"P. P.
"Your highborn grace must with all speed be informed that the mortally sick Fraülein von Froulay desires most earnestly this very day to speak with your highnessin person; and you have so much the more need to haste, as, according to her own representation, she can hardly with the least probability be expected, especially as patients of thisgenrecan always foresee their death accurately, to survive the present evening, but must pass out of this mortality into the eternal glory. In my own person, I need hardly admonish your grace as a Christian, that a soft, still, pious, and devout demeanor would be far more suitable and seemly than cruel worldly sorrow beside the dying-bed of this glorious bride of Christ, in regard to whose death every heart will wish, 'Lord, be my death like that of this just one!' With this suggestion, I remain, with distinguished respect,
"Your highborn grace's submissive"Joachim Spener,Court Chaplain.
"P. S. If your highness does not come directly with the messenger, I beg earnestly the favor of a few lines in reply."
Albano said not a word, gave the note to his friend, pressed his hand gently, took his hat, and went slowly and with dry eyes out into the road that led up to the mountain-castle.
He hurried along with a shudder round by the spot where the corpse-seeress had stood the previous night, in order to behold her dreams, transformed into dark-clad human beings, wind slowly down from the mountain-road. It was a still, warm, blue after-summer afternoon. The evening red of the year, the ruddy-glowing foliage, stole from mountain to mountain; on dead pastures the poisonous saffron-flowers stood together untouched; on the overspun stubble spiders were still working away at the flying summer, and setting up a few threads as the ropes and sails wherewith it was to hasten its flight. The wide circle of air and earth was still, the whole heaven cloudless, and the soul of man heavily overcast.
Albano's heart rested upon the season as a head rests upon the executioner's block. Naught did he see in the wide blue of heaven but Liana soaring therein; nothing, nothing on the earth, but her prostrate, empty form.
He felt a sharp pang when suddenly, on the heights of Blumenbühl, the white mountain-palace flashed upon his sight. He ran down wildly along by the abhorred, the transformed, and deformed Blumenbühl, and hurried away up into the deep hollow pass which leads to the mountain-castle. But where this splits into two ascending defiles, the young man, with the veil of sorrow over his eyes, took by mistake the left, and hurried on between its walls more and more eagerly, till, after the long chase, he came out on the heights, and beheld the gleaming palace of sorrow behind him. Then did it seem to him as if the landscape stretching far away below him heaved to and fro confusedly, like a stormy sea, with billowing fields and swimming mountains; and the heavens looked down still and serene on the commotion. Only down below on the western horizon slept a long, dark cloud.
He stormed down again, and in a few minutes arrived at the little flower-garden of the house of mourning. As he strode impetuously through it, he saw, up at the castle-windows, the backs of several people. If they should turn round, said he, the word would immediately go round, There comes the murderer! At this moment, the Minister's lady came to a window, but quickly turned round when she saw him. Heavily he went up the stairs; the Lector came feelingly to meet him, and said to him, "Composure for yourself and forbearance for others! You have no witness of your interview, but your own conscience," and opened to the speechless youth the silent chamber of sickness.
Burdened and bowed down with grief, he softly entered. In an easy-chair reclined a white-clad figure, with white, sunken cheeks, and hands laid in one another, leaning her head, which was encircled with a variegated wreath of wild-flowers, on the arm of the chair. It was his former Liana. "Welcome to me, Albano!" said she, with feeble voice, but with the old smile, like sunrise, and stretched out to receive him her hand which she raised with difficulty; her heavy head she could not raise at all. He drew near, sank on his knee and held the precious hand, and his lip quivered and was dumb. "Thou art right welcome to me, my good Albano!" she repeated, still more tenderly, with the impression that he had not probably heard it the first time; and the well-known voice coming back to him started all the tears of his heart into one gushing rain. "Thou, too, Liana!" he stammered, still more softly. Wearily she let her head fall over on the other arm of the chair, which was nearer to her; then did her life-tired blue eyes look right closely upon his wet and fiery ones; how did each find the other's countenance paled and ennobled by one and the same long sorrow! Red-cheeked and in full bloom, and with a load of sorrows, had Liana entered the strange, cold death-realm of sore probation for the higher world, and without color and without sorrows had she come back again, and with heavenly beauty on the face from which earthly bloom had faded. Albano stood before her, pale and noble also, but he brought back on his young, sick, sunken countenance the pangs and the conflicts, and in his eye the glow of life.
"O God, thou hast changed, Albano," she began, after a long gaze. "Thou lookest quite hollow: art thou so sick, love?" she asked, with that old anxiety of affection which neither the pious father nor the last genius, who makes man cold towards life and love, ere he withdraws them, had been able to take from her heart. "O, would to God!—No, I am not," said he, and stifled, out of forbearance, the internal storm; for he would so gladly have poured out his woe, his love, his death-wish before her in one mortal cry, as a nightingale sings herself to death and falls headlong from the branch.
Her chilled eye long rested, warming itself, upon his face, full of inexpressible love, and at last she said with a heavy smile, "So, then, thou lovest me again, Albano! Thou wast even in Lilar wholly in error. After a long time my Albano will begin to learn why I separated from him,—only for his good. On this, this my dying-day, I tell thee that my heart has been ever true to thee. Believe me! My heart is with God, my words are true. See, this is why I begged thee to come to me to-day,—for thou shalt mildly, without remorse, without reproach, in thy long-coming life, look over upon thy first youthful love. To-day thou wilt not take it ill of thy little Linda[59]that she speaks of dying,—seest thou haply that I was then in the right? Bring me the leaf yonder!"
