A hard, black morning; only the outward atmospheric morning was
dark-blue; there was nothing loud and stormy, except perchance the
swarms of bees in the linden-thicket; the heaven's ether seemed to
flutter away high over the stony streets, so as to settle down low in
the bright open Lilar upon all hill-tops and tree-tops, and, blue as
peacock's plumage, to play its hues over the twigs.
Liana found on her writing-table a billet, folded in large quarto,
wherein the Minister, ever-working, like a heart, sought even at this
early hour of the morning, before raising out of the public documents
for the several administration and exchequer counsellors the transient
tempests which were necessary to fruitfulness, to descend upon his
shuddering daughter with a cold morning rain-gust. In the decretal
letter referred to, he developed more in detail, upon a sheet and a half
what he had meant yesterday,--separation on the spot; and offered six
grounds of separation,--first, his uncongenial relation with the Knight
of the Fleece; secondly, her own and the Count's youth; thirdly, the
approaching place of court-dame; fourthly, that she was his daughter,
and this the first sacrifice to which he, her father, for all his
previous ones, had ever laid claim; fifthly, she might perceive, by his
indulgent "Yes," to the love of her brother, whose apparent improvement
he held out to her as a model, that he lived and cared only for the
welfare of his children; sixthly, he would send her to Fort * * * to his
brother, the commandant, in case she were refractory, by way of exiling,
punishing, and bringing her round; and neither weeping, nor falling at
feet, nor mother, nor hell should bend him; and he gave her three days'
time for reflection.
Mutely, and with wet eyes, she handed to her who had been hitherto her
comforter the heavy sheet. But the comforter had become a judge: "What
wilt thou do?" said the Minister's lady. "I will suffer," said Liana,
"in order that _he_ may not suffer; how could I so sorely sin against
him?" The mother, whether actually under the old notion of her easy
conversion, or from dissimulation, took that "He" for the father, and
asked: "Say'st thou nothing of me?" Liana blushed at the substitution,
and said: "Ah! poor me, I will not indeed be happy,--only true!" How had
she during this night prayingly lived and wept amidst the fearful wars
of all her inner angels! A love so guiltless, consecrated by her holy
friend in heaven,--a fidelity so exceedingly abridged by early death;
so sound-hearted a youth, shooting up with high, fruit-bearing summit
heavenward, whom not even ghostly voices could scare or allure out of
his faithful childhood's love toward her, insignificant one; the
everlasting discomfort and grief which he would experience at the first,
greatest lie against his heart; her short, straight path through life,
and the nearness of that cross-way, at which she should wish to throw
back,--not stones, but flowers upon the other pilgrims;--all these forms
took her by _one_ hand to draw her away from her mother, who called
after her with the words: "See how ungratefully thou art going from me,
and I have so long suffered and toiled for thee!" Then came Liana back
again out of the dusky, warm rose-vale of love into the dry, flat
earth-surface of a life, wherein nothing breaks the monotony save her
last mound. O how imploringly did she look up to the stars, to see
whether they did not move as the eyes of her Caroline, and tell her
_how_ she must sacrifice herself, whether for her lover or for her
parents; but the stars stood friendly, cold, and still in the steadfast
heavens.
But, when the morning sun again beamed upon her heart, it beat
hopefully, newly strengthened with the resolution to endure this day for
Albano full many sorrows,--ah yes, even the first. Could Caroline,
thought she, approve a love to which I must be untrue?
Hardly had she left the lips of her mother with the morning greeting,
when the latter sought, but more earnestly than yesterday, to draw up
the roots of this steadfast heart out of its strange soil by a longer
use of yesterday's flower-extractor. In her comparative anatomy of
Albano and Roquairol, from the similarity of voice even to that of
stature, she grew more and more cutting, till Liana, with a maiden's
wit, at once asked, "But why may my brother, then, love Rabette?"
"_Quelle comparaison!_" said the mother. "Art thou nothing better than
she?" "She _does_, strictly speaking, much more than I," said she, quite
candidly. "Didst thou never quarrel with the wild Zesara?" asked the
mother. "Never, except when I was in the wrong," said she, innocently.
The mother was alarmed to perceive more and more clearly that she had to
pull up deeper and stronger roots than light flowers strike into the
soil. She concentrated all her maternal powers of attraction and
lifting-machines upon one point, for the upturning of the still green
myrtle. She disclosed to her the Minister's dark plan of an alliance
with the German gentleman, her hitherto concealed strifes and sighs on
the subject, her thus far effectual resistance, and the latest paternal
stratagem, to make her a garrison-prisoner with his brother, and thereby
probably Herr von Bouverot a besieger of the citadel.
For some readers and relicts of the heavy, old-fashioned, golden age of
morality, the remark is here introduced and printed, that a peculiar,
cold, unsparing, often shocking and provoking, candor of remark upon the
nearest relatives and the tenderest relations is so very much at home in
the higher ranks, that even the fairer souls, among whom, surely, this
mother belongs, cannot, absolutely, understand or do otherwise.
