I have often in the theatre made the pleasant experience, that when
painful scenes immediately followed the rising of the curtain, I took
but a slight interest in them, while in joyful ones which, immediately
after the music, came on with their own music, I took the greatest; man
demands more that sorrow than that rapture should show its motive and
its apology. Without hesitation, therefore, I begin a third volume[180]
with blisses of which, to be sure, the foregoing couple have been
preparing more than enough.
At the moment where our story has arrived, among all the descendants of
Adam who lifted a glad face to heaven, and imaged in that face a still
fairer heaven, there must have been some one who had the highest
heaven,--a happiest of all men. Ah yes! And to be sure, among all
suffering creatures upon this _globe_, which our short race makes a
_plain_, there must also have been one most unhappy; and may the poor
man soon lie down to sleep under, not _on_, his rocky road! Although I
could wish that Albano might not be the happiest of all,--in order that
there might yet be a higher heaven above his,--still it is probable
that, on the morning after that holiest night, in his present dream of
the richest dream, deep in the threefold bloom of youth, of nature, and
of anticipation, he bore the broadest heaven in himself which the narrow
bosom of man can span.
He looked from his thunder-house,--that little temple on whose walls
still lingered the radiance of the goddess who had therein become
visible to him,--out over the new-created mountains and gardens of
Lilar; and it was to him as if he looked into his white and red blooming
future, adorned with mountain-peaks and fruit-tree-tops, a full Paradise
built out into the naked earth. He looked round in his future after any
robbers of joy who might attack his triumphal chariot; he found them all
visibly too weak to cope with his arms and weapons. He called up Liana's
parents, and his own father, and the host of spirits which had hitherto
been working in the air, and set them out on the road which lay between
him and his beloved; in his muscles glowed more than sufficient power
easily to dash through them to her, and take her with him into his life
by main force. "Yes," said he, "I am completely happy, and need nothing
more,--no fortune, only my heart and hers!" Albano, may thy evil genius
not have heard this dangerous thought, so as to carry it to Nemesis! O,
in this wildly entangled wood of thy life, no step, even in the blooming
avenues of pleasure, is wholly safe; and amidst the very fulness of this
artistic garden there awaits thee a strange, gloomy upas-tree, and
breathes cold poisons into thy life! Therefore it was better as it was
once, when men were still lowly and prayed to God even in their great
raptures; for in the neighborhood of the Infinite One the fiery eye
sinks and weeps, but only out of gratitude.
Let no mean almanac measurement be applied to the fair eternity which he
now lived, when he saw the beloved every evening, every morning, in her
little village. As evening star she went forth before his dreams; as
morning star, before his day. The interval both filled out with letters,
which they themselves carried to each other. When they parted at
evening, not long before they were to see each other again, and while in
the north already the rose-bud twigs shot along low down in the heavens,
which during men's sleep speedily grew out toward the east, in order to
hang down from heaven with thousands of full-blown roses ere the sun and
love came back again,--and when his friend Charles stayed with him by
night, and he asked, in the course of an hour, whence the light came,
whether from the morning or from the moon,--and when he sallied forth,
while moon and morning still appeared together in the dew-dripping
pleasure-woods,--and when the road, left only a few hours before,
appeared wholly new and the absence too long, (because Cupid's wing is
half a second-hand, which shows the day of the month, and half a
month-hand, which points to the second, and because, in the neighborhood
of the loved one, the shortest absence lasts longer than the longest
when she is far away,)--and when at last he saw her again,--then was the
earth a sun, from which rays proceeded: his heart stood all in light;
and as a man, who on a spring morning dreams of a spring-morning, finds
it still brighter around him when he awakes, so, after the blessed
youthful dream of the beloved, did he open his eyes before her, and
desire the fairest dream no more.
Sometimes they saw each other, when the long summer day was too long,
on distant mountains, where by appointment they looked upon the
harvests; sometimes Rabette came alone to Lilar to her brother, that he
might hear something from Liana. When Liana had read a book, he read it
after her; often he read it first and she last. Whatever of divine the
fairest, purest souls can manifest to each other when they unfold
themselves,--a holy heart which makes one still holier, a glowing heart
which makes one still more glowing,--that they manifested to each other.
Albano was mild toward all, and the radiance of a higher beauty and
youth filled his countenance. The fair realms of nature and of his
childhood were both adorned by love, not it by either of them; he had
mounted from the pale, light moon-car of hope upon the sounding, shining
sun-car of living ecstasy. Even on the galleys of wooden sciences, as if
animated by the wonder-working hand of Bacchus, masts and shrouds
fluttered out into vine-stalks and clusters. If he went to the Froulay
house, he always, because he went in full of tolerance, came back
without any sacrifice of the same: the Minister, who had returned from
Haarhaar with a veil of gay, blooming ideas on his face, imparted to him
charming prospects of the exultation wherewith city and country would
celebrate the approaching marriage-feast of the Prince and the gain of
the most beautiful bride.