He obeyed; it was a sketch which she had made with trembling hand to represent Linda's noble head. Albano did not look upon the leaf. "Take it to thyself," said she; he did so. "How kind and compliant thou art!" said she. "Thou deservest her,—I name her not to thee,—as the reward of thy fidelity towards me. She is more worthy of thee than I; she is blooming, like thyself, not sick, like me; but never do her wrong; it is my last wish that thou shouldst love her. Wilt thou distress me, determined spirit, by a vehement No?"
"Heavenly soul!" he cried, and looked upon her beseechingly, and presented her the stifled No as an offering to the dead. "I answer thee not. Ah, forgive, forgive that earlier time!" For now he saw for the first time, how meekly, gently, and yet fervently, the still, tender soul had loved him, who even yet, in the dissolution of the body, spoke and loved as in the beautiful days of Lilar, just as the melting bell in the burning steeple still continues, from the midst of the flames, to sound out the hours.
"Now, then, farewell, beloved!" she said, calmly, and without a tear, and her feeble hand offered to press his; "a happy journey into the beautiful land! Accept eternal thanks for thy love and truth, for the thousand joyous hours which I will, up yonder, at length deserve;[60]for Lilar's fair flowers.... The children of my Chariton have put them on me.[61]...Je ne suis qu'un songe.[62]What was I going to say to thee, Albano? My farewell! Forsake not my brother! O how thou weepest! I will still pray for thee!"
The dying have dry eyes. The tempestuous weather of life ends with cold air. They know not how their babbling tongue cuts into widely rent hearts. This most gentle soul knew not how she thrust sword upon sword through Albano, who now felt that to the saint whom already the spring-gales, the spring-fragrances of the eternal shore were floating to meet and welcome, he could be nothing more, give nothing more, nor even so much as take from her her humility.
When she had said it, her head, with the crown of flowers, raised itself upright; inspired, she drew her hand out of his, and prayed aloud with fervor: "Hear my prayer, O God! and let him be happy till he enters into thy glory. And should he err and waver, then spare him, O God, and let me appear to him and exhort him. But to thee alone, O all-gracious one, be praise and thanks uttered for my pleasant, peaceful life on the earth; thou wilt, after I have rested, bestow on me up yonder the fair morning in which I may work.... Wake me early from the sleep of death.... Wake me, wake!... Mother, the morning-red[63]lies already upon the trees."
At this moment, her mother, with other persons, rushed into the chamber. Her vision, bewildered with the drowsiness of death and the wandering of her speech, announced that the cold sleep with open eyes was now at hand. "Appear to me, thou art indeed with God!" cried Albano, distracted. In vain would Augusti have led him away; without answering, without stirring, he stood fast-rooted there. Liana grew paler and paler; death arrayed her in the white bridal garment of Heaven; then his eye ceased its weeping, grief froze, and the broad, heavy ice of anguish filled his breast.
Liana's eye was fixed steadily on a light spot of the softly veiled evening heavens, as if seeking and waiting for the heavens to lift and show the sun. Indifferent to all present, her brother stormed in with his lamentation: "Go not to God, or I shall see thee no more! Look on me, bless, sanctify me, give me thy peace, sister!" She was silently lost in the lightening and breaking sun-cloud. "She takes thee for me," said Albano to Charles, on account of the similarity of their voices, "and gives thee not her peace." "Steal not my voice!" said Charles, angrily. "O, leave her in peace," said the mother, out of whose downcast eyes only a few light tears fell trembling on the garland of the daughter, whose faint head, upturned toward heaven, she held, leaning against herself, with both hands.
All at once, when the sun opened the clouds like eyelids, and looked serenely from beneath, the still form quivered. The dying see double; she saw two sun-balls, and cried, clinging to her mother, "Ah, mother, how large and fiery his eyes are!" She saw Death standing in heaven. "Cover me with the pall," she begged, distressfully,—"my veil!" Her brother caught it up, and covered with it the wandering eyes and the flowers and locks. The sun, too, mercifully veiled himself again with clouds.
"Think on Almighty God!" said the pious father to her, in a loud voice. "I think of him," answered the veiled one, in a low tone. The aurora of the second world stands black before mortals. They all trembled. Albano and Roquairol grasped and pressed each other's hands, the latter from hatred, Albano from agony, as one gnashes at metal. The chamber was full of uncongenial, discordant people, whom death made equal. At one side Albano saw that a strange form, repulsive to him, had stolen in. It was his impenetrable father, whose great, dark eyes were fastened sharply and sternly on his son. Out of a second chamber two tall, veiled female forms gazed at the third, and saw no face, and no one saw theirs.
Liana played with her fingers at the veil. Evening stood in the chamber, and the silence between the lightning-flash and the thunder-clap. "Think upon Almighty God!" cried Spener. She answered not. He continued: "Of our source, and of our sea; he alone stands by thee now in the dark, when the earth, and its dwellers, and all lights of life, are sinking away beyond thy reach!" Suddenly she began, and said, with a low tone of gladness, and with words swiftly following each other, as when one talks in sleep, and with increasing rapture and rapidity, "Caroline! here, here, Caroline! This is my hand,—how beautiful thou art!" The invisible angel who had consecrated her first love, who had attended her whole life, gleamed again, like a new-risen moon, over the whole dark scene of death; and the splendor gently melted the little May night into the great spring morning of the second world.
