Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, who was born at Wunsiedel, in Bavaria, on March 21, 1763, and died on November 14, 1825, was the son of a poor but highly accomplished schoolmaster, who early in his career became a Lutheran pastor at Schwarzenbach, on the Saale. Young Richter entered Leipzig University in 1780, specially to study theology, but became one of the most eccentric and erratic of students, a veritable literary gypsy, roaming over vast fields of literature, collating and noting immense stores of scientific, artistic, historic, and philosophic facts. Driven to writing for subsistence, he only won a reputation by slow degrees, but so great at last was the esteem in which his countrymen held him that he is typically styled "Der Einzige" ("The Unique"). The turning point proved to be the issue of "The Invisible Lodge" ("Die Unsichtbare Loge") in 1793, a romance founded on some of his academic experiences. Then followed a brilliant series of works which have made Richter's name famous. Among these was "Hesperus," published in 1794, which made him one of the most famous of German writers. Fanciful and extravagant as the work is, and written without any regard to the laws of composition, it is nevertheless stamped with genius. In all Richter's stories the plot goes for nothing; it is on the thoughts that he strikes out by the way that his fame depends.
I.--Friendship
"Victor," said Flamin, to the young Englishman, "give me this night thy friendship for ever, and swear to me that thou wilt never disturb me in my love to thee. Swear thou wilt never plunge me in misfortune and despair!"
The two friends were standing at midnight in the mild, sweet air of May, alone on the watch-tower of the little watering place of St. Luna. It was their first meeting for eight years. Flamin was the son of Chaplain Eymann, who had retired from the court of the Prince of Flachsenfingen; Victor was the heir of Lord Horion, a noble Englishman who lived at Flachsenfingen and directed all the affairs of the prince. The two boys had been sent in their infancy to London and brought up together there for twelve years; then for six years they had lived with Chaplain Eymann at St. Luna, and Victor had naturally conceived a great affection for the old clergyman and a deep love for his son. When, however, Victor was eighteen years of age, Lord Horion had sent him to GÖttingen to study medicine, and he had remained at that university for eight years. Everybody wondered why a great English nobleman should want to bring his son up as a physician; but Horion was a politician and his ways were dark and secret. Neither Chaplain Eymann nor the wife of that worthy pastor ever understood why his lordship should have been so anxious that Flamin and Victor should be brought up together and united by the closest ties of friendship; but being good, simple souls, they accepted the favours showered upon their son without seeking to discover if there were any reason for them. Eight years' absence had not diminished Victor's affection for them, but the young English nobleman was alarmed by the strange, wild passion which Flamin displayed as soon as they were alone together.
"You know I love you, Flamin, more than I love myself," he said, clasping his friend in his arms, and leading him to a seat on the watch-tower. "Of course, I swear never to overwhelm you in misfortune, or desert you or hate you. What is it that brings such gloomy thoughts into your mind?"
"I will tell thee everything now, Victor!" exclaimed his friend. "I will open all my heart to thee."
At first he was too much overcome by his feelings to speak. For a long time the two young men remained silent, gazing into the dark blue depths of the night The Milky Way ran, like the ring of eternity, around the immensity of space; below it glided the sharp sickle of the moon, cutting across the brief days and the brief joys of men. But clear among the stars shone the Twins, those ever-burning, intertwined symbols of friendship; westward they rose, and on the right of them blazed the heart of the Lion. The two friends had studied astronomy together, and when Victor pointed out the happy sign in the midnight sky, Flamin began to tell him his troubles. He, a poor clergyman's son, had fallen wildly in love with Clotilda, the beautiful daughter of Prince January, of Flachsenfingen. She was living at the country seat of the Lord Chamberlain Le Baut, at St. Luna; so poor Flamin was able to see her every day. Knowing that he could neither forget her nor win her, he was tortured by a strange, hopeless jealousy, and he now confessed that, instead of looking forward with joy to Victor's return to his home, he had been consumed with fear lest his brilliant, noble, handsome friend should utterly eclipse him in the sight of his beloved lady.
"Cannot I do anything to help you?" said Victor, tenderly.
