Flying Spring! (I mean love, just as one calls the after summer a
_flying summer_) thou hurriest away of thyself over our heads with
arrowy speed; why do authors again hurry over thee? Thou art the German
blossoming season; which is never a blossoming month long. We read all
winter in almanacs and similes much about its magnificence, and we pine
for it; at last it hangs thick on the dark boughs six days long, and
beside that, under cold May showers, sweeping bliss-month[188] storms,
and with a dumb-session of half-frozen nightingales,--and then, when one
comes out at length into the garden, the footpath is already white with
blossoms, and the tree at most full of green; then it is over, till in
winter we again hear with exaltation of heart the beginning of a tale:
"It was just in the lovely season of the blossoming." Even so do I see
few authors, at the long session-and-scribbling-table of romance,
working right and left for the benefit of the reading-desk, who, after
the long preface to love, do not so soon as, like a war, it is declared,
forthwith conclude it; and really, there are more steps _to_ love than
_in_ it; all that is _coming to be_,--for instance, spring, youth,
morning, learning,--opens out more widely and in a richer variety of
hues than fixed _being_; but is not this latter in turn a progress, only
a higher; and this, again, a state of being, only a quicker?
Albano would fain lead along more beautifully the fleeting, divine
season, when the heart is our god; he would have it rather fly _upward_
than fly _away_. He was angry the next day with nobody but himself. He
tore his way through such petty and yet closely entangling troubles,
through a condition like that of men during an earthquake, when an
invisible vapor holds the heavy foot as a snare. "I would rather let
myself be rained on upon mountains," said he, "than in valleys." Men of
quick fancy more easily reconcile themselves to the loved one when she
is absent, than when she is present.
After some days, he went again to Blumenbühl just before sundown. A
burning red cut through the night-like gloom of the foliage. His
darkening, woody road was made, by the flames which danced about
therein, an enchanted one. He transferred his illuminated present deep
into a future, shady past. O, after years, thought he, when thou
returnest, when all is gone by and changed, the trees grown up, human
beings passed away, and only the mountains and the brook left, then wilt
thou congratulate thyself that thou couldst once in these walks so often
journey to thy sweetest heart, and on either hand the music and the
glory of Nature went along with thy joyful soul, as the moon seems to
the child to run after him through all streets. An unwonted rapture
flung through his whole being the long, broad streak of sunshine; the
farthest flowers of his fancy opened; all tones came through a brighter
ether, and sounded nearer. The flowers around him, too, exhaled a keener
fragrance, and the peal of the bell sounded nearer; and both are signs
of foul weather.
Thus inwardly happy, he made his appearance,--and, indeed, without
Roquairol, who in fact came more and more seldom,--and found his beloved
up in his childhood's study, her guest-chamber, which was now the usual
scene of his visits. In a white dress, with dark trimming, as in a
beautiful half-mourning, she sat at the drawing-table with her eyes
sharper than usual, buried in a picture. She flew to his heart, but only
to lead him back presently to the dear form upon which her heart hung as
in a mother's arms. She related that her mother had been here to-day
with the Princess, and had showed so much pleasure in her improving
color, such infinite kindness toward her happy daughter. "She was
obliged," continued she, "to let me take a slight sketch of her, in
order that I might only look upon her so much the longer, and have
something of her to keep by me. I am just finishing the outline of the
face, but it is absolutely too poor a likeness." She could not tear her
fancy away from the image, and still less from the original. To be sure,
no more beautiful medallion can hang _on_ a daughter's heart, or in fact
_in_ it, than that of a mother; but, nevertheless, Albano thought to-day
the hanging-ring took up too broad a space.
She talked only of her mother. "I certainly sin," said she; "she asked
me in such a friendly way whether thou camest often, but I said only
yes, and nothing further. O good Albano, how gladly would I have given
up to her frankly my whole soul!"
He answered, that the mother seemed not to be so frank; she perhaps knew
already the whole through the Lector, and the pure draught of love would
now be continually disturbed by foreign substances. Against Augusti he
declared himself very strongly, but Liana quite as strongly upheld him.
Through both that counterfeiter of the coin of truth, namely,
suspicion,--the suspicion that she perhaps loved him as she loved
everything, since she grew as by a living tie to everything
good,--gained, under Albano's sensibilities, which besides had been
to-day so warm and glad, more and more mint-stamps and currency.
She suspected nothing, but she came back to the subject of her secrecy.
"But why, then, does it make me unhappy," said she, "if it is right?
Beloved one, my Caroline too appears to me no longer, and truly that is
no good sign." This spectral-machinery always came on as oppressively
and gloomily to him as a thunder-cloud in the outer world. His old
exasperation against the teasings practised in his own case by apes of
the air, whom he could not lay hold of, passed over into a similar
feeling against Liana's optical self-deception. That veil presented her
by Caroline, wherewith, in the beginning, she had so sublimely arrayed
herself for the cloister of the tomb,--that travelling veil for the next
world,--had long been to this Hercules a burning garment, drenched in
the poisonous blood of a Nessus; therefore she no longer dared to wear
it before him. The conclusion that the fancy of being destined to death
laid the seed of the reality, and that in the deep overhanging cloud an
accident might easily attract the striking-spark of death, fell like a
mourning into his love festival. So are all strange sea-wonders of fancy
(like this death-delusion) desired only _in_ fancy (in romance), but not
in life, except once on fantastic heights; but then must such comets,
like others, soon recede again from our heaven.