Now the veiled nun of heaven leaned, quite still, on her mother. The death-angel stood invisible and wrathful among his victims. With great wings hung the screech-owl of anguish over mortal eyes, and pecked with black beak down into the breast, and nothing was heard in the stillness but the owl. More darkly rolled the Knight's melancholy eyes to and fro in their deep sockets between the still bride and the still son; and Gaspard and the destroying angel gazed upon each other gloomily.
At that moment Liana's harp sent out a clear, high, ringing tone far into the silence. The Fatal Sister who spun at her life knew the signal, checked herself, and stood up; and the sister with the scissors came. Liana's fingers ceased to play, and beneath the veil all became still and motionless.
"Thy head is heavy and cold, my daughter," said the disconsolate mother. "Tear the veil away!" cried the brother; and when he drew it down, there lay Liana, peaceful and smiling beneath it, but dead,—the blue eyes open toward heaven, the transfigured mouth still breathing love, the maidenly lily-brow encircled with the flower-wreath which had sunk down around it; and pale and glorified with the moonlight of the higher world was the strange form which passed majestically forth from the midst of the puny living among its lofty dead.
Then gushed the golden sun through the clouds and through all the tears, and circumfused with the blooming evening twilight, with the youthful rose-oil of his evening clouds, the faded sister of heaven; and the transfigured countenance wore again the bloom of youth. In heaven all the clouds, touched with her wings as she swept through them, burst out into long, red blossoms; and through the high, misty veil, fluttering up over the earth, glowed the thousand roses which had been strown about or sprung up on the cloud-path on which the virgin passed up over the earth to the Eternal.
But Albano, the forsaken Albano, stood without tears or eyes or words among the commonplaces of sorrow, in the crimson evening fire of the holy chamber of transfiguration, amidst the earthly bustle that went on round the still form. In the depths of the past, Sorrow showed him a Medusa's-head; and he still looked upon it when his heart was already petrified by it, and he heard continually the gloomy head murmur the words, "How bitterly did the dead one, when in Lilar, weep at the harsh Albano!" Her brother, upon his rack, said many barbarous words to him. He heard or heeded them not, because he was listening to the horrible Gorgon head.
"Son," cried Gaspard Cesara, earnestly,—"son, dost thou not know me?" Through the heavy, deathly heart a life-voice flashes upon him. He looks round, and sees his father, with terror arranges him into a shape, and falls upon his breast, and cries only, "Father!" and again and again, "Father!" He continued to cry out, grasping him violently like a foe, and said: "Father, that is Liana!" Still more passionate grew the embrace, not from love, only from agony. "Come to thyself, and to me, dear Albano," said the Knight. "O, I will do so; she is dead now, father!" said he, with a choked voice; and now his grief broke upon his father like a cloud upon a mountain, into one incessant tear,—it streamed forth as if the innermost soul would bleed itself to death out of all the open veins,—but the weeping only stirred up his sorrows, as a rain-storm does a battle-field: he became more inconsolable and impetuous, and sullenly repeated the previous exclamation.
"Albano!" said Gaspard, after some time, with stronger voice, "wilt thou accompany me?" "Gladly, my father!" said he, and followed him, as a bleeding child with its wound follows its mother. "To-morrow I will speak," said Albano, in the carriage, and took his father's hand. His wide-open eyes hung swollen and blind upon the warm evening-sun, which already rested on the mountains; he continued smiling and pale, and weeping softly; nor did he mark when the sun went down, and he arrived in the city.
"To-morrow, my father!" said he languidly and beseechingly to the Knight; and shut himself in. Nothing more was heard from him.
hornstart
Albano for a long time remained mute in a by-chamber. His father left him to the healing influence of quiet. Schoppe waited for him patiently, that he might console him by looking upon and listening to him. At last they heard him in there praying fervently: "Liana, appear to me and give me peace!" Directly after he stepped out strong and free as an unchained giant, with all the blood-roses on his face,—with lightnings in his eyes,—with hasty tread. "Schoppe," said he, "come with me to the observatory; there hangs high in heaven a bright star; on that she is buried: I must know that, Schoppe!"
The noble soul lay in the violent hands of a fever. He was just going out with him, when he beheld the Knight, who gazed upon him intently. "Only do not become numb and palsied again, my father!" said he, embraced him but gently, and forgot what he had been going to do.
Schoppe went for Doctor Sphex. Albano returned to his chamber, and walked slowly up and down there with bowed head and folded hands, and said to himself consolingly, "Only wait, however, till it strikes again." Sphex came and saw and—said, "It is simply an inflammatory fever." But no force could bring him to the point of undressing himself for bed, or even for a bleeding. "What!" said he, modestly; "she may surely appear to me at any moment and give me peace. No! no!" The physician prescribed a whole cooling snow-heaven for the purpose of snowing the crater full. These coolings and frost-conductors also the wild youth refused. But then the Knight assailed him with that thundering voice of his, and with that fury in his eye which revealed the ever-enduring but covered wrath-fire of the haughty breast: "Albano, take it!" Then the patient became considerate and compliant, and said: "O my father, I do indeed love thee!"