"Your father has immense influence over Prince January," said Flamin, "could you beg him to get me some court position at Flachsenfingen? If only I could make my way in the world, perhaps I might be able to hope to win at last the hand of my lady."
Victor at once promised to do all in his power; and the two friends, newly reattached to each other, came down from the watch-tower, and, with their arms lovingly entwined, they returned to the parsonage.
II.--Love
The next day Chamberlain Le Baut gave a garden party in honour of the son of the great English minister.
"Take good care!" said the chaplain's wife as Victor set off; "she is very beautiful."
Victor had no need to ask who "she" was.
"I shall take care not to take care," he replied, with a smile.
Victor was too much of a man of the world to fall in love at first sight. But when he entered the garden, and a sweet, tall, and lovely figure came forward to greet him from behind the foliage, he felt as if all his blood had been driven in his face. It was Clotilda. She spoke to him, but he listened to the melody of her voice, instead of to her words, so that he did not understand what she was saying. Her quiet, reserved eyes, however, brought him to his senses; but still he could not help feeling glad that, as Flamin's friend, he had some claim upon her attention and her society. It seemed to him as if everything that she did was done by her for the first time in life; and he would no doubt have shown a strange embarrassment in her company if the Lord Chamberlain and his wife and a throng of guests had not come into the garden and surrounded him and distracted him by their compliments. Recovering his self-possession, he concealed his real feelings by giving full play to his faculty for malicious and witty sayings. But though he succeeded in amusing the company, he displeased Clotilda; for the talk fell on the topic of women.
"The thing which a girl most easily forgets," said the Lord Chamberlain, "is how she looks; that is why she is always gazing into a mirror."
"Perhaps that is also the reason," said Victor, "why no woman regards another as more beautiful than she is. The most that a woman will admit is that her rival is younger than herself."
Nothing fell upon Clotilda--and this is always found in the best of her sex--more keenly than satire upon womankind, and though she concealed the fact that she both endured and despised this sort of wit, she began to distrust the lips and the heart of the young Englishman, and treated him during this time with such cold civility, that he had to exaggerate his wild gaiety in order to conceal the grief that he felt.
But as she was walking at evening in the garden, a loose leaf blew out of a book that she was holding, and Victor picked it up and read: "On this earth man has only two and a half minutes--one to smile, one to sigh, and a half a one to love; for in the midst of it he dies."
"Dahore! This is a saying of Dahore!" exclaimed Victor. "Clotilda, do you know my beloved master Dahore?" Clotilda turned towards him, her face transfigured with a lovely radiance. Their two noble souls discovered at last their affinity in their common love for the wise and gracious spirit who had nourished their young souls. For some strange reason Lord Horion, as they found out as soon as they began to converse together in a sweet and sincere intimacy, had had them brought up by the same master; and Dahore, an eccentric, lovable man with a profound wisdom, had made them, in both mind and soul, comrades to each other, though he educated one in London and the other at St. Luna.
"He taught Flamin and me at the same time," said Victor, looking to see what effect the name of his friend had on Clotilda. She smiled sweetly, but mysteriously, when he went on to speak of his loving friendship for the son of Chaplain Eymann.
The next day he knew why her smile was so mysterious. Lord Horion arrived from Flachsenfingen with some extraordinary news. Flamin had been appointed a counsellor to Prince January. Never had Victor in his wildest dreams of his friend's advancement, imagined that he would obtain at a leap so high an important position as this. The young Englishman himself had been sent to study at GÖttingen in order that he might be qualified to act as the prince's physician; but Flamin, without any labour, had suddenly obtained a place of authority almost equal to that occupied by Lord Horion.
Late that evening, however, Lord Horion revealed to his son a strange secret, in the light of which everything was explained. The Prince of Flachsenfingen was a man of a rather weak and evil character, over whom Horion ruled by sheer force of will. Prince January had had two children, a boy and a girl, and the English lord had had them brought up far away from the malicious influences of the court. In order that January might not interfere in the education of the heir, Horion had told him that the boy had perished in infancy in London. As a matter of fact, the child had been brought up with Victor.
