On Sunday morning, when all the blue heavens stood open, and the earth
was festally decked with pearls and twigs, a gentle finger tapped at
Albano's door, which could belong to none but a female hand. It was
Liana who entered at so early an hour; Rabette and Charles without
uttered a loud greeting. On his exulting breast fell the beautiful
maiden, blooming from, her walk, with blessed, bright eyes, a freshly
bedewed rose-bud. It was his finest morning; he had a clear feeling of
Liana's love. As the Æolian-harp sounded in, she looked towards it,
remembered with a blush that fairest evening of the covenant, and
listened in silence, and dried her eyes when she turned them again
towards Albano. But he could not enter into this temple of joy without
having cleansed and healed himself by a frank confession of his late
errors. What a sweet rivalry ensued between them of confessing and
forgiving, when Liana lovingly exclaimed and owned that she had not
understood him lately, that only she was the blamable one, and that she
would begin this very moment to speak better. She could not give herself
any comfort about the secret pangs which she had caused her friend. As
mahogany furniture cracks in no temperature, and contracts no spots, and
needs no polishing, so was it with this heart, Albano's felt, as he now
swore to himself always, even when he did not understand her, to say to
himself, She is right.
She solved for him the riddle of her appearing to-day with those
friendly looks which a good nature redoubles, when it has anything to
sweeten,--namely, she was going back to Pestitz to-day; but the carriage
would not come till late, till evening, in fact, about tea-time, and so
there remained a whole day before them; and she hoped her father would
not take this circuitous route through Lilar as a breach of her promise.
A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold. Thereupon she sought to
make him quite calm about the peaceful intentions of her father, and
represented his strictness, in subjecting himself and others to
convenience, as the reason of his prohibition, as well as of her being
summoned back to the wedding-festival. Albano, so soon after the oath
which he had just sworn to himself, kept it, and said, She is right.
The Captain came in with the red-cheeked Rabette, whose eyes glistened
with joy. The small apartment did not, by narrowness and confusion, make
the pleasure less. Charles, generally so much like Vesuvius, which in
the first hours of morning is still covered with snow, presented already
a warm summit; he seated himself at the instrument and thundered into
the noisy presence with a prestissimo (which lay open) of Haydn's,--that
true hour-caller of rejoicing hours,--and played, to the astonishment of
the females, the hardest part so easily, at sight, that he rather played
into it, than from it, and kept composing much (for instance, the bass)
himself; whereas Albano, with almost comic fidelity, gave you the exact
truth in music quite as much as in history, which, again, always became
in Charles's mouth a piece of his own personal biography. The morning
added wings to all their souls, whereas noon always binds men's wings
down,--hence Aurora goes with winged steeds, and the god of day with
wingless ones. "But how now are our seven pleasure-stations to be made
out?" inquired Charles, "for the day lies like a garden-hall, with
nothing but pleasure-avenues on all sides open before us." "Charles, is
it not, then, a matter of indifference _where_ a man loves?" said
Albano. Blessed one, whose heart needs nothing but one heart more, no
park into the bargain, no _opera seria_, no Mozart, no Raphael, no
eclipse of the moon, not so much as moonlight, and no read or acted
romance!
"First, I must see my Chariton," said Liana. "Yes," added her brother,
immediately, "she can bring our dinner after us into the gothic temple."
He proposed, namely, on this lovely day, to dine in the twelfth century,
and to sit by a sombre, motley window-light, and on sharp-cornered,
heavy, thick furniture, and, as it were, darkly under the earth of a
green present, glistening overhead, to sit with blooming faces; for
thus did he overload the fullest enjoyments with external contrasts, and
enjoyed every happy present most in the near gleam and reflection of the
sharpened sickle which was to mow them away.[190] "God forbid and avert
it, friend!" said Rabette. Albano, too, deemed the friendly Greek, her
laughing children, and the neighboring rose-fields far preferable, and,
with the aid of Liana, prevailed. Before the embowered cottage the
children came running to meet them, Helena, with her little apron full
of orange-blossoms, which she had picked up, for the breaking of them
off had been forbidden her, and Pollux, in the last, light bandage of
his broken arm, the hand of which had now been obliged to work with its
companion, the right hand, at puckering up and cracking the rose-leaves.