Through the whole night, of which the faithful Schoppe remained watcher and physician, the crazed body kept on playing its feverish part, driving the youth up and down, and at every stroke of the clocks constraining him to kneel down and pray: "Liana, do appear, and give me peace!" How often did Schoppe, otherwise so poor in expression, hold him fast with a long embrace, only to beguile the harassed one into a short repose. Incomprehensible to the physician the next morning were the energies of this iron and white-hot nature, which fever, pain, and walking had not yet bowed, and on which all prescribed ice-fields hissed and dried up,—and frightful appeared to him the consequences, as Albano continued to be his own incendiary, and, at every striking of the hour, fell on his knees and languished and looked for the heavenly apparition.
His father, however, left him, like a humanity, to his own energies; he said he was glad to see such a rare case of unenfeebled youthful vigor, and felt no fear at all; and he gave, too, with perfect calmness, his orders about packing up everything for the journey to Italy. He visited the court, i. e. everybody. Upon any one who knew what he was wont to demand of men and deny to them, this general complaisance towards all the world inflicted the pang of wounded honor, even if Gaspard addressed him too. He first visited the Prince, who, although the Knight, when in Italy, had quietly administered to him the poisoned Host of love, together with her poison-chalice, always hung upon him familiarly. The Knight inspected with him the new accessions to the works of art; the two sharply and freely compared their opinions in regard to them, and gave each other commissions for the approaching absence.
Thereupon he went to his travelling companion, the Princess, towards whom, indeed, his galling pride had not left behind one particle of flower-dust from his former love, who, however, in the smooth, cold mirror of his epic soul, in which all figures moved about freely and in clear conception, occupied, by virtue of her powerful individuality, the foreground, as a central figure. As he placed freedom, unity, even license of spirit, far above sickly pietism, hypocritical imitation of other people's talents and penitent warfare with one's self, he held the Princess, even with her cynicism of tongue, as "in her way dear and deserving." She inquired with much interest after his son's condition and prospect of travelling with them; he gave her, with his old calmness, the best hopes.
The Princess Julienne was inaccessible. She had been compelled to see how the faithful playmate of her youth had been drawn by a harsh, hostile arm from the flowery shore into the flood of death, and how the poor girl had drifted away exhausted; this completely prostrated her, and gladly would she have plunged headlong after the victim. She had not been, the day before, in a condition to go with the two veiled ones to the castle.
Gaspard now hastened to one of these, the Countess Romeiro, with whom he found the other also, the Princess Idoine. The latter had not been able to read so much in every letter about the sister of her face and soul, without travelling from her Arcadia in person to see her and prove the fair relationship; but when she arrived in her veil at the house of mourning, her kinswoman had already drawn hers over her dying eye; and when it arose, she saw herself extinguished, and beheld, in the deep mirror of time, her own dying image. She kept silence within herself, as if before God, but her heart, her whole life, was stirred.
The resemblance was so striking that Julienne begged her never to appear before the afflicted mother. Idoine was, it is true, taller, more sharply cut and less rosy than Liana in her days of bloom; but the last pale hour, wherein the latter appeared beside her, made the whitened form taller and the face nobler, and withdrew the flowery veil of maidenhood from the sharp outline.
Idoine said little to the Knight, and only looked on and saw how her friend Linda overflowed with real childlike love in return for his almost paternal affection. Both maidens he treated with a respectful, warm, and tender morality, which must have appeared wonderful to an eye (for example, the Prince's) which had often witnessed the unmerciful irony wherewith he so loved to draw downward in a slow spiral of licentious discourses, rotten, worm-eaten hearts,—half installed in God's church and half in the Devil's chapel,—shy, soft, sensitive sinners, inwardly-bottomless Fantasts, the Roquairols, for instance, more and more deeply and with ever-increasing pleasure to the centre of infamy. The Prince thought, in such cases, "He thinks exactly as I do;" but Gaspard did with him just so.
Even the trembling, pale Julienne stole in, at last, to see him. They avoided, so far as they could, for her sake, the open grave of her friend; but she asked, herself, after the sick lover of that friend very urgently. The Knight, who for most answers of moment had provided himself with an original phrase-book of nothings, particularly with ice-flowers of speech, such as, "It is going on as well as can be expected under the circumstances," or, "Such things are to be looked for," or, "It will all come right," made use on this occasion of the last-named flower of rhetoric, and replied, "It will all come right."
When he reached home, nothing had come right, but the flood of the evil was at its highest. There lay the youth—dressed, in bed,—unable to walk any longer,—in a burning heat,—talking wildly,—and yet at every stroke of the clock uttering his old prayer to the high, shut-up heavens. Hitherto his firm, vigorous brain had been able to hold fast its reason, at least for all that did not touch Liana; but gradually the whole mass went over into the fermentation of the fever. In vain did his father, once, when he knelt and prayed for the apparition of the dead, arm himself with all the wrath and thunder of his personality. "Give me peace!" Albano continued to pray, softly, and, as he said it, looked him softly in the face.
Schoppe, at this point, with the look of one who has a weighty mystery, took the father aside, and said he knew an unfailing remedy. Gaspard evinced curiosity. "The Princess Idoine," said he, "must not concern herself at all about miserable childish trifles, but just when it strikes and he kneels, boldly present herself to him as the blessed spirit, and conclude the plaguy peace." Contrary to what might have been presumed, the Knight said, ill-humoredly, "It is improper." In vain Schoppe sought to preach him over to the sunny side,—he only went farther over to the wintry side at the appearance of another's intention; no one could bring him to a gentle warmth but himself. At last Gaspard, after his manner, let so much drift-ice of above-mentioned phrases drive over the permanent ground-ice of his character, that Schoppe proudly and indignantly held his peace. Besides, the preparations for the journey went on as if the father meant to snatch his son as a brand from the fever-burning, and tear him distractedly out of the old circles of love. Schoppe made known to him his intention of staying at home; he said he had nothing against it.
