On a fine spring evening, the young Spanish Count Cesara came, with his
companions, Schoppe and Dian, to Sesto, in order the next morning to
cross over to the Borromæan island, Isola Bella, in Lago Maggiore. The
proudly blooming youth glowed with the excitement of travelling, and
with thoughts of the coming morrow, when he should see the isle, that
gayly decorated throne of Spring, and on it a man who had been promised
him for twenty years. This twofold glow exalted my picturesque hero to
the form of an angry god of the Muses. His beauty made a more triumphal
entry into Italian eyes than into the narrow Northern ones from the
midst of which he had come; in Milan many had wished he were of marble,
and stood with elder gods of stone, either in the Farnese Palace or in
the Clementine Museum, or in the Villa of Albani; nay, had not the
Bishop of Novara, with his sword at his side, a few hours before, asked
Schoppe (riding behind) who he was? And had not the latter, with a droll
squaring of the wrinkle-circle round his lips, made this copious answer
(by way of enlightening his spiritual lordship): "It's my Telemachus,
and I am the Mentor. I am the milling-machine and the die which coins
him,--the wolf's tooth and flattening mill which polishes him down,--the
man, in short, that regulates him"?
The glowing form of the youthful Cesara was still more ennobled by the
earnestness of an eye always buried in the future, and of a firmly shut,
manly mouth, and by the daring decision of young, fresh faculties; he
seemed as yet to be a burning-glass in the moonlight, or a dark precious
stone of too much color, which the world, as in the case of other
jewels, can brighten and improve only by cutting _hollow_.
As he drew nearer and nearer, the island attracted him, as one world
does another, more and more intensely. His internal restlessness rose as
the outward tranquillity deepened. Beside all this, Dian, a Greek by
birth and an artist, who had often circumnavigated and sketched Isola
Bella and Isola Madre, brought these obelisks of Nature still nearer to
his soul in glowing pictures; and Schoppe often spoke of the great man
whom the youth was to see to-morrow for the first time. As the people
were carrying by, down below in the street, an old man fast asleep, into
whose strongly marked face the setting sun cast fire and life, and who
was, in short, a corpse borne uncovered, after the Italian custom,
suddenly, in a wild and hurried tone, he asked his friends, "Does my
father look thus?"
But what impels him with such intense emotions towards the island is
this: He had, on Isola Bella, with his sister, who afterward went to
Spain, and by the side of his mother, who had since passed to the
shadowy land, sweetly toyed and dreamed away the first three years of
his life, lying in the bosom of the high flowers of Nature; the island
had been, to the morning slumber of life, to his childhood's hours, a
Raphael's painted sleeping-chamber. But he had retained nothing of it
all in his head and heart, save in the one a deep, sadly sweet emotion
at the name, and in the other the squirrel, which, as the family
scutcheon of the Borromæans, stands on the upper terrace of the island.
After the death of his mother his father transplanted him from the
garden-mould of Italy--some of which, however, still adhered to the
tap-roots--into the royal forest of Germany; namely, to Blumenbühl, in
the principality of Hohenfliess, which is as good as unknown to the
Germans; there he had him educated in the house of a worthy nobleman,
or, to speak more meaningly and allegorically, he caused the pedagogical
professional gardeners to run round him with their water-pots,
grafting-knives, and pruning-shears, till the tall, slender palm-tree,
full of sago-pith and protecting thorns, outgrew them, and could no
longer be reached by their pots and shears.
And now, when he shall have returned from the island, he is to pass from
the field-bed of the country to the tanvat and hot-bed of the city, and
to the trellises of the court garden; in a word, to Pestitz, the
university and chief city of Hohenfliess, even the sight of which, until
this time, his father had strictly forbidden him.