Both gave notice: "Mother was not ready yet, and had dressed them
first." But presently, neat and simple as a priestess destined to dance
around the altar of gods of joy, sprang Chariton to meet her Liana, and,
as she came, continued adjusting her hastily donned clothes by a light
hitching and twitching. "This," said Roquairol, after he had easily
obtained from Rabette a nodding assent thereto, because she had not
understood his French request for the same, "is my spouse since
yesterday,"--and he enjoyed without further circumstance the right of
thouing her, which she, since the friendly encouragement of the
Minister, accepted the more fondly with maidenly presentiments.
When Liana kindly announced four noonday guests for Chariton, there
stood in the dark eyes of the Greek gleams of joy, and the little face,
with great arched Italian eyebrows, became a stereotype smile, which was
not culinary embarrassment, but merely tongueless joy; which only made
her white semicircle of teeth shine more broadly, when Charles spoke
right out: "Surely thou canst help her, wife!" "Of course!" said
Rabette, quite delighted; because her heart had no longer any other lips
than her two hands, for which, if they could only lay hold of hard work,
it was full as much as if they were pressed by the hand of a lover. Did
she not again and again curse her awkward, hesitating throat, when
Roquairol, in her presence, poured out his sounding and fiery torrents
of speech? On this occasion, when he had again set off the surroundings
with artificial, shadowy refinements, he insisted upon it, of course,
that Chariton should be executive secretary, and Rabette only
corresponding secretary. Liana, too, out of a like womanliness, would
fain do something for her darling; but since she, as a maiden of rank,
could not cook anything, but only bake a little, accordingly it was
assigned her,--but reluctantly on the part of her friend, who never
loved to see the sweet form anywhere else than, like other butterflies,
by his side among the flowers,--at a quite late moment, and for a space
of ten minutes, with her eyes and in extraordinary cases with her three
writing-fingers, to co-operate in making the snow-balls, which were to
close and crown the dessert.
Never had kitchen ball-queen a broader canopy, or a more beautifully
carved sceptre and apple, or fairer _dames d'atour_[191] than Chariton,
and vessels and fire were quite thrown into the shade thereby.
Now the happy couples--and the children too--went out into the joyful
day, into the youthful garden, in order, like planets, with their moons,
to stand now near each other, now far off, now in opposition, and now in
conjunction, on their heavenly orbit around the same sun. "We will
launch out at a venture," said Charles, in port, "and see whether we do
not meet." Albano went with Liana after the children, who were already
skipping along on the little houses through the rose-walks, on the
bridge over the singing wood. He whose heart beats in such calm
blissfulness, seeks in the invisible church no visible one: the whole
temple of nature is the temple of love, and everywhere stand altars and
pulpits. On the smoothly descending life-stream man stands without
rudder, happy in his skiff, and leaves it to its own will.
Then the children, mindful of the maternal prohibition against
excursions, led the way up along the right, over the bridged eminence,
to the western triumphal arch; and Helena, merely as guide of the little
convalescent, ran forward quite unexpectedly and wildly with his hand.
How gladly did Albano follow the little pilots and pointers! Heavens!
when they looked round them on the magnificent height, and into the rich
outspread day, and then into each other's eyes, how freely and broadly
did the arches of their life-bridge rear themselves, and ships, with
swollen sails and proudly towering masts, sail away beneath! Rose-trees
clambered up the triumphal arches, the children reached up, snatched
roses from their summits, and trudged away (working out and proving the
unusual obedience) over four gates, in order, from the fifth, to look
down into the smooth, shining lake, and to descend into the "enchanted
wood," where art, like the children, played her pranks.
Out of the entrance of the wood came forth Charles and Rabette, on their
way back to Chariton over the arches, the former bound to the
wine-cellar (he had something empty therefrom in his hand), and she
intending to run a moment into the kitchen. He went blissfully, as if on
wings, and said: "Life travels to-day in the constellation of the wain,
far away through the blue." He turned round, however, to let the
_Pleiades_ rise before them, that is, the so-called "inverted rain,"
which ascends only for the space of five minutes, and properly only in
an illumination. He led them all into the wondrous wood, through a light
that lay in noonday slumber, glowing under free trees, whose stems,
standing far asunder, only tendered each other their long twigs. At the
focus of the picturesque paths, he let them await the play of the rain.
The children sprang after him with their hopes, and, backed by the
courage of the grown ones, sat down by them, on designated seats of the
gods, or children's seats, between two little round lakes.
