rivetstart
A little light in our apartment can screen us against the blinding effect of the whole heaven-broad lightning-glare; so it needs in us only a single, constantly shining idea and tendency, that the rapid alternation of flame and light in the outer world may not dizzy us. Had not Albano had an end in view which could be seen far-off,—had he not kept before his eye an obelisk in his life-path,—how long would the last scene, with its pangs cutting through each other, have confounded him! Now he was like the kindled olive—and laurel-leaves around him, whose flames grow green as they are themselves. Dian, who drove away the pains of others, because he, being easily movable, soon grew from a spectator to a sharer of them, made Albano and himself gay by his ardent interest in every beautiful form, every ruin, every little joy. He had the rare and beautiful gift of being cheerful upon journeys, of plucking every flower, but no thistle; whereas the majority jog along with the night-cap under the hat; from station to station, gaping as they go on, and in grumbling war with every face, they travel through whole paradises as if they were antechambers of hell.
In the waste Pontine marshes, wherein only buffaloes thrive and men grow pale, Dian sought for all sorts of amusement, and even drew forth his letter-case, in order to get over the last fishing-water of the papal territory, out of the reach of Peter's fisherman successors, without falling into a deadly sleep. There he stumbled, with a modern Greek curse, upon a letter to Albano, which had been enclosed in one from Chariton, and which in Rome he had forgotten, in the hurry of departure, to hand over; but he soon laughed about it, and found it good that in this "Devil's-dale" one had something to read against sleep.
It was the following from Rabette:—
"Heartily loved brother, one longs to know whether thou still thinkest a little bit of thy friends in Blumenbühl, now that in the magnificent Italy thou art certainly quite in thyessée.[89]That thou livest in all our hearts,thatthou hast long known, and thou shouldst only know how long after thy departure we all wept for thee, as well thy mother as myself; and a certain one[90]thinks now-a-days quite differently of thee from what he did in old times. Much has happened this winter. The Minister's lady has separated from her husband, and lives on her estate, sometimes in Arcadia with the Princess Idoine. Our Prince is dangerously sick with the dropsy, and father can get a scrap of business from the province by this, as he says. Thy Schoppe has gone on a journey of a couple of months, leaving behind a letter to thee, which he has intrusted to father's care. He stayed latterly with us, and in thy room, and visited attentively the Countess Romeiro. It is a shame for him, for he means well; but Master Wehmeier and all of us in the place are convinced that he is, in short, mad, and he believes it, too, and says he shall therefore soon set his house in order. As touching the Countess Romeiro, she has gone off with Princess Julienne; none, however, knows whither. They say the Prince has shown her too marked attentions, and she would rather be off to Spain. Others talk of Greece, but thecertain oneassures me she is gone to Rome to her guardian: of that now thou wilt know better than myself. The certain one undertook all that was within human possibility in order to win her, partly by letters, partly in person, to no purpose; not one smile could he gain as often as ever he addressed her even atcour. All this I have (wilt thou believe it?) from his mouth, for he is again often with me, and reveals to me his whole heart. Mine, however, I hold together fast, that not so much as the smallest drop of blood may trickle out from it, and God alone sees how it passes, and what a weeping there is therein. Ah, Albano, a poor girl who is in strong health must endure much before she can die. Often my eye can no longer remain dry, and I then say his talk does it, which, to be sure, is partly true, but to thee I show thedessous des cartes. Never, never more can I be his, for he has not dealt ingenuously with me, but altogether recklessly, and he knows it too. Nor is a single kiss allowed him; and I tell him, only for God's sake, not to take that as a coquette's manner to draw him to me. My good parents do not rightly know what they are to make of our intercourse, and I fear father may break out; then I shall have very bitter days. But shall I repel the poor, sick, pale spirit from myself, too? shall the glowing soul, exhaling like smoke, rise to heaven, and consume itself? Whose heart will not break when he is at aFestin, and she immediately, offended at his presence, goes home again?—as lately happened, and he said to me, in a perfect rage, 'Well, very well, Linda,one day, be sure, thine eye will be wet for me.' Then I know well that he means no good, and I spare him from an anxious dread on that account; for shall two, brother and sister, sink in their bloom? He would long ago have travelled after her, had he not daily hoped she was coming back. Ah, could I tear my loving heart out of my breast, and put it into hers instead of the other, that so she might love him with all my love, Albano, right gladly would I do it. But the paper comes to an end on this side, and mother wishes on the other to write a greeting. Farewell! is the wish of
Thy faithful sister,Rabette."
"How goes it with my most precious son? Is he prosperous, still good and well? Does he still think of his true foster-parents? This in the name of his father and in her own, asks and wishes,
His faithful mother,Albina von W."
"P. S. His old teacher, Wehmeier, likewise greets his darling in strange lands; and we all rejoice in the prospect of his return.
A."