Now did Schoppe feel on his own scratched-up face the cutting North of this character, to which he had generally been partial: "'Trust no long, lank Spaniard,' was the just saying of Cardanus,"[64]said he.
Albano was sick, and therefore not inconsolable. He drew from the Lethe of madness the dark draught of oblivion of the present; only when he knelt did he see mirrored in the stream his lacerated form and a cloudy heaven. He heard nothing of this,—how the poor named their names, that they might weep gratefully around their sleeping benefactress, and how under their lamentations the once healing music of their countenances now lay deaf and dumb. He heard nothing of the raving of her brother, nor of the loud (acoustically arranged) grief of her father, nor of the stiff mother wrapped in dull anguish. He knew not beforehand that the pale Charis would appear one evening in her coronation-chamber in the midst of lights for the last time on earth, crowned, decked, and slumbering. To him, indeed, at every hour died an infinite hope, but each hour bore him also a new one.
"Poor brother," said Schoppe the next day, in noble indignation, "I swear to thee, thou shalt get thy peace to-day." The pale patient looked upon him imploringly. "Yes, by Heaven!" Schoppe swore, and almost wept.
Schoppe had resolved not to trouble himself at all about the Knight,—who divided his evening between the Minister and Wehrfritz in Blumenbühl,—but to betake himself at once to the presence of the Princess Idoine with the great petition. First, however, he would get the Lector as porter orbilleteurof the locked court-doors, and as surety for his words. But Augusti was indescribably alarmed; he insisted the thing would not do,—a Princess and a sick young man, and an absolutely ridiculous ghost-scene, &c.; and his own father, indeed, already saw through it. Schoppe upon this became a spouting fire-engine, and left few curses or comparisons unused upon the man-murdering nonsense of courtly and female decorum,—said it was as beautifully shaped as a Greek fury,—it bound up the wound on a man's neck as the cook-women did on a goose's, not till after it had bled to death, so that the feathers might not be stained,—and he was as much of acourtisan, he concluded ambiguously, as Augusti, and knew what decency was. "May I not propose it to the Fürstinn, then, who certainly esteems him so highly?" Augusti said, "That does not alter the case." "Nor yet to Julienne?" "Nor yet to her," said he. "Nor yet to the most satanic Satan?" "There is surely a good angel between," replied Augusti, "whom you can at least with more propriety use as an intercessor, because she is under obligations to the Knight of the Fleece,—the Countess of Romeiro." "O, why not, indeed?" said Schoppe, struck with the idea.
The Lector—who was one of those men that never use their own hands, but love to do everything by a third, sixth, farthest possible one, after a system ofhandinganalogous to the fingering-system—urged upon the reflecting Schoppe his ready willingness to introduce him to Linda, and her ability to do something in this "épineuse affaire."
Schoppe went up and down in a state of unusual distraction between two opinions,—shook his head often and vehemently, and yet stopped suddenly,—fluttered and shook still more violently,—looked at the Lector with a glance of sharper inquiry,—at length he stood fast, struck down with both arms, and said: "Thunder and lightning seize the world! Done, then! So be it! I go right to her. Heavens, why am I then, so to speak, so ridiculous in your eyes—I mean just now?" The courtly Lector had, however, transformed the smile of the lips into a smile of the eyes only. On Schoppe's face stood the warmth and haste of the self-conqueror. As men can be at once hard of hearing amidst the common din of life, and yet open to the finest musical tones,[65]so were Schoppe's inner ears hardened against the vulgar noise of ordinary impulse, but drank in thirstily all soft, low melodies of holier souls.
The Lector—loving the Count far more heartily than he was loved by him—was for taking the Librarian by storm at once to the castle, because just now was the most favorable hour, of court-recess, from half past four to half past five. Schoppe said he was on hand. In the castle Augusti commanded a servant, who understood him, to usher Schoppe into the mirror-room. He did so; brought lights immediately after; and Schoppe went slowly up and down, with his annoying retinue of dumb, nimble orang-outangs-of-the-looking-glass, rehearsing his part and calculating the future. Singularly did he feel himself seized now with his young, fresh sense of that former freedom which he was just suspending. He recognized Liberty, held her fast, looked upon her, and said to her, "Go away, only for a little while; save him, and then come back again!"
The multiplication of himself in the mirrors disgusted him. "Must ye torment me, ye I's?" said he, and he now represented to himself how he was standing before the richest, brightest moment and finest gold-balance of his existence, how a grave and a great life lay in this balance, and how his "I" must vanish from him, like the copied glass I's round about him. Suddenly a joy darted through him, not beyond the worth of his resolve, but greater than its occasion.
At last, near doors flew open, and then the nearest. Then entered a tall form, with head still half turned back, all enveloped in long, black silk. Like an enraptured moon on high tops of foliage, there stood before him, on the dark, silken cloud, a luxuriantly blooming, unadorned head, full of life, with black eyes full of lightnings, with dark roses on the dazzling face, and with an enthroning, snowy brow under the brown, overhanging locks. It seemed to Schoppe, when she looked upon him, as if his life lay in full sunshine; and he felt, with embarrassment, that he stood very near the queen of souls. "Herr von Augusti," she began, earnestly, "has told me that you wished to put into my hands a petition for your sick friend. Name it to me clearly and freely. I will give you, with pleasure, a frank and decided answer."
