How gloriously,--before all the beating veins of the inner man, like
those of the outer in old age, have stiffened into gristle, and all the
vessels have become inflexible and earthy, and the moral pulse, like the
physical, hardly makes sixty strokes in a minute, and before the shy old
fool, at every emotion, reserves a piece of his nature which he keeps
cold and dry, and which is to wait for another occasion, as sprinkled
raspberry leaves always remain dry on the rough side,--how gloriously, I
say, before this period of espionage, does a youth, especially an
Albano, step along his path, how freely, boldly, and exultingly! and
seeks with equal confidence the friend and the foe, and closes with him,
to fight either for him or against him!
Let this excuse Albano's fiery letter! The next day he received from
Roquairol this answer:--
"I am as thou. On ascension-evening I will seek thee among
the masks.
"CHARLES."
The redness of mortification rushed over the Count's face at this
artificial postponement of the acquaintance; he felt that, after such a
tone from the heart, _he_ would have immediately, without a dead interim
of five days, and without an _homage-day masquerade_ in a double sense,
gone to his friend and become his. But now he swore no longer to run to
meet him, but only to wait for him. However, the roused indignation soon
subsided, and he began to invent fairer and fairer mitigations for the
first leaf of the so-long-sought favorite. Charles might certainly, e.
g. not wish to mix up the holy time of the first recognition with this
bustle of taking the allegiance-oath,--or that first suicidal masquerade
might have made every succeeding one an inspiring era of a new second
life,--or he knew, perhaps, in fact, about Albano's birthday,--or,
finally, this glowing spirit chose to run or fly on his own track.
Meanwhile, his note made the Count reproach himself for his own letter,
as if it had been a sin against his Schoppe; he held it to be a sin, in
one friendship, to yearn after another; but thou mistakest, fair soul!
Friendship has steps which lead up on the throne of God, through all
spirits, even to the Infinite: only love is satiable, and, like truth,
admits no three degrees of comparison; and a single being fills its
heart. Moreover, Albano and Schoppe, in such a mutual metempsychosis of
their ideas, and such a near relationship of their pride and nobility,
held each other far more dear than they showed to each other. For, as
Schoppe, in fact, showed nothing, one could love him in return only with
the finger on the lip, but, perhaps, so much the more strongly. Albano
was a burning-hot concave mirror, which has its object near, and
represents it erect behind itself; Schoppe one which holds the object
far off, and throws an inverted image of it into the air.
On the evening before his birthday, and the day of allegiance, Albano
stood alone at his window, and pondered his past,--for a last day is
more solemn than a first: on the 31st of December I reckon up three
hundred and sixty-five days and their fates; on the first of January I
think of nothing, because, in fact, the whole future is transparent, or
may be all out in five minutes;--while the vesper-bell pealed over the
fast-closing twentieth year of his life, and the vesper-hour rose within
him, he measured the _abside-line_[101] of his moral being, and looked
up at the towering pile of the approaching morrow, which hung full
either of spring-showers or hailstones. Never yet had he so tenderly
surveyed the circle of his beloved beings, or glanced through the open
doors of futurity, as at this time.
But the fair hour was spoiled by Malt, who burst in with the information
that the limping gentleman had leaped overboard. From the dormer-window
might be seen a returning village funeral-procession, conglomerated
around the spot on the bank where Schoppe had plunged in. With frightful
wildness--for in Albano indignation was next-door neighbor to terror and
pain--he dragged along with him, as he flew to the rescue, the lazy
provincial physician, and even threatened him with hard words; for Sphex
was going to wait for a carriage, and meanwhile represent to himself the
possible cases of too late preparations for a rescue, and besides,
perhaps, cherished a hope of serving up Schoppe, on the anatomical
table, as Doctor's-feast of science.
The youth ran out with him,--through corn-fields, amidst tears and
amidst curses,--with alternate clenched fist and outspread palm, and his
eye grew more and more dim and dizzy, and his heart hotter and hotter,
the nearer they approached the dark circle. At last they could not only
see the Librarian, but also hear him; in good case he turned towards
them his curly head from among the reeds, and, occasionally, as he was
haranguing the mourning-retinue, he flung up, in a fiery manner, his
hairy arm above the water-plants.