The carriage flew through the village with the four young people. How
grateful to our youth was the expanse of heaven and of earth! The portal
of life--youth--was hung with flowers and lights. They rolled along at
the foot of the mountain by the bird-pole, the sign-post of a boyish
Arcadia, by the cradle where, in the enraptured sleep of childhood, he
had stretched out his boyish arm after the high heaven; and through the
birch thicket, now dwindled in his eyes to a bush, which, on that golden
morning, he had found so broad and long; and by the open triumphal arch
of the east, behind which the sea of the many-shaped Lilar poured the
tide of its charms; and when they arrived behind the mountain-wall of
the flute-dell, they sent back the carriage.
They walked on a glorious earth, under a glorious heaven. Pure and white
swam the sun like a swan through the blue flood,--meadows and villages
crowded up close around the distant, low mountain-ridges; a soft wind
swayed the green waves of the crop to and fro all over the plain; on the
hills shadows lay fast asleep under the wings of white clouds; and
behind the summits of the heights the mast-trees of the Rhine ships
majestically sailed away.
As Albano went along so close by the side of his beloved, the purgatory
burning under his Eden fell back deeper and deeper into the earth's
core; full of uneasiness and hope, he cast his fiery eye now on the
summer, now on the mild vesper-star, which glimmered so near to him out
of the spring ether. The good maiden seemed to-day more still, serious,
and restless than usual. As they went through a little wood, open on all
sides, along the ridge of a hill that ran round the flute-dell, Liana
suddenly said to the Count, she heard flutes. Scarcely could he say, he
heard only far-off turtle-doves, when she at once collected herself as
for something wonderful, fixed her eyes on heaven, smiled, and suddenly
looked round toward Albano, and grew red. Then turning to him, she said:
"I will be frank; I hear at this moment music within me.[174] Forgive me
to-day my weakness and tenderness; it comes from yesterday." "I--you?"
said he, passionately; for he, about whom in sicknesses only burning
images stormed, was inspired with veneration for a being to whom, as if
from her higher world, low tones like golden sunbeams reach down in her
pains, and pass veiled through the rough deep.
But Liana, as if for the sake of turning aside his enthusiasm, came upon
the subject of her friend Caroline, and told how she always hovered
before her on such days, and especially on this walk. "In the beginning
I sought her out," said Liana, "because she resembled my Linda. She was
my instructress, although she was only a few weeks older than I. Her
pure, severe, unflinching character, and her readiness to sacrifice
herself cheerfully and in silence, made her even, if I may say so,
worthy of veneration in the eyes of her mother. She was never seen to
weep, tender as she was, for she wished to keep her mother always
cheerful. We were going to take the veil in company, for the sake of
being always together; I should not live to become old, she said, and I
must spend my short life happily and without anxiety; but also in
preparation for the next. Ah, she herself went up before me!
Night-watching by the sick-bed of her mother, and sorrow for her death,
took her away. She received the holy supper, for which we were preparing
ourselves together, only on her death-bed. Then did the angel give me
this veil, in which I am some time to follow her. O good, good
Caroline!" She wept unconcealedly, and pressed, with emotion, Albano's
hand. "O, I should not have begun about this! There comes already our
friend; we will be right cheerful!"
They had now passed through a high wood of under-brush, which teasingly
disclosed and hid by turns the landscapes that glided around them, and
had come near to the spire which looks in upon the flute-dell, and near
which lay a solitary church and Spener's dwelling, and in the plain
below the open village. Spener came to meet his pupil--after the manner
of old men--unconcerned about the others; and a young roe ran after him.
A beautiful spot! Little white peacocks; turtle-doves at large; a city
of bees in the midst of their bee-flora,--all bespoke the tranquil old
man, whom the earth serves and honors, and who, indifferent towards it,
lives only in God. He came--disappointing one's expectation of an
ecclesiastical gravity--with a light playfulness upon the gay train, and
laid his finger in benediction on the forehead of Liana, who seemed to
be his granddaughter, as it were, a second tree-blossom in the late
autumn of life. In a daughterly way, she placed the bunch of dwarf-roses
in his bosom, and took very careful notice whether it pleased him. She
smiled quite serenely, and all her tears seemed fanned away; but she
resembled the rain-sprinkled tree, when the sun laughs out again,--the
least agitation flings the old rain from the still leaves.