He spoke now very seriously,--of suicidal fancies, of life's duties, of
wilful blindness to the fairest signs of her recovery, among which he
reckoned as well the disappearance of the optical Caroline as the
blooming of her color. She heard him patiently; but through the
Princess, who, notwithstanding her love, seldom left behind with him
pleasant impressions, her fancy had to-day taken quite another road, far
beyond herself and her grave. She stood only before Linda's image, of
which Julienne had this afternoon communicated to her sharper outlines
than maidens are wont to give of maidens. "She is a very good girl,"
they say of each other. Linda's manly spirit, her warm attachment to
Gaspard in connection with her contempt of the mass of men, her
inflexibility, her bold strides in manly knowledge, her masterly and
often severe letters, more pithy than flowery, and, most of all, her
probably approaching arrival, took a powerful hold of Liana's tender
heart. "My Albano must have her," was the constant thought of this
disinterested soul; and if the Princess had had the intention of
humiliating comparisons, she remarked it not, but fulfilled it. The good
creature found, too, so much of a higher providence here,--for example,
that her brother need now no longer be the rival of her lover and of his
friend,--that she herself could portray beforehand her vigorous Albano
to the proud Romeiro, and that certainly, despite all opposition, all
the ghostly prophecies strikingly connected and coincided with each
other. All this she now said (because she concealed only her sorrows,
not her hopes) right to the Count's face.
What a gnashing bite did an evil genius at this moment make into his
tenderest life! That glowing love which neither divides nor is divided
possessed _his_ heart, he thought, not hers. He came very near to
showing up his inner being just as it was, all kindled at once, as if by
a lightning stroke, into a lofty blaze. Only the innocent white brow,
with festive roses in its little ringlets; the childishly bright
looking-up of the pure blue pair of eyes, and the soft face, which even
at a musical fortissimo, and at every vehemence in movement or laughter
on the part of another, caught a sickly redness from the beating heart;
and his indignant shame at the levity with which a man can abuse his
omnipotence and his sex, to the terror of the tenderer, restrained him,
like guardian spirits; and he said merely, in that noble anger which
sounded like a tender emotion, "O Liana, thou art hard to-day!"
"And yet I am indeed so tender!" said the innocent one. The two had
hitherto been standing at the window, before the dark tempest which came
rolling on out of Lilar. She turned suddenly round; for since the day of
her blindness, when a dark cloud had seemed to fly towards her, she had
never been able to look at one long; and Albano's tall form, with his
whole live-glowing face and his soul-speaking eyes, stood illumined by
the evening light before her. With the hand which he left free she
softly and playfully swept aside the dark hair from his defiant
forehead, smoothed the contracted eyebrow, and said, as his look stung
like a sun, and his mouth shut with determination, "O, joyfully,
joyfully, shall this fair face one day smile!" He smiled, but sadly.
"And then shall I be still more blest than to-day!" said she, and
started, for a lightning-flash darted across his earnest face, as over a
jagged mountain, and showed it, like that of the god of war, illuminated
with war-flames.
He hurried away; would not be held back; spoke of a weather-cooling;
went out into the storm; and left Liana behind in the joy that she had
spoken to-day merely out of pure love. From the last house in the
village Rabette flew to meet him; the torrents of the restrained tears
rolled down his cheeks. "What dost thou want? why weepest thou?" she
cried. "Thou art dreaming!" cried he, and hurried, without further
answer, out into the tempest, which had suddenly, like a mantle-fish,
flung itself stiflingly over the whole heaven. There, under the
rain-drops and lightning-flashes, he began, first of all, to reckon up
for himself the best proofs that Liana had saintly charms, divine sense,
all virtues, especially universal philanthropy, daughterly, sisterly,
friendly affection, only not, however, the glowing love for one
person,--at least, not for him. She is so entirely and exclusively--such
is always his conclusion--possessed and absorbed with the present
object, whether it be myself or a broken arm of the little Pollux, that
it hides from her heaven and earth. Hence the setting of her life's day,
with all the attendant partings, is no more to her than the setting of a
star. Hence it was that I stood beside her so long, with a heart full of
the pangs of love, and she saw not into my love, because she found none
in her own bosom. And this is what makes it so bitter, when man, pining
in poverty among the common hearts of earth, is rendered by the noblest
only unhappy at last.
The rain pattered and trickled through the leaves, the fire darted
through the woods, and the Wild Huntsman of the storm drove his crazy
chase. This refreshed and rejoiced him like the cooling hand of a friend
taking his to guide him. As he ascended, not through the cavern, but
outside over the back of the mountain to his high thunder-house, he saw
a thick, gray night of rain settle down heavily upon the green Lilar,
and on the winding Tartarus rested under the flashes the illuminated
storm. He shuddered, on entering his little house, at a cry which his
Æolian-harp emitted under the snatches of the wind; for it had once,
gilded by the evening sun, ethereally clothed his young love like
starlight, and had followed it with ever-varying tones, as it went out
over this suffering life.