"So Flamin is the heir to the throne of Flachsenfingen!" exclaimed Victor.
"Yes," said Horion, "and I have trained you to guide and direct him in the same way as I guide and direct his father. For the present, however, I must have complete control of the matter. Swear that you will not divulge the secret of Flamin's birth to him or to any one else, before I give you permission."
For a moment Victor hesitated. He remembered the promise that Flamin had wrung from him on the watch-tower, and this, he was beginning to see, might involve him in a perilous misunderstanding.
"Does Clotilda know?" he said.
"I revealed the secret to her when she came to St. Luna," said Horion, "under the same conditions that I am now revealing it to you. She swore to reveal it under no circumstances whatever, and you must do the same before you leave this spot."
So Victor took the oath with a strange mixture of misgiving and joy. As he walked back, slowly and thoughtfully, to the chaplain's house, he at last admitted to himself that he was deeply in love with Clotilda. Instead of returning to England and leaving Flamin in possession of the field, as he had resolved on doing, he was now at liberty to try and win the beautiful, noble girl. On the other hand, Flamin would misunderstand his actions, and this would bring both of them into great danger.
The next day Victor received his appointment as physician to the Prince of Flachsenfingen, and he was summoned to the court, together with Clotilda. He now divined what his father's intentions were in regard to him and the lovely young girl. Instead, however, of going with her to Flachsenfingen, he dressed himself in poor attire and set out on an aimless journey through Europe, without telling anyone where he was going.
III.--Enmity
Victor had a profound aversion from the wild and yet vacant kind of life that men pursued at the court of the Prince of Flachsenfingen. He was comforted in his separation by the thought that so long as it lasted he was spared from disturbing the delusions of her jealous brother. But when he at last came to Flachsenfingen, he was grieved to find that his beautiful lady had grown pale and sorrowful. Like a sweet flower taken from the clear fresh air of the forest and placed in a hot, closed room, she was pining in the close, heavy atmosphere of the court, which was so crowded and yet so lonely. At the sight of her distress, Victor forgot his promise to Flamin. Meeting her at evening in the forest near the palace, he sank on his knees before her in the dewy grass, and told her all his love for her, and of the promise he had made to Flamin. Clotilda stooped and clasped his hand, and drew him up, and he folded her to his breast.
"We must part, dearest," he said, "until my father sees fit to reveal to your brother the secret of his birth."
A nightingale broke out into a passion of song as Victor gathered up his courage to bid her farewell. The call of the nightingale was suddenly answered by another nightingale. It kept flying as it sang, and, with its voice muffled by the thick blossoms on the trees, it sent a languishing melody flowing out of a dim, flowering dell a hundred paces away. The two lovers, who dreaded and delayed to part, wandered confusedly after the receding nightingale into the hollow of the forest; they knew not that they were alone, for in their hearts was God. At last Clotilda recovered herself, and as the nightingale ceased, she turned round to say good-bye. But Victor lingered, and took both of her hands, though for very grief he could not bear to look upon her. With tears in his eyes he murmured, "Good-bye, my dearest. My heart is too heavy. I can say no more. Do not sorrow, darling. Nothing can part us now--neither life nor death."
Like a transfigured spirit bending down to an angel, he stooped and touched her sweet mouth. In a gentle kiss, in which their hovering souls only glided tremorously from afar to meet each other with fluttering wings, he took from her yielding lips the seal of her pure love. As he did so, there came a crashing sound from the dark trees around them.
"You scoundrel!" cried Flamin, rushing down into the hollow, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight, and his face white with anger. "Take it, take it! I will have your blood for this!"
He had two pistols in his hand, and he thrust one fiercely towards Victor. The Englishman drew Clotilda aside, and then went up to his friend, saying, "I have not wronged you. Believe me, Flamin, I remember the oath I gave you, and I swear that I have been faithful to you. Only wait until I see my father, and everything will be explained."
"I want no explanation, you faithless scoundrel," shouted Flamin, "Take it, or I will kill you where you stand."
