weaker that he sees an incurable cancer-sore growing upon him? The highest thing he has, at all events, lost,—innocence." "A fleeting cradle virtue! He has, after all, a bright, bold, reflecting faculty," said Gaspard. "Only effeminate, shameless, double-meaning, many-sided debility of heart he has; talks of power, and cannot tear through the thinnest mesh of pleasure," said Albano.
"Charles," said Hiort, tenderly, as if answering him, "yes, there is yet one help. When on the ground of life one fresh color after another fades,—when existence is now nothing, neither comedy nor tragedy, only a stale show-piece,—still is there one heaven open to man, which shall receive him,—love. Let this close against him, and he is damned forever. Carlos, my Carlos, I could still be happy, for I have seenAthenais; but I can be still more unhappy than I am, for she loves me not. In my heart lies this blazing, but continually sharp-cutting diamond, upon which it bleeds as often as it beats." Everywhere now did Roquairol let Linda's image play in. At this crisis, Carlos at first threw his friend into an internal uproar, with the intelligence that Athenais had been selected by his father forhisbride, and was coming soon; but he calmed him, when his sister Lilia appeared, by quickly taking her hand, and saying, "This one only do I love." They spoke of the obstacles on the part of old Salera, whom Carlos called a glacier, which bore fruit under no sun, and could not be built upon. "Stand by me, Charles," said Hiort; "think what thou wrotest to me: 'Like two streams will we blend together, and grow, and bear, and dry up together.'"[130]Thus did the three beings mutually understand, bind, elevate each other; all had one end,—their common welfare. Carlos swore eternal rebellion against his father; Hiort, to protect his sister, and cried, "At last the empty cornucopia of Time, which hitherto has given out nothing but hollow sounds, pours out flowers again." "O, the women! How common and commonplace are almost all men! But almost every woman is new." Gaspard said, with a smile, "Women say the reverse of us and themselves." The second act closed in gladness and peace.
"Diablesse!" cried the Spaniard, and stretched his right hand high in the air.
"Fleeting," began the black jay, amid tones of music, "is man, more fleeting is his bliss, but earlier than all dies the friend with his word."
The third act followed immediately upon the heels of the preceding, and broke up, by the uninterrupted continuance of the artistic enchantment, which should belong to every play and every work of art that is to be read, all cold, prosaic astonishment, even that which arose from the wonderful speaking of the jay on the lake. A great, beautiful, proud lady appeared,—Athenais (personated by the merchant's wife, Roquairol's by-mistress), full of hope in her old friend Lilia, who called herself "the little Athenais," and, sweetly dreaming over the dream of former days, Lilia sinks into her arms with twofold tears; Athenais does indeed bear in her hand three heavens and three hells. "How beautiful thou returnest! My poor brother!" said Lilia softly. "Name him not," said she proudly, "he can die for me, but I cannot live for him." Here Carlos flies in to his Lilia,—stops and stiffens in his flight,—collects himself, and approaches Lilia. She says, "Count Salera,—Athenais—" He grew pale, she red. A constraining, painful confusion entangled them all three; every honey drop was taken from a thorn-hedge. Lilia, with a shudder, is made more and more strongly aware of Athenais's sudden victory over her fortune and love. Athenais went away. The two lovers look upon each other for a long time with trembling. "Am I right?" asked Lilia. "Am I in fault?" said Carlos. "No," said she, "for thou art a mortal, and, what is still worse, a man." "What shall I do, then?" replied Carlos. "Thou shalt," said she, solemnly, "after one year go into a garden on a hill, and look around thee and seek me in the garden,—in the garden—under the beds,—deep below one,—I know not how deep." She hastened away, as if frantic, and sang, "All over, all over with loving and living!"
Carlos stood some minutes with his wild look on the ground, and said, in a low, hollow tone, "God, it is thy work!" and went off,—met his friend, who called out impetuously and joyfully, "She is here!" but he hastened on proudly, and only called back, "Not now, Hiort!" To him came Lilia, weeping, and led him onward. "Come," said she, "do not look upon the tomb; we are both too unhappy."