"P. S. Brother, I, too, must make a P. S. Schoppe has paintedyou know who, andscenes, even, have arisen out of the circumstance. But more of this when we meet. The Princesse Idoine has visited our Princess often this winter.
R."
As letters accommodate themselves more to the place, where they were born, than to that where they are delivered, it often happens that what went out as seed, arrives, after its long journey, already in a germinating state, and with roots, and inversely in the shape of blossoms rather than of dry seed; and every sheet is a double birth of two distant times, that of writing and that of reading. Thus was Albano, now under this serener sky, on this soil of a greater world of the past, and with a soul full of new springs, the less overtaken and darkened by Rabette's letter, through which the northern winter clouds had passed. The ingenuous Rabette, the mild Albina came after him in fancy but softly over the strange mountains and through the strange climes, and laid a cooling hand on his hot brow; his old Schoppe stood in his old worth before him, and Liana floated again through the lofty blue. Toward the weather-beaten Roquairol he felt not so much as compassion, but a hard contempt; and Linda's steadfast mind was exactly after his, like the proud look and gait of Roman women. He now thought over many things more cheerfully than ever, and even wished to look once in the magic-face of that Heroine.
InFondithe Neapolitan world-garden began, and when they entered upon the road toMola, they went deeper and deeper into blossoms and flowers. In flying sheets—addressed, perhaps, to his father, still more probably to his Schoppe—his bliss and his soul expressed themselves; it treasured up, as it were, some stray orange-blossoms dropped out of the Eden through which they had so rapidly flown. Here they are:—
"Shortly before sundown on Ascension-day we arrived in Mola; the native Dian was full as much overcome with the green majesty, which he had not seen for a long time, as I, and I do not yet believe him when he says that it blooms and smells more finely about Naples. I did not go at all into the city, for the sun hung already toward the sea. Around me streams the incense smoke of reeking flowers from citron-woods and meadows of jessamin and narcissus. On my left the blue Apennine flings his fountain-waters from mountain to mountain, and on my right the mighty sea presses upon the mighty earth, and the earth stretches out a firm arm and holds a shining city[91]hung with gardens, far out into the multitudinous waves,—and into the unfathomable sea lofty islands have been cast as unfathomable mountains;[92]low in the south and east a glimmering mist-land, the coast of Sorrento, grasps round the sea like a crooked-up Jupiter's-arm, and behind the distant Naples stands Vesuvius, with a cloud in heaven under the moon. 'Fall on thy knees, fortunate one,' said Dian, 'before the sumptuous prospect!' O God, why not do it in earnest? For who can behold in the glow of evening the monstrous realm of waters, how yonder busy and restless motion grows still in the distance, and only sparkles, and at last, blue and golden, blends with the sky, and how the earth here shuts in the delicate, floating fire with her long lands into a rosy, steady earth-shadow, who can behold the fire-rain of infinite life, the weaving magic circle of all forces in the water, in the sky, on the earth, without kneeling down before the infinite spirit of Nature and saying, 'How near to me thou art, O Ineffable!' O here he is both near and far, bliss and hope come glimmering from the misty coast, and also from the neighboring fountains, which the hills pour down into the sea, and in the white blossoms over my head. O does not, then, this sun, around which burning waves flutter, and the blue overhead and over yonder, and the kindling lands of men, worlds within the world,—does not this distance call out the heart and all its aspiring wishes? Will it not create and grasp into the distance and snatch its life blossoms from the highest peak of heaven? But when it looks around itself upon its own ground, there too again is the girdle of Venus thrown around the blooming circumference, brightly green grows the tall myrtle-tree near its little dark myrtle, the orange glimmers in the high, cold grass, and overhead hangs its fragrant blossom, the wheat waves with broad leaves between the enamels of the almond and the narcissus, and far off stands the cypress, and the palm towers proudly;[93]all is flower and fruit, spring and harvest. 'Shall I go this way? shall I go that way?' asks the heart in its bliss.
"Thus did I see the sun go down under the waves,—the reddening coasts fled away under their misty veils,—the world went out, land after land, from one island to another,—the last gold-dust was wafted away from the heights,—and the prayer-bells of the convents led up the heart above the stars. O how happy and how wistful was my heart, at once a wish and a flame, and in my innermost being a prayer of gratitude went forth for this, that I was and am upon this earth.
"Never shall I forget that! If we throw away life as too small for our wishes, still do they not belong to life itself, and did they not come from it? If the crowned earth rears around us such blossoming shores, such sunny mountains, would she fain enclose therewith unhappy beings? Why is our heart narrower than our eye? why does a cloud hardly a mile long oppress us, when that very cloud stands itself under the stars of immensity? Is not every morning and every hope a beginning of spring? What are the thickest prison-walls of life but vine-trellises built up for the ripening of the wine-glow? And as life always cuts itself up into quarters, why must it be merely the last, and not quite as often the first, upon which a full-beaming moon follows? 'O God,' said I, as I went back through the green world which next morning becomes a glowing one, 'never let me ascribe thy eternity to any one time, except the most blissful; joy is eternal, but not pain, for this last thou hast not created.'