In his blind fury he was pointing the muzzle of the pistol at the trembling form of Clotilda, and Victor snatched the weapon from him in order to save her.
"I will have blood for this--blood, blood!" Flamin kept saying, reeling about the floor of the dell like a drunken man.
"You are my brother, my brother!" cried Clotilda. "Don't you hear? You are my brother!"
She ran up to Flamin to take the pistol from him, but reeled and fell to the ground in a swoon. Victor looked at her wildly, and thinking that she was dead, turned upon Flamin.
"If you want blood," he said sternly, "take mine."
"You fire first," exclaimed Flamin.
Victor lifted his pistol up into the air and shot at the top of a tree; then he stood calm and silent waiting for Flamin to fire. His old friend pointed the pistol straight at his heart, but hesitated; and Clotilda recovered her senses and staggered to her feet, and threw herself before her lover. Flamin looked at them in gloomy wonder without lowering his pistol. He would have liked to kill them both with one shot, but the instinct of a life-long friendship unnerved him. He hurled his pistol away, saying, "It isn't worth troubling to kill a scoundrel like you," and then turned and strode fiercely through the forest.
Some weeks afterwards Victor was standing on the watch-tower at St. Luna alone, with a letter from Lord Horion in his hand. He looked down from the height, and he was tempted to throw himself over. He had regained the friendship of Flamin, but it seemed to him that he had now lost all hope of winning Clotilda. For Lord Horion had explained the whole of the strange, tortuous policy which he had used in regard to Prince January. He informed Victor that he had introduced Flamin to the prince, and had proved to him that the young man was his heir. "They asked me, my dear Victor," Horion went on to say in his letter, "a question which I was surprised at your not asking. If Flamin is the son of the prince, where is the son of Chaplain Eymann whom I took to London to be educated with him? My dear boy, I have no son, and you really are the child of Eymann and his good wife. This secret I felt bound to reveal to the prince at the same time that I was forced to reveal the secret of Flamin's birth. It was because I wished to postpone the revelations until you were established in the prince's good graces that I made you take the oath that you took so unwillingly."
Victor felt that what the heir to a great English nobleman might aspire to, the son of a poor country clergyman could never hope to attain. By a strange vicissitude of fortune he now found himself in the same position as that in which Flamin had been when they met on the watch-tower after their long separation. His mournful meditations were suddenly interrupted by two figures who had silently crept up the stairs of the tower. They were Flamin and Clotilda, and each of them put an arm around Victor and led him to the parsonage. On the way he learnt that Clotilda had known all along that he was the son of Chaplain Eymann.
Titan
The climax of Jean Paul Richter's inspiration, and of his obscurity, was reached in "Titan," published during 1801-3. He meant it to be his greatest romance, and posterity has confirmed his judgement. Of all his works, it is the most characteristic of its author. It has all the peculiarities of his style, peculiarities that are reflected in the prose of Thomas Carlyle, his most eminent British admirer and interpreter. The book itself took ten years to write, and according to his correspondence, Richter intended to call it "Anti-Titan," having in view his attacks on the material selfishness of the age which, to gain its own ends, would move mountains. The motive--a comparison between a man of moral grandeur and one of grandiose immorality--came to Richter while he was engaged on "Hesperus," a fact that explains why certain characters from the earlier romance reappear in "Titan."
I.--Liana
For many years Albano, the young Spanish Count Cesara, had lived within sight of the capital city of the state of Hohenfliess; yet he had never entered it--his mother, so his father told him, had shut it against him, desiring that he should be reared in the Carthusian monastery of rural life, not sullied in his youth by mingling with courtiers and men of the world.
And now the gates of Pestitz were open to him. Contemplate the heated face of my hero, who at last is riding into the streets, built up in his fancy of temples of the sun, where who knows but that at every long window, on every balcony, his beloved Liana may be standing?
