Man and Woman.

67. CYCLE.

At the moment where our story has arrived, among all the descendants of Adam who lifted a glad face to heaven, and imaged in that face a still fairer heaven, there must have been some one who had the highest heaven,—a happiest of all men. Ah yes! And to be sure, among all suffering creatures upon this globe, which our short race makes a plain, there must also have been one most unhappy; and may the poor man soon lie down to sleep under, not on, his rocky road! Although I could wish that Albano might not be the happiest of all,—in order that there might yet be a higher heaven above his,—still it is probable that, on the morning after that holiest night, in his present dream of the richest dream, deep in the threefold bloom of youth, of nature, and of anticipation, he bore the broadest heaven in himself which the narrow bosom of man can span.

He looked from his thunder-house,—that little temple on whose walls still lingered the radiance of the goddess who had therein become visible to him,—out over the new-created mountains and gardens of Lilar; and it was to him as if he looked into his white and red blooming future, adorned with mountain-peaks and fruit-tree-tops, a full Paradise built out into the naked earth. He looked round in his future after any robbers of joy who might attack his triumphal chariot; he found them all visibly too weak to cope with his arms and weapons. He called up Liana's parents, and his own father, and the host of spirits which had hitherto been working in the air, and set them out on the road which lay between him and his beloved; in his muscles glowed more than sufficient power easily to dash through them to her, and take her with him into his life by main force. "Yes," said he, "I am completely happy, and need nothing more,—no fortune, only my heart and hers!" Albano, may thy evil genius not have heard this dangerous thought, so as to carry it to Nemesis! O, in this wildly entangled wood of thy life, no step, even in the blooming avenues of pleasure, is wholly safe; and amidst the very fulness of this artistic garden there awaits thee a strange, gloomy upas-tree, and breathes cold poisons into thy life! Therefore it was better as it was once, when men were still lowly and prayed to God even in their great raptures; for in the neighborhood of the Infinite One the fiery eye sinks and weeps, but only out of gratitude.

Let no mean almanac measurement be applied to the fair eternity which he now lived, when he saw the beloved every evening, every morning, in her little village. As evening star she went forth before his dreams; as morning star, before his day. The interval both filled out with letters, which they themselves carried to each other. When they parted at evening, not long before they were to see each other again, and while in the north already the rose-bud twigs shot along low down in the heavens, which during men's sleep speedily grew out toward the east, in order to hang down from heaven with thousands of full-blown roses ere the sun and love came back again,—and when his friend Charles stayed with him by night, and he asked, in the course of an hour, whence the light came, whether from the morning or from the moon,—and when he sallied forth, while moon and morning still appeared together in the dew-dripping pleasure-woods,—and when the road, left only a few hours before, appeared wholly new and the absence too long, (because Cupid's wing is half a second-hand, which shows the day of the month, and half a month-hand, which points to the second, and because, in the neighborhood of the loved one, the shortest absence lasts longer than the longest when she is far away,)—and when at last he saw her again,—then was the earth a sun, from which rays proceeded: his heart stood all in light; and as a man, who on a spring morning dreams of a spring-morning, finds it still brighter around him when he awakes, so, after the blessed youthful dream of the beloved, did he open his eyes before her, and desire the fairest dream no more.

Sometimes they saw each other, when the long summer day was too long, on distant mountains, where by appointment they looked upon the harvests; sometimes Rabette came alone to Lilar to her brother, that he might hear something from Liana. When Liana had read a book, he read it after her; often he read it first and she last. Whatever of divine the fairest, purest souls can manifest to each other when they unfold themselves,—a holy heart which makes one still holier, a glowing heart which makes one still more glowing,—that they manifested to each other. Albano was mild toward all, and the radiance of a higher beauty and youth filled his countenance. The fair realms of nature and of his childhood were both adorned by love, not it by either of them; he had mounted from the pale, light moon-car of hope upon the sounding, shining sun-car of living ecstasy. Even on the galleys of wooden sciences, as if animated by the wonder-working hand of Bacchus, masts and shrouds fluttered out into vine-stalks and clusters. If he went to the Froulay house, he always, because he went in full of tolerance, came back without any sacrifice of the same: the Minister, who had returned from Haarhaar with a veil of gay, blooming ideas on his face, imparted to him charming prospects of the exultation wherewith city and country would celebrate the approaching marriage-feast of the Prince and the gain of the most beautiful bride.

And had he not, in addition to all, his friend too? When one stands so close before the flame of joy, one does indeed shun men,—because they easily step between us and the pleasant warmth,—but one seeks them too; a hearty friend is our wish and joy, who shall gently lead on, without chasing away, the happy dream in which we sleep and speak. Charles played softly into his friend's dream; he would, however, have also done it from sincere love for the sister.