The old man was delighted with the sympathy of the young people, and
remained with them upon the blooming and resounding eminence, which sat
enthroned between a wide landscape and the richly laden mountain-ridge,
running away into Elysium. Since, as with one who ascends in a balloon,
the tones of earth did not reach him from so great a distance as its
forms, they let him talk more than listen, as one spares old people.
He spoke soon of that in which his heart lived and breathed, but in a
singular, half-theological, half-French, Wolfian, and poetic speech. One
ought, of many a mystic's poetry and philosophy to give, instead of
verbal, real translations, in order that it may be seen how the pure
gold of truth glows under all wrappages. Spener says, in my translation:
"He had formerly, before he found the right way, tormented himself in
every human friendship and love. He had, when he was fervently loved,
said to himself, that he could surely never so regard or love himself;
and even so the beloved being could not truly so think of itself, as the
loving one did, and though it were ever so perfect or so full of
self-love. If every one looked upon others as upon himself, there could
be no ardent love. But all love demands an object of infinite worth, and
dies of every inexplicable and clearly recognized failure; it projects
its objects out of all and above all, and requires a reciprocal love
without limits, without any selfishness, without division, without
pause, without end. Such an object is verily the divine being, but not
fleeting, sinful, changeable man. Therefore must the lovesick heart sink
into the Giver himself of this and of all love, into the fulness of all
that is good and beautiful, into the disinterested, unlimited,
universal Love, and dissolve and revive therein, blest in the
alternation of contraction and expansion. Then it looks back upon the
world and finds everywhere God and his reflection: the worlds are his
deeds; every pious man is a word, a look, of the All-loving; for love to
God is the Divine thing, and the heart yearns for him in every heart."
"But," said Albano, whose fresh, energetic life rebelled against all
mystical annihilation, "how, then, does God love us?" "As a father loves
his child, not because it is the best child, but because it needs
him."[175] "And whence," he further inquired, "comes, then, the evil in
man, and whence sorrow?" "From the Devil," said the old man, and
pictured out uninterruptedly, with transfigured joy, the heaven of his
heart,--how it was always surrounded with the all-beloved, all-loving
One, how it never desired any good fortune or any gifts from him at all
(which one did not wish even in earthly love), but only a higher and
higher love towards himself, and how, while the evening mists of old age
were gathering thicker and thicker around his senses, his heart felt
itself, in the darkness of life, embraced more and more closely by the
invisible arms. "I shall soon be with God!" said he, with a radiance of
love on that countenance of his, chilled with life, and breaking in
under the weight of years. One could have borne to see him die. So
stands Mont Blanc before the rising moon; night veils his feet and his
breast, but the light summit hangs high in the dark heaven as a star
among the stars.
Liana, like a daughter, had not let her eye nor her hand go from him,
and had languishingly drunk in every sound; her brother had heard him
with more pleasure than Albano, but merely for the sake of remodelling
more clearly and fully the mystic Hero into the mimic Mount Athos of his
representation, and Rabette had contemplated him as in a church among
believing by-thoughts.
He withdrew now without ceremony to take care of his animals, which he
loved, as he did everything involuntary, for instance, children, as
coming at first hand from God. "Everything is divine," he said, "and
nothing earthly but what is immoral." He could not bear to smoke bees
with brimstone, let flowers dry up with thirst in the pot-cage, or see
an overdriven wounded horse, and he passed by a butcher's stall not
without shuddering limbs.
"Shall we," said friend Charles, "take in the glorious evening on the
magnificent mountain road, and see thy thunder-house, and cast down
every cup of sorrow into the vales below?" Through what a magic
neighborhood did they now pass along the sloping ridge of the
thunder-house! On the right, as it were, the occident of nature; on the
left, the orient; before them Lilar, glittering in the _faerie_ of
evening,--lying in the arms of the glancing Rosana,--golden grain behind
silver-poplars, and overhead a heaven filled with a life-intoxicated,
tumultuous creation,--and the sun-god stalking away over his
evening-world, and stooping a little under the midnight to raise his
golden head in the east. Albano went forth, holding Liana's holy hand.