All recollections of his part were sunk to the bottom, and dissolved within him; but the great guardian-genius, who flew along invisible beside his life, plunged with fiery wings into his heart, and he answered, with inspiration, "So, too, will I answer you. My Albano is mortally sick; he has been in a fever since last evening. He loved the departed Fraülein Liana. He lies bound to the condor's-wing of fever, and is swept to and fro. He falls upon his knees at every knell of the clock, and, lying close to the sunny side of fancy, prays more and more fervently, 'Appear to me, and give me peace!' He stands upright and dressed on the high pyre of the fantastic flame-circle, and pants and bakes with thirst, and dries and shrivels up dreadfully, as I can plainly see ..."
"O, finissez donc?" said the Countess, who had bent back with a shudder, and slowly shaken her Venus head. "Frightful! Your petition?"
"Only the Princess Idoine," said he, coming to himself, "can fulfil it, and rescue him, by appearing to him, and whispering him peace, since she is said to be such a near ass-[66], cos-[67], copy, and mock-sun of the deceased." "Is that your petition?" said the Countess. "My greatest," said Schoppe. "Has his father sent you hither?" said she. "No, I," said he; "his father, to be clear and free and explicit with you, disapproves of it."
"Are you not the painter of the sneezing self-portrait?" she asked. He bowed, and said, "Most certainly." Having replied that in an hour he should hear the decision, she made him a short, respectful, leave-taking obeisance, and the simple, noble form left him gazing after her in rapture; and he was provoked that the childish mirrors round about should dare to send after the rare goddess so many shadows of herself.
At home he found, indeed, the crazed young man, whose ears alone lived any longer among realities, again on his knees at the sixth stroke of the clock; but his hope bloomed now under a warmer heaven. After an hour, the Lector appeared, and said, with a significant smile, the thing was going on right well; he was to get an opinion from the physician, and then the decision would be accordingly.
Herr von Augusti gave him, with courtier-like explicitness, the more definite intelligence, that the Countess had flown to the Princess, whose regard for her future travelling companion she knew, and told her she would, in Idoine's case, do it without hesitation. The Princess considered with herself a little, and said this was a thing which only her sister could decide. Both hastened to her, pictured to her the whole case, and Idoine asked, with alarm, how she could help her resemblance and her well-meant journey hither, that they should wish to draw her so deeply into such fantastic entanglements. At this moment Julienne came in, pale, and said she had only since morning received intelligence of this, and it was the duty of such a good soul to grant the apparition. Then Idoine, considering herself and everything, answered, with dignity, it was not at all the unusualness and impropriety of the thing which she dreaded, but the untruthfulness and unworthiness, as she would have to play false with the holy name of a departed soul, and cheat a sick man with a superficial similarity. The Countess said she knew of no answer to that, and yet her feelings were not against the thing. All were silent and perplexed. The conscientious Idoine was moved in the tenderest heart that ever hung trembling under the weight of such a decision upon a life. At last Linda said, with her sharp-sightedness, "Properly speaking, however, after all, there is no moral man to be deceived in the case, but a sleeper, a dreamer; and imagination and delusion are not, in fact, going to be strengthened in him, but to be subdued." Julienne drew Idoine aside, probably to portray to her more nearly the youth, whom she had not seen any more than Linda. Soon after, Idoine came back with her decision.
"If the physician will give a certificate that a human life hangs upon this, then I must conquer my feeling. God knows," she added, with emotion, "that I am quite as willing to do as to forbear, if I only know first what is right. It is my first untruth."
The Lector hastened from Schoppe to the Doctor, in order to bring back with him from the latter, among many turns of expression, just the most convenient certificate.
Schoppe waited long and anxiously. After seven o'clock came a note from Augusti: "Hold yourself in readiness; punctually at eight o'clock comes the privy person." Forthwith, by way of sparing the patient's feverish eyes, he put out the wax-candles, and lighted the magic hanging-lamp of isinglass in the chamber.
He kindled the sick youth to new fever with stories of people who had come back from the tomb, and advised him to kneel with long, ardent prayers before the fast gate of death, in order that her mild, merciful spirit might open it, and healingly touch him on the threshold.
Just before eight, the Princess and her sister came in their sedans. Schoppe was himself seized with a shudder at the sight of this risen Liana. With sparkling eye and firmly shut mouth, he led the fair sisters into thecoulisse, whence they already heard, out on the adjoining stage, the youth praying. But Idoine's tender limbs trembled at the unpractised part in which her truthful spirit must belie itself. She wept upon it, and her fair, holy mouth was full of mute sighs. Her sister had to embrace her often in order to encourage her heart.
The clock struck. With a frightful fervor the frantic one within prayed for peace. The tongue of the hour was imperative. Idoine sent up a look as a prayer to God. Schoppe slowly opened the door.
Within, blooming in the magic dusk, with arms and eyes uplifted to heaven, knelt a beautiful son of the gods in the enchanted circle of madness, whose only and continual cry was, "O peace! peace!" Then, with inspiration, as if sent by God, the virgin stepped in, clothed in white, like the deceased in the dream-temple and on the bier, with the long veil at her side, but taller in stature, less rosy, and with a sharper, brighter starlight in the blue ether of the eye, and more resembling Liana among the blest, and sublimely, as if, like a renovated spring, she had come back again from the stars, so she appeared before him. His enchaining, fiery look terrified her. In a low and faltering tone, she stammered, "Albano, have peace!" "Liana?" groaned his whole breast, and, sinking down, he covered his weeping eyes. "Peace!" cried she, more strongly and courageously, because his eye no longer smote and staggered her; and she disappeared as a superhuman spirit vanishes from men.