"O thou best mother!" cried Liana, agitated, but not by the thought of
the rattle and the snaky breath of Bouverot, or of his murderous spring
at her heart,--she thought with as much indifference of being betrothed
to him as any innocent one does of his dying on a scaffold,--but by the
thought of the long building over and crowding out of sight of the
motherly tears, the streams of motherly love, which had hitherto flowed
nourishingly deep down under her flowers. She threw herself gratefully
between those helpful arms. They closed not around her, because the
Minister's lady was not to be made weak and soft by any washing wave and
surge of sudden emotion.
Into this embrace the Minister struck or stepped in. "So!" said he,
hastily. "My ear, madam," he continued, "cannot be found again at all
among the domestics; I have that to tell you." For he had to-day posted
himself upon a law-giving Sinai, and thundered into the ears of the
service assembled at its foot the inquiry after his own ear, "because I
must believe," he had said to them, "that you, for very good reasons,
have stolen it from me." Then he had swept like a hail-storm, or a
kitchen-smoke in windy weather, through the servants' apartments and
corners, one by one, in quest of his ear. "And thou?" said he, in a
half-friendly tone to Liana. She kissed his hand, which he, as the Pope
does his foot, always despatched for kisses, as proxy and lip-bearer,
agent, and _de latere nuncio_ of his mouth.
"She continues disobedient," said the severe lady. "Then she is a little
like you," said he, because the mistrustful one looked upon the embrace
as a conspiracy against him and his Bouverot. Upon this, his ice-Hecla
burst out, and flamed and flowed, now upon daughter, now upon wife. The
former was absolutely a miserable creature, he said; and only the
Captain was worth anything, whom he luckily had educated by himself
alone. He saw through all, heard all, though they had hid away his
ear-trumpet. There was, accordingly, as he saw, (he pointed to his
unsealed morning-psalm,[208]) a communication between the two colleges;
but he invoked God to punish him if he did not--"my dear daughter, pray
answer at last!" he begged.
"My father," said Liana, who, since the fraternization of Bouverot and
the ill treatment from her mother, had begun to feel her heart wake up,
which, however, could only despise and never hate, "my mother has to-day
and yesterday told me all; but I have surely duties towards the Count!"
A bolder liveliness than her parents had ever missed or found in her
beamed under her upraised eye. "Ah, I will truly remain faithful to him
just as long as I live," said she. "_C'est bien peu_," replied the
Minister, astounded at such pertness.
Liana listened now, for the first time, after the word which had escaped
her; then, in order to justify the past and her mother, she conceived
the pleasant and ridiculous purpose, of moving and converting the old
gentleman by her ghost-visions or dream-seeings. She begged of him a
solitary interview, and afterward--when it was reluctantly
granted--intreated him therein for his sacred promise to be silent
towards her mother, because she feared to show to that loving one the
clock-wheels of her death-bell rattling so near to the fatal stroke. The
old gentleman could only, with a comic expression,--which made him look
like one who with a bad cold wants to laugh,--vow that he would keep his
word so far as was necessary, because never, so far as he could
recollect, had his word been kept by him, only he had been often kept by
his word. In such men, word and deed are like theatrical thunder and
lightning, which, though generally occurring in close connection, and
simultaneously in heaven, on the stage break forth out of separate
corners, and by means of different operators. But Liana would not rest
till he had put on a word-keeping, sincere face,--a painted window.
Thereupon she began, after a kissing of the hand,[209] her ghostly
history.
With unbroken seriousness, and firmly contracted muscles, he heard the
extraordinary narration through; then, without saying a word, he took
her by the hand and led her back into the presence of her mother, to
whom he handed her over with a long psalm of praise and thanksgiving
about her successful daughter's-school. "His boy's-school with Charles
had not been blessed to him, at least in this degree," he added. As a
proof, he frankly communicated to her--cold-bloodedly working up all
Liana's pangs, as the coopers do cypress-branches into cask-hoops--the
little which he had promised to bury in silence, because he always
prostituted either himself or the other party, generally both. Liana sat
there, deeply red, and growing hotter and hotter, with downcast eyes,
and begged God to preserve her filial love towards her father.
No sympathizing eye shall be further pained with the opening of a new
scene, when the ice of his irony broke, and became a raging stream, into
which flowed tears of maternal indignation, also, at the thought of a
precious being, and her feverish, fatal, dreaming of herself away into
the last sleep. The object and the danger almost united the married
couple for the second time; when there is a glazed frost, people go very
much arm in arm. "Thou hast sent nothing to Lilar?" asked the father.