In fact, with so much youth, summer weather, innocence, freedom, beautiful scenery, and deep love and friendship, there may well be constructed, even on this low earth, something like that which up in heaven is called a heaven; and a celestial chart, an Elysium-atlas, which one should map out thereof, would perhaps look not far otherwise than this: in front, a long pastoral land, with scattered pleasure-castles and summer-houses; a philanthropist's grove in the middle, the Tabor mountains overhead, with herdsmen upon them, long Campanian vales; then the broad archipelago, with St. Peter's islands; over on the other side the shores of a new pastoral continent, all covered with Daphnean groves and gardens of AlcinoÜs; behind that again, stretching far inward, an Arcadia; and so on.

All the philosophy and stoicism that he now had in him—for he held that which the arm out of the clouds gave him as booty gained by his own—Albano applied to the purpose of taking from his ecstasy the moderation which they impart. Moderation, he said, was only for patients and pigmies; and all those anxious, evenly balanced sticklers for temperament[181] and time-keepers had, whether in the cultivation of a pleasure or of a talent, profited themselves more than the world; on the contrary, their antipodes had benefited the world more than themselves.[182]

He kept in view very good fundamental principles. Man, said he, is free and without limits,—not in respect to what he will do or enjoy, but in respect to what he will do without; he can, if he will, will to dispense with everything. In fact, he continued, one has simply the choice, either always or never to fear; for thy life-tent stands over a loaded mine, and, round about, the hours aim at thee naked weapons. Only one in a thousand[183] hits; and, in any case, I am sure I would sooner fall standing than bending like a coward. But, he concluded, in order to justify himself on the subject, is then steadfastness made for nothing better than for a surgeon and serving-maid, and not much rather for our muse and goddess? for it is not surely a good, merely because it helps do without something which we have lost, but it is intrinsically one, and a greater than the one whose place it supplies; even the happiest must acquire it, even without outward occasion or bestowal; yes, it is so much the better, if it is possessed earlier than applied.

These deceptions or justifications were partly weapons of self-defence against the tragic Roquairol, who would fain heighten every pleasure, and even those of his friend, by sombre contrasts; and partly they were such as a noble man, who hitherto has plunged into sorrow without measuring its depth, and who would always feel his power of swimming through life, must necessarily fall upon, when he is inwardly aware that the centre of gravity of his bliss and of his hell has shifted and fallen out of himself into another being. "O, what if she should die?" he asked himself. He had not been wont to shudder so at the thought of any death as of this. Therefore he squeezed these thorns of fancy right sharply in his hand in order to crush them. At last, when the pure country air of love and the shepherd-dance in this Arcadia had brought more and more roses to Liana's cheek, then his thorns ceased to grow.

To all other vipers of life, so long as they could find no entrance through Liana's heart, he was inaccessible. At whatever price,—and though he should have to forsake, give up, provoke, undertake all,—he would buy Liana. The phantoms of terror which came threateningly to meet him out of two houses,—Froulay's and Gaspard's,—he let come on, and dispelled them: let the foe once show himself, thought he, so am I his foe too. Often he stood in Tartarus, and found, in this still life of death in rilievo, peace of soul. The actual world takes more quickly our image than we its; even here he gained soft, broad, life-illumining hopes and sweet tears, which flowed from him at the thought of Liana's faith in her death, not because he believed in the probability, but in the improbability thereof, which, through love and joy and recovery, would daily grow greater.

Only one misfortune was there for him, against which every weapon snapped in pieces, whose possibility, however, he held to be a sinful thought,—namely, that he and Liana, by some fault or time or the world's influence, might cease to love each other. Here, relying on two hearts, he boldly defied the future. O, who has not said, when, in reliance upon a warm eternity, he has expressed his rapture, The Fatal Sister may clip the thread of our life, but shall she come and open the scissors against the bond of our love? The very next day the Fatal Sister has stood before him, and snapped the scissors to.

68. CYCLE.

Once Roquairol came quite late to take Albano with him to the "Evening-Star Party" at the herdsman's hut, which he had arranged with Rabette. The Captain loved to build around the warm springs of his love and joy the well-curb of wholly select days and circumstances; if he could contrive it, for instance, he made his declarations of love, say on a birthday, during a total eclipse of the sun, on a valentine's day, in a blooming hot-house in winter, in a skating chair on the ice, or in a charnel-house; so, too, he loved to quarrel with others in significant days and places, in the church-pew, in the beginning of spring or winter, in the green-room of the amateur theatre, at a great fire, or not far from Tartarus or in the flute-dell. Albano, however, was too young, as others are too old, to have to season his fresh feeling with artificial hours and situations; he preferred to beautify the latter through the former.

With impetuous joy Albano flew along the road to the unexpected pleasure. Last evening had been so rich,—the four rivers of Paradise had, in one cataract, poured down from heaven into his heart,—and this evening he would leap into its sprayey whirlpool. The evening heaven itself was so fair and pure, and Hesperus went with growing splendor down his brightly glimmering path.