Gaspard, Count Cesara, Knight of the Fleece, had met his son, for the first time in Albano's memory, at Lake Maggiore, and Albano had come away from the meeting with a feeling of chill that poisoned his heart, eager as it was to love and be loved, and a vague, discomposing sense that in his birth there was a mystery. But the thought of his father's coldness, all thoughts that troubled and confused, were forgotten on his entry into Pestitz, in the eager hope of seeing Liana, his beloved, and his friend, her brother, Charles Roquairol; for neither his beloved nor her brother had he ever yet in his life beheld.
The love and the friendship were of the imagination, and the imagination was begotten of the accounts given by Von Falterle, the accomplishments-master of Albano in the village of BlÜmenbuhl, and of his former pupil Liana, daughter of the Minister von Froulay. It was his wont to paste up long altar-pieces of Liana's charms, charms which her father had sought to enhance by means of delicate and almost meagre fare, by shutting up his orangery, whose window he seldom lifted off from this flower of a milder clime--until she had become a tender creature of pastil-dust, which the gusts of fate and monsoons of climate could almost blow to pieces. In Albano's silent heart, therefore, there was to be seen a saintly image of Liana, the ascending Raphael's Mary, but, like the pictures of the saints in Passion-week, hanging behind a veil.
And as for her brother, the madcap Roquairol, who in his thirteenth year had shot at himself with suicidal intent because the little Countess Linda de Romeiro, Albano's father's ward, had turned her back upon him, could our hero's admiration be withheld from a youth of his own age who already possessed all the accomplishments and had tasted all the passions?
When Albano entered Pestitz, eager that his dreams of love and friendship should be realised, the aged Prince of Hohenfliess had just departed this life, and Liana, intimate friend of the Princess Julienne, daughter of the dead prince, was smitten with temporary blindness, due to emotion and consequent headache. Albano first beheld her in the garden of her father, the minister, standing in the glimmer of the moon. The blest youth saw irradiated the young, open, still Mary's-brow, and the delicate proportions, which, like the white attire, seemed to exalt the form. Thou too fortunate man!--to whom the only visible goddess, Beauty, appears so suddenly, in her omnipotence!
Ah, why must a deep, cold cloud steal through this pure and lofty heaven?
The inauguration of the new prince was held--of the enfeebled Prince Luigi--upon whose expected speedy decease the neighbouring princely house of Haarkaar founded its hopes of acquiring the dominions of Hohenfliess. It was on the night of an inauguration ball that Albano, having poured out his heart to Roquairol in a letter, met his long-hoped-for friend, and sealed their affections by declaring that he would never wed Linda de Romeiro, whom it was thought Count Gaspard had designed for his son's bride, and for whom Roquairol's youthful passion had not been extinguished.
When Liana recovered her sight, she was sent to BlÜmenbuhl for restoration of health--to the home of Albano's foster-father, the provincial-director Wehrfritz. Thither often came Albano; thither also came Roquairol, to bask in the wondering admiration that Rabette, Albano's foster-sister, bestowed on him with all the fervour of her innocent rural mind. Albano's dream was fulfilled; he loved Liana in realty as he had loved her in imagination. Roquairol thought he loved Rabette; in truth, her simplicity was to this experienced conqueror of feminine hearts but a new and, for the moment, overmastering sensation.
On a glorious evening Albano and Liana stood on a sloping mountain-ridge; overhead was a heaven filled with a life-intoxicated, tumultuous creation, as the sun-god stalked away over his evening-world. He seized Liana's hands and pressed them wildly to his breast; flames and tears suffused his eyes and his cheeks, and he stammered, "Liana, I love thee!"
She stepped back, and drew her white veil over her face.
"Wouldst thou love the dead?" she said.
He knew her meaning. Her friend Caroline, whom she had loved and who had died, had appeared in a vision, and announced that she would die in the next year.
"The vision was not true!" cried Albano.
"Caroline, answer him!" Liana folded her hands as if in prayer; then she raised the veil, looked at him tenderly, and said, in a low tone, "I will love thee, good Albano, if I do not make thee miserable."
"I will die with thee!" said he.
Charles appeared with Rabette; he, also, had spoken frantic words of love, and Rabette clung around him compassionately, as a mother around her child.
