I could wish nothing finer for one whom I held dear, than a mother,--a
sister,--three years of living together on Isola Bella,--and then in the
twentieth, a morning hour when he should land on the Eden-island, and,
enjoying all this with the eye and memory at once, clasp and strain it
to his open soul. O thou all too happy Albano, on the rose-parterre of
childhood,--under the deep, blue sky of Italy,--in the midst of
luxuriant, blossom-laden citron-foliage,--in the bosom of _beautiful_
nature, who caresses and holds thee like a mother, and in the presence
of _sublime_ nature, which stands like a father in the distance, and
with a heart which expects its own father to-day!
The three now roamed with slow, unsteady steps through the swimming
paradise. Although both of the others had often trodden it before, still
their silver age became a golden age, by sympathy with Albano's ecstasy;
the sight of another's rapture wakes the old impression of our own. As
people who live near breakers and cataracts speak louder than others, so
did the majestic sounding of the swollen sea of life impart to them all,
even Schoppe, a stronger language; only he never could hit upon such
imposing words, at least gestures, as another man.
Schoppe, who must needs fling a farewell kiss back to dear Italy, would
gladly still have conserved the last scattered drops that hung around
the cup of joy, which were sweet as Italian wines, full of German fire
without the German acid. By acid he meant leave-taking and emotion. "If
fate," said he, "fires a single retreating shot, by Heaven, I quietly
turn my nag and ride whistling back. The deuce must be in the beast (or
on him) if a clever jockey could not so break his mourning steed that
the creature should carry himself very well as a companion-horse to the
festive steed.[6] I school my sun-horse as well as my sumpter-horse far
otherwise."
First of all, now, they took possession of this Otaheite-island by
marches, and every one of its provinces must pay them, as a Persian
province does its emperor, a different pleasure. "The lower terraces,"
said Schoppe, "must deliver to us squatter-sovereigns the tithe of fruit
and sack, in citron and orange fragrance,--the upper pays off the
imperial tax in _prospects_,--the Grotto down below there will pay, I
hope, Jews-scot in the _murmur_ of waters, and the cypress-wood up
yonder its princess's tribute in _coolness_,--the ships will not defraud
us of their Rhine and Neckar toll, but pay that down by showing
themselves in the distance."
It is not difficult for me to perceive that Schoppe, by these quizzical
sallies, aimed to allay the violent commotions of Cesara's brain and
heart; for the splendor of the morning enchantment, although the youth
spoke composedly of lesser things, had not yet gone from his sight. In
him every excitement vibrated long after (one in the morning lasted the
whole day), for the same reason that an alarm-bell keeps on humming
longer than a sheep-bell; although such a continuing echo could neither
distract his attention nor disturb his actions or his words.
The Knight was to come at noon. Meanwhile they roamed and revelled and
went humming about in stiller enjoyment with bees-wings and
bees-probosces through the richly-honeyed Flora of the island; and they
had that serene naturalness of children, artists, and Southern people,
which sips only from the honey-cup of the moment; and, accordingly, they
found in every dashing wave, in every citron-frame, in every statue
among blossoms, in every dancing reflection, in every darting ship, more
than one flower which opened its full cup wider under the warm sky,
whereas, with us, under our cold one, it fares as with the bees, against
whom the frosts of May shut the flowers up. O, the islanders are right!
Our greatest and most lasting error is, that we look for life, that is,
its happiness, as the materialists look for the soul, in the combination
of parts, as if the whole or the relation of its component parts could
give us anything which each individual part had not already. Does then
the heaven of our existence, like the blue one over our heads, consist
of mere empty air, which, when near to, and in little, is only a
transparent nothing, and which only in the distance and in gross becomes
blue ether? The century casts the flower-seeds of thy joy only from the
porous sowing-machine of minutes, or rather, to the blest eternity
itself there is no other handle than the instant. It is not that life
consists of seventy years, but the seventy years consist of a continuous
life, and one has lived, at all events, and lived enough, die when one
may.