While Charles ran swiftly up and down in zigzag, attending to the
hydraulic and other mechanism,--nearly according to the points of the
labyrinth-garden in Versailles,--they could fly about through the magic
wood that rose everywhere. An all-powerful arm of the Rosana, which
swept by without, struck in among the flowers, and bore a heavy, rich
world; now the water was a fixed mirror, now a winding, beating vein,
now a gushing spring, now a flash of lightning behind flowers, or a dark
eye behind leafy veils; tapering shores, short beds, children's gardens,
round islands, little hills, and tongues of land lay between: they held
their motley, blooming children on arm and bosom, and the blue eyes of
the forget-me-not, and the full tulip-cheeks, and the white-cheeked
lilies played together like brothers and sisters apart from strangers,
but roses ran through all. Now they heard a murmuring and purling; the
lakes beside them bubbled up; on a peeled May-tree, fenced in on an
island, the yellow fir-needles began to drop from above; from the
hanging birches on the tongue of land, an inner rain dripped and glided
down; out of the two lakes beside them water-jets flew like
flying-fishes toward heaven. Now it gushed everywhere, and rows of
fountains, those water-children, played with the flower-children. Like
birds, streams fluttered with broad wings out of the laurel-hedges, and
fell into the groups of roses. On a hill full of oaks, a water-snake
crawled up; victoriously shot out from all the mouths of the shores
besieging arches to the summits; suddenly the cheated spectators found
themselves overhung with rainbows, for the lakes flung their waters high
across over them, so that the wavering sun blazed through the
lattice-work of drops, as through a shivered jewel-world. The children
screamed with a terror of joy. The scared birds cruised through the
shower; night butterflies were cast down; the turtle-doves shook
themselves on the ground, beaten down in the torrents; the banks and the
beds held their blooming little ones beneath the heavens.
After five minutes the whole was over, and nothing remained, save that
in all flowers and eyes the moist radiance trembled, and on the waves
the stars continued to glisten. The children ran after the
wonder-worker, Charles. "All is over outwardly," said Albano, "but not
within us. I am to-day perfectly and peacefully happy; for thou lovest
me, and the whole world, too, is friendly. Art thou, too, happy, Liana?"
She answered, "Still more happy, and I must needs weep for joy if I told
how happy I am." But she was weeping already. "See! drops!" said she,
naively, as he looked upon her, and wiped _his_, which were the
sprinklings of the rainbow, softly from his cheeks. His lips touched her
holy, tender eye, but the other remained open, and her love looked out
from it at him, and never did her holy soul hover nearer to him.
After a few minutes this inverted heavenward shower was also over. They
went across the middle of the free gardens to the eastern parts and
gates. How brightly lay the coasts of the future before them, with
thick, high green, and nightingales flying around the shores! Rapture
makes the manly heart more womanly. The voice of his full bosom spoke
but softly to Liana, on whose countenance, turned sidewise and
heavenward, lay a still, pious gratitude; his fiery glance moved but
slowly, and rested on the beautiful world; and he went without hasty
strides around the smallest points of land. The young nightingale whet
her well-fed bill against the twig, and shook herself merrily; the old
one sang a short lullaby, and skipped chanting after fresh food; and
everywhere flew and screamed across each other's paths the children of
spring and their parents. Little white peacocks ran, without their
pride, like little children in the grass. Blissfully floated the swan
between her waves, with the white arch over the eyes that dipped under,
and blissfully hovered the glistening music-fly, like a fixed star,
undisturbed in the air, over a distant, flowery bell. The butterflies,
flying flowers, and the flowers, fettered butterflies, sought and
sheltered each other, and laid their variegated wings to wings; and the
bees exchanged flowers only for blossoms, and the rose which has no
thorns for them they exchanged only for the linden.
"Liana," said Albano, "how I love the whole world to-day, on thy
account! I could give the flowers a kiss, and press myself into the very
heart of the full trees; I could not tread in the way of the long chafer
down there." "Should one," she replied, "ever feel otherwise? How can a
human being, I have often thought, who has a mother, and knows her love,
so afflict and rend the heart of a brute mother? But Spener says, we do
not forgive beasts even their virtues." "Let us go to him," said he.
They came out through the eastern gate on the mountain-way behind the
flute-dell, up to the house of old Spener, which lay in noonday
brightness; but, as they heard loud reading and praying, they chose
rather to walk by at a great distance, in order not to throw so much as
their shadow into his holy heaven.
