Clouds like these last consisted with Albano less of falling drops than
of settling dust. His life was yet a hothouse, and stood therefore
toward the sunny side. Every day brought a new apology for the absent
sweetheart, till at last she needed one no longer. But still he gave to
every day its letter of indulgence for her silence; by and by they grew
into letters of respite (moratories); finally, when she never let
anything at all be heard or read from her; then he began to re-examine
the afore-said apologies, and strike out many things therein.
Quite as little could he find for himself, or for a note, a way of
access to her. Even the Captain had been gone for some days on a journey
to Haarhaar. With faint hands he held the heavy, drained cup of joy,
which, when empty, weighs the heaviest. The wild hypotheses which man in
such a case trots[192] through him--as in this, for instance, that of
Liana's being sick, having caught cold, her imprisonment, absence on a
journey--are, in their alternation and value, to be compared with
nothing, except with the quite as great wildness and number of the
plans which he enlists and dismisses,--that of abduction, of hate, of a
duel, of despair.
The terrible motionless time had no gnomon on its dial-plate. He stood
as near his fate as man does to his dreams, without being able to
recognize or prepare for its form, any more than one can for that which
dreams will take. He went often into the city, through all whose streets
there was riding, running, and driving, because they were about bringing
and nailing together the beams for the grandest throne-scaffolding, on
which the princely bride at her introductory compliment in the land,
might look round the farthest; but he heard nothing there of his own
bride, except that she quite often visited the picture-gallery with the
Minister.
Hereby two distressing hypotheses, that of her sickness, and that of her
being at war with her family, seemed to lose their stings. The best,
though the hardest thing was, to go straight to the Minister, as to
Vesuvius, in order there to have the fairest prospect. He visited the
Vesuvius. In fact this volcano was never more still and green. He asked
after everything, and expressed himself upon much which immediately
concerned the marriage festival; nor did he seek to conceal his hopes
and wishes that the Count would help welcome the admirable bride.
At last the latter, too, must venture to unfold _his_ hopes and wishes
about the ladies. The Minister replied, with uncommon pleasantness, that
the two had just carried back the "charming Mademoiselle von Wehrfritz"
to Blumenbühl; and indulged himself forthwith in a eulogium of that
"unsophisticated nature." Albano soon took his leave, but much happier
than when he came. A few street-lamps[193] certainly were now burning on
his path.
But in the morning he fell into a little obscure alley, where there was
not a single one; in other words, Rabette, the little reindeer, came
running to Lilar, as she yesterday had to Pestitz,--for what is a race
of a mile to a country-girl, else than a simple _Allemande_?[194]--and
shook and shook her heart before him, even to its very ears, but nothing
fell out of it except pleasant images, a few heavens, a complete
wedding-day, a couple of parents-in-law, and a Captain's wife. "The
Minister had been so courteous toward me, but--the mother afterward
still more so toward my parents; and they have mentioned and praised the
Captain so much,--in short, they of course know all, my glorious,
heartily-loved brother!" said she,--but of Liana she had nothing to
bring to her glorious brother, except a bill of her health; her joyous
eye had not turned toward any dark region whatever. "We were not alone a
minute, that is the reason of it," she added, and came again upon the
subject of her Captain, whom the Minister had sent out on the Haarhaar
road, as chief marshal of the escort of the Princess; yet she referred
him to the illumination night in Lilar, when she and Liana, and the
parents on both sides, had arranged to be there. Thou good creature! who
is so cruel as to begrudge thee the glittering ring of joy, which thou
contemplatest on thy brown and hard-boiled hand, and who does not fondly
wish that its stones may never fall out?
Soon after, the brother of the past festivals flew to the heart of the
deserted one,--Charles. He repeated almost exactly Rabette's deposition,
although not her rapture; he said,--but without special emotion,--that
his father actually threw him the brotherly hand kiss through several
rooms, distinguished and designated him quite particularly, and kindly
made use of him for business purposes; and all this merely since he had
become acquainted with his love for Rabette, and the silent assent of
the parents; for with his father, though the heart was of no account,
yet Rabette's fief was, especially as one could not trust, with all the
romantic stock-jobbing of his heart, that he would not himself one day
realize the poorest result.
With a sighing breast, which would gladly have imparted more to an
expecting one, Charles merely related that he had found Liana well and
quiet, but not alone for one minute. The association of another's want
with his own open, rich fortune was, so Albano believed, the fair,
tender reason why Charles glided with such cool, fleeting pleasure over
the parental benediction of his soul's bond. O, how he loved him at this
moment! Could he have loved him ever so much more, he would have done
it, though Liana had been actually lost to the sum of his happiness,
merely to show himself and him that holy friendship wants no third heart
in order to love a second.