Rabette waited at the foot of the mountain on which stood the herdsman's hut (the little shooting-house), in order to lead him unsuspecting to the unprepared female friend, who at the window, with her gleaming eye on Hesperus, lay musing, and thought of the full, glowing autumn flowers, which, at this late time of her life, and so shortly before the longest night, were springing up. She was troubled to-day about many things. She had, in fact, sought hitherto more to deserve and to justify than to enjoy and increase her love, and more to bless with it another's heart than her own. How indescribably she longed to do deeds for him,—only sacrifices were to her deeds,—and she really envied her friend who had, every time, at least to prepare Charles a beverage. As she knew no other way, she expressed her devoted zeal by greater daughterly love and attention to Albano's parents and sister; and learned even to cook a little, which other ministers' daughters, who make nothing but salad and tea, must pardon her, especially when they reflect that, in Liana's case, they themselves would not have done otherwise, but rather have made one dish more. Yes, she accounted Rabette as more virtuous, because she could be more broadly and extensively active; Rabette, on the other hand, held Liana to be the better of the two, because she prayed so much the more. A similar error they repeated twofold in respect to the brothers; Rabette thought Charles the gentler, and Liana, Albano; both, according to inferences from their mutual reports.

So long as a woman loves, she loves right on, steadily. A man has to do something between whiles. Liana transformed everything into his image and his name: this mountain, this little chamber, this, to him once dangerous, bird-pole, became the crayon pencils for his stereotype image. She always came back upon this, that he deserved something better than her; for love is lowliness, on the wedding-ring sparkles no jewel. It touched her that her early death affected him. There she saw still the maiden blinded by the small-pox, whom he had once unconsciously pressed to his heart;[184] and, with the quick apprehension of sadness, she felt herself to resemble the blind one also, in that incident, and not merely in the similar, although shorter night, which pain had once thrown over her eyes.

As gentle as her emblem, Hesperus, dipping into the western horizon of life, did she seem to her lover. She never could pass immediately out of her own heart into the startling present; her turnings were always like those of the sunflower, very slow, and every sensation lived long in her faithful breast. Seldom, indeed, does a lover find the welcome of his loved one like the last image, which the farewell had imparted to him; a female soul must—so man desires—with all the wings, storms, heavens, of the last minute, sound over into the next. But Liana had ever received her friend shyly and softly, and otherwise than she had parted with him; and sometimes, to his fiery spirit, this tender waiting, this slow lifting of the eyelid, appeared almost as a return to the old coldness.

To-day it seized the more ardent Count more strongly than usual. Like a pair of strange children who are to become acquainted with each other, and smile upon and touch each other, the two stood beside each other friendly and embarrassed. She told how she had made his sister tell her of his childish break-neck adventure on this mountain. A loved maiden knows no more beautiful, no richer history than that of her friend. "O even then," he said with emotion, "I looked toward thy mountains! Thy name, like a golden inscription, was written on my whole youth. Ah, Liana! didst thou haply love me as I thee, when thou hadst not yet seen me?"

"Certainly not, Albano," answered she, "not till long after!" She meant, however, her blindness; and said he appeared to her in this twilight of the eyes, on that evening when he ate with her father, like an old northern king's son, somewhat like Olo,[185] and she had had a certain awe before him, as for her father and brother. Her high respect for men the fewest were hardly worthy to guess, not to say, occasion. "And how when thou hadst regained thy sight?" said Albano. "I just told thee that," she replied naively. "But when thou didst so love my brother," she continued, "and wast so good to thy sister, then to be sure I quite took heart, and am now and henceforth thy second sister. Besides, thou hast lost one—Albano, believe me, I know I am surely unworthy, especially of thee; but I have one consolation."

Perplexed by this mixture of sanctity and coldness, he could only passionately kiss her, and was constrained, without contradicting her, to ask forthwith, "What consolation?" "That thou wilt one day be entirely happy," said she softly. "Liana, speak more plainly!" said he. For he understood not that she meant her death and the announcement of Linda by the spirits. "I mean after one year," she replied, "from the date of the predictions." He looked at her speechless, wild, guessing and trembling. She fell weeping upon his heart, and suddenly gave vent to the swell of inward sighs: "Shall I not then be dead at that time," said she with deep emotion, "and look down from eternity to see that thou art rewarded for thy love to Liana? And that, too, certainly in a high degree!"

Weep, be angry, suffer, exult, and wonder more and more, passionate youth! But, to be sure, thou comprehendest not this lowly soul!—Holy humility! thou only virtue which God, not man, created! Thou art higher than all which thou concealest or knowest not! Thou heavenly beam of light! like the earthly light,[186] thou showest all other colors and floatest thyself invisible, colorless, in heaven! Let no one profane thy unconsciousness by instruction! When thy little white blossoms have once fallen, they come not again, and around thy fruits only modesty then spreads her foliage.

