So many tender and holy sensibilities flutter round in our inner world,
which, like angels, can never assume the bodily form of outward action,
so many rich, full flowers stand therein which bear no seed, that it is
lucky poetry has been invented, which easily treasures up all these
inborn spirits and the flower-fragrance in its limbo. With this I catch,
dear Albano, thy glorious perfume-breathing Sunday, and hold fast the
invisible incense for the Schneider's-skin of the world!
On Sunday he moved to the thunder-house in Lilar. The Lector kept
himself up with the hope that the Count would very soon tread down the
flower-parterre of the new enjoyment as flat and dead as a cross-way. It
was a fine morning, all sprinkled with dew; a fresh wind blew from Lilar
over the blooming grain; and the sun burned alone in a cool heaven. Over
the Blumenbühl road a swarm of people were plodding onward, and no one
went long alone; on the Eastern heights he saw his friend Charles, with
bowed crest, dashing to meet the sun.
The breezes of Lilar came flying to welcome him with a breath of
orange-fragrance, and blew away the ashes which rested on the glowing
altar-coals of that first magnificent Sunday. He went down the bridge,
and Pollux, early in his finery, came driving a ruffled turkey-cock to
meet him. A _Sœur Servante_ of old Spener had been already for an
hour cooking at Chariton's, merely to see him go by. The latter ran,
festally decked, out of the house, which opened itself gayly with all
its windows to the whole heavens, to meet him, and, in the confusion of
her joy, broke out with the main matter first, namely, that everything
was ready and beautiful up there in the little house, and whether he
would have his dinner up there. She would fain, in the midst of the
conversation, pull Pollux out of the Count's fingers, but he let him
swing up for a kiss, and won thereby every heart, even the old one
behind the kitchen fire.
While he marched off toward his little house through the western
triumphal arch, he felt, with indescribable strength and sweetness, that
the lovely time of youth is our Italy and Greece, full of gods, temples,
and bliss,--and which, alas! so often Goths and Vandals stalk through
and strip with their talons.
His blooming path ran at length into the descending and ascending
stairway, which he had passed with Spener; single streaks of day burned
themselves into the moist ground and painted the scattered twigs fiery
and golden. In the mystic bower, where the dead Prince had stalked along
before him in the by-cavern, he found no such cavern, but only an empty
niche. He stepped out above, as out of the haunch of the earth. His
little house lay on the crooked back of the mountain ridge. Down below
reposed around him those elephants of the earth, the hills, and Lilar
gloriously swelling in blossoms, and he looked from his windows into
the camp of the giants of Nature.
Meanwhile he could not now stay on the window-sill, nor near the
inspiring Æolian harp, nor in the eye-prison of books; through streams
and woods and over mountains fresh nature longed to sweep. That he did.
There are sometimes between the every-day days of life--when the rainbow
of Nature appears to us only broken up, and as a misshapen, motley mass
on the horizon--certain creation-days, when she rounds and contracts
herself into a fair form, nay, when she becomes alive, and speaks to us
like a soul. To-day Albano had such a day for the first time. Ah, years
often pass away and bring no such day! While he went thus roaming along
on both sides of the mountain ridge, the northeast wind began to flow
fuller and fuller to meet him;--without wind, a landscape was to him a
stiff, fast-nailed wall-tapestry;--and now the wind rolled the solid
land over into a fluid state. The neighboring trees shook themselves
like doves sweetly shuddering in its bath, but in the distance the woods
stood fast, like hosts in battle array, and their summits like lances.
Majestically swam through the blue the silvery islands, the clouds, and
on the earth shadows stalked like giants over streams and mountains; in
the valley sparkled the Rosana, and rolled into the oak grove. He went
down into the warm vale; the flowery pastures foamed and their seed
played in its cloud-fleece ere the earth caught it; the swan spread
voluptuously his long wing; pairs of doves were pecking each other for
love; and everywhere lay beds and twigs full of hot maternal bosoms and
eggs. Like a glorious blue bouquet, the neck of the reposing peacock
played off its dissolving colors in the high grasses. He stepped under
the oaks, which with knotty arms seized hold upon heaven, and with
knotty roots the earth. The Rosana talked alone with the murmuring wood,
and ate away, foaming, at the rocky crags and at the decaying
shore;--night and evening and day chased each other in the mystic grove.
He stepped into the stream, and went out with it before a warm, busy
plain full of villages, and out from them came the Sabbath sounds, and
out of the grain-fields larks arose, and on the mountains human
foot-paths crept upward,--the trees lifted themselves up as living
things, and the distant men seemed to be fast-rooted, and became only
little shoots on the low bark of the enormous tree of life.
