On the morning after both storms were dissolved into a still
cloudiness.--And out of the great griefs came only errors. Weaklings
that we are! when at our sham execution fate touches us with the rod,
not with the sword, we sink impotently from the block, and feel the
process of dying reach far into our life! All fevers, including
spiritual ones, are cooled by the freshness of a new morning, just as
sad evening stirs all their embers into a glow. Who of us has not at
evening,--that proper witching hour of tormenting spectres,
house-haunting ghosts and hobgoblins,--caught in the threads which he
himself had spun, but which he took for a web spread by other hands,
entangled himself more and more deeply the more he turned about and
tried to extricate himself, till in the morning he saw his turnkey
before him, namely, himself?
Albano saw on the whole theatre of yesterday's war nothing left standing
but a pale, kindly figure in half-mourning, who looked round after him
with innocent maidenly eyes, and toward which he could not help looking
over, albeit she was now more a bride of God than of a mortal. He felt
now, to be sure, more strongly how high his demands upon real friends
rose, than he once did, when he could heighten at pleasure the highest
which he made upon the beings of his dreams, whom he always cast exactly
into the temporary mould of his heart; and how he was possessed by a
spirit that spared no one, that would stretch the wings of every other
according to its own, because it could bear no individuality except that
which was copied.
He had hitherto experienced from all his loved ones too little
opposition, as Liana had too much; both extremes injure one. The
spiritual as well as the physical man, without the resistance of the
outer atmosphere, is blown up and burst by the inner, and without the
resistance of the inner is crushed by the outer; only the equilibrium
between inner resistance and outer pressure keeps a fair play-room open
for life and its culture. Besides, men--since only the best of them
appreciate in the best of their own sex strong conviction--can hardly
tolerate it in women, and would have them not merely the reflection, but
even the echo, of themselves. They want, I mean, not merely the look,
but also the word, that says yes.
Albano punished himself with several days of voluntary absence, till the
unclean clouds should have cleared away from within him which had
overshadowed the gnomon of the sundial of his inner man. "When I am
quite cheerful and good-natured," said he, "I will go back to her, and
err no more." He errs at this moment. Whenever a strange, uncomfortable
semitone has repeatedly intruded itself between all the harmonies of two
natures, it swells more and more fatally till it drowns the key-note,
and ends all. The dividing tone was, in this case, the strength of the
man's pitch in connection with the strength of the woman's. But the
highest love is most easily wounded by the slightest difference. O,
little avails it then for man to say to himself, I will be another man!
Only in the finest, only in unimpaired enthusiasm, does he propose to
himself such a thing; but it is just when the feeling is impaired, when
he were hardly capable of the purpose, that he has to rise to the
fulfilment of it, and then he can hardly make the achievement.
The Count went in the morning, as usual, to his lecture-rooms and
parlors in the city. In the former it was hard for him to fix his
instruments and his eyes upon the stars of the sciences, and to take
sight, sailing as he was on such a sea of emotion. In the latter he
found the Lector colder than ever, the Bibliothecary warmer, the
household more inflated. He went to Roquairol, whom he to-day loved and
treated still more cordially, as if by way of atonement to his offended
sister. Charles said at once, with his sudden and tragical flinging up
of the curtain of futurity, "All was discovered,--in the highest degree
of probability!" As often as lovers see that their Calypso's
island--which, to be sure, lies free on the open ocean--has at length
come to the eyes of the seafaring world, and that they are making sail
for it, they are astonished to an astonishing degree; for is there any
one Paradise which has such a loose and low palisado, allowing every
passer-by to see in, as theirs?
For a long time, he related, had the Doctor's children always had
something to fetch from the Architect's wife at Lilar,--flowers,
medicine-phials, &c.; certainly as spy-glasses and ear-tubes of Augusti,
who again was the opera-glass of his mother. In short, his father had,
at least, been at the Greek woman's yesterday, but had luckily found
only an empty package[189] from Rabette to him (Charles), which,
according to the liberties of the ministerial Church, he had opened and
closed.
"Why _luckily_?" said Albano. "I will justify and honor my love before
the world." "I referred to myself," he replied; "for never was my father
more friendly to me than since he broke open my last letters. He is this
afternoon in Blumenbühl, and it may well be more on my own account than
my sister's."
Albano had no fear that the city could drill mining-galleries under his
childhood's land, so as to blow up in one conflagration the blessed
isle,--could he not trust his character and courage and Liana's
own?--but it pained him now that he had so needlessly robbed the
childlike Liana of the joy and merit of a childlike open-heartedness.
How he longed now for the atoning and recompensing moment of the first
meeting again, after the next morning!
He stayed by his friend as by a consolation, and did not go back till
the evening redness floated about in the rain-clouds. When he came, he
found already awaiting him a letter from Liana, written to-day.
"O good Albano, why camest thou not? How much I had to say
to thee! How I trembled for thy sake on Friday, when the
frowning cloud pursued thee with its thunder! Thou hast
weaned me too much from sorrow, so strange and heavy has it
become to me now. I was inconsolable the whole evening; at
last, when night fell, the thought sank into my mind that
thou hadst been oppressed as with presentiments, and that
the lightning loved to strike the thunder-house. Why,
indeed, art thou there? I hurried up, and knelt by my bed,
and prayed to God, although the storm had long been
dispersed, that he would have preserved thee. Smile at my
tardy prayer; but I said to him, 'Thou knewest indeed,
all-gracious One, that I would pray.' I was consoled, too,
when I looked up to the stars, and the broken ray of joy
trembled within me.
"But in the morning Rabette made me sad again. She had seen
thee weeping on the road. A thousand times have I asked
myself, whether I am to blame for that. Can it have come
from this,--for she says so,--that I afflict thee too much
with my death thoughts? Never more shalt thou hear them; the
veil, too, is laid away; but I calculated upon thee
according to my brother, to whom, as he himself says, the
dusk of death is an evening-twilight, in which forms seem to
him more lovely. Truly, I am quite blest; for thou art even
so, and yet hast so little in having me,--only a small
flower for thy heart, but I have thyself. Leave me my
grave-mound; therefrom, as from a mountain, comes better,
more fruitful soil into my valley. O how one loves, Albano,
when all around us crumbles and sinks and melts away in
smoke, and when, still, the bond and splendor of love stand
firm and inviolate on the fleeting ground of life, as I have
often seen with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a
rainbow hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting,
impetuous floods! O, would that the nightingales were yet
singing; now I could sing with them! Thy Æolian-harp, my
harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my hand! My father
was with us, and more cheerful and friendly toward all than
ever. Lo, even he is kindly disposed! My parents surely send
no tempest into our feast of roses. I readily did him the
pleasure, therefore,--forgive it!--of promising him, that I
would receive no visits from strangers in a strange
house--because, he said, it was improper. I must go home for
some days on account of the Prince's marriage; but I shall
see thee soon. O forgive! When my father speaks softly, my
soul cannot possibly say, No. Farewell, my noble one!