Painfully did the heart in Albano split into contradictions, as if into two, his own heart and Liana's. She was nothing but pure love and lowliness, and the splendor of her talents was only a foreign border-work, as white marble images of the gods have the variegated border only as decoration: one could not do anything but adore her, even in her errors. On the other hand, she had, in conjunction with tender, susceptible feelings, such firm opinions and errors; his modesty fought so vainly against her humility, and his clear-sightedness against her visionary tendency. The hostile train which this propensity drew after it he saw too clearly sweeping along over all the joys of her life. His ever-besetting suspicion, that she loved him merely because she hated nothing, and that she was always a sister instead of a lover, again charged home upon him like an armed man. Thus did all things fight together in this case,—duty and desire, fortune and place. Both were new and unknown to each other, because of love; but Liana divined as little as he. O how strange to each other and unlike each other two human beings, kindred souls, become, merely because a Divinity hovers between the two and shines upon both!

Something remained in him unharmonious and unsolved. He felt it so sadly, now that the summer night glimmered for higher raptures than he possessed; now that, deep in the ether, the trembling evening star pressed on after the sun through the rose-clouds under which he was buried; now that the meadows of grain breathed perfume and murmured not, and the closed pastures grew green and did not glow, and the world and every nightingale slept, and life below was a still cloister-garden, and, only overhead, the constellations, like silver, ethereal harps, seemed to tremble and sound before the spring winds of distant Edens.

He must needs see Liana again to-morrow, by way of tuning his heart. Rabette came up from the mountain with her friend, infinitely animated. Both seemed almost exhausted with laughing and joking; for Roquairol carried everything, even mirth, to the degree of pain. He had converted the evening star, for which he had given the invitation, into a hothouse and homestead of pleasant conceits and allusions. At first he would not come home with her, even to-morrow; but at last he consented, when Rabette assured him "she understood the fine gentleman well enough, but he must nevertheless just let her take care of things."

When the ruddy dawn arose, Albano, accompanied by him, came again; but the garden-gate of the "manor-garden" was already open, and Liana already in the arbor. A stitched book of public documents (seemingly) lay in her lap, and her folded hands beside it; she looked rather straightforward, as in thought, than upwards, as in prayer; yet she received her Albano with so mild and distant a smile, as a man, greeting a guest who comes right into the midst of his prayers, smiles upon him, and then continues his devotion. The Count had hitherto been obliged always to prepare himself for a certain reserve in her reception of him. A misunderstanding, which returns quickly, however often it is removed, acts again and again as deludingly and freshly as at the first time. He felt very strongly that something more fixed than that first virgin bashfulness, wherewith a maiden will always invent for the dazzling sun of love, besides the dawn, a twilight too, and again another for that, hindered the fiery melting together of their souls.

He asked what she was reading; she hesitated, covering it up. A thought, suddenly darting upon her, seemed to open her heart; she gave him the book, and said it was a French manuscript,—namely, written prayers, drawn up by her mother several years before, which touched her more than her own thoughts; but still there was ever-more looking through her tenderly woven face a cloistral thought, which sought to leave her heart. What could Albano object to this Psalmist of the heart? Who can answer a songstress? A praying female stands, as does also an unhappy one, on a high, holy place, which our arms cannot reach. But how miserable must most prayers be, since, although in earlier life possessing the attraction of charms, like the rosary, which is made out of sweet-smelling woods, yet afterward in advanced age they act only as blemishes, and like the relic or the death's-head with which the rosary itself ends!

Without waiting for his question, she told him at once what had disturbed her during her prayer; namely, this passage in it: O mon Dieu, fais que je sois toujours vraie et sincere, &c., whereas she had hitherto concealed her love from her dear mother. She added, she would come now very soon, and then the closed heart should be opened to her. "No," said he, almost angrily, "thou mayest not; thy secret is also mine!" Men are often hardened by that in prose which in poetry softens them; for example, woman's piety and open-heartedness.

Now no one hated more than he the clutching of the parental writing-finger, forefinger, and little finger into a pair of clasped hands; not that he feared, on the part of the Minister, wars or rivals,—he rather presupposed open arms and feasts of joy,—but because, to his magnanimous spirit, at once claiming and granting liberty, nothing was more revolting than the reflection, what smutty turf now for the kindling of the fire the parents might lay on the altar of love, or what pots they might set on to boil; how easily, then, even poetic parents often transform themselves with the children into prosaic or juristical ones, the father into an administrative, the mother into a financial board; how, then, to say the least, the court atmosphere makes one a bondsman, just as only the poetic heaven's ether makes free; and what perturbations his Hesperus might expect from the attracting world, the old Minister, who found nothing more unprofitable about love than love itself, and to whom the holiest sensibilities seemed about as useful for marriages of rank as the Hebrew is for preachers, namely, more in examination than in actual service. So ill did he think of his father-in-law, for he knew not something still worse.

But the good daughter thought far higher of her mother than did a stranger, and her heart struggled painfully against concealing from her her love. She appealed to her brother, who was just entering. But he was wholly of Albano's mind. "Women," he added, not in the best humor, "are more fond of speaking about love than in love; men, the reverse." "No," said Liana, decidedly; "if my mother ask me, I cannot be untrue." "God!" cried Albano, with a shudder, "and who could wish that?" For to him, also, free truth was the open helmet of the soul's nobility; only he spoke it merely from self-respect, and Liana out of human affection.