The soul of the youth was cast into the holy fire; like asbestos-paper,
he drew it out quenched and blank; it was to him as if he knew nothing,
as if he were _one_ thought; and here the feeling came upon him in a
wonderfully new manner, that is the world, thou art on the world;--he
was _one_ being with it,--all was _one_ life, clouds and men and trees.
He felt himself grasped by innumerable polypus-arms, and swallowed up at
the same time with them, and yet running on in the infinite heart.
In a blissful bewilderment he arrived at his dwelling, from which little
Pollux came rolling down the mountain to meet him, and call him to
dinner. In the little house the very thought of his heart was expressed
by the Æolian harp at the open window. While the child was thundering
away with his little fist on the harpsichord, and the birds joyfully
screamed in out of the trees, the soul of the world swept exulting and
sighing through the Æolian strings, now lawlessly and now regularly,
playing with the storms and they with it; and Albano seemed to hear the
streams of life rushing between their shores, the countries of the
earth,--and through flower-veins and oak-veins, and through
hearts,--around the earth, bearing clouds on their bosom,--and the
stream, which thunders through eternity, a Divine hand was pouring out
under the veil.
Albano came, with the innocent boy dancing before him, to the still
smiling mother. Even here, between the four walls, the sails continued
to propel him which the great morning had swelled. Nothing surprised
him, nothing seemed to him common, nothing remote; the wave and the drop
in the endless sea of life flowed away in indivisible union with the
streams and whirlpools which it bore onward. Before Chariton he stood
like a shining god, and she would gladly have veiled either him or
herself. Never was humanity individualized in purer forms, crippled by
no alloy of provincialism or nationality, than in this circle of joy,
wherein childhood, womanhood, and manhood, twined with flowers, met and
softly clasped each other.
Chariton spoke constantly of Liana, out of love, not merely for the
absent one, but also for the one who stood near; for, although she
looked with those open eyes, which seem more to image quietly than to
behold, more to let in than to draw in, still she was, like children,
virgins, country people, and savages, at once open-heartedly true and
keen. She had easily detected Albano's love, because everything is
easier to disguise from women,--even hatred, than its opposite. She
praised Liana infinitely, particularly her incomparable kindness; and
"her lord had said, few men had so much heart as she, for she had often
been, without any fear, whole nights with her in Tartarus." Certainly,
neither was this explicable to the Count. The marvellous is the aureole
of a beloved head; a sun, softened down to a human countenance, takes
less powerful hold than a beloved countenance glorified into a
sun-image.
More and more heartily delighted at his delight, she offered to lead him
into Liana's chamber. A simple little chamber,--under a green twilight
of glimmering vine foliage, some books of Fénelon and Herder, old
flowers still in their water-glasses, little Chinese dishes, Julienne's
portrait, and another of a deceased youthful friend, whose name was
Caroline, an unstained writing-stand, with English-pressed paper,--was
what he found. The holy spring hours of the virgin passed by before him,
dropping dew like sunny clouds.
He happened to touch a penknife, when Chariton brought quills to be cut,
"because," she said, "they had so much trouble on this score since her
master had gone away." For a woman can more easily drive any pen--even
the epic and Kantian--than make one; and here, as in several other
cases, the stronger sex must lend the weaker a hand.
Albano wished to see, also, the working-chamber of his teacher; but this
she decidedly--although an hour's eating together had not given her any
new courage--refused, because her master had forbidden it. He begged
once more; but she smiled more and more painfully, and adhered to her
gentle no.
He now dreamed away the murmur of the morning in the magic garden, on
whose waters and paths the moonshine and reflection of memory played.
Out of the nine million square miles of common earth, how do certain
poetical lands stand out to a poetical heart! On the mountain with the
altar, where he once saw her disappear down below, the afternoon chime
of Blumenbühl came wafted to him with the fanning of a freer ether; and
his childhood's life, and the present scenes yonder, and Liana, gave him
a tender heart, and he surveyed, with dimmer eyes, the transfigured
land.
At evening came happy church-goers from Blumenbühl, and praised the
consecration and the burial mightily. He saw the pious father still
standing up there on the back of the mountain. The morning when he
should be able to see Liana a whole day, and perhaps tell her all,
overspread his life with a morning dew, glimmering around him in
splendid rainbow circles. Even in bed he sang for joy the morning song
of the rowers on Lago Maggiore,--the constellations over Blumenbühl
shone through the open window of his little Alp-house down into his
closing eye. When the bright moon and flute-tones from the vale awakened
him again, the silent rapture still glowed on under the ashes of
slumber, and grew till it closed his eyes again.