Then came out old Salera with Athenais,—seized on ice for fire, and took his cold coin for warm,—praised her like a man, and his son like a father,—and said, as in a play, There comes himself. "Here, son," said he, "I set before thee thy happiness, if thou canst deserve it." Carlos had lost Lilia's heart,—his father's wish, the might of beauty, the omnipotence of loving beauty, stood before him, his longing and the thought of cruelty toward this goddess, and finally a world within him, which stood so near to her sun, prevailed over a double fidelity;—he sank on his knee before her, and said, "I am guiltless, if I am happy." The pair go off on one side; Salera on the other, and encounters Lilia, whose hand he takes, with the words, "You, as a friend of my house and son, certainly take the deepest interest in his latest happiness as the possessor of Athenais." So ended the third act, which, by its unjust, all-distorting allusions, filled and fired Albano with an exasperated desire for the end, merely that he might call Roquairol to account for this assassin-like brandishing of the tragic dagger. "The old fellow,"[131]said Gaspard, laughing, "fancies he is painting me too herein; I wish, however, he would take stronger colors."
Before the fourth act commenced, the Spaniard threw up his left hand, and the black jay spoke immediately: "Sin punishes sin, and the foe the foe; untamable is love, untamable also vengeance. See, now comes the man whom they no more love, and brings with him his wounds and his wrath." There stood Hiort, as if before his grave, which drew down his head,—weeping and drinking enormously,—soft evening tones of music melted away with his dissolving life. "Ah, so it is," cried he, out of a deep, agonized breast,—"only throw them away at length, the two last roses of life:[132]too many bees and thorns lurk in them; they draw thy blood and give thee poison— O, how I loved! thou Almighty One on high, how I loved!—but ah, not thee! And so now I stand empty and poor and old: nothing, nothing is left me,-not a single heart,—no, not my own: that is already gone down into the grave. The wick is drawn out of my life, and it runs away in darkness. O ye children of men! ye stupid children of men! why do ye then believe that there is still any love here below? Look at me, I have none. An airy colored ribbon of love, a rainbow, draws itself out and winds itself around under us shifting clouds, as if it would bind the clouds and bear them. Ridiculous! it is itself cloud and mere falling weather,—in the beginning glisten gay drops of gladness, then dash down black drops of rain!"
He was silent,—went slowly up and down,—looked seriously at a war-dance and masquerade of internal spectres,—then stopped. The shadows of dark deeds played through each other around him: suddenly he started up; a lightning-flash of a thought had darted into his heart; he ran to and fro, cried, "Music! let me have horrible music!" and the wedding music from Don Juan, which had hitherto accompanied him, raised the murder-cry of terror. "Divine!" said he; and only single words, only tiger spots, appeared and vanished on the monster as he passed by. "Devilish! the rose's being, the blossom's being,—aye, well! I will bury myself in the avalanche, and roll down; and then I die beautifully on my slumber-island," he concluded, in a soft, faint voice.
"O Lilia! insure me one prayer!" cried he, going to meet his approaching sister. "Any one which hinders not my dying," said she. He laid before her the prayer, that she would this very night persuade her friend Athenais into the "night-arbor" of the island, under the pretext that her bridegroom, Carlos, wished to show her to-day two mysteries about Lilia. "I have," he added, "Carlos's voice; with it I can declare to her my loving heart, and then, if she loves me, I will call myself Hiort." "Is thy request sincere?" asked the sister. "As true as that I will be still alive to-morrow," said he. "Then is it soon fulfilled, for Athenais expects me even in the night-arbor; only follow me after seven minutes." She went; he looked after her, and said to himself, "Hasten, arrange the heaven! Fair slumber-island, at once the sleeping-place for the bridal-chamber and for the eternal sleep. O, how few minutes stand between me and her heart!"