A few more days of joyous life at BlÜmenbuhl, and Liana returned to her home at Pestitz. Then for weeks Albano saw nothing of her, heard nothing of her. Liana was in sore trouble. Her father had disapproved of the match; what mattered much more to her, her mother also. The mother's opposition was on the quite decisive ground that she could not endure Albano.
The Minister von Froulay had more specific reasons for his hostility--the most specific of all being that he had designed his daughter for one Bouverot, a disreputable court intriguer, his leaning towards Bouverot being based on financial liabilities, and stimulated by financial expectations. The minister's lady detested Bouverot, but in desiring separation between Liana and Albano, she was her husband's ally. Behold, then, Liana torn between duty towards her mother and love for Albano.
Once Albano saw her, but heard no explanation. The prince was wedded to the Princess of Haarbaar, and it was at a wedding festivity in the grounds of the pleasure palace of Lilar that Albano looked upon his beloved. But she was pledged for the time to tell him nothing, and she told him nothing. The princess looked curiously at her, for Liana exactly resembled the princess's younger sister, the philanthropic Idoine, who devoted herself to the idyllic happiness of her peasantry in the Arcadian village that it was her whim to rule.
To the aged and saintly court chaplain, Spener, Liana at last brought her perplexities. Here the history moves in veils. How he extorted from her the promise to renounce her Albano for ever is a mystery watched and hidden by the Great Sphinx of the oath she swore to him.
On the next day Albano was summoned, and stood with quivering lips before the beloved.
"I am true to you--even unto death," she said; "but all is over."
He looked upon her, wild, wondering.
"I have resigned you," she said; "and my parents are not to blame. There is a mystery that has constrained me--"
"Oh, God!" he cried. "Is it thus with external fidelity and love?" In whirling, cruel passion he pictured his love, her coldness, his pain, her violated oath.
"I did not think thou wert so hard," she said. "Oh, it grows dark to me; let me to my mother!"
Albano gazed into the groping, timid face, and guessed all--her blindness had returned!
The mother rushed up. "May God bring you retribution for this!" cried Albano to her. "Farewell, unhappy Liana!"
For many days Albano lived without love or hope, in bitter self-reproach; every recollection darted into him a scorpion-sting. And to him in his agony came the tormenting news that the fickle Roquairol had deserted Rabette. He drove the false one from his presence; sister and brother, beloved and friend, were now utterly lost to him.
At length he learned that Liana had recovered her sight, and that she was dying. Once more, for the last time, he was admitted to her presence. She reclined in an easy-chair, white-clad, with white, sunken cheeks.
"Welcome, Albano!" she said feebly, but with the old smile. "Some day thou wilt know why I parted from thee. On this, my dying day, I tell thee my heart has been true to thee." She handed him a sheet with a sketch she had made with trembling hand of the noble head of Linda de Romeiro. "It is my last wish that them shouldst love her," she said. "She is more worthy of thee."
"Ah, forgive, forgive!" sobbed Albano.
"Farewell, beloved!" she said calmly, while her feeble hand pressed his. For a while she was silent. Suddenly she said, with a low tone of gladness, "Caroline! Here, here, Caroline! How beautiful thou art!" Liana's fingers ceased to play; she lay peaceful and smiling, but dead.
II.--Linda De Romeiro
Albano's state for a long time was one of fever. He lay dressed in bed, unable to walk, in a burning heat, talking wildly, and as each hour struck on the clock, springing up to kneel down and utter the prayer, "Liana, appear, and give me peace!" to the high, shut-up heavens.
"Poor brother!" said Schoppe the librarian, his old preceptor and dear friend. "I swear to thee thou shalt get thy peace to-day."
He went to Linda de Romeiro, now in Pestitz after long wandering, and placed his design before her. Would the Princess Idoine, Liana's likeness, appear before Albano as a vision and give him peace? Linda consented to plead with Idoine. But Idoine made a difficulty. It was not the unusualness and impropriety of the thing that she dreaded, but the untruthfulness and unworthiness of playing false with the holy name of a departed soul, and cheating a sick man with a superficial similarity.