This cloud of silence lay fixed for weeks, and grew more and more dark
around his fairest heights; and the guiltless one went round and round
through the darkness in a circle of contradictions. How must this youth
have harassed himself when he thought, as he soon did, that the parents
would, in all probability, reject an alliance with him, as he, indeed,
thought himself obliged rather to forget than to reciprocate their
advances, and that they might sacrifice two hearts to political
heartlessness; or when he let fall upon the innocent Liana the suspicion
of giving way before parental assaults, which suspicion received
reinforcement from the past through the conjecture that she had
embraced him rather in poetical enthusiasm and from goodness, and more
with wings than with arms, and that, in fact, accustomed to such long
submissions, she could hardly distinguish sacrifices and inclinations,
and might take one for the other; or when, as he soon and oftenest did,
he turned the point of all these weapons against his own breast, and
asked himself why he had such a firm confidence in friendship, and such
a wavering one in love. Then this reproach led him to a second, upon
every previous one, which he had cast upon the good soul merely for the
sake, according to the proselyting system and reforming mania which men
exercise more upon their wives than upon their friends, of melting her
down for his own mould. This last he might rue; as Holberg[195] observes
that men do not keep estates so well as women, because the former are
always wanting to improve them more than the latter; on the same ground,
also, lovers spoil women more than these do them.
For the sake merely of getting more expeditiously from the tedious
tribunal of the future his sentence of death, or a more agreeable
document, he went again to the ministerial house. He was again smilingly
received by the Minister, and seriously by the mother; and, in reply to
his question, Liana was not quite well. He laid before old Schoppe (who
now pressed his friendship upon him more warmly, and who, for some time
near the dissecting-knife of the Doctor, had not studied any other heart
than that which was to be spattered to pieces and prepared) a short
question about the Doctor's visits at the Minister's. How was he
astonished when he heard that no one out of the house any longer made
any visits to it, (while Liana, quite blooming, went into all circles,)
except merely the Lector, who made very frequent ones!
He well comprehended that only the Medusa's-heads of the parents could
turn the softest heart into stone against him; but even this he found
not right. He boldly demanded that she should love him more than her
parents, "not from egotism," said he to himself, "not on my account, but
on her own." A lover wishes a great, indescribable love, of which he
thinks himself always only the accidental and unworthy object, merely
for the sake of tendering the highest himself.
Even the silent Lector, who generally placed all newly rising lights
behind light-shades and fire-screens, communicated unbidden to the Count
the novel tidings that Liana would be, under the administration of the
coming Princess, something--[196]maid of honor. His old jealous
suspicion of Augusti's wishes or relations allowed him no answer to
that.
Now his spirit manned itself, and he wrote straight to the soul that
belonged to him, and sent the letter to her brother for delivery. The
latter came the next day, but seemed to him not to have any answer yet,
because he would otherwise have given it with the first greeting.
Charles introduced him to the Haarhaar court, where he had lately been;
said every nerve there had on jack-boots, and every heart a
hoop-petticoat; then went on to eulogize the youngest, but most
unpopular Princess, _Idoine_; declared she possessed, in addition to all
her other advantages,--for instance, purity, kindness, decision of
character, which even on the throne selects for itself its own lot and
life,--the further grace of amiableness, since even the princely bride,
who loved no one else, hung upon her heart, and--last, not least--the
advantage of a very deceptive similarity to Liana.
"Has Liana received my letter yet?" asked Albano. Charles handed it back
to him. "By Heaven!" said he, ardently, and yet ambiguously, "I could
not get it to her just now. But, brother, canst thou believe, only for
one minute, that she does not remain forever most thine?" "I do not
believe anything at all!" said Albano, offended, and tore his leaf on
the spot into little bits no bigger than the letters. "Only _we_ will,"
he continued, with a tone of emotion, "remain, as we are, firm as iron,
and flexible as iron when it comes out of the furnace." The deeply
touched friend sought to console him with the following: "Only wait, I
pray, the illumination evening;[197] then she will speak with thee. She
must certainly appear, and thou wilt wonder in what character, and for
whom." He nodded silently; he easily gathered her part from her
resemblance to Idoine, and from her expected office at court. But what
help was it to his fortune?
With the return of his note, which he despatched against his pride, that
same pride came back in renewed strength. Now was a hot seal stamped on
Albano's bleeding lip; he had now nothing for and before him, except
time, which was now his poison, and would by and by, as he hoped, be his
antidote. Nothing was ever master over his sense of honor, when it was
once roused. He could look forward to a scaffold on which blood spurted
out, but he could not look upon a pillory where, under the heavy,
poisonous, murderous pain of scorn and self-contempt, a downcast,
distracted face hung on the sinful breast.
Charles sometimes approached with a few lights the long night-like
riddle; but Albano, however much he wished them, staggered him by
opposition, and sought not even to hear him, much less to ask him
questions. So he lay on hard, youthful, thorny rose-buds, which a single
hour can open into tender roses. Victories beget victories, as defeats
do defeats; he found now, if not a complete relief from the emotions
which besieged him, nevertheless a mountain-fortification against them,
provisioned for a little eternity, in the shape of an astronomical
observatory. With an entire and firmly collected soul he threw himself
upon theoretical astronomy, in order not to see daylight, and upon
practical astronomy in order not to see night. The watch-tower stood
indeed upon a mountain intermediate between the city and Blumenbühl, and
commanded a view of both; but he cast his eyes only upon the
constellations, not upon those rosy-red spots of the earth, where they
now could have sucked out of the cold flower-cups only water instead of
honey. Thus amid the festive preparations in Lilar did he go armed to
meet the long delaying evening when the presence of the fairest soul
should either bless or destroy him, vainly looking from time to time at
the distant telegraph of his destiny, which was constantly moving,
uncertain whether with peaceful or hostile significance.