"'Friend,' said Dian to me, on the way, when I could not well conceal from him my inner commotion, 'what may not your feelings be, then, when you look back upon Naples on the passage over to Ischia! For it is plain to perceive that you were born in a northern land.' 'Dear friend,' said I, 'every one is bornwithhis north or south; whether in an outer one beside, that is of little consequence.'"
So far his leaf upon Mola. But a wonderful circumstance seemed this very night to take him at his word in respect to the last assurance contained in his letter. In the yard of the inn were assembled many boatmen and others; all were contending violently about an opinion, and the most were continually saying: "To-day, to be sure, is Ascension Day, andhe, too, has wrought miracles." "Ascension?" thought Albano, and remembered his birthday, which often fell on this festival. Dian came up and related, laughing, how the people were expecting down below the ascension of a monk, who had promised it this night, and many believed him for this reason, because he had already done a wonderful work, namely, given a dead man his speech for two hours, before all Mola. They both were agreed to witness the work. The multitude swelled,—the promised man came not, who was to lead them to the place of ascension,—all became angry rather than incredulous. At length late at night a mask appeared and gave, with a motion of the hand, a sign to follow it. All streamed after, even Albano and his friend. The pure moon shone fresh out of blue skies, the wide garden of the country slept in its blossoms, but all breathed fragrance, the slumbering and the waking flowers.
The mask led the crowd to the ruins of Cicero's house, or tower, and pointed upward. Overhead, on the wall, stood a trembling man. Albano found his face more and more familiar. At last the man said: "I am a father of death: may the Father of life be merciful to me. How it goes with me I know not. There stands one among you," he added at once in a strange, namely, in the Spanish language, "to whom I appeared one Good Friday on Isola Bella, and announced the death of his sister; let him journey on to Ischia, there will he find his sister."
Albano could not hear these words without excitement and indignation. The form of the Father of Death upon that island he saw now right clearly upon these ruins; and his promise to appear to him on a Good Friday came again to his mind. He tried now to work his way up to the ruins, so as to attack the monk. An inhabitant of Mola cried, when he heard the strange language: "The monk is talking with the Devil." The ascensionist said nothing to the contrary,—he trembled more violently,—but the people sought for him who had said it, and cried, "It is he with the mask, for he is no more to be found." At last the monk, quaking, begged they would be still when he vanished, and pray for him, and never seek his body. Albano was now close behind his back, unseen by Dian. Just then, high in the dark blue, came a flock of quails flying slowly along. The monk swiftly and staggeringly flung himself up, scattered the birds, cried out in the dark distance, "Pray!" and vanished away into the broad air.
The people cried and shouted with exultation, and part prayed; many believed now the Devil was in the play. Among the spectators lay a man with his face to the earth, and continually cried, "God have mercy on me!" But no man brought him to an explanation. Dian, privately a little superstitious, said his understanding was at a stand-still here. But Albano explained how a complot of ghosts had been long twitching and drawing at his life's curtain, but some day he should yet certainly thrust his hand successfully through the curtain, and he was firmly resolved immediately to cross over from Naples to Ischia, to see his sister. "Verily," he added, "in this mother country of wonder, fantasy, and everything great, one as easily believes in fair, enriching miracles of fate, as one does in the north in dreadful robbing miracles of spirits."
Dian was also for the earliest visit to the island of Ischia; "Because otherwise," he added, "when Albano had delivered his letters in Naples, and had been drawn in to theRicevimenti,[94]or on Posilippo and Vesuvius, then there would be no getting away."
On the day following they departed from Mola. The lovely sea played hide-and-seek with them on their way, and only the golden sky never veiled itself. Naples' goblet of joy already intoxicated one from afar with its fragrance and spirit. Albano cast inspired looks atCampania Felice, at the Colosseum in Capua, and at the broad garden, full of gardens, and even at the rough Appian Way, which its old name made softer.
But he sighed for the island of Ischia, that Arcadia of the ocean, and that wonderful place where he was to find a sister. It was not in their power earlier than in the early part of Saturday night—if indeed waking and glancing life can be called night, particularly an Italian Saturday night—to reachAversa. Albano insisted upon their continuing on in the night toward Naples. Dian was still reluctant. By chance there stood in the post-house a beautiful girl, who might be about fourteen years old, very much troubled at having missed the coach, and determined this very night to go on to Naples, in order to reach Ischia, where her parents were, early enough on the holy Sabbath. "She had come," she said, "fromSanta Agata; her name was onlyAgata, and notSanta." "Probably her old joke," said Dian, but he was now—with his love of hovering about every fair form—himself quite in a mood for the night-ride, that so they might carry the black-eyed one along with them, who looked joyously and brightly into the fire of strange eyes. She accepted the invitation cheerfully, and prattled familiarly, like a naturalist, about Epomeo and Vesuvius, and predicted for them innumerable pleasures on the island, and altogether showed an intelligence and thoughtfulness far above her years. At last they all flew along under the bright stars out into the lovely night.