At length Idoine gave her decision. "If a human life hangs upon this, I must conquer my feeling."
As eight o'clock struck, Albano knelt in the dusk, crying, "Peace, peace!"
Idoine trembled as she heard him; but she entered, clothed in white, the image of the dead Liana.
"Albano, have peace!" she said, in a low and faltering tone.
"Liana!" he groaned, weeping.
"Peace!" cried she more strongly, and vanished.
"I have my peace now, good Schoppe," said Albano softly, "and now I will sleep."
Time gradually unfolded Albano's grief instead of weakening it. His life had become a night, in which the moon is under the earth, and he could not believe that Luna would gradually return with an increasing bow of light. Not joys, but only actions--those remote stars of night--were now his aim. As he travelled with his father in Italy after his recovery, the news of the French Revolution gave an object to his eagerness.
"Take here my word," he wrote to Schoppe, "that as soon as the probable war of Gallic freedom breaks out I take my part decidedly in it, for it."
But at Ischia, Albano was dazzled by a wonder; he saw Linda de Romeiro. When she raised her veil, beauty and brightness streamed out of a rising sun; delicate, maidenly colours, lovely lines and sweet fullness 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.
As Albano and Linda walked on the mountain Epomeo, looking upon the coasts and promontories of that rare region, upon cities and sea, upon Vesuvius without flame or thunder, white with sand or snow, Albano's 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. He gazed into her face lovingly and serenely as a sun-god in morning redness, and pressed her hands. "Give them to me for ever!" said he earnestly.
She 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!"
Count Gaspard bestowed his paternal consent on the union, and the lovers returned separately to Hohenfliess. A difference arose; Albano was still bent on warring for France, Linda sought to dissuade him. They quarrelled, and parted in anger.
On the day after the quarrel Linda received a letter in Albano's handwriting begging forgiveness, and asking for a meeting in the gardens of Lilar. She went there at the appointed evening hour, although, owing to the night-blindness from which, like many Spaniards, she often suffered, she could not see her lover. But she kissed him, and heard his burning words of love.
But Albano had not written, and had not entered Lilar. Roquairol's old passion for Linda was undiminished; his rage at Albano was beyond bounds. He could mimic Albano's writing and voice; he knew of Linda's night-blindness. On the next night, in the presence of Albano and Linda, he slew himself with his own hand.
The death of Roquairol lay like a blight between the lovers. They parted for ever.
III.--Idoine
"War!" This word alone gave Albano peace. He made himself ready for a journey to France, and ere he set forth he sought out the little spot of earth, beneath a linden-tree, where reposed the gentle Liana, the friendly, lovely angel of peace.
Suddenly, with a shudder, he beheld the white form of Liana herself leaning against the linden. He believed some dream had drawn down the airy image from heaven, and he expected to see it pass away. It lingered, though quiet and mute. Kneeling down, he exclaimed, "Apparition, comest thou from God? Art thou Liana?"
Quickly the white form looked round, and saw the youth. She rose slowly, and said, "My name is Idoine. I am innocent of the cruel deception, most unhappy youth." Then he covered his eyes, from a sudden, sharp pang at the return of the cold, heavy reality. Thereupon he looked at her again, and his whole being trembled at her glorified resemblance to the departed--prouder and taller her stature, paler her complexion, more thoughtful the maidenly brow. She could not, when he looked upon her so silently and comparingly, repress her sympathy; she wept, and he too.
"Do I, too, distress you?" said he, in the highest emotion.
"I only weep," she innocently said, "that I am not Liana."
"Noble princess," he replied, "this holy spot takes away all sense of mutual strangeness. Idoine, I know that you once gave me peace, and here I thank you."
"I did it," she said, "without knowing you, and therefore could allow myself the use of a fleeting resemblance."
He looked at her sharply; everything within him loved her, and his whole heart, opened by wounds, was unfolded to the still soul. But a stern spirit closed it. "Unhappy one, love no one again; for a dark, destroying angel goes with poisoned sword behind thy love."
Idoine turned to go. He knelt, pressed her hand to his bosom, and only said, "Peace, all-gracious one!" Idoine, after a few swift steps, passed out of his sight.