"O how beautiful is all!" said he. "How the fluttering world-map rustles
and murmurs with long streams and woods,--how the eastern mountains bask
in steadfast repose,--how the groves climb the hills, with glowing
stems! One could plunge down into the smoking vales and into the cold,
glistening waves. Ah, Liana, how beautiful is all!" "And God is on the
earth," said she. "And in thee!" said he, and thought of the word of the
old man, that love seeks God, and that he dwells in the heart which we
esteem.
Now came rolling toward him the great waves which the Æolian-harp dashed
out in the thunder-house; and his genius flew by before him with the
words, "Tell her there thy whole heart!"
Before the little tabernacle of yesterday's dreams his stormy heart was
dissolved; and the sun and the earth reeled before his passionate tears.
As he entered with her into the rosy splendor of the evening sun that
filled the apartment, and into the spirit-like din of tones discoursing
with one another alone, he seized Liana's hands and pressed them wildly
to his breast, and sank down before her speechless and dazzled; flames
and tears suffused his eyes and his cheeks,--the whirlwind of tones blew
into his blazing soul,--the mild angel of innocence bowed herself,
weeping and trembling, toward the burning sun-god, and a sharp pain
twined itself like a pale serpent through the roses of the mild
countenance,--and Albano stammered: "Liana, I love thee!"
Then the serpent turned round and clasped and covered the sweet rosy
form. "O good Albano! thou art unhappy, but I am innocent!" She stepped
back with dignity, and quickly drew down the white veil over her face,
and said, beside herself, "Wouldst thou love the dead? This is my
corpse-veil; the coming year it will lie upon this face." "That is not
true," said Albano. "Caroline, answer him!" said she, and stared at the
burning sun as if looking for a higher apparition. Frightful moment! as
during an earthquake the sea heaves and the air rests in fearful
stillness, so was his lip dumb beside the veiled one, and his whole
heart was a storm. On the strings swept by a sighing world of spirits,
and the last ended with a sharp scream. The beauty of the earth was
distorted before him, and in the evening clouds broad fiery banners were
planted; and the sun's eye shut-to in blood.
All at once Liana folded her hands as if in prayer, and smiled and
blushed; then she raised the veil from her divine eyes, and the
transfigured one, tinged with the rosy reflection, looked on him
tenderly,--and cast her eye down,--and raised it again,--and again let
it sink,--and the veil fell again before her, and she said, in a low
tone, "I will love thee, good Albano, if I do not make thee miserable."
"I will die with thee!" said he. "What then?"--And now let a holy cloud
veil the sun-god, who moves flaming through the midst of his stars!
His solitude and Liana's solution of so many wonders were suspended by
the entrance of Rabette and Charles, who both seemed more touched than
blessed,--she by the comforting nearness of the loved one, he by the
singular situation and the subduing evening; for after certain beings a
storm follows, and they must, against their will, make the steps that
they take more rapid.
When Albano, with the peace-angel of his life, with the beloved one,
who, in the midst of the rush of her feelings, heard, nevertheless, the
voice of her female friend, walked forth again once more alone upon the
rocky causeway between fragrant vales of Tempe in the glimmering world,
he felt as if he had struggled through his life like an eagle through a
storm-cloud, and as if the black tempest were running far away below his
wings, and the whole starry heaven burned bright above his head. Liana,
with maidenly nobleness and firmness, gave him, before he had put a
question, the answer: "I must now tell you a mystery, which I have
hidden from every one, and even from my mother, because it would have
disquieted her. I spoke just now of my never-to-be-forgotten Caroline.