Rabette came with the tea-things and a flask, wherein was tea-juice and elementary fire, or nerve-ether for the Captain,—arrack. He never liked to visit people in the morning, with whom he could not drink it till evening; Rabette had yesterday guessed this naughtiness, and to-day gratified it. "How can the soul," said the sound Albano to him often, "make itself a slave to the belly and the senses? Are we not already bound closely enough by the fetters of the body, and thou wilt still draw chains through the chains?" To this Roquairol had always the same answer: "Just the reverse! Through the corporeal itself, I free myself from the corporeal; for instance, by wine from blood. As long as thou canst never escape servitude to the bodily senses, and all thy consciousness and thy thinking can only, through a bodily servitude, attaching itself to the glebe of the earth, abide in their nobility; I cannot perceive why thou dost not properly use these rebels and despots as thy servants? Why must I let the body only work ill upon me, and not advantageously as well?" Albano stood to it, that the still light of health was more dignified than the poppy-oil flame of a slave of opium; and the fate of being prisoner of war to the body, which one spirit has to bear in common with the whole human army, more honorable than the cramping confinement of a personal arrest.

To-day, however, not even the spirituous brimstone-smoked tea-water could wash away a certain discontent from Roquairol, whom night-watching had colored more pale, as it had the Count more red. He could not be reconciled to it, that the manor-garden was all shut in with a board-fence as high as a man, which was less intended as a billiard-table border, not to let the eye-ball go out, than as a mountebank's booth, to let nothing in, and which of course insured no other prospect than the prospect proper; quite as little did the pleasure-garden commend itself to his favor by the fact that the turf-benches on which they sat in the arbor had not yet been mowed, that in all the beds only vegetables for the trimming of cooked meat flapped about, that nothing ripe yet hung there but one or two moles in their hanging death-beds, that on a bowling-green, whereupon one rolls into a tinkling middle-hole, the crooked return-alley let the balls run home again, much more easily than they could—unless one threw them—be made to pass over the earth-bottom of the main alley, and that no orangery was anywhere to be seen, excepting once, when fortunately the garden-gate stood open, just as a blooming orangery box passed by in a wheelbarrow on its way to Lilar.

The Captain needed only to bring forward these particulars satirically, and thereby inwardly to wound the outwardly laughing Rabette,—because no woman can bear to hear fault found with her bodily property, whether it be children, clothes, cakes, or furniture;[187] and then his mountain-heights could gradually disencumber themselves of their clouds again, and Rabette become still more uncommonly gay.

Albano, in this morning hour of the day, and, as it were, of childhood, and in this little paradise-garden of his childish years, was inwardly glad,—for in the first love, as in Shakespeare's pieces, nothing depends on the wooden stage of the performance; but to-day's afterwinter of yesterday's chill would nevertheless not melt. The morning-blue began to be filled with brighter and brighter golden fleeces; as the garden, like small cities, had only two gates, the upper and the lower, he opened like an aurora that of the morning sun; the splendor gushed in over the smoking green; the Rosana gliding below caught lightnings, and flung them over hitherward; Albano departed finally full of love and bliss.

But the love was greater than the bliss.

69. CYCLE.

Flying Spring! (I mean love, just as one calls the after summer a flying summer) thou hurriest away of thyself over our heads with arrowy speed; why do authors again hurry over thee? Thou art the German blossoming season; which is never a blossoming month long. We read all winter in almanacs and similes much about its magnificence, and we pine for it; at last it hangs thick on the dark boughs six days long, and beside that, under cold May showers, sweeping bliss-month[188] storms, and with a dumb-session of half-frozen nightingales,—and then, when one comes out at length into the garden, the footpath is already white with blossoms, and the tree at most full of green; then it is over, till in winter we again hear with exaltation of heart the beginning of a tale: "It was just in the lovely season of the blossoming." Even so do I see few authors, at the long session-and-scribbling-table of romance, working right and left for the benefit of the reading-desk, who, after the long preface to love, do not so soon as, like a war, it is declared, forthwith conclude it; and really, there are more steps to love than in it; all that is coming to be,—for instance, spring, youth, morning, learning,—opens out more widely and in a richer variety of hues than fixed being; but is not this latter in turn a progress, only a higher; and this, again, a state of being, only a quicker?

Albano would fain lead along more beautifully the fleeting, divine season, when the heart is our god; he would have it rather fly upward than fly away. He was angry the next day with nobody but himself. He tore his way through such petty and yet closely entangling troubles, through a condition like that of men during an earthquake, when an invisible vapor holds the heavy foot as a snare. "I would rather let myself be rained on upon mountains," said he, "than in valleys." Men of quick fancy more easily reconcile themselves to the loved one when she is absent, than when she is present.