"Thou art still here, surely?" said he, and looked for his pistol. "Now," cried he, solemnly, in departing, "is the time for theclear-obscuredeed, then the bier-cloth is thrown over it," and went swiftly into the arbor.
The Spaniard threw a twig into the water, and the black jay spake, in a low tone, "Silent is bliss; silent is death."
"The man," said Gaspard, "has something through the whole play like real earnest. I will not answer that he does not shoot himself dead before us all." "Impossible!" said Albano, alarmed; "he has not the force for such a reality." Nevertheless, he could not, after all, properly free himself from the anxious thought of this possibility.
Disturbed, impetuous, with dishevelled hair, Hiort came back, and said, in a low voice, "It is done; I was blest; no one will be so after me." "With that yellow one,[133]and now in the night-hour, I will answer for nothing," said Gaspard. Albano reddened with shame at the impudent presumption, and still more at Roquairol's crime of dishonoring and seducing, even in the play, his holy beloved. "Music, but tender and good!" he cried, and let himself be fanned by the zephyr of harmony, and drank incessantly "funeral draughts," or wine,—both to the annoyance of the Knight, who abhorred drinking, and shunned music, because this or both made one weak.
He laid himself down on the turf, and the pistol beside him, and said, stammering, "So, then, I lie in the warm ashes of my burnt-out life, and my cold ashes will be added soon." He put his double opera-glass close to his eyes, and cast sparkling looks over at Linda. "I have had her on my heart, the divine beauty, my eternal love,—my tulip, which at evening closes at length over the bee, that he may die in the flower-cup. On the roses of my life I rest and die; I still look with bliss on the sweet one; I cannot repent. Only forgive, poor Carlos; I wipe away the crime with blood, but with tears of penitence I cannot. Should that which time has washed away from this shore cleave again to the shore of eternity, then it must fare badly with me there: I can change there as little as here."
At this moment a cannon-shot was fired in the city to announce a deserter. He took his pistol into his hand. "Yes, yes, a shot signifies a fugitive,—a fugitive out of the world, too. O, when shall the sharp sickle lift itself in the east, and cut life in twain? I am so weary!" He looked toward the eastern heavens, but a cloud, which already faintly thundered, overcast the gateway of the moon. He smiled bitterly.
"Even this little, last joy also destiny begrudges me! I shall see the moon no more. Well, I shall, perhaps, mount higher than it or its storm-cloud,—only my dear spectators and auditors of my death are driven away from me by the rain. Yes, if thou art out, then am I out!" He pointed to the flask.
"Wild, awful tones, come up from the deep! Bring me my bloody bridal dress! It is time; declining joy casts behind a long, lengthening shadow." Albano and Julienne recognized with a shudder, in the little coat which they brought him, the blood-sprinkled one which he had worn at the masquerade, when, as a boy, he had meant to murder himself before Linda. "You must lay it on my cold breast," said he, as he received it from Falterle. The thunder rolled nearer, the lightnings became more glowing, and one cloud after another swelled the tempest. He drank the glasses fast. "Nothing can now harm me," said he; "even the lightning not specially, although I lie under trees; in this tube there is a lightning that defies all lightnings,—a real lightning-rod." The hastening storm drove him, on the spectators' account, to the conclusion, and he was roused to indignation at the mockery of Providence over his theatrical preparations.
"Nothing is more pleasant and timely than this tempest," said Gaspard; "however, talking and waiting seem to gratify him tolerably." The other spectators were agonized by the scene, and yet not one tore himself away. Orders had been given to the fellow-performers to take the shot as the signal-word, and not to come before it. He said, "The death-snake rattles in the neighborhood; yonder, on the wave of the future, the corpse comes swimming on." They perceived that he spoke at random and extempore, vexed by the storm. He looked upon the pistol. "A glance at thee! So is the look at life taken, and again hidden under the eyelid. A spark, a single spark, and the theatre-curtain blazes up, and I see the spectators stand, spirits, or even nothing at all, and the eternal, heavy cloud fills the wide ether of the world. So stand I, then, by the dead sea of eternity; so black, still, wide, deep it lies below me; one step, and I am in there, and sink forever. Let it come! I swam therein even before my birth. Now, now," said he, while it sprinkled, and he took the last glass, "the rain will chill the poor wretch already sinking into the chill of death. Play now something soft and beautiful, good people!"