Albano goes on in the description of his journey thus:—
"A night of unrivalled serenity! The stars alone of themselves illuminated the earth, and the milky-way was silvery. A single avenue, intertwined with vine-blossoms, led to the magnificent city. Everywhere one heard people, now near, talking, now distant, singing. Out of dark chestnut woods, on moonlit hills, the nightingales called to one another. A poor, sleeping maiden, whom we had taken with us, heard the melodies even down into her dream, and sang after them; and then, when she awoke herself therewith, looked round confusedly and with a sweet smile, with the whole melody and dream still in her breast. On a slender, light two-wheeled carriage, a wagoner, standing on the pole and singing, rolled merrily along by. Women were already bearing in the cool of the hour great baskets full of flowers into the city; in the distance, as we passed along, whole Paradises of flower-cups sent their fragrance; and the heart and the bosom drank in at once the love-draught of the sweet air. The moon had gone up bright as a sun in the high heaven, and the horizon was gilded with stars; and in the whole cloudless sky stood the dusky cloud-column of Vesuvius, alone, in the east.
"Far into the night, after two o'clock, we rolled in and through the long city of splendor, wherein the living day still bloomed on. Gay people filled the streets; the balconies sent each other songs; on the roofs bloomed flowers and trees between lamps, and the little bells of the hours prolonged the day; and the moon seemed to give warmth. Only now and then a man lay sleeping between the colonnades, as if he were taking his siesta. Dian, at home in all such matters, let the carriage stop on the southern side, toward the sea, and went far into the city, in order to arrange, through old acquaintances, the passage across to the island, so that we might have exactly at sundown out on the sea, the richest view of the stately city, with its bay and its long coasts. The Ischian girl wrapped herself up in her blue veil, to keep off the flies, and fell asleep on the black, sandy shore.
"I walked up and down alone; for me there was no night and no house. The sea slept, the earth seemed awake. In the fleeting glimmer (the moon was already sinking towards Posilippo) I looked up over this divine frontier city of the world of waters, over this rising mountain of palaces, to where the lofty Castle of St. Elmo looks, white, out of the green foliage. With two arms the earth embraced the lovely sea; on her right, on Posilippo, she bore blooming vine-hills far out into the waves, and on the left she held cities, and spanned round its waters and its ships, and drew them up to her breast. Like a sphinx lay the jagged Capri darkly on the horizon in the water, and guarded the gates of the bay. Behind the city the volcano smoked in the ether, and occasionally sparks played between the stars.
"Now the moon sank down behind the elms of Posilippo,—the city grew dark,—the din of the night died away,—fishermen disembarked, put out their torches, and laid themselves down on the bank,—the earth seemed to sink to sleep, but the sea to wake up. A wind from the coast of Sorrento ruffled the still waves; more brightly gleamed Sorrento's sickle with the reflection at once of the moon and of morning, like silver meadows; the smoke column of Vesuvius had blown away, and from the fire-mount streamed a long, clear morning redness over the coasts as over a strange world.
"O, it was the morning twilight, full of youthful omens! Do not landscape, mountain, coasts, like an echo, speak so many the more syllables to the soul the farther off they are? How young did I feel the world and myself, and the whole morning of my life was crowded into this!
"My friend came; all was arranged; the boatmen had arrived; Agata was awakened to the joy, and we embarked, just as the dawn kindled the mountains, and, her sails swelling with the morning breezes, our little vessel flew out into the sea.
"Before we had yet doubled the promontory of Posilippo, the crater of Vesuvius threw up its glowing child, the sun, slowly into the sky, and sea and earth blazed. The half earth-girdles of Naples, with morning-red palaces, its market-place of fluttering ships, the swarm of its country-houses on the mountains and up along the shore, and its green throne of St. Elmo, stood proudly between two mountains, before the sea.
"When we came round Posilippo, there stood Ischia's Epomeo, like a giant of the sea, in the distance, girdled about with a wood, and with bald, white head. Gradually appeared on the immeasurable plain the islands, one after another, like scattered villages, and wildly pressed and waded the promontories into the sea. Now, mightier and more alive than the dried-up, parcelled out, stiff land, the watery kingdom opened, whose powers all, from the streams and waves even to the drops, join hands and move in concert. Almighty, and yet gentle element! grimly thou leapest upon the lands, and swallowest them up, and, with thy undermining polypus-arms, liest stretching around the whole globe. But thou reinest the wild streams, and meltest them down into waves; softly thou playest with thy little children, the islands, and playest on the hand which hangs out of the light gondola, and sendest out thy little waves which play before us, then bear us along, and play behind us.