After some days, he went again to BlumenbÜhl just before sundown. A burning red cut through the night-like gloom of the foliage. His darkening, woody road was made, by the flames which danced about therein, an enchanted one. He transferred his illuminated present deep into a future, shady past. O, after years, thought he, when thou returnest, when all is gone by and changed, the trees grown up, human beings passed away, and only the mountains and the brook left, then wilt thou congratulate thyself that thou couldst once in these walks so often journey to thy sweetest heart, and on either hand the music and the glory of Nature went along with thy joyful soul, as the moon seems to the child to run after him through all streets. An unwonted rapture flung through his whole being the long, broad streak of sunshine; the farthest flowers of his fancy opened; all tones came through a brighter ether, and sounded nearer. The flowers around him, too, exhaled a keener fragrance, and the peal of the bell sounded nearer; and both are signs of foul weather.

Thus inwardly happy, he made his appearance,—and, indeed, without Roquairol, who in fact came more and more seldom,—and found his beloved up in his childhood's study, her guest-chamber, which was now the usual scene of his visits. In a white dress, with dark trimming, as in a beautiful half-mourning, she sat at the drawing-table with her eyes sharper than usual, buried in a picture. She flew to his heart, but only to lead him back presently to the dear form upon which her heart hung as in a mother's arms. She related that her mother had been here to-day with the Princess, and had showed so much pleasure in her improving color, such infinite kindness toward her happy daughter. "She was obliged," continued she, "to let me take a slight sketch of her, in order that I might only look upon her so much the longer, and have something of her to keep by me. I am just finishing the outline of the face, but it is absolutely too poor a likeness." She could not tear her fancy away from the image, and still less from the original. To be sure, no more beautiful medallion can hang on a daughter's heart, or in fact in it, than that of a mother; but, nevertheless, Albano thought to-day the hanging-ring took up too broad a space.

She talked only of her mother. "I certainly sin," said she; "she asked me in such a friendly way whether thou camest often, but I said only yes, and nothing further. O good Albano, how gladly would I have given up to her frankly my whole soul!"

He answered, that the mother seemed not to be so frank; she perhaps knew already the whole through the Lector, and the pure draught of love would now be continually disturbed by foreign substances. Against Augusti he declared himself very strongly, but Liana quite as strongly upheld him. Through both that counterfeiter of the coin of truth, namely, suspicion,—the suspicion that she perhaps loved him as she loved everything, since she grew as by a living tie to everything good,—gained, under Albano's sensibilities, which besides had been to-day so warm and glad, more and more mint-stamps and currency.

She suspected nothing, but she came back to the subject of her secrecy. "But why, then, does it make me unhappy," said she, "if it is right? Beloved one, my Caroline too appears to me no longer, and truly that is no good sign." This spectral-machinery always came on as oppressively and gloomily to him as a thunder-cloud in the outer world. His old exasperation against the teasings practised in his own case by apes of the air, whom he could not lay hold of, passed over into a similar feeling against Liana's optical self-deception. That veil presented her by Caroline, wherewith, in the beginning, she had so sublimely arrayed herself for the cloister of the tomb,—that travelling veil for the next world,—had long been to this Hercules a burning garment, drenched in the poisonous blood of a Nessus; therefore she no longer dared to wear it before him. The conclusion that the fancy of being destined to death laid the seed of the reality, and that in the deep overhanging cloud an accident might easily attract the striking-spark of death, fell like a mourning into his love festival. So are all strange sea-wonders of fancy (like this death-delusion) desired only in fancy (in romance), but not in life, except once on fantastic heights; but then must such comets, like others, soon recede again from our heaven.

He spoke now very seriously,—of suicidal fancies, of life's duties, of wilful blindness to the fairest signs of her recovery, among which he reckoned as well the disappearance of the optical Caroline as the blooming of her color. She heard him patiently; but through the Princess, who, notwithstanding her love, seldom left behind with him pleasant impressions, her fancy had to-day taken quite another road, far beyond herself and her grave. She stood only before Linda's image, of which Julienne had this afternoon communicated to her sharper outlines than maidens are wont to give of maidens. "She is a very good girl," they say of each other. Linda's manly spirit, her warm attachment to Gaspard in connection with her contempt of the mass of men, her inflexibility, her bold strides in manly knowledge, her masterly and often severe letters, more pithy than flowery, and, most of all, her probably approaching arrival, took a powerful hold of Liana's tender heart. "My Albano must have her," was the constant thought of this disinterested soul; and if the Princess had had the intention of humiliating comparisons, she remarked it not, but fulfilled it. The good creature found, too, so much of a higher providence here,—for example, that her brother need now no longer be the rival of her lover and of his friend,—that she herself could portray beforehand her vigorous Albano to the proud Romeiro, and that certainly, despite all opposition, all the ghostly prophecies strikingly connected and coincided with each other. All this she now said (because she concealed only her sorrows, not her hopes) right to the Count's face.

What a gnashing bite did an evil genius at this moment make into his tenderest life! That glowing love which neither divides nor is divided possessed his heart, he thought, not hers. He came very near to showing up his inner being just as it was, all kindled at once, as if by a lightning stroke, into a lofty blaze. Only the innocent white brow, with festive roses in its little ringlets; the childishly bright looking-up of the pure blue pair of eyes, and the soft face, which even at a musical fortissimo, and at every vehemence in movement or laughter on the part of another, caught a sickly redness from the beating heart; and his indignant shame at the levity with which a man can abuse his omnipotence and his sex, to the terror of the tenderer, restrained him, like guardian spirits; and he said merely, in that noble anger which sounded like a tender emotion, "O Liana, thou art hard to-day!"