And to-morrow he sees that father for the first time! He must have
burned with desire, since his whole life had been one preparation for
this meeting, and his foster-parents and teachers had been a sort of
chalcographic company, who had engraved in copper a portrait of the
author of his life-book so magnificently opposite the title-page. His
father, Gaspard de Cesara, Knight of the Golden Fleece (whether Spanish
or Austrian I should be glad to be precisely informed myself), a spirit
naturally three-edged, sharp, and brightly polished, had in his youth
wild energies, for whose play only a battle-field or a kingdom would
have been roomy enough, and which in high life had as little power of
motion as a sea-monster in a harbor. He satisfied them by playing
star-parts with all ranks in comedies and tragedies, by the prosecution
of all sciences, and by an eternal tour: he was intimate and often
involved with great and small men and courts, yet always marched along
as a stream with its own waves through the sea of the world. And now,
after having completed his travels by land and sea round the whole
circumference of life, round its joys and capacities and systems, he
still continues (especially since the Present, that ape of the Past, is
always running after him) to pursue his studies and geographical
journeyings; but always for scientific purposes, just as he visits now
the European battle-fields. As for the rest, he is not at all gloomy,
still less gay, but composed and calm; he does not even hate and love,
blame and praise other men any more than he does himself, but values
every one in his kind, the dove in hers and the tiger in his. What often
seems vengeance is merely the determined, soldier-like tread wherewith a
man, who can never flee and fear, but only knows how to advance and
stand his ground, tramples down larks'-eggs and ears of corn.
I think that the corner which I have thus snipped off from the
Whistonian chart of this comet, for the benefit of mankind, is broad
enough. I will, before I discourse further, reserve the privilege to
myself, of sometimes calling Don Gaspard _the Knight_, without appending
to him the Golden Fleece; and, secondly, of not being obliged by
courtesy towards the short memory of readers to steal from his son
Cesara (under which designation the old man will never appear) his
Christian name, which, to be sure, is _Albano_.
As Don Gaspard was about leaving Italy for Spain, he had, through
Schoppe, caused our Albano, or Cesara, to be brought hither without any
one's knowing why he did it at so late a period. Was it his pleasure,
perhaps, to gaze into the full spring-time of the young twigs? Did he
wish to unfold to the youth some rules for rustics in the
century-almanac of court life? Would he imitate the old Gauls, or the
modern inhabitants of the Cape, who never suffered their sons in their
presence till they were grown up and capable of bearing arms? Was
nothing less than that his idea? This much only I comprehend, that I
should be a very good-natured fool if I were, in the very fore-court of
the work, to suffer myself to be burdened with the task of drawing and
dotting out from the few data that I now have, in the case of a man so
remarkable, and whose magnetic needle declines so many degrees,--a
Wilkes's magnetic table of inclinations;--he, not I, is the father of
his son, to be sure, and he knows of course why he did not send for him
till his beard was grown.
When it struck twenty-three o'clock (the hour before sundown), and
Albano would have counted up the tedious strokes, he was so excited that
he was not in a condition to ascend the long tone-ladder;[2] he must
away to the shore of the Lago, in which the up-towering islands rise
like sceptred sea-gods. Here stood the noble youth, his inspired
countenance full of the evening glow, with exalted emotions of heart,
sighing for his veiled father, who, hitherto, with an influence like
that of the sun behind a bank of clouds, had made the day of his life
warm and light. This longing was not filial love,--_that_ belonged to
his foster-parents, for childlike love can only spring up toward a heart
whereon we have long reposed, and which has protected us, as it were,
with the first heart's-leaves against cold nights and hot days,--his
love was higher or rarer. Across his soul had been cast a gigantic
shadow of his father's image, which lost nothing by Gaspard's coldness.
Dian compared it to the repose on the sublime countenance of the Juno
Ludovici; and the enthusiastic son likened it to another sudden chill
which often comes into the heart in company with too great warmth from
another's heart, as burning-glasses burn feeblest precisely in the
hottest days. He even hoped he might perchance melt off by his love this
father's heart, so painfully frozen to the glaciers of life: the youth
comprehended not how possible it was to resist a true, warm heart, at
least his.