The sisters departed silently, and full of high remembrance and satisfaction. Schoppe found him still kneeling, but looking away enraptured, like a storm-sick mariner on tropical seas, who, after long sleep, opens his eyes on a still, rosy-red evening, just before the going down of the blazing sun; and the dashing wake travels on, like a bed of roses and flames, into the sun, and the flashing cloud flies asunder in mute fire-balls, and the distant ships float high in the evening-red, and swim far away over the waves. So was it with the youth.
"I have my peace now, good Schoppe," he said, softly, "and now I will sleep in quiet." Transfigured, but pale, he rose, laid himself on the bed, and in a few minutes a heart wearied with so long a wading in the hot fever-sands sank down on the fresh, green oasis of slumber.
rivetstart
It was late when the Knight of the Fleece arrived. Schoppe showed him joyfully the sleeping countenance, whose rose-buds seemed to burst as in a moist, warm night. The Knight manifested great exhilaration at this, and still more did Doctor Sphex, who looked in quite late. The latter found the pulse not only full, but even slow, and on the way to a still greater repose. He appealed, at the same time, toChaudeson, and several other professional examples, that great mental sufferings had often been relieved and removed very successfully by the internal opium of lethargy.
At last Schoppe acquainted the father with Idoine's whole method of cure. Gaspard haughtily replied, "You still, however, knew my opinion, Mr. Librarian?" "Certainly, but my own too," said, with bitterness, the disturbed Schoppe. The Knight, however, entered no further into anything,—quite after his manner of never giving the least light upon his real self, however much it might gain thereby,—but gave the friend a very cold signal of retreat.
The next morning, Schoppe found his beloved still in the soul's cradle of sleep. How he budded and bloomed! How slowly, yet strongly, like a freeman's, moved the breath in his unchained breast! Meanwhile, Gaspard's packed carriage, which was to trundle the youth away to Italy, stopped already, at this early hour, before the door, with its snorting, pawing horses, and the Knight expected every minute the waking up and the—jumping in.
The physician came also, praised crisis and pulse, added that the cream-o'-tartar (which he had prescribed among the rest) was the cream of life, and said, right to the father's face, when the latter was about to wake the youth for starting, he had never yet, in all his praxis, known any one who had so little acquaintance with critical points as he; any waker would be in this case a murderer, and, as physician, he most expressly forbade it.
From hour to hour Schoppe grew more and more out of humor with the father; he thanked God now—when he considered how the Knight's treatment had beat upon and washed over this fruit-bearing island—that Albano had not only the heat, but also the hardness of a rock.
Dr. Sphex, equally fond of his art and his reputation, watched like a threatening Esculapius-serpent over the pillow, and grew more hilarious. Schoppe lingered there, nerved against any degree of severity. The Knight took leave of every one in his son's name, and sent all soft hearts home; for the foster-mother, Albina and others, were not suffered so much as to see the sleeper,—because tears were to him a cold, disagreeable Scotch mist. The Princess and her retinue were already streaming along with the gay pennons of hope on their way to the shining Italy.
The evening was now irrevocably set for departure, especially as, in the night, the sleeping Liana was to be carried into the bed-chamber, which men never again open.
Already was the blooming Endymion overspread with smiles and radiance of joy, as a precursive morning-star of his waking day. His soul roamed, smiling, through the sparkling-cave of subterranean treasures, which the genius of dream unlocks; while the common waking eye stood blind before the spirit's Eldorado, so near and yet walled round by sleep. At last an unknown over-measure of bliss opened Albano's eye,—the youth immediately rose with vigor,—threw himself with the rapture of a first recognition on his father's breast, and seemed, in the first dreamy intoxication, not to remember the spent storm behind him, but only the blissful dream,—and in ecstasy related it thus:—
"I sailed in a white skiff on a dark stream which shot along between smooth, high marble walls. Chained to my solitary wave, I flew anxiously through the winding, rocky narrows, into which, at times, a thunderbolt darted. Suddenly the stream whirled round and descended, growing broader and wilder, over a winding stairway. There lay a broad, flat, gray land around me, tinged by the sickle of the sun with a loathsome, lurid, earthy light. Far from me stood a coiled-up Lethe-flood, which crawled round and round itself. On an immense stubble-field innumerable Walkyres,[68]on spider's-threads, shot by to and fro with arrowy swiftness, and sang, 'The fight of life 'tis we that weave'; then they let one flying summer after another soar invisibly to heaven.
"Overhead swept great worlds; on every one dwelt a human being; he stretched out his arms imploringly after another, who also stood on his world and looked across; but the globes ran with the hermits round the sun-sickle, and the prayers were in vain. I, too, felt a yearning. Infinitely far before me reposed an outstretched mountain-ridge, whose entire back, looming out of the clouds, glittered with gold and flowers. Painfully dragged the skiff through the flat, lazy waste of the shallow stream. Then came a sandy tract, and the stream squeezed through a narrow channel with my jammed-up skiff. And near me a plough turned up something long; but when it came up it was covered with a pall—and the dark cloth melted away again into a black sea.
