I would make more out of Albano's commemoration-dinner, which he, like a
grown-up trencher-man, could carve in the little chamber, and distribute
among the family circle, and at which he could fill for himself, were I
not going to meet weightier incidents which befell during the carrying
back of the table dinner-service.
Albano went out, with the whole sea of his inner being sparkling and
phosphorescing under the influence of the wine and the forenoon, and the
blue heaven fluttering in stronger breezes around him. He felt as if the
morning had long since gone by; and he remembered it with a tender
emotion, as we all in youth remember childhood, in age youth,--even as
at evening we remember the morning,--and the forms of Nature drew nearer
to him and moved their eyes like Catholic images. Thus does the present
offer us only shapes for optical anamorphoses, and only our spirit is
the sublime mirror which transposes them into fair human forms. With
what a sweet dip into dreams did he, when he met the fanning of the
eastern wind, close his eyes, and draw the hum of the landscape, the
screaming of the cocks and birds, and a herdsman's flute, as if deeper
and deeper into his shaded soul! And then when he opened his eyes again
on the shore of the mountain, there lay peaceful down below in the
valley the pastured white lambs by the side of the flutist, and overhead
in heaven lay stretched out far away above them the shining, fleecy
lamb-clouds!
Meanwhile, he was fain for once to take the liberty of shutting his eyes
and groping too far into the garden,--besides, the blind girl did not
see,--holding his arms open before him so as not to run against
anything, when all at once his breast touched a second, and looking up,
he found the trembling maiden so near to him, who bent aside,
stammering, "Ah, no! ah, no!" "It is only I," said the innocent one,
holding her fast; "truly, I will not harm thee!"--and as she, with a
modest shyness, trusted him, he held her a little while, and gazed down
on her bowed head with sweet emotion.
Heartily glad would he have been to give the terrified one dole-money
and benefits in this comedy for the poor; he had, however, nothing by
him, till, luckily, his sister Rabette, that bandagist,--from whose
ribbon mania he erroneously concluded that many girls are diabolically
possessed for ribbons, and swallow them like jugglers, but never give
them back,--she, and his new hair-band, came into his mind. He wound
off, joyfully, the long, silken swathing-band from his head on hers. But
the lovely neighborhood, the tie-work of an _inner_, finer band, and the
blessedness of giving, and the vivacity of his inborn exuberance, so
overcame him, that he would gladly have emptied the Green Cellar of
Dresden into her apron, when a Jew pedler, with his smaller, silken one
on his stomach, and with a bagful of bought-up hair on his back, came
trudging up the Pestitz road. The Jew suffered himself, very willingly,
to be called, but nothing to be borrowed from him, despite all bills of
exchange proposed to be drawn upon parents and pocket money. Ah, a
magnificent red cap-ribbon would have been as becoming to Lea's blind
eyes as a red bandage to a wound! For a blind lady loves to prink
herself as much as one who can see, unless she is self-conceited, and
would rather please herself in the glass than others out of it. The
merchant was very glad to let her feel of the ribbon, and said he bought
up hair in the villages, and yesterday the children of the inn, with a
piece of burning punk, had crisped up his whole sackful of queues into
short wool, and if the young gentleman would let him trim his brown hair
down to the nape of the neck, he should, on the spot, have the ribbon,
and a very serviceable leather queue of Würzburg fabric into the
bargain. What was to be done? The ribbon was very red,--so was Lea with
hope,--the Jew said he must pack up,--besides, the hair-queue which he
had hitherto worn ran like a second backbone down over the whole of the
first, and became to Alban, by reason of the tedious swathing, every
morning, a check-rein and snaffle-bridle of his mettle. In brief, the
poor, plucked hare resigned to the Jew the royal French Insigné, and
buckled on the Würzburg sheath.
And now he shook her hand right soundly, and said, with a whole Paradise
of loving joyousness in his face: "The ribbon is, no doubt, very
pleasant to thee, thou poor, blind thing!" Then the everlasting rogue
actually climbed the cherry-tree in order, up there, as a living
scare-crow, to spoil the cherries for the sparrows, and, as a fruit-god,
to throw down several of them to her as rosaries and festoons.
By Heaven! up there among the heart-cherries, it seemed as if real
wolf-cherries must be working in the head of the boy: as the earth had
her dark, middle ages, so have children often dark, middle days, full of
pure _monkery_ and mischief. On the high boughs, the growing landscape,
and the sun declining towards the mountains, and particularly the spires
of Pestitz, gleamed upon him with such heavenly light, that he could not
now imagine to himself anything higher than the bird-pole near him, nor
any more blessedly enthroned crown-eagle than one on the pole....
But now I beg every one of my fair readers either to step into the
shooting-house, or make the best of her way out of it with the soldier's
wife, who is running on to tell the naughty thing to her gracious
lady,--for few of them can stand it out with me to see our hero, the
male support of _Titan_, firmly planted by some farmers' boys--to whom,
moreover, Albina has intrusted the _remarche-règlement_ of hastening his
return--on a cross-stick, which is fitted in just under the crotch of
the bird-pole, and with his belly bound down to it, and so lying
horizontal in the air, gradually lifted through the wide sweep of the
arch, and held up in mid-heaven. It is too bad! but the servants could
not possibly resist the supplications of his mighty eyes, his
picturesque will and spirit, and the offered recompenses and
coronation-coins, in comparison with which he verily weighed only half
as much as the last bird.
I am, nevertheless, partial to thee, little one, despite that stiff
dare-neck of thine built up between head and heart. Thy monstrous
Baroque-pearls of energies will time soon, as the artists in the Green
Cellar do with physical pearls, use up in the finishing of a fine
figure!
The imperial history of our imperial eagle on his pedestal, covering at
the same time the events that took place on the mountain, when the
Band-box master and Provincial Director came accidentally to the manned
bird-pole, shall be incontinently resumed, when we have the 14th Cycle.