The hour of departure came rolling on with swifter and swifter wheels;
more constellations of joy went down than came up. Thus do the blooming
vineyards of life always grow green on the ups and downs of a
mountainous way, never on a smooth plain. The two lovers needed quiet
now, not walks. They took the nearest, the path to the thunder-house.
They stepped into the glimmering vesper-grounds as into a new land; at
mid-day man is awakened from one dream after another, and has always
forgotten and sees things always new. In Albano the golden splendor of
the strings of joy still lingered under the declining sun; he told her
gladly, how often he would visit her at her parents', and how he
certainly hoped to find them friendly. Liana, as a daughter and a lover,
retouched all his hopes with her own. But now she let her hitherto light
heart, which had been rocking itself on the flowers of sport, sink back
upon the solid ground of earnest.
When there is peace and fulness in a man, he wishes not to enjoy
anything else but himself; every motion, even of the body, jostles the
full nectar-cup. They hastened out of the loud, lively garden into the
still, dark thunder-house. But when, as if parted from the world, which
lay out around the windows, brightly glistening and far receding, they
stood alone together in the little twilight, and looked upon each
other,--and when Albano's soul became like a sun-drunken mountain at
evening, light, warm, firm, and fair, and Liana's soul like an
up-gushing spring on the mountain, which glides away purely bright and
cool and hidden, and only under the touch of the evening-beam glows in
rosy redness,--and now that these souls had just found each other in the
wide, unharmonious world,--then did a mighty joy thrill through them
like a prayer, and they cast themselves upon each other's hearts, and
glowed and wept and looked upon each other exaltedly in the
embrace;--and, on the Æolian-harp, suddenly the folding doors of an
inspired concert-hall flew open, and outswelling harmonies floated by,
and suddenly again the gates shut to.
They seated themselves at the breezy eastern window, before which the
mountains of Blumenbühl and Lilar's hills and paths lay in the sunlight.
Around them was evening shade, and all was still, and the Æolian-harp
breathed low. They only looked at each other, and felt joy to their
innermost being that they loved and possessed each other. How
ecstatically did they look, from the protection of this citadel, down
into the sounding, stirring world! Down below the wind blew the blaze of
poppies and tulips far and wide, and in among the heavy, yellow harvest.
The silver-poplars, wearing eternal May-snow, fluttered with uptossing
splendor; a flock of pigeons went rustling away, and dipped into the
blue; and overhead, amid flying clouds, stood those round temples of
God, the mountains, in rows, beside each other, bearing alternate nights
and days; and the pious father stood alone on his hill, and handed his
roe tender branches.
"Thus may we ever remain!" said Albano, and pressed her dear hand with
both of his to his heart. "Here and hereafter!" said she. "Albano, how
often have I wished thou wert at the same time my female friend, that I
might speak with thee of thyself! Who on the earth knows how I esteem
thee, except myself alone?" "Here and hereafter? Liana, I am happier
than thou, for I alone believe in our _long_ life here," said he, all at
once changed.
Whatever, now, may have been the reason,--whether that man is not at all
accustomed to be happy in a pure present, severed from all future and
past, because his inner heaven, like the natural one, directly over his
head and close to him, always looks dark-blue, and only round about the
distant horizon radiant; or that there is a bliss so tender and
unearthly as, like the moonshine, to be made too dark by every passing
cloud, whereas a sturdy one, like daylight, can bear the broadest; or
that Albano was too much like men who always in joy feel their powers so
strongly that they would rather kick over the table of the gods than see
a dish or a loaf of the heavenly bread less thereupon, rather be
perfectly miserable than not perfectly happy;--suffice it, he could not
and would not be guilty of longer fear and concealment.
So, when Liana, instead of answering, only embraced him, and was silent,
because she meant to remain the whole day true to her promise not to
dash the festal tapestry of fair days with a shade of mourning-cloth,
then, as if urged on by a strange spirit, he spoke out: "Thou answerest
nothing? Only joys, not sorrows, shall I share? Thou hast not thy veil?
Wilt thou spare _me_ as a weakling? and thee alone shall thy
death-belief continue to oppress? Liana, I will have pangs, too, and all
thine,--tell all!"
"Truly, I only meant to keep my promise," said she, "and no more. But
what then shall I say to thee, dear?"
"Dost thou believe, then, that thou art certainly to die after a year,
superstitious one?--heavenly one!" said he.
"In so far as it is God's will, certainly," said she. "O my good Albano,
how can I help my belief, much as it pains thee too?" And here she could
no longer restrain her tears, and all the crucifixes of memory started
up alive in the fair soul, and bled intensely.
"God's will?" asked he. "Quite as well might he at this moment
precipitate a winter as an iceberg, into this happy summer. God?" he
repeated, looked up, knelt down, and prayed, "O thou all-loving God--But
thou shalt not die to me!" He turned, as if in anger, towards her,
incapable of continuing his prayer, for the cry of his heart, and wiping
hastily with both hands over his moist face. Now he prayed on, with a
soft, trembling voice: "No, thou all-loving One! kill not this fair,
young life! Leave us together long in purity and in peace."
She knelt involuntarily at his side;--to-day more exhausted with
pleasures and unknown inner victories, even with long walking, so much
the more intensely struck by a moving reality that she had been spoiled
and softened by moving fancies, and inexpressibly afflicted at Albano's
sorrow;--she could not speak; her head and neck bowed, as under a
burden suddenly laid upon them; and thus, as one heavily overclouded by
a whole life, she looked down upon the floor. The embracing death-flood
sounded with one arm around her; then did she see, without looking up,
her Caroline pass by somewhere in bridal dress, and with the white,
gold-spangled veil trailing along far over life; and she saw clearly how
the celestial shape, when Albano begged for her life, shook its head
slowly to and fro. "Cease to pray!" she cried, inconsolably. "But listen
to me, thou cold apparition, and only make _him_ happy!" she prayed, but
she saw nothing more; and, with inexpressible love, she hid her face,
marked all over with the lines of agony, upon his breast.
Here her brother called up, that the carriage was ready. She threw down
a quick, thin-voiced "Yes." "Must we part?" asked Albano; the fiery rain
of ecstasy had now fallen back into his open soul, in the shape of a
darker rain of ashes; and so he went on without any bounds to his
anguish. "Then have we seen each other for the last time?" and under the
closed eyelid his noble eye wept.
"No! in the name of the All-gracious, no!" said she, and rose to go.
"Stay!" said he, and she staid, and embraced him again. "But do not
accompany me!" she entreated. "Not!" said he, and held her for some time
as she withdrew, by the tips of the fingers; it pained him so much, when
he saw the sufferings which had been brought upon this still form, that
these white wings of innocence had beaten themselves bloody against his
cliffs and mountain-horns. He drew her again to himself, ere he let her
and his salvation go from him. He looked after her as she slowly stole
down along the sunny mountain, drying her eyes under the twigs, and
went with bowed head along all the gay, blooming paths of the forenoon's
walk. But he gazed not after, when her carriage rolled away across the
joyous wood; he stood at the eastern window, and saw his childhood's
mountains tremble, because he had forgotten to dry his eyes.