"When we came along by the little Nisita, where Brutus and Cato once sought shelter after Cæsar's death; when we passed by the enchanted Baja and the magic castle where once three Romans determined upon the division of the world, and before the whole promontory, where the country-seats of great Romans stood; and when we looked down towards the mountain of Cuma, behind which Scipio Africanus lived in his Linternum and died; then did the lofty life of the great ancients take possession of me, and I said to my friend: 'What men were those! Scarcely do we learn incidentally in Pliny or Cicero that one of them has a country-house yonder, or that there is a lovely Naples. Out of the midst of nature's sea of joys their laurels grow and bear as well as out of the ice-sea of Germany and England, or out of Arabia's sand. Alike in wildernesses and in paradises, their mighty hearts beat on. And for these world-souls there was no dwelling except the world; only with such souls are emotions worth almost more than actions. A Roman might here weep nobly for joy! Dian, say, what can a modern man do for it, that he lives so late after their ruins?'
"Youth and ruins, tottering, crumbling past and eternal fulness of life, covered the shore of Misenum and the whole far-stretching coast. On the broken urns of dead gods, on the dismembered temples of Mercury and Diana, the frolicsome, light wave played, and the eternal sun; old, lonely bridge-posts in the sea, solitary temple-columns and arches, spoke, in the luxuriant splendor of life, a sober word; the old, holy names of the Elysian Fields, of Avernus, of the Dead Sea, lived still along the coast; ruins of rocks and temples lay in confusion upon the motley-colored lava; all bloomed and lived; the maidens and the boatmen sang; the mountains and the islands stood great in the young, fiery day; dolphins chased sportively along beside us; singing larks went whirling up in the ether above their narrow islands; and from all ends of the horizon ships came up and flew down again with arrowy speed. It was the divine over-fulness and intermingling of the world before me. Sounding-strings of life were stretched over the string-bridge of Vesuvius, even to Epomeo.
"Suddenly one peal of thunder passed along through the blue heaven over the sea. The maiden asked me, 'Why do you grow pale? it is only Vesuvius.' Then was a god near me; yes, heaven, earth, and sea stood before me as three divinities. The leaves of life's dream-book were murmuringly ruffled up by a divine morning-storm; and everywhere I read our dreams and the interpretations thereof.
"After some time, we came to a long land swallowing up the north, as it were the foot of a single mountain; it was already the lovely Ischia, and I went on shore intoxicated with bliss, and then, for the first time, I thought of the promise that I should there find a sister."
With emotion, with a sort of festive solemnity, Albano trod the cool island. It was to him as if the breezes were always wafting to him the words, "The place of rest." Agata begged them both to stay with her parents, whose house lay on the shore, not far from the suburb-town.[95]As they went over the bridge, which connects the green rock wound round with houses to the shore and the city, she pointed out to them joyfully in the east the individual house. As they went along so slowly, and the high, round rock and the row of houses stood mirrored in the water; and upon the flat roofs the beautiful women who were trimming the festal lamps for evening spoke busily over to each other, and greeted and questioned the returning Agata; and all faces were so glad, all forms so comely, and the very poorest in silk; and the lively boys pulled down little chestnut-tops; and the old father of the isle, the tall Epomeo, stood before them all clad in vine-foliage and spring-flowers, out of whose sweet green only scattered, white pleasure-houses of happy mountain-dwellers peeped forth;—then was it to Albano as if the heavy pack of life had fallen off from his shoulders into the water, and the erect bosom drank in from afar the cool ether flowing in from Elysium. Across the sea lay the former stormy world, with its hot coasts.
Agata led the two into the home of her parents, on the eastern declivity of Epomeo; and immediately, amidst the loud, exulting welcome, cried out, quite as loudly: "Here are two fine gentlemen, who wish to come home with me." The father said, directly: "Welcome, your excellencies! You shall, with pleasure, keep the chambers, though many bathing-guests will come by and by. You will find nowhere better quarters. I was formerly only aturnerin the Fayence manufactory, but have been for these eight years a vine-dresser, and can afford to do a favor. When was there ever a better December and March[96]than this year? Your commands, excellencies!" Suddenly Agata wept; her mother had announced to her the interment of her youngest sister, for which solemnity, according to the fashion of the island, an eve of joy was appointed to-day, because they loved to congratulate each other upon the eternal, bliss-insuring ratification of a child's innocence by death. The old man would fain have gone at once right into narrations, when Dian begged his Albano, after so long a commotion of souls and bodies, to go to sleep till sunset, when he would wake him. Agata showed him the way to his cool chamber, and he went up.
Here, before the cooling sea-zephyr, the going to sleep was itself the slumber, and the echoing dream itself the sleep. His dream was an incessant song, which sang itself,—"The morning is a rose, the day a tulip, night is a lily, and evening is another morning."