And had he not, in addition to all, his friend too? When one stands so
close before the flame of joy, one does indeed shun men,--because they
easily step between us and the pleasant warmth,--but one seeks them too;
a hearty friend is our wish and joy, who shall gently lead on, without
chasing away, the happy dream in which we sleep and speak. Charles
played softly into his friend's dream; he would, however, have also done
it from sincere love for the sister.
In fact, with so much youth, summer weather, innocence, freedom,
beautiful scenery, and deep love and friendship, there may well be
constructed, even on this low earth, something like that which up in
heaven is called a heaven; and a celestial chart, an Elysium-atlas,
which one should map out thereof, would perhaps look not far otherwise
than this: in front, a long pastoral land, with scattered
pleasure-castles and summer-houses; a philanthropist's grove in the
middle, the Tabor mountains overhead, with herdsmen upon them, long
Campanian vales; then the broad archipelago, with St. Peter's islands;
over on the other side the shores of a new pastoral continent, all
covered with Daphnean groves and gardens of Alcinoüs; behind that again,
stretching far inward, an Arcadia; and so on.
All the philosophy and stoicism that he now had in him--for he held that
which the arm out of the clouds gave him as booty gained by his
own--Albano applied to the purpose of taking _from_ his ecstasy the
moderation which they impart. Moderation, he said, was only for patients
and pigmies; and all those anxious, evenly balanced sticklers for
temperament[181] and time-keepers had, whether in the cultivation of a
pleasure or of a talent, profited themselves more than the world; on the
contrary, their antipodes had benefited the world more than
themselves.[182]
He kept in view very good fundamental principles. Man, said he, is free
and without limits,--not in respect to what he will do or enjoy, but in
respect to what he will do without; he can, if he _will_, will to
dispense with _everything_. In fact, he continued, one has simply the
choice, either _always_ or _never_ to fear; for thy life-tent stands
over a loaded mine, and, round about, the hours aim at thee naked
weapons. Only one in a thousand[183] hits; and, in any case, I am sure I
would sooner fall standing than bending like a coward. But, he
concluded, in order to justify himself on the subject, is then
steadfastness made for nothing better than for a surgeon and
serving-maid, and not much rather for our muse and goddess? for it is
not surely a good, merely because it helps do without something which we
have lost, but it is intrinsically one, and a greater than the one whose
place it supplies; even the happiest must acquire it, even without
outward occasion or bestowal; yes, it is so much the better, if it is
possessed earlier than applied.
These deceptions or justifications were partly weapons of self-defence
against the tragic Roquairol, who would fain heighten every pleasure,
and even those of his friend, by sombre contrasts; and partly they were
such as a noble man, who hitherto has plunged into sorrow without
measuring its depth, and who would always feel his power of swimming
through life, must necessarily fall upon, when he is inwardly aware that
the centre of gravity of his bliss and of his hell has shifted and
fallen out of himself into another being. "O, what if she should die?"
he asked himself. He had not been wont to shudder so at the thought of
any death as of this. Therefore he squeezed these thorns of fancy right
sharply in his hand in order to crush them. At last, when the pure
country air of love and the shepherd-dance in this Arcadia had brought
more and more roses to Liana's cheek, then his thorns ceased to grow.
To all other vipers of life, so long as they could find no entrance
through Liana's heart, he was inaccessible. At whatever price,--and
though he should have to forsake, give up, provoke, undertake all,--he
would buy Liana. The phantoms of terror which came threateningly to meet
him out of two houses,--Froulay's and Gaspard's,--he let come on, and
dispelled them: let the foe once show himself, thought he, so am I his
foe too. Often he stood in Tartarus, and found, in this still life of
death _in rilievo_, peace of soul. The actual world takes more quickly
our image than we its; even here he gained soft, broad, life-illumining
hopes and sweet tears, which flowed from him at the thought of Liana's
faith in her death, not because he believed in the probability, but in
the improbability thereof, which, through love and joy and recovery,
would daily grow greater.
Only one misfortune was there for him, against which every weapon
snapped in pieces, whose possibility, however, he held to be a sinful
thought,--namely, that he and Liana, by some fault or time or the
world's influence, might cease to love each other. Here, relying on two
hearts, he boldly defied the future. O, who has not said, when, in
reliance upon a warm eternity, he has expressed his rapture, The Fatal
Sister may clip the thread of our life, but shall she come and open the
scissors against the bond of our love? The very next day the Fatal
Sister has stood before him, and snapped the scissors to.