Our hero, reared in the Carthusian monastery of rural life, and more in
past ages than his own, applied to every subject antediluvian gigantic
standards of measurement; the invisibility of the Knight constituted a
part of his greatness, and the Moses'-veil doubled the glory which it
concealed. Our youth had, in general, a singular leaning toward
extraordinary men, of whom others stand in dread. He read the eulogies
of every great man with as much delight as if they were meant for him;
and if the mass of people consider uncommon spirits as, for that very
reason, bad,--just as they take all strange petrifactions to be Devil's
bones,--in him the reverse was the case: in him _love_ dwelt a neighbor
to _wonder_, and his breast was always at the same time wide and warm.
To be sure, every young man and every great man who looks upon another
as great, considers him for that very reason as too great. But in every
noble heart burns a perpetual thirst for a nobler, in the fair, for a
fairer; it wishes to behold its ideal out of itself, in bodily presence,
with glorified or adopted form, in order the more easily to attain to
it, because the lofty man can ripen only by a lofty one, as diamond can
be polished only by diamond. On the other hand, does a litterateur, a
cit, a newspaper carrier or contributor wish to get a glimpse of a great
head,--and is he as greedy for a great head as for an abortion with
three heads,--or a Pope with as many caps,--or a stuffed shark,--or a
speaking-machine or a butter-machine,--it is not because his inner man
is burdened and beset by the soul-inspiring ideal of a great man, pope,
shark, three-headed monster, or butter-model, but it is because he
thinks, in the morning, "I can't help wondering how the creature looks,"
and because, in the evening, he means to tell how he looks, over a glass
of beer.
Albano looked from the shore with increasing restlessness across the
shining water toward the holy dwelling-place of his past childhood, his
departed mother, his absent sister. The songs of gladness thrilled
through him as they came floating along on the distant boats; every
running wave--the foaming surge--raised a higher in his bosom; the giant
statue of St. Borromæus,[3] looking away over the cities, embodied the
exalted one (his father) who stood erect in his heart, and the blooming
pyramid, the island, was the paternal throne; the sparkling chain of the
mountains and glaciers wound itself fast around his spirit, and lifted
him up to lofty beings and lofty thoughts.
The first journey, especially when Nature casts over the long road
nothing but white radiance and orange-blossoms and chestnut-shadows,
imparts to the youth what the last journey often takes away from the
man,--a dreaming heart, wings for the ice-chasms of life, and wide-open
arms for every human breast.
He went back, and with his commanding eye begged his friends to set sail
this very evening, although Don Gaspard was not to come to the island
till to-morrow morning. Often, what he wanted to do in a week, he
proposed to himself for the next day, and at last did it at once. Dian
tapped the impetuous Boreas on the head lovingly, and said: "Impatient
being, thou hast here the wings of a Mercury, and down there too
(pointing to his feet)! But just cool off! In the pleasant
after-midnight we embark, and when the dawn reddens in the sky we land."
Dian had not merely an artistic eye to his well-formed darling, but also
a tender interest in him, because he had often, in Blumenbühl, where he
had business as public architect, been the friend and guide of his
childhood and youth, and because now on the island he must tear himself
from his arms for some time and be absent at Rome. Since he (the public
architect) considered the same extravagance which he would rebuke in an
old man to be no extravagance in a youth,--an inundation to be no
inundation in Egypt, though it would be in Holland,--and since he
assumed a different average temperature for every individual, age, and
people, and in holy human nature found no string to be cut off, but only
at most to be tuned, surely Cesara must have cherished toward the
cheerful and indulgent teacher, on whose two tables of laws stood only,
Joy and moderation! a right hearty attachment, even more hearty than for
the laws themselves.