Thereupon he cocked his weapon, stood up, said, weeping, "Farewell, beautiful and hard life! Ye two fair stars, ye that still look down from above, may I come nearer to you? Thou holy earth, thou wilt still often quake, but no more shall he quake with thee who sleeps in thy bosom; and ye good, far-off beings who loved me, and ye near ones whom I so loved, may you fare better than I, and condemn me not too harshly! I do verily punish myself, and God immediately judges me. Farewell, my dear, offended, but very hard Albano, and thou, thou even unto death ardently loved Liana, forgive me, and weep for me! Liana, if thou still livest, then stand by thy brother in the last hour, and pray for me before God!" Here he suddenly pointed the weapon at his forehead, fired, and fell headlong; some blood flowed from the cloven skull, and he breathed yet once, and then no more.
Bouverot flew out, according to his part, and began it: "Even now, my dear Hiort, my Carlos bethinks himself"; but he started back before the corpse, stammering, "Mais! mon Dieu! il s'est tué re vera! Diable! il est mort! Oh! qui me payera?" Linda sank powerless on Julienne's bosom, and the latter stammered, "O, the sinner and suicide!" The Princess exclaimed, indignantly, "Oh, le traitre!" Albano cried, "Ah, Charles! Charles!" and plunged into the lake, and swam over, threw himself upon the shattered form, and groaned, weeping, "O, had I known this! Brother and sister dead! and I am to blame! O, had I remained unsuccessful! Ah, my Charles, Charles, forgive! I was not thy foe. How deplorably shattered it lies there,—the great temple!" "Be more calm, I pray," said Gaspard, who had at last come over in the boat, and who bore every mutilation with an anatomical coldness and curiosity; "he had his regiment debts also, and feared the investigation which a new administration would bring about. Now, one can, after all, have respect for him; he has actually carried through his character."
Albano raised himself up erect, and said, in the deafness of anguish, "Who spake that? you, miserable Bouverot? you know nothing but debts!" "Monsieur le Comte!" said he, defyingly. "I said it," said Gaspard to his son. "O my Dian!" cried Albano, and stretched out his hand toward him, who, himself weeping, held his weeping Chariton, "come thou hither; let us bandage him; there may yet be help for it."
The Counsellor of Arts Fraischdörfer stepped up to the astounded Princess, who remained upon her side of the lake, with the words, by way of diverting her attention, "Viewed on the side of art merely, it were a question whether this situation was not borrowed with effect. One must, as in that wonderful creation of Hamlet, weave a play into the play, and in that make the pretended death a real one; of course it were then only a show of show, playing reality in real play, and thousand-fold, wonderful reflex! But how it rains now!" Something was whispered in the ear of the Princess by her Haltermann. She flung up her arms, and cried, "O, monster! homicide! My poor, innocent Gibbon! Thou monster!" She had heard of the ape's murder, and departed inconsolable.
All at once the naked moon emerged into the deep blue, and every one remarked it; but the rain previous no one but Fraischdörfer had been aware of. Albano saw now full clearly the dead eyes and white, stiff lips. "No, they stir not," said he. Then it sounded as if out of Roquairol's breast and iron mouth, "Be still; I am judged!" And immediately began the jay, as concluding chorus of the last act, "The poor man now lies fast asleep, and you can cover him up!"
Gaspard looked very earnestly at his brother. "By heavens!" replied the latter, "it is written so in his part."
The whole starry sky cleared up. The company went homeward. Albano and Dian, with Chariton, stayed by the corpse.