On the day of my sacrament, which I had wished to take with her, I went
back by night from my teacher to my mother, and in fact through the
singular, long cavern, wherein one seems to descend, when one is in
reality going upward. My maid went before with the lantern. In the
romantic arbor, where a concave mirror stands, I turn round toward the
full moon which was streaming in, from a dread of the wild mirror, which
distorts people too horribly. Suddenly I hear a heavenly concert, such
as I often heard again afterward in sicknesses,--I think of my blessed
friend,--and gaze, full of longing, into the moon. Then I saw her
opposite to me, beaming with innumerable rays: in her fair eyes was a
tender look, but yet something dissolving; the tender mouth, almost the
only living feature, resembled a red, but transparent fruit, and all her
hues seemed to be nothing but light. Yet only in the blue eye and red
mouth did the angel seem like Caroline. I could sketch her, if one could
paint with light. I became dangerously sick; then she appeared to me
oftener, and refreshed me with inexpressibly sweet tones,--they were not
properly words,--whereupon I always sank into a soft sleep, as into a
sweet death. Once I asked her--more with inner words--whether I should,
then, soon come to her into the realm of light. She answered, I should
not die just now, but somewhat later; and she named very clearly the
coming year, and the very day, which I have, however, forgotten.... O
dear Albano! forgive me only a few words! I soon recovered, and mourned
over the slow, lingering passage of time...."
"No," Albano interrupted her, for his feelings were striking against
each other like swords, "I revere, but I hate her dangerous phantom.
Fancy and sickness are the parents of the air-born, destroying angel,
who flies scorching, like a dumb heat-lightning, over all the blossoms
of youth!"
She answered, with emotion, "O thou good, pure spirit! thou hast never
distressed me, thou hast ever comforted, guided, made me happy and
holy,--a phantom is it, Albano? It even preserves me against all
phantoms of terror, against all ghostly fear, because it is always about
me. Why, if it is only a phantom, does it never appear to me in my
dreams?[176] Why comes it not when I will? But it comes only in weighty
cases; then I consult and obey it very willingly. It has already to-day,
Albano," she added, in a lower and fainter tone, "twice appeared to me
on the way, when I heard the inner music, and previously in the
thunder-house, when the sun went down, and has affectionately answered
me."
"And what says it, heavenly one?" asked Albano, innocently. "I saw it
only on the way, and asked no question," replied the childlike one,
blushing; and here, all at once, her holy soul stood unconsciously
without a veil before him; for she had, in the thunder-house, received
from the invisible Caroline the yes to her love; because that being was
her own creation, and this a suggestion of her own. Yes indeed, heavenly
one! thou standest before the mirror with the virgin's veil over thy
form, and when thy image softly raises its own, thou fanciest thyself
still covered!
No word can express Albano's veneration for such a sanctified heart,
which dreamed into such distinctness glorified beings; whose golden
flowers only grew the higher over the thought of death, as earthly ones
do in churchyards over the reality; which, simultaneously with his own,
invisible hands had drawn into two similar dreams;[177] to which one was
ashamed to give common truths for its holy errors. "Thou art from
heaven," he said, inspired, and his joy became the pearl melted in the
eye which quenches the thirst of the human heart; "therefore thou
wouldst go back thither!" "O, I consecrate to thee, my friend," said
she, smilingly weeping, and pressed his hand to her pure heart, "the
whole little life which I have, every hour to the last, and I will,
meanwhile, prepare thee for everything which God sends."
Before they entered the cottage of the pious father, Albano seized his
friend's hand, and the sisters joined each other. The friends went
forward for a time in silence; Charles looked upon Albano, and found the
peace of blessedness upon his face. When the latter saw how Liana
pressed her overfraught heart to her sister's, then were sincerity and
joy too strong in him, and he fell without a word upon the heart of the
dear brother of the eternal bride, and let him silently guess all from
his tears of bliss. O, he might have guessed it, to be sure, from the
bridal look of love which his sister more seldom removed from his
friend, and from the heartiness wherewith she drew Rabette to her heart;
just as if they two would soon be related to each other, as if her
brother himself would soon speak more sweetly, since he for some time
had no longer called her the little Linda; and consecrated her thereon
for the heart of her brother. Not before the pious father did the
enraptured look hold itself much in abeyance, which Albano, standing as
if under the gate of eternity, cast into the heavens, gleaming like
worlds one behind another; he was still and tender, and in his heart
dwelt all hearts. O love _one_ heart purely and warmly, then thou lovest
all hearts after it, and the heart in its heaven sees like the
journeying sun, from the dew-drop even to the ocean, nothing but mirrors
which it warms and fills.