The images of the present and of the near future and of his father had
so filled the breast of the Count with greatness and immortality, that
he could not comprehend how any one could let himself be buried without
having achieved both, and that as often as the landlord brought in
anything, he pitied the man, particularly as he was always singing, and,
like the Neapolitans and Russians, in the minor key, because he was
never to be anything, certainly not immortal. The latter is a mistake;
for he gets his immortality here, and I take pleasure in giving place
and life to his name, _Pippo_ (abbreviated from Philippo). When, at
last, they paid and were about to go, and Pippo kissed a Kremnitz ducat,
saying, "Praised be the holy Virgin with the child on her _right_ arm,"
Albano was pleased that the father took after his pious little daughter,
who had been all the evening rocking and feeding an image of the child
Jesus. To be sure, Schoppe remarked, she would carry the child more
_lightly_ on her left arm;[4] but the error of the good youth is a merit
in him as well as the truth.
Beneath the splendor of a full moon they went on board the bark, and
glided away over the gleaming waters. Schoppe shipped some wines with
them, "not so much," said he, "that there is nothing to be had on the
island, as for this reason, that if the vessel should leak, then there
would be no need of pumping out anything but the flagons,[5] and she
would float again."
Cesara sank, silently, deeper and deeper into the glimmering beauties of
the shore and of the night. The nightingales warbled as if inspired on
the triumphal gate of spring. His heart grew in his breast like a melon
under its glass-bell, and his breast heaved higher and higher over the
swelling fruit. All at once he reflected that he should in this way see
the tulip-tree of the sparkling morn and the garlands of the island put
together only like an artificial, Italian silk-flower, stamen by stamen,
leaf by leaf; then was he seized with his old thirst for one single
draining draught from Nature's horn of plenty; he shut his eyes, not to
open them again, till he should stand upon the highest terrace of the
island before the morning sun. Schoppe thought he was asleep; but the
Greek smilingly guessed the epicurism of this artificial blindness, and
bound, himself, before those great insatiable eyes the broad, black
taffeta-ribbon, which, like a woman's ribbon or lace mask, contrasted
singularly and sweetly with his blooming but manly face.
Now the two began to tease and tantalize him in a friendly way with oral
night-pictures of the magnificent adornments of the shores between which
they passed. "How proudly," said Dian to Schoppe, "rises yonder the
castle of Lizanza, and its mountain, like a Hercules, with twelvefold
girdles of vine-clusters!" "The Count," said Schoppe in a lower tone to
Dian, "loses a vast deal by this bandaging of his eyes. See you not,
architect, to speak poetically, the glimmer of the city of Arona? How
beautifully she lays on Luna's blanc d'Espagne, and seems to be setting
herself out and prinking up for to-morrow in the powder-mantle of
moonshine which is flung around her! But that is nothing; still better
looks St. Borromæus yonder, who has the moon on his head like a
freshly-washed night-cap; stands not the giant there like the Micromegas
of the German body politic, just as high, just as stiff and stark?"
The happy youth was silent, and returned for answer a hand-pressure of
love;--he only dreamed of the present, and signified he could wait and
deny himself. With the heart of a child from whom the curtains and the
after-midnight hide the approaching Christmas present of the morrow, he
was borne along in the pleasure-boat, with tightly bandaged eyes, toward
the approaching, heavenly kingdom. Dian drew, as well as the double
light of the moonshine and the aurora permitted, a sketch of the veiled
dreamer in his scrap-book. I wish I had it here, and could see in it how
my darling, with the optic nerves tied up, strains at once the eye of
dream directed toward the inner world, and the ear of attention so
sharply set toward the outer. How beautiful is such a thing,
painted,--how much more beautiful realized in life!
The mantle of night grew thinner and cooler,--the morning air fanned
livingly against the breast,--the larks mingled with the nightingales
and with the singing boatmen,--and he heard, beneath his bandage, which
was growing lighter and lighter, the joyful discoveries of his friends,
who saw in the open cities along the shore the reviving stir of human
life, and on the waterfalls of the mountains the alternate reflections
of clouds and ruddy sky. At last the breaking splendors of morn hung
like a festoon of Hesperides-apples around the distant tops of the
chestnut-trees; and now they disembarked upon Isola Bella.