"And yet I am indeed so tender!" said the innocent one. The two had hitherto been standing at the window, before the dark tempest which came rolling on out of Lilar. She turned suddenly round; for since the day of her blindness, when a dark cloud had seemed to fly towards her, she had never been able to look at one long; and Albano's tall form, with his whole live-glowing face and his soul-speaking eyes, stood illumined by the evening light before her. With the hand which he left free she softly and playfully swept aside the dark hair from his defiant forehead, smoothed the contracted eyebrow, and said, as his look stung like a sun, and his mouth shut with determination, "O, joyfully, joyfully, shall this fair face one day smile!" He smiled, but sadly. "And then shall I be still more blest than to-day!" said she, and started, for a lightning-flash darted across his earnest face, as over a jagged mountain, and showed it, like that of the god of war, illuminated with war-flames.

He hurried away; would not be held back; spoke of a weather-cooling; went out into the storm; and left Liana behind in the joy that she had spoken to-day merely out of pure love. From the last house in the village Rabette flew to meet him; the torrents of the restrained tears rolled down his cheeks. "What dost thou want? why weepest thou?" she cried. "Thou art dreaming!" cried he, and hurried, without further answer, out into the tempest, which had suddenly, like a mantle-fish, flung itself stiflingly over the whole heaven. There, under the rain-drops and lightning-flashes, he began, first of all, to reckon up for himself the best proofs that Liana had saintly charms, divine sense, all virtues, especially universal philanthropy, daughterly, sisterly, friendly affection, only not, however, the glowing love for one person,—at least, not for him. She is so entirely and exclusively—such is always his conclusion—possessed and absorbed with the present object, whether it be myself or a broken arm of the little Pollux, that it hides from her heaven and earth. Hence the setting of her life's day, with all the attendant partings, is no more to her than the setting of a star. Hence it was that I stood beside her so long, with a heart full of the pangs of love, and she saw not into my love, because she found none in her own bosom. And this is what makes it so bitter, when man, pining in poverty among the common hearts of earth, is rendered by the noblest only unhappy at last.

The rain pattered and trickled through the leaves, the fire darted through the woods, and the Wild Huntsman of the storm drove his crazy chase. This refreshed and rejoiced him like the cooling hand of a friend taking his to guide him. As he ascended, not through the cavern, but outside over the back of the mountain to his high thunder-house, he saw a thick, gray night of rain settle down heavily upon the green Lilar, and on the winding Tartarus rested under the flashes the illuminated storm. He shuddered, on entering his little house, at a cry which his Æolian-harp emitted under the snatches of the wind; for it had once, gilded by the evening sun, ethereally clothed his young love like starlight, and had followed it with ever-varying tones, as it went out over this suffering life.

70. CYCLE.

On the morning after both storms were dissolved into a still cloudiness.—And out of the great griefs came only errors. Weaklings that we are! when at our sham execution fate touches us with the rod, not with the sword, we sink impotently from the block, and feel the process of dying reach far into our life! All fevers, including spiritual ones, are cooled by the freshness of a new morning, just as sad evening stirs all their embers into a glow. Who of us has not at evening,—that proper witching hour of tormenting spectres, house-haunting ghosts and hobgoblins,—caught in the threads which he himself had spun, but which he took for a web spread by other hands, entangled himself more and more deeply the more he turned about and tried to extricate himself, till in the morning he saw his turnkey before him, namely, himself?

Albano saw on the whole theatre of yesterday's war nothing left standing but a pale, kindly figure in half-mourning, who looked round after him with innocent maidenly eyes, and toward which he could not help looking over, albeit she was now more a bride of God than of a mortal. He felt now, to be sure, more strongly how high his demands upon real friends rose, than he once did, when he could heighten at pleasure the highest which he made upon the beings of his dreams, whom he always cast exactly into the temporary mould of his heart; and how he was possessed by a spirit that spared no one, that would stretch the wings of every other according to its own, because it could bear no individuality except that which was copied.

He had hitherto experienced from all his loved ones too little opposition, as Liana had too much; both extremes injure one. The spiritual as well as the physical man, without the resistance of the outer atmosphere, is blown up and burst by the inner, and without the resistance of the inner is crushed by the outer; only the equilibrium between inner resistance and outer pressure keeps a fair play-room open for life and its culture. Besides, men—since only the best of them appreciate in the best of their own sex strong conviction—can hardly tolerate it in women, and would have them not merely the reflection, but even the echo, of themselves. They want, I mean, not merely the look, but also the word, that says yes.