He dreamed himself at last down into a long sleep. Late, in the dark, like an Adam in renovated youth, he opened his eyes in Paradise, but he knew not where he was. He heard distant, sweet music; unknown flower-scents swam through the air. He looked out; the dark heaven was strewed with golden stars, as with fiery blossoms; on the earth, on the sea, hovered hosts of lights; and in the depths of distance hung a clear flame steadily in the midst of heaven. A dream, of which the scene was unknown, confounded still the actual stage with one that had vanished; and Albano went through the silent, unpeopled house, dreaming on, out into the open air, as into an island of spirits.
Here nightingales, first of all, with their melody drew him into the world. He found the name Ischia again, and saw now that the castle on the rock and the long street of roofs in the shore-town stood full of burning lamps. He went up to the place whence the music proceeded, which was illuminated and surrounded with people, and found a chapel standing all in fires of joy. Before a Madonna and her child, in a niche, a night-music was playing, amidst the loquacious rustling of joy and devotion. Here he found again his hosts, who had all quite forgotten him in the jubilee; and Dian said, "I would have awaked you soon; the night and the pleasures last a great while yet."
"Do hear and see yonder the divine Vesuvius, who joins in celebrating the festival in such right good earnest," cried Dian, who plunged as deeply into the waves of joy as any Ischian. Albano looked over toward the flame, flickering high in the starry heaven, and, like a god, having the great thunder beneath it, and he saw how the night had made the promontory of Misenum loom up like a cloud beside the volcano. Beside them burned thousands of lamps on the royal palace of the neighboring island Procida.
While he looked out over the sea, whose coasts were sunk into the night, and which lay stretching away like a second night, immeasurable and gloomy, he saw now and then a dissolving splendor sweep over it, which flowed on ever broader and brighter. A distant torch also showed itself in the air, whose flashing drew long, fiery furrows through the glimmering waves. There drew near a bark, with its sail taken in, because the wind blew off shore. Female forms appeared on board, among which, one of royal stature, along whose red, silken dress the torch-glare streamed down, held her eyes fixed upon Vesuvius. As they sailed nearer, and the bright sea blazed up on either side under the dashing oars, it seemed as if a goddess were coming, around whom the sea swims with enraptured flames, and who knows it not. All stepped out on shore at some distance, where by appointment, as it seemed, servants had been waiting to make everything easy. A smaller person, provided with a double opera-glass, took a short farewell of the tall one, and went away with a considerable retinue. The red-dressed one drew a white veil over her face, and went, accompanied by two virgins, gravely and like a princess, to the spot where Albano and the music were.
Albano stood near to her; two great black eyes, filled with fire and resting upon life with inward earnestness, streamed through the veil, which betrayed the proud, straight forehead and nose. In the whole appearance there was to him something familiar and yet great; she stood before him as a Fairy Queen, who had long ago with a heavenly countenance bent down over his cradle and looked in with smiles and blessings, and whom the spirit now recognizes again with its old love. He thought perhaps of a name, which spirits had named to him, but that presence seemed here not possible. She fixed her eye with complacency and attention on the play of two virgins, who, neatly clad in silk, with gold-edged silken aprons, danced gracefully, with modestly drooping heads and downcast eyes, to the tambourine of a third; the two other virgins, whom the stranger had brought with her, and Agata, sang sweetly with Italian half-voice[97]to the graceful joy. "It is all done in fact," said an old man to the strange lady, "to the honor of the Holy Virgin and St. Nicholas." She nodded slowly a serious yes.
At this moment there stood, all at once, Luna, played about with the sacrificial fire of Vesuvius, over in the sky, as the proud goddess of the sun-god, not pale, but fiery, as it were a thunder-goddess over the thunder of the mountain, and Albano cried, involuntarily, "God! the great moon!" The stranger quickly threw back her veil, and looked round significantly after the voice as after a familiar one; when she had looked upon the strange youth for a long time, she turned toward the moon over Vesuvius.
But Albano was agitated by a god, and dazzled by a wonder; he saw here Linda de Romeiro. When she raised the veil, beauty and brightness streamed out of a rising sun; delicate, maidenly colors, lovely lines and sweet fulness of youth played like a flower-garland about the brow of a goddess, with soft blossoms around the holy seriousness and mighty will on brow and lip, and around the dark glow of the large eye. How had the pictures lied about her,—how feebly had they expressed this spirit and this life!
