At last they began a journey through the garden. Pollux very
reluctantly, and only after Liana's promise to draw him a horse again
to-day, stayed behind as patron-saint of the cradle. Alban said, to the
extreme joy of the Architect's wife, who could now show the beautiful
man everything, that he had seen but little of Lilar yet. How
bewitchingly the two forms, linked in friendship, walked before him side
by side! Chariton, although a matron, yet of a Grecian slenderness,
fluttered along as a younger sister beside the lily-form of her somewhat
taller Liana. The former seemed, according to the classification of the
landscape-painters, nature in motion; Liana, nature in repose. As he
joined Liana again, by whose left hand Helena was running along,--the
mother on the right,--he found her softly-descending profile
indescribably touching, and around the mouth he recognized lines which
sorrow had drawn, the scars of returning days; while the lovely maiden,
on the sunny side of the front face, as in her easy conversation,
manifested a free, benignant cheerfulness, which Albano, who had never
knocked at the school-room door of any young ladies' academy, found it
hard to reconcile with her tearful poetry. O, if the tear of woman
passes away lightly, so flutters away still more lightly woman's smile;
and the latter, still oftener than the former, is only appearance!
He tried, from a longing of the thirsty heart, to catch the little one's
hand, but she hung with both upon Liana's left; presently, however, she
skipped away, and plucked three iris-flowers,--which, like her,
resembled butterflies,--and gave one to her mother, and two to Liana,
with the words, "Give _him_ one too!" And Liana handed it to him,
lifting her friendly face upon him as she did so with that holy
maiden-look which is bright and attentive, but not searching, expressive
of childlike sympathy without giving and demanding. Nevertheless,
several times during the day did she let those holy eyes sink down; but
what compelled her to it was, that on Zesara's rocky face, softened
though it was by love, there rested a physiognomical right of the
stronger: he seemed to look upon a shy soul with a hundred eyes, and his
two true ones blazed as warmly, although quite as purely, as the sun's
eye in the ether.
The iris-flowers have this peculiarity, that one smells them, another
not; only to these three beings in one did the cups open themselves
equally wide, and they rejoiced long over this community of enjoyment.
Helena ran forward and disappeared behind a low bush; she sat on a
child's bench by a child's table, awaiting, with a smile, the grown
people. The good old Prince had low moss-benches, little garden-chairs,
little table- and pot-orangeries, and the like, placed everywhere, for
the children, about the resting-places of their elders; for he loved to
draw these refreshing open flowers of humanity near to his heart! "One
wishes so often," said Liana, "to live in the patriarchal time, or in
Arcadia, or in Otaheite; children are, indeed,--do you not believe
so?--everywhere the same, and one has already in them what only the most
remote time and the most remote region can insure." He indeed believed
it, and gladly; but he kept asking himself, How can such an unstained
Aphrodite be born out of the dead sea of a court, as pure dew and rain
arise out of the briny water of the ocean?
While speaking, she occasionally drew an uncommonly graceful--how shall
I write it--_H'm!_ after her words, which, although a grammatical
blunder at court, betrayed an unspeakable good nature; but I describe
it, not in order that all my fair readers may let this attractive
interjection be heard the very next Sunday.
"The same," replied Albano,--but he meant it well,--"holds of the
animals: the swan yonder is like the one in Paradise." She took it just
as it was meant; but the reason was the pious Father Spener, her
teacher; for at Albano's question touching Lilar's abundance of
beautiful and gentle creatures, she answered: "The old Lord loved these
creatures with a real tenderness, and they could often bring him even to
tears. The pious Father thinks so too; he says, since they do everything
at God's behest by instinct, accordingly it seems to him, when he
contemplates the care of the parents for their young, just as if the
Infinitely Gracious One were doing it all himself." They ascended now a
half-shaded bridge, over a long water-mirror hung round with quivering
poplars, wherein Liana's emblem, namely, a swan, slept on the
water-rings, the bent neck beautifully nestled on the back, the head
upon the wing, and gently wafted more by the breezes than by the waves.
"So reposes the innocent soul!" said Alban, and thought, perhaps, of
Liana, but without the courage to confess it. "And thus it awakes!"
Liana added with emotion, as this white magnified dove slowly raised its
head from the wing; for she thought of her mother's waking on this very
day.
Chariton, as if all made up of salient points, was continually turning
to Liana, and asking: "Shall we go this way? or in through there? or out
through here? If my lord were only here! he knows all about it." She
would gladly have led him round every fount and every flower, and looked
into the youth's face as lovingly as into that of her friend. Liana said
to her, on the cross way at the bridge: "I think the flute-dell yonder,
with the gleaming gold ball, will perhaps be pleasantest, especially for
a lover of music; and, besides, they will look for me there, when they
bring the harp to my mother." She had promised to come back to her as
soon as that arrived. She shunned every path toward the south, where
Tartarus frowned behind its high curtain.
Liana spoke now of the contest between painting and music, and of
Herder's charming official report of this strife. She, although a votary
of the pencil, gave in her vote, as was natural to the female and the
lyric heart, entirely for tones, and Albano, although a good pianist,
was rather for colors, "This magnificent landscape," said Albano, "is in
fact a picture, and so is every fair human form." "Were I blind," said
Chariton, naively, "then I should not see my lovely Liana." She replied:
"My teacher, the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdörfer, also set painting
above music. But to me, when I hear music, it is as if I heard _a loud
past_ or _a loud future_. Music has something holy; unlike the other
arts, it cannot paint anything but what is good."[90] Verily, she was
herself a moral church-music, the angel-stop in the organ. The pure
Albano felt, by her side, the necessity and the existence of a yet
tenderer purity; and it seemed to him as if a man might injure, even
unconsciously, a soul like this, whose understanding was hardly anything
more than a finer feeling,--as window-glasses of pure transparency are
often broken, because they appear as if they were not. He turned round
mechanically, because he was always one step in advance, and not only
the blooming Lilar, but also Liana's full form, shone at once and
transfigured into his soul. To clasp her to his heart was not now his
yearning, but to snatch this being, who had so often suffered, from
every flame; to rush for her, sword in hand, upon her foe, to bear her
mightily through the deep, cold hell-floods of life;--that would have
illuminated his existence.