They gazed into the fair, still flute-dell, and would fain go directly
in; at length it spoke up to them with one flute. Their friends seemed
to be down below there. The flute continued long to complain, as if
lonely and forsaken; no sisters and no fountains murmured in with it. At
last there rose, panting, in company with the flute, a timid, trembling
singer's voice, struggling forth. It was Rabette, behind the tall
bushes. She stirred both to the depths of the soul, because the poor
creature, with the labor of her helpless voice, was rendering her loved
one the meek sacrifice of obedience. "O my Albano," said Liana, twining
around him with ecstasy, "what sweetness to think that my brother is
happy, and has found peace of soul, and _that_ through thy sister!" "He
deserves all my peace," said he, with emotion; "but we will not disturb
the two, but go back the old way." For Rabette's tones were often cut
short, but it was uncertain whether by fear, or by kisses, or by
emotion.
When they came in again through the eastern gate, the songstress and
Charles came out of the green portal to meet them, both with wet eyes.
Charles, stepping impetuously over living beds, and with wandering eyes,
grasped a hand of both with his, and said, "This is, for once in this
rainy world, a day which does not look like a night. Brother, but when
one is so deeply blest, and catches the music of the spheres, the tones
are such as were once heard in token that from Mark Antony his patron
deity, Hercules, was departing." Thus are joys, like other jewels,
mechanical poisons, which only in the distance shine, but, when touched
and swallowed, eat into us. But Albano replied, smiling, "Since thou now
fearest, dear friend, thou hast nothing to fear; for thou art not
perfectly happy. I, however, alas! fear nothing." "Bravo!" said Charles;
"now go into your kitchen, maiden!" He went into the so-called "Temple
of Dreams," but soon hastened after her into the forbidden kitchen.
Albano visited Liana's spring chamber. Here he painted to himself from
memory that bright Sunday when Liana led him through Lilar, and he let
the past soothingly glimmer into the present; but the latter overpowered
the former with its beams. Out in the garden stood and shone, so it
seemed to him, the pure pillars of his heaven, the supporters of his
temple, the trees; and all that he here saw near him belonged again to
his happiness, Liana's books and pictures and flowers, and every little
mark of her tender hand.
At last the saint of the Rotunda herself--suffused with a virgin blush
at this nearness and at his blushing--stepped in, to take him away into
the cool dining-room. It was small and dusky, but the heart needs not
for its heaven much space nor many stars therein, if only the star of
love has arisen. To the table-talk,--whereby alone an eating becomes a
human one,--and to the jokes,--the finest _entremets_, the powdered
sugar of conversation,--the children contributed their share, especially
as they, unqualified to ascend from the forbidden _thou_ to _you_,
always used thou-you at once. The deeply-red Chariton made extracts from
Dian's letters and from the history of her life, and from the surgeon's
bulletins in relation to Pollux's broken arm; she sought to extol the
snow-balls, listened with a half-credulous, half-cunning look to the
Captain, who spun out the sportive marriage-thou toward Rabette into
five acts, and smiled with pleasure just where it was required.
Especially did that music-barrel of all souls, Charles, spin joyously
round; that Jupiter, around whom the eclipses of so many satellites were
always flying, could show a great, serene splendor, when he and others
wished. As often as Albano, according to the old way, would not come to
his tragedy, he drew up the curtain of a comedy. To the good Rabette a
word was as good as a look from him, although she only returned the
latter, so as neither to fall into the _Thou_ nor into the _You_.
Albano, knit with ears and eyes to one soul, could not produce with his
lips much more than a smile of bliss; he could more easily have made a
hymn than a _bon-mot_, a grace at meat than a dinner speech. For his
Liana was to-day too affectionate, so contentedly and exhilaratingly did
the sweet maiden look round with such hearty play, acting the chatty,
bantering hostess, that a man who saw it and thought of her firm
death-belief, would only have been so much the more deeply affected by
this dance around the grave with flowers on the head, though he should
remark--or rather for the very reason of his remarking--that she was
here merely carrying on a joke with jocoseness itself for the
sake--according to her new moral funeral arrangement--of sweetening for
her beloved every parting-hour, as well the next as the last of all. But
this was hard to perceive, because in female souls every show easily
becomes reality, whether it be a sad or a gay one.
How happy was her friend and every good being to think that the saint
pronounced herself blest! And then she became, in turn, still more so.
Thus does the radiance of joy dart to and fro between sympathizing
hearts, as between two mirrors, in growing multiplication, and grows
without end.