The veiled dreamer heard, as they ascended with him the ten terraces of
the garden, the deep-drawn sigh and shudder of joy close beside him, and
all the quick entreaties of astonishment; but he held the bandage fast,
and went blindfold from terrace to terrace, thrilled with
orange-fragrance, refreshed by higher, freer breezes, fanned by
laurel-foliage,--and when they had gained at last the highest terrace,
and looked down upon the lake, heaving its green waters sixty ells
below, then Schoppe cried, "Now! now!" But Cesara said, "No! the sun
first!" and at that moment the morning wind flung up the sunlight
gleaming through the dark twigs, and it flamed free on the summits,--and
Dian snatched off the bandage, and said, "Look round!" "O God!" cried he
with a shriek of ecstasy, as all the gates of the new heaven flew open,
and the Olympus of nature, with its thousand reposing gods, stood around
him. What a world! There stood the Alps, like brother giants of the Old
World, linked together, far away in the past, holding high up over
against the sun the shining shields of the glaciers. The giants wore
blue girdles of forest, and at their feet lay hills and vineyards, and
through the aisles and arches of grape-clusters the morning winds played
with cascades as with watered-silk ribbons, and the liquid brimming
mirror of the lake hung down by the ribbons from the mountains, and
they fluttered down into the mirror, and a carved work of chestnut woods
formed its frame.... Albano turned slowly round and round, looked into
the heights, into the depths, into the sun, into the blossoms; and on
all summits burned the alarm-fires of mighty Nature, and in all depths
their reflections,--a creative earthquake beat like a heart under the
earth and sent forth mountains and seas.... O then, when he saw on the
bosom of the infinite mother the little swarming children, as they
darted by under every wave and under every cloud,--and when the morning
breeze drove distant ships in between the Alps,--and when _Isola Madre_
towered up opposite to him, with her seven gardens, and tempted him to
lean upon the air and be wafted over on level sweep from his summit to
her own,--and when he saw the pheasants darting down from the _Madre_
into the waves,--then did he seem to stand like a storm-bird with
ruffled plumage on his blooming nest, his arms were lifted like wings by
the morning wind, and he longed to cast himself over the terrace after
the pheasants, and cool his heart in the tide of Nature.
Ashamed, he took, without looking round him, the hands of his friends
and pressed them in mute fervor, that he might not be obliged to speak.
The magnificent universe had painfully expanded, and then blissfully
overflowed his great breast; and now, when he opened his eyes, like an
eagle, wide and full upon the sun, and when the blinding brightness hid
the earth, and he began to be lonely, and the earth became smoke and the
sun a soft, white world, which gleamed only around the margin,--then did
his whole, full soul, like a thunder-cloud, burst asunder and burn and
weep, and from the pure, white sun his mother looked upon him, and in
the fire and smoke of the earth his father and his life stood veiled.
Silently he went down the terraces, often passing his hand across his
moist eyes to wipe away the dazzling shadow which danced on all the
summits and all the steps.
Exalted Nature! when we see and love thee, we love our fellow-men more
warmly; and when we must pity or forget them, thou still remainest with
us, reposing before the moist eye like a verdant chain of mountains in
the evening red. Ah, before the soul in whose sight the morning dew of
its ideals has faded to a cold, gray drizzle,--and before the heart,
which, in the subterranean passages of this life, meets no longer men,
but only dry, crooked-up mummies on crutches in catacombs,--and before
the eye which is impoverished and forsaken, and which no human creature
will any longer gladden,--and before the proud son of the gods whom his
unbelief and his lonely bosom, emptied of humanity, rivet down to an
eternal, unchangeable anguish,--before all these thou remainest,
quickening Nature, with thy flowers and mountains and cataracts, a
faithful comforter; and the bleeding son of the gods, cold and
speechless, dashes the drop of anguish from his eyes, that they may
rest, far and clear, on thy volcanoes, and on thy Springs, and on thy
suns!