As if the hour would fain worthily invest the shining apparition, so beautifully did heaven and earth with all rays of life play into each other,—love-thirsty stars flew like heaven-butterflies into the sea,—the moon had soared away over the impetuous earth-flame of Vesuvius, and spread her tender light over the happy world, the sea and the shores,—Epomeo hovered with his silvered woods, and with the hermitage of his summit high in the night blue,—near by stirred the life of the singing, dancing ones, with their prayers and their festal rockets which they were sending aloft. When Linda had long looked across the sea toward Vesuvius, she spoke, of herself, to the silent Albano, by way of answering his exclamation, and making up for her sudden turning round and staring at him. "I come from Vesuvius," said she; "but he is quite as sublime near at hand as afar off, which is so singular." Altogether strange and spirit-like did it sound to him, that he really heard this voice. With one that indicated deep emotion he replied: "In this land, however, everything is great indeed, even the little is made great by the large,—this little human pleasure here between the burnt-out volcano[98]and the burning one,—all is at one, and therefore right and so godlike." At once attracted and distracted, not knowing him, although previously struck with the resemblance of his voice to that of Roquairol, gladly reflecting on his simple words, she looked longer than she was aware at the ingenuous, but daring and warm eye of the youth, made no reply, turned slowly away, and again looked silently at the sports.
Dian, who had already for a long time been looking at the fair stranger, found at last in his memory her name, and came to her with the half-proud, half-embarrassed look of artists toward rank. She did not recognize him. "The Greek, Dian," said Albano, "noble Countess!" Surprised at the Count's recognition of her, she said to him: "I do not know you." "You know my father," said Albano, "the Knight Cesara." "O Dio!" cried the Spanish maiden, startled, became a lily, a rose, a flame, sought to collect herself, and said, "How singular! A friend of yours, the Princess Julienne, is also here."
The conversation flowed now more smoothly. She spoke of his father, and expressed her gratitude as his ward. "That is a mighty nature of his, which guards itself against everything common," said she, at once, against the fashion of the quality, speaking even partially of persons. The son was made happy by this praise of a father; he enhanced it, and asked in pleased expectation how she took his coldness.
"Coldness?" said she, with liveliness, "I hate the word cordially. If ever a rare man has a whole will and no half of one, and rests upon his power, and does not, like a crustaceous animal, cleave to every other, then he is called cold. Is not the sun, when he approaches us, cold too?" "Death is cold," cried Albano, very much moved, because he often imagined that he himself had more force than love; "but there may well be a sublime coldness, a sublime pain, which with eagle's talon snatches the heart away on high, but tears it in pieces in mid-heaven and before the sun."
She looked upon him with a look of greatness. "Truly you speak like a woman," said she; "they alone have nothing to will or to do without the might of love; but it was prettily said." Dian, good for nothing as to general observations, and apt only at individual ones, interrupted her with questions about particular works of art in Naples; she very frankly communicated her characteristic views, although with tolerable decision. Albano thought at first of his artistic friend, the draughtsman Schoppe, and asked about him. "At my departure," said she, "he was still in Pestitz, though I cannot comprehend what such an extraordinary being would fain do there; that is a powerful man, but quite jumbled up and not clear. He is very much your friend." "How does," asked Dian, half joking, "my old patron, the Lector Augusti?" She answered concisely, and almost with a certain sensitiveness at the familiarity of his question: "It goes well with him at court. Few natures," she continued, turning to Albano, on the subject of Augusti, "are doomed to meet so much injustice of judgment as such simple, cool, consistent ones as his." Albano could not entirely say yes, but he recognized with satisfaction in her respect for the strangest individuality of character the pupil of his father, who prized a plant, not according to the smoothness or roughness of its skin, but according to its bloom. Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another's. But Linda's lofty candor on the subject, which is as often wanting in finely cultivated females as refinement and reserve are in powerful men, took the strongest hold of the youth, and he thought he should be sinning if he did not exercise his great natural frankness towards her in a twofold degree.
She called her maidens to depart with her. Dian went off. "These are more necessary to me," said she to Albano, "than they seem." She had, namely, she related, something of the ocular malady[99]of many Spanish women, of being infinitely short-sighted in the night. He begged to be permitted to accompany her, and it was granted; he would have guided her, after what she had said, but she forbade it.
During the walk she often stood still, to look at the beautiful flame of Vesuvius. "He stands there," said Albano, "in this pastoral poem of Nature, like a tragic muse, and exalts everything, as a war does the age." "Do you believe that of war," said she. "A man must have," he replied, "either great men or great objects before him, otherwise his powers degenerate, as the magnet's do, when it has lain for a long time without being turned toward the right corners of the world." "How true," said she: "what say you to a Gallic war?" He owned his wish that it might break out, and his own disposition to take part in it. He could not help, even at the expense of his future liberty, being open-hearted towards her. "Blessed are you men," said she; "you dig your way down through the snow of life, and find at last the green harvest underneath. That can no woman do. A woman is surely a stupid thing in nature. I respect one and another head of the Revolution, particularly that political monster of energy, Mirabeau, although I cannot like him."
