THE unknown old man lingered many days in Albano's soul, and would not
stir. In fact, the channel of his life now needed a bend, to break the
stress of the stream. Fate can educate men like him only by a change of
circumstances, just as it can weak ones only by a continuance of the
same. For if it went on much longer in this way, and the chandelier in
his temple should, by inner earthquakes, be thrown into ever increasing
vibrations, the consequence would be, at last, that no candle could any
longer burn therein. What Imperial-Diet-grievances did not Wehrfritz and
Hafenreffer already jointly present on the subject, when the shipmaster
Blanchard, in Blumenbühl, went up with his aerostatic soap-bubbles, and
Zesara could hardly, by almost the absolute despotism of the Director,
be kept back from embarking! And how divine a thing does he not imagine
it would be, not only to hurl down to the earth its iron rings and
arrest warrants, and soar away, perpendicularly, above all its
market-rubbish and boundary-trees and Hercules'-pillars, and sweep
around it as a constellation, but also to hover above the magic Lilar
and the hermetically-sealed Linden-city with devouring eyes, and to lift
a whole, full, heavy world to his thirsty heart, by the handle of a
single look!
But fate broke the fall of this swift stream. Namely, as good luck would
have it, the Blumenbühl church had this long time been daily threatening
to tumble down,--and I was wishing the Whitsuntide lightning had gone in
there, and had made ears and legs for the building committee,--when by
still greater good luck the old Prince was taken sick. Now in the church
was the hereditary sepulchre of the Prince, which could not conveniently
serve, on the other hand, as the hereditary sepulchre of the church.
About this time it must needs happen that the old Princess, with the
Minister Froulay, passed through the village. The two had long since
commissioned themselves as Imperial vicars, business-agents, and
sceptre bearers of the State, because the feeble old gentleman had been
glad to give up the amusements and burdens, the glitter and weight of
the crown, and admit those two feudal guardians into the hereditary
office of the sceptre. In short, the age of the church, together with
that of the princely couple, decided the building of a new roofing and
covering for the vault.
The Provincial-Director was one of the inspecting committee, and invited
the distinguished company to his house; among whom, the Provincial
architect, Dian, and the Counsellor of Art, Fraischdörfer, as artists,
and the little princess as naturalist, are particularly to be noticed.
The poor dancing-master got wind of the procession through a telescope,
just as he was stretching his feet, full of _pas_, into a warm
foot-bath. It will not gratify anybody, that the Vienna gentleman had
but one thing in common with the old Magister,--what the Devil shares
with the horse, namely, the foot, which measured its good foot and a
half, Paris measure, and that, therefore, his double root, in the narrow
forcing-pots of shoes, shot out into a fruit-bearing, knotty-stock, full
of inoculating eyes, i. e. corns. To-day he would have cut these gordian
knots in a foot-bath; but, as it was, he must, on occasion of such a
visit,--although he had never stretched them,--put on his tightest
children's shoes, for effect. Thus are men often caught with too tight
shoes, as monkeys are with too heavy ones.
Albano, on the contrary, stood in buskins. In general, every one who
simply came from Pestitz, had, in his eyes, consecrated holy earth on
his soles; and here he looked with the loving reverence of a village
youth upon a somewhat oldish, but red-cheeked and tall-built princess,
whose chin was bent up by time, and whose friendly face--perhaps, by way
of hiding the many wrinkles--was buried deep in a whole bush of
millinery. She kept this head moving to and fro with a smiling
comparison, as of brother and sister, between him and Rabette; for
mothers always look, in mothers, for the children first. He should have
further known that he had before him a friend of Liana in the
frizzle-headed _little_ princess, who, although already of his age, yet
with a friendly liveliness, which can never be subscribed to by the
court-marshalship, looked up at all, and even took Rabette by the hand,
and drew from her an indescribably good-natured and stiff smile. The
formidable one of the party was to him the Minister, a man full of
strong parts, both of body and soul, full of furious, murderous
passions, only that they lay bound with flowery chains, and with respect
to whom, although his hard face was written over only out of courtliness
with the twelve friendly signs of the zodiac of love, it would not be
specially apparent how one could be father and guide to the weak-nerved
Liana, when the iron parts, of which man carries more in his blood than
any other animal, had settled, not as in the case of Götz of
Berlichingen, into his hand, but into his brow and heart.
I give merely a flying glance at the only member of the company who was
intolerable to Albano,--the art-counsellor, Fraischdörfer, who had
thrown off his face, like the drapery of the ancients, into folds of
simple and noble greatness. This man, I must explain, had wanted for
many years to have our bashful little hero sit to him, even to the very
pit of his stomach, in order to represent, whether in a crayon likeness
or a medallion I know not, his face, and the broad, high, Plato-like
breast shining out from his shirt-frills. But the bashful child played
about himself with his hands and feet so lustily, that nothing could
possibly be caught and copied except the naked face without the
pedestal, the thorax. Before me, on the contrary, dear academy, must
thou now for years keep thyself on the model-stand, like a stylite, and
expose to my drawing-pen thy head and thy breast, together with its
cubic contents, not to mention the groupings at all.
He had, perhaps, to thank his noble form for it, that the beautifully
built, straight-nosed, and magnificently slender Dian--with his raven
hair and black, eagle eye, who in every pliant motion showed a higher
freedom of carriage than is gained in ball-rooms and court-saloons--came
up to him warmly, and, with very few glances, saw to the green bottom of
the deep but clear sea of the young man, and discerned the pearl-banks
there. Albano, with his too loud, vehement voice,--with his respectful
but sharply-moving eyes,--with his rooted posture,--expressed an
agreeable mixture of inward culture and ascendency with external rustic
modesty and mildness, like a tulip-tree not as yet cut up for a
tulip-bed,--a rural hermitage and log-house with golden furniture. He
had the faults of youth in its recluseness; but men and winter radishes
must be sowed _far apart_, in order that they may grow _large_: men and
trees that stand near together have, it is true, a more slender and
tapering trunk, but no power to brave the tempest, nor such a rich crown
and branching as those that stand free. With the most unembarrassed
heartiness, the architect disclosed to the glowing youth, "They should
from this time forth see each other every week, since he was to come
daily to oversee the building of the church."
The whole Wehrfritz household is now peeping out after the majestic
procession, even to the last disappearing chariot-wheel, and is, of
course, eager to say three words upon the lavender-water of joy that
leaves such a fragrance behind it, which the procession had sprinkled
into all corners and upon all pieces of furniture. From the Master of
exercises--who, with the compression-machines on his feet, stood only so
far as the excrescences in Purgatory, but from there up to the crown of
his head in heaven (because the affable Princess had remembered very
well his five positions)--even to the modest Rabette, the eulogist of
her victorious rival,--and even to Albina, who was agreeably impressed
with such warm, motherly love in a Fürstinn toward the Princess,--and
even to the Director, who looked back with pleasure on the nobly
sustained blade- and anchor-proof of his foster-son and the universal
probity of this converted portion of the great world, because the man
never observed that Princes and Ministers, just as they have in their
wardrobes mountain- and mining-habits, so also carry about in their
dressing-chamber Directorate-dresses, furred gowns of justice,
consistorial sheep-skins, and women's opera-dresses;--from all these,
even to the Director, the glad echo swelled, to die away in Zesara with
an alarm-cannon. His ambition took arms; his liberty-tree shot forth
into blossoms; the standards of his youthful wishes were consecrated and
flung to the breeze of heaven; and on the myrtle crown he covered a
heavy helm with a glittering, high-waving, plumed crest....
The following Cycle is composed merely for the purpose of showing how
all this is to be taken.