But in Roquairol started up immediately, when he saw the heavenly bliss
so near, the mutinous spirit of his past, and struck with a bloody
epilepsy the limbs of the inner man: those immortal sighings after an
ever-flying peace again tormented him; his transgressions and errors,
and even the hours when he innocently suffered, were painfully reckoned
up before him; and then he spoke, (and stirred every heart, but most of
all poor Rabette's, which he pressed against his own to warm himself,
as, according to the tradition, the eagle does with the dove, after
which he does not tear her to pieces,)--nobly he spoke then of life's
wilderness, and of fate, which burns out man, like Vesuvius, into a
crater, and then again sows cool meadows therein, and fills it again
with fire; and of the only blessedness of this hollow life, love, and of
the injury inflicted, when fate with its winds sways and rubs a
flower[178] to and fro, and thereby cuts through the green skin against
the earth.
But while he thus spoke, he looked on the glowing Rabette, and would
fain by these warmings burst open, as it were by force, the fast-closed
flower-bud of his love, and spread its leaves out under the sun. O the
bewildered and yearning one was surely not yet quite happy even to-day,
and he wished not so much to affect others as himself.
With what blissful presentiments did they step out again before the
sphinx of night, who lay smiling before them with soft, starry glances!
Did they not go through a still, glimmering, subterranean world, light
and free, without the heavy clogging earth on their feet, while in the
wide Elysium the warm ether only flutters because invisible Psyches fan
it with their wings? And out of the flute-dell the old man sends after
them his tones as sweet arrows of love, in order that the swelling heart
may blissfully bleed of their woundings. Albano and Liana came out upon
a prospect where the broad eastern landscape, with its light-streaks of
blooming poppy-fields, and its dark villages, ascended the soft
mountains, where the moon awoke, and the splendor of her garment already
swept like that of a spirit through heaven: here they remained standing
and waiting for Luna. Albano held her hand. All the mountain-ridges of
his life stood in a glowing dawn. "Liana," said he, "what innumerable
springs are there at this moment up yonder on the worlds which hang in
the heavens; but this is the fairest!" "Ah, life is lovely, and to-day
it is too dear to me! Albano," she added, in a low voice, and her whole
face became an exalted, tearless love, and the stars wove and
embroidered its bridal dress, "if God calls me, then may he let me
always appear to thee as Caroline does to me. O, if I could only attend
thee thus through thy whole dear life, and console and warn thee, I
would willingly wish for no other heaven."
But as he was about to express the fulness of his love, and the anger
of his pain about the death-delusion, just then came his wild friend,
who, like a Vesuvius, pouring out at once lava- and rain-streams over
the credulous Rabette, had made both her heart and his own only fuller,
not lighter; then Charles beheld the glorified beings and the blue
horizon, where already the moon was flinging forth her glimmering light
between the bristling mast-peaks and summits, and looked again into the
splendor of holy love. Then could he no longer contain himself; his
heart, full of agony, mounted to an eternal purpose, as if to God, and
he embraced Albano and Rabette, and said: "Beloved man! beloved maiden!
keep my unhappy heart!"
Rabette clung around him compassionately, as a mother around her child,
and gave up to him, in hot, gushing tears, her whole soul. Albano,
astonished, enfolded in his arms the love-bond; Liana was drawn to the
beloved hearts by the whirlpool of bliss. Unheard the flutes sounded on,
unseen waved the white banners of the stars overhead. Charles spoke
frantic words of love, and wild wishes of dying for joy. Albano touched
trembling Liana's flower-lip, as John kissed Christ, and the heavy
milky-way bent down like a magic wand toward his golden bliss. Liana
sighed: O mother, how happy are thy children! The moon had already flown
up into the blue, like a white angel of peace, and glorified the great
embrace; but the blest ones marked it not. Like a sounding waterfall,
their rich life covered them, and they knew not that the flutes had
ceased, and all the hills were shining.[179]