Albano punished himself with several days of voluntary absence, till the unclean clouds should have cleared away from within him which had overshadowed the gnomon of the sundial of his inner man. "When I am quite cheerful and good-natured," said he, "I will go back to her, and err no more." He errs at this moment. Whenever a strange, uncomfortable semitone has repeatedly intruded itself between all the harmonies of two natures, it swells more and more fatally till it drowns the key-note, and ends all. The dividing tone was, in this case, the strength of the man's pitch in connection with the strength of the woman's. But the highest love is most easily wounded by the slightest difference. O, little avails it then for man to say to himself, I will be another man! Only in the finest, only in unimpaired enthusiasm, does he propose to himself such a thing; but it is just when the feeling is impaired, when he were hardly capable of the purpose, that he has to rise to the fulfilment of it, and then he can hardly make the achievement.

The Count went in the morning, as usual, to his lecture-rooms and parlors in the city. In the former it was hard for him to fix his instruments and his eyes upon the stars of the sciences, and to take sight, sailing as he was on such a sea of emotion. In the latter he found the Lector colder than ever, the Bibliothecary warmer, the household more inflated. He went to Roquairol, whom he to-day loved and treated still more cordially, as if by way of atonement to his offended sister. Charles said at once, with his sudden and tragical flinging up of the curtain of futurity, "All was discovered,—in the highest degree of probability!" As often as lovers see that their Calypso's island—which, to be sure, lies free on the open ocean—has at length come to the eyes of the seafaring world, and that they are making sail for it, they are astonished to an astonishing degree; for is there any one Paradise which has such a loose and low palisado, allowing every passer-by to see in, as theirs?

For a long time, he related, had the Doctor's children always had something to fetch from the Architect's wife at Lilar,—flowers, medicine-phials, &c.; certainly as spy-glasses and ear-tubes of Augusti, who again was the opera-glass of his mother. In short, his father had, at least, been at the Greek woman's yesterday, but had luckily found only an empty package[189] from Rabette to him (Charles), which, according to the liberties of the ministerial Church, he had opened and closed.

"Why luckily?" said Albano. "I will justify and honor my love before the world." "I referred to myself," he replied; "for never was my father more friendly to me than since he broke open my last letters. He is this afternoon in BlumenbÜhl, and it may well be more on my own account than my sister's."

Albano had no fear that the city could drill mining-galleries under his childhood's land, so as to blow up in one conflagration the blessed isle,—could he not trust his character and courage and Liana's own?—but it pained him now that he had so needlessly robbed the childlike Liana of the joy and merit of a childlike open-heartedness. How he longed now for the atoning and recompensing moment of the first meeting again, after the next morning!

He stayed by his friend as by a consolation, and did not go back till the evening redness floated about in the rain-clouds. When he came, he found already awaiting him a letter from Liana, written to-day.

"O good Albano, why camest thou not? How much I had to say to thee! How I trembled for thy sake on Friday, when the frowning cloud pursued thee with its thunder! Thou hast weaned me too much from sorrow, so strange and heavy has it become to me now. I was inconsolable the whole evening; at last, when night fell, the thought sank into my mind that thou hadst been oppressed as with presentiments, and that the lightning loved to strike the thunder-house. Why, indeed, art thou there? I hurried up, and knelt by my bed, and prayed to God, although the storm had long been dispersed, that he would have preserved thee. Smile at my tardy prayer; but I said to him, 'Thou knewest indeed, all-gracious One, that I would pray.' I was consoled, too, when I looked up to the stars, and the broken ray of joy trembled within me.

"But in the morning Rabette made me sad again. She had seen thee weeping on the road. A thousand times have I asked myself, whether I am to blame for that. Can it have come from this,—for she says so,—that I afflict thee too much with my death thoughts? Never more shalt thou hear them; the veil, too, is laid away; but I calculated upon thee according to my brother, to whom, as he himself says, the dusk of death is an evening-twilight, in which forms seem to him more lovely. Truly, I am quite blest; for thou art even so, and yet hast so little in having me,—only a small flower for thy heart, but I have thyself. Leave me my grave-mound; therefrom, as from a mountain, comes better, more fruitful soil into my valley. O how one loves, Albano, when all around us crumbles and sinks and melts away in smoke, and when, still, the bond and splendor of love stand firm and inviolate on the fleeting ground of life, as I have often seen with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a rainbow hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting, impetuous floods! O, would that the nightingales were yet singing; now I could sing with them! Thy Æolian-harp, my harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my hand! My father was with us, and more cheerful and friendly toward all than ever. Lo, even he is kindly disposed! My parents surely send no tempest into our feast of roses. I readily did him the pleasure, therefore,—forgive it!—of promising him, that I would receive no visits from strangers in a strange house—because, he said, it was improper. I must go home for some days on account of the Prince's marriage; but I shall see thee soon. O forgive! When my father speaks softly, my soul cannot possibly say, No. Farewell, my noble one!

L.

"P. S. Soon a little leaf will come fluttering again over to thy mountain. Only continue in perpetual joy! O God! why am I not stronger? What beings shouldst thou then take to thy heart!—Thou dear one!"