During these discoursings they came upon the ascent of Epomeo. Agata accompanied the two playmates of her earlier days with full tongue and hungry ear for so many mutual news-tellings. As he now went along beside the beautiful virgin, and occasionally looked in her face, which was made still more beautiful by mental energy, and became at once flower, blossom, and fruit (whereas generally the converse holds, and the head gains by the face): then did he pass a severe judgment upon his previous deportment toward this noble being, although he as well as she, out of delicacy, remained silent about the former juggling play with her name, as well as about the wonderfulness of to-day's meeting. Silently they went on in the rare night and region. All at once she stopped on an eminence, around which the dowry of Nature was heaped up on all sides in mountains. They looked round in the splendor; the Swan of Heaven, the moon, floated high over Vesuvius in the ether,—the giant serpent of the world, the sea, lay fast asleep in his bed that stretches from pole to pole,—the coasts and promontories glimmered only, like midnight dreams,—clefts full of tree-blossoms overflowed with ethereal dew made of light, and in the vales below stood dark smoke-columns upon hot fountains, and overhead they floated away in splendor,—all around lay, high up, illuminated chapels, and low around the shore dark cities,—the winds stood still, the rose-perfumes and the myrtle-perfumes stole forth alone,—soft and bland floated the blue night around the ravished earth; from around the warm moon the ether retired, and she sank down love-intoxicated out of mid-heaven larger and larger into the sweet earth-spring. Vesuvius stood now, without flame or thunder, white with sand or snow, in the east,—in the darkening blue the gold grains of the fiery stars were sowed far abroad.
It was the rare time when life has its transit through a superterrestrial sun. Albano and Linda accompanied each other with holy eyes, and their looks softly disengaged themselves from each other again; they gazed into the world, and into the heart, and expressed nothing. Linda turned softly round and walked silently onward.
Just then, all at once, one of the prattling maidens behind them called out: "There is really an earthquake coming; I actually feel it; good night!" It was Agata. "God grant one," said Albano. "O why?" said Linda, eagerly, but in a low tone. "All that the infinite mother wills and sends is to me to-day childishly dear, even death;—are not we, too, part and parcel of her immortality?" said he. "Yes, man may feel and believe this in joy; only in sorrow let him not speak of immortality; in such impotency of soul he is not worthy of it."
Albano's spirit here rose up from its princely seat to greet its lofty kinswoman, and said, "Immortal one! and though no one else were so!" She silently smiled and went on. His heart was an asbestos-leaf written over and cast into the fire, burning, not consuming; his whole former life went out, the leaf shone fiery and pure for Linda's hand.
When they reached the last eminence below which Linda's and Julienne's dwelling lay, and they stood near each other on the point of separation, then the maiden suddenly cried out below: "An earthquake!" Out of hell a thunder-car rolled on in the subterranean ways,—a broad lightning flapped its wings up and down in the pure heaven under the stars,—the earth and the stars trembled, and affrighted eagles flew through the lofty night. Albano had grasped the hands of the tottering Linda. Her face had faded before the moon to a pale, godlike statue of marble. By this time it was all over; only some stars of the earth still shot down out of the steadfast heavens into the sea, and wondrous clouds went up round about from below. "Am I not very timid?" said she, faintly. Albano gazed into her face livingly and serenely as a sun-god in morning-redness, and pressed her hands. She would have drawn them away violently. "Give them to me forever!" said he, earnestly. "Bold man," said she, in confusion, "who art thou? Dost thou know me? If thou art as I, then swear and say whether thou hast always been true!" Albano looked toward Heaven, his life was balanced; God was near him; he answered softly and firmly: "Linda, always!" "So have I!" said she, and inclined modestly her beautiful head upon his breast, but immediately raised it again, with its large moist eyes, and said, hurriedly: "Go now! Early to-morrow come, Albano! Adio! Adio!"
The maidens came up. Albano went down, his bosom filled with living warmth, with living radiance. Nature breathed with fresher perfumes out of the gardens; the sea murmured again below; and on Vesuvius burned a Love's-torch, a festal fire of joy. Through the night-skies some eagles were still sailing toward the moon, as toward a sun; and against the arch of heaven the Jacob's-ladder stood leaning with golden rounds of stars.
As Albano was walking along so solitary in his bliss, dissolved in the rapture of love, the fragrance of the vales, the radiance of the heights, dreaming, hovering, he saw birds of passage flying across the sea in the direction of the Apennines, on their way to Germany, where Liana had lived. "Holy One above!" cried his heart, "thou desiredst this joy; appear and bless it!" Unexpectedly he stood before a chapel niche wherein the Holy Virgin stood. The moon transfigured the pale statue,—the Virgin took life beneath the radiance, and became more like Liana,—he knelt down, and ardently gave God his prayers of gratitude and Liana his tears. When he rose, turtle-doves were cooing in dreams, and a nightingale warbled; the hot fountains smoked glimmering, and the happy singing of far-off people came up to his ears.