"The mountain-ridge stood much nearer, but longer and higher before me, and cut through the lofty stars with its purple flowers, over which a green wild-fire flew to and fro. The worlds, with the solitary beings, swept away over the mountains, and came not back; and the heart yearned to mount up and soar away after them. 'I must, I will,' cried I, rowing. After me came stalking an angry giant, who mowed away the waves with a sharp moon-sickle; over me ran a little condensed tempest made out of the compressed atmosphere of the earth; it was called the poison-ball of heaven, and sent down incessant pealings.
"On the high mountain-ridge a friendly flower called me up; the mountain waded to meet and dam up the sea, but it almost reached now to the worlds that were flying over, and its great fire-flowers seemed only like red buds scattered through the deep ether. The water boiled,—the giant and the poison-ball grew grimmer,—two long clouds stood pointing down like raised drawbridges, and the rain rushed down over them in leaping waves; the water and my little bark rose, but not enough. 'No waterfall,' said the giant, laughing, 'runsupwardhere!'
"Then I thought of my death, and named softly a holy name. Suddenly there came swimming along high in heaven a white world under a veil, a single glistening tear fell from heaven into the sea, and it rose with a roar,—all waves fluttered with fins, broad wings grew on my little skiff, the white world went over me, and the long stream snatched itself up thundering, with the skiff on its head, out of its dry bed, and stood on its fountain and in heaven, and the flowery mountain-ridge beside it, and lightly glided my winged skiff through green rosy splendor and through soft, musical murmuring of a long flower-fragrance, into an immense radiant morning-land.
"What a broad, bright, enchanted Eden! A clear, glad morning sun, with no tears of night, expanded with an encircling rose-wreath, looked toward me and rose no higher. Up and down sparkled the meadows, bright with morning dew. 'Love's tears of joy lie down below there,' sang the hermits overhead on the long, sweeping worlds, 'and we, too, will shed them!' I flew to the shore, where honey bloomed, while on the other bloomed wine; and as I went, my gayly decorated little skiff, with broad flowers puffed out for sails, followed, dancing after me over the waves. I went into high blooming woods, where noon and night dwelt side by side, and into green vales full of flower-twilights, and up sunny heights, where blue days dwelt, and flew down again into the blooming skiff, and it floated on, deep in wave-lightnings, over precious stones, into the spring, to the rosy sun. All moved eastward, the breezes and the waves, and the butterflies and the flowers, which had wings, and the worlds overhead; and their giants sang down, 'We fondly look downward,—we fondly glide downward, to the land of love, to the golden land.'
"Then I saw my face in the waves, and it was a virgin's, full of high rapture and love. And the brook flowed with me, now through wheat-fields; now through a little, fragrant night, through which the sun was seen behind sparkling glow-worms; now through a twilight, wherein warbled a golden nightingale. Now the sun arched the tears of joy into a rainbow, and I sailed through, and behind me they sank down again, burning like dew. I drew nearer to the sun, and he wore already the harvest-wreath. 'It is already noon,' sang the hermits over my head.
"Slowly, as bees over honey-pastures, swam the thronging clouds in the dark blue, over the divine region. From the mountain-ridge a milky-way arched over, which sank into the sun. Bright lands unrolled themselves. Harps of light, strung with rays, rang in the fire; a tri-clang of three thunders agitated the land. A ringing storm-rain of dew and radiance filled with glitter the wide Eden; it dissolved in drops, like a weeping ecstasy. Pastoral songs floated through the pure blue air, and a few lingering, rosy clouds danced out of the tempest after the tones. Then the near morning-sun looked faintly out of a pale lily-garland, and the hermits sang up there, 'O bliss, O bliss! the evening blooms!' There was stillness, and twilight. The worlds held themselves in silence round the sun, and encircled him with their fair giants, resembling the human form, but higher and holier. As on the earth the noble form of man creeps downward by the dark mirror-chain of animal life, so did it, overhead there, mount up along a line of pure, bright, free gods, sent from God. The worlds touched the sun, and dissolved upon it; the sun, too, fell to pieces, in order to flow down into the land of love, and became a sea of radiance. Then the fair gods and the fair goddesses stretched out their arms towards each other, and touched each other, trembling for love; but, like vibrating strings, they disappeared from sight in their blissful trembling, and their being became only an invisible melody; and the tones sang to each other, 'I am with thee, and am with God'; and others sang, 'The sun was God.'
"Then the golden fields glistened with innumerable tears of joy, which had fallen during the invisible embrace; eternity grew still, and the breezes slept, and only the lingering, rosy light of the dissolved sun softly stirred the flowers.
"I was alone, looked round, and my lonely heart longed dyingly for a death. Then the white world with the veil passed slowly up the milky-way; like a soft moon, it still glimmered a little; then it sank down from heaven upon the holy land, and melted away upon the ground; only the high veil remained. Then the veil withdrew itself into the ether, and an exalted, godlike virgin, great as the other goddesses, stood upon the earth and in heaven. All rosy radiance of the swimming sun collected in her, and she burned in a robe of evening-red. All invisible voices addressed her, and asked, 'Who is the Father of men, and their Mother, and their Brother, and their Sister, and their Lover, and their Beloved, and their Friend?' The virgin lifted steadfastly her blue eye, and said, 'It is God!' And thereupon she looked at me tenderly out of the high splendors, and said, 'Thou knowest me not, Albano, for thou art yet living.' 'Unknown virgin,' said I, 'I gaze with the pangs of a measureless love upon thy exalted countenance. I have surely known thee; name thy name.' 'If I name it, thou wilt awake,' said she. 'Name it!' I cried. She answered, and I awoke."