Albano hastened preparations for his journey; but ere the preparations were ended, a letter was brought to him that caused him to abandon the project altogether. It was a letter from the long-dead Princess Eleonore, wife of the old prince who had died when Albano had first entered Pestitz. Now, in the fullness of time, was the letter placed before Albano's eyes and the token of the fullness of time was the death, without issue, of Prince Luigi, and the seeming inheritance of his dominions by the House of Haarkaar.
Thus the letter began:
"My son,--Hear thine own history from the mouth of thy mother; from no other will it come to thee more acceptably.
"The birth of thy brother Luigi at a late period of our married life annihilated the hopes of succession of the house of Haarkaar. But Count Cesara discovered proofs of some dark actions which were to cost thy poor brother his life. 'They will surely get the better of us at last,' said thy father.
"Madame Cesara and I loved each other; we were both of romantic spirit. She had just borne a lovely daughter, called Linda. We made the singular contract that, if I bore a son, we would exchange; with her, my son could grow up without incurring the danger which had always threatened thy brother in my house.
"Soon afterwards I brought forth thee and thy sister Julienne at a birth. 'I keep' I said, to the countess, 'my daughter, thou keepest thine; as to Albano, let the prince decide.' Thy father allowed that thou shouldst be brought up as son of the count. The documents of thy genealogy were thrice made out, and I, the count, and the court chaplain Spener, were put in possession of them. The Countess Cesara went off with Linda to Valencia, and took the name Romeiro. By this change of names all would be covered up as it now stands.
"Ah, I shall not live to be permitted openly to clasp thy son in my arms! May it go well with thee, dearest child! God guide all our weak expedients for the best.
"Thy faithful mother,
"ELEONORE"
Albano stood for a long time speechless. Joy of life, new powers and plans, delight in the prospect of the throne, the images of new relations, and displeasure at the past, stormed through each other in his spirit.
He went out, and in the twilight stood upon the mountains, whence he could overlook, but with other eyes than once, the city which was to be the circus and theatre of his powers. He belongs now to a German house, the people around him are his kinsmen; the prefiguring ideals, which he had once sketched to himself at the coronation of his brother, of the warm rays wherewith a prince as a constellation can enlighten and enrich lands, were now put into his hands for fulfilment. His pious father, still blessed by the grandchildren of the country, pointed to him the pure sun-track of his princely duty: only actions give life strength, only moderation gives it a charm.
He descended to BlÜmenbuhl. The funeral bell of the little church of BlÜmenbuhl tolled for Luigi. Albano joined his sister Julienne, and they betook themselves with Idoine and Rabette to the church. At the bright altar was the venerable Spener; the long coffin of the brother stood before the altar between rows of lights. Here, near such altar-lights, had once the oppressed Liana knelt while swearing the renunciation of her love. The whole constellation of Albano's shining past had gone down below the horizon, and only one bright star of all the group stood glimmering still above the earth--Idoine.
After the solemn service, Idoine addressed herself to him oftener; her sweet voice was more tender, though more tremulous; her maidenly shyness of the resemblance to Liana seemed conquered or forgotten. Her existence had decided itself within her, and on her virgin love, as on a spring soil by one warm evening rain, all buds had been opened into bloom.
"How many a time, Albano," said Julienne, "hast thou here, in thy long-left youthful years, looked toward the mountains for thine own ones--for thy hidden parents, and brothers and sisters--for thou hadst always a good heart!"
Here Idoine unconsciously looked at him with inexpressible love, and his eyes met hers.
"Idoine," said he, "I have that heart still; it is unhappy, but unstained."
Then Idoine hid herself quickly and passionately in Julienne's bosom, and said, scarcely audibly, "Julienne, if Albano rightly knows me, then be my sister!"
"I do know thee, holy being!" said Albano, and clasped his bride to his bosom.
"Look up at the fair heaven!" cried Julienne. "The rainbow of eternal peace blooms there, and the tempests are over, and the world's all so bright and green. Wake up, my brother and sister!"