"Without your permission I certainly should not do it," said she; but
she meant her letters, not Albano's. He took advantage of the
misunderstanding, and said, "Thou hast, however, surely." "I will gladly
do, and let be done everything," said she, "but only on condition the
Count consents, in order that I may not appear to him disingenuous; he
has my sacred word for my truth!" At this mild firmness, at this Peter's
rock overgrown with tender flowers, the father stumbled the hardest. In
addition to this, the transition of a haughty lover from his own wishes
to those of his enemies, supposing they had allowed Liana the question
to the Count, was so impossible on the one hand, and the solicitation of
this change, whether it were granted or refused, absolutely so degrading
on the other, that the astounded Minister's lady felt her pride rise,
and asked again, "Is this thy last word to us, Liana?" And when Liana,
weeping, answered, "I cannot help it; God be gracious to me!" she turned
away indignantly toward the Minister, and said: "Do now what you take to
be _convenable_; I wash my hands in innocence!" "Not so entirely, _ma
chère_; but very well!" said he, "thou wilt stay after to-morrow in thy
chamber, till thou hast corrected thyself, and art more worthy of our
presence!" he announced, as he went out, to Liana; firing at her
meanwhile two eye-volleys, wherein, according to my estimate, far more
reverberating fires, tormenting ghosts, eating, devouring medicaments,
brain and heart-borers, were promised, than a man can generally hold to
give or bear to receive.
Poor maiden! Thy last August is very hard, and no harvest-month day!
Thou lookest out into the time, where thy little coffin stands, on which
a cruel angel wipes away the still fresh flower-pieces of love running
round it, in order that it may, all white, as rosy-white as thy soul or
thy last form, be consigned to the grave!
This banishment by her mother into the desert of her cloister-chamber
was quite as frightful to her, only not more frightful than her anger,
which she had to-day, only for the third time, experienced, though not
deserved. It was to her as if now, after the warm sun had gone down, the
bright evening glow had also sunk below the horizon, and it grew dark
and cold in the world. She remained this whole day, which was yet
allowed her, with her mother; gave, however, only answers, looked
friendly, did everything cheerfully and readily, and--as she quickly
dashed away, with her tiny finger, every gathering dew-drop out of the
corner of her eyes, as if it were dust, because she thought, at night I
can weep enough,--she had very dry eyes; and all that, in order not to
be an additional burden to her oppressed mother. But she, as mothers so
easily do, confounded a timid, loving stillness with the dawning of
obduracy; and when Liana, with the innocent design of consolation,
wished to have Caroline's picture brought for her from Lilar, this
innocence also passed for hardness, and was punished and reciprocated
with a corresponding on the part of the parent, namely, with the
permission to send. Only the Minister's lady demanded the French prayers
of her again, as if she were not worthy to lay them under her present
heart. Never are human beings smaller than when they want to plague and
punish without knowing _how_.
As every one who rules, whether he sits on a chair of instruction or a
princely one, or, like parents, on both, when the occupant of its
footstool once leaves off his former obedience, imputes that obedience
to him, not as a mitigation, but as an aggravation of his offence, so
did the Minister's lady also toward her hitherto so uniformly docile
child. She hated her pure love, which burned like ether, without ashes,
smoke, or coal, so much the more, and held it to be either the author
or the victim of an incendiary fire, particularly as her own married
love hitherto had seldom been anything more than a showy chimney-piece.
Liana at last, too heavily constrained, since on the other side of the
wall-tapestry the serene day, the loveliest sky was blooming, ascended
to the Italian roof. She saw how people were travelling and riding back
contentedly from their little places of pleasure, because the earth was
one; on Lilar's bushy path the walkers were sauntering with a blissful
slowness home,--in the streets there was a loud carpentering at the
festive scaffoldings and Charles's-wains for the princely bride, and the
finished wheels were rolled along for trial,--and everywhere were heard
the drillings of the young music, which when grown up was to go before
her. But when Liana looked upon herself, and saw her life alone standing
here in dark raiment,--over yonder the empty house of her loved one,
here her own, which to her had also become empty,--this very spot, which
still reminded her of a lovelier, rarer blossoming than that of the
_Cereus serpens_,--and oh! this cold solitude, in which her heart
to-day, for the first time, lived without a heart; for her brother, the
chorister of her short song of gladness, had been sent off, and Julienne
had for some time been incomprehensibly invisible to her,--no, she could
not see the fair sun go down, who, so serene and white, was sinking to
slumber with his high evening star,--or listen to the happy evening
chorus of the long day, but left the shining eminence. O how does joy
die a stranger in the untenanted, dark bosom, when she finds no sister
and becomes a spectre there! Thus does the beautiful green, that spring
color, when a cloud paints it, betoken nothing but long moisture.
When she entered, soon, the asylum of day, the bedchamber, the heavens
without flashed heat-lightning; O why just now, cruel fate?--But here,
before the still-life of night, when life, covered with her veil, sounds
more faintly,--here may all her tears, which a heavy day has been
pressing,[210] gush forth freely. On the pillow, as if it bore the last,
long sleep, rests this exhausted head more softly than on the bosom
which reproachfully reckons up against it its tears; and it weeps
softly, not _upon_, only _for_ loved ones.
According to her custom, she was on the point of opening her mother's
prayers, when she recollected, with a startled feeling, that they had
been taken from her. Then she looked up with burning tears to God, and
prepared alone out of her broken heart a prayer to him, and only angels
counted the words and the tears.