"P. S. Soon a little leaf will come fluttering again over to
thy mountain. Only continue in perpetual joy! O God! why am
I not stronger? What beings shouldst thou then take to thy
heart!--Thou dear one!"
How was he shamed by this full-blooming love, which never rightly knows
when it is misunderstood, and which presupposes no other fault than its
own! How sadly did the thought of the commanded separation affect him
now, after the voluntary one! He could now love her as a guarding angel
_before_ Paradise, how much more as a giving angel _in_ it! But it is
hard for a man, as the youth felt, clearly to distinguish in the female
heart, especially in this one, intention from instinct, ideas from
feelings, and in this dark, full heaven to count and arrange all the
stars. Everything like hardness, every unpromising bud, arose at last as
a flower; and her worth unfolded itself piece-wise like spring; whereas,
generally, from other maidens, a traveller who visits them carries away
with him directly at his first evening's departure a little complete
flower-catalogue of all their charms and arts, as a Brocken-passenger
gets at the tavern a neat nosegay of the various kinds of mosses which
are found on the mountain.
He supposed she was now with her parents; and he followed, not as a
pouting schoolboy, but as a harmonious man, the giant of destiny. In the
garden rainy weather held sway, the crop of every heavy tempest, which,
like a war, always devastates the scene of conflict.
The promised leaflet appeared: "Only be happy. We shall see each other
very, very soon, and then most blissfully. Forgive me! Ah, I long
exceedingly!"
Now he experienced what days they were which had _once_--that is, only a
few days ago--passed before him as divine apparitions, and which now
again were to come up in the East as returning stars! Why does a
blessing, not till it is lost, cut its way like a sharp diamond so
deeply into the heart? Why must we first have lamented a thing, before
we ardently and painfully love it? Albano threw both past and future
away from him, that he might dwell wholly and purely in that present
which Liana had promised him.