The father had made this chamber-imprisonment a punitory mark of her
refusal. With deep anguish she uttered this mute no, in the very fact
that she voluntarily stayed in the chamber, and denied her mother the
morning kiss. She had, in the course of the night, cast many an ardent
look at the dead image of her counsellor Caroline, but no original, no
fever-created form had appeared to her. Can I longer doubt, she inferred
from this, that the divine apparition, which has spoken the assenting
word to my love, was something higher than my own creation, since I must
otherwise have been able to form it again over against her picture?
She had Albano's blooming letters in her desk, and opened it, in order
to look over from her island into the remote orient land of warmer
times; but she shut it to again; she was ashamed to be secretly happy,
while her mother was sorrowful, who into these melancholy days had not
even come, like her, out of pleasant ones.
Froulay did not long leave her alone, but soon sent for her; not,
however, to sound her or pronounce her free, but for the purpose--which,
as may well be conceived, required an unvarnished brow and cheek, whose
fibrous network was as hard to be colored as his with the Turkish red of
shame--of appointing her his mistress in artistic language, and taking
her with him to the Prince's gallery, in order to learn from her the
explanation of these frontispieces (for such they were to him) in this
private deaf-and-dumb institution so well that he might be in a
condition, so soon as the Princess should come to inspect it, to
represent something better than a mute before the beauties of the
pictures and the image-worshipping Regentess. Liana had to transfer an
impression of every pictured limb, with the praise or blame appertaining
thereunto, over into his serious brain, together with the name of the
master. How delightedly and completely did she give this kallipædeia to
her growling old cornute,[211] and would-be _connoisseur_ in painting,
who paid her not a single thankful look as instruction-money!
At noon, for the first time, did the daughter find her longed-for
mother, among the kitchen-servants, very serious and sad. She ventured
not to kiss her mouth, but only her hand, and opened upon her her
love-streaming eyes only timidly and a little. Dinner seemed a
funeral-feast. Only the old gentleman, who on a battle-field would have
danced his marriage-minuet, and celebrated his birthday, was in good
spirits and appetite, and full of salt. In case of a family jar, he
usually ate _en famille_, and found in biting table-speeches, as common
people do in winter and in famine, a sharper zest for food. Quarrelling,
of itself, strengthens and animates, as physicians can electrify
themselves merely by whipping something.[212]
Laughable, and yet lamentable, was it that poor Liana, who was all day
long to keep a prison, was always called out of it just for
to-day,--this time into the carriage again, which was to set down the
sad heart and the smiling face before nothing but bright palaces. She
had to go with her parents to the Princess, and look as happy as they,
who, on the melancholy road, regarded her as if she were to be envied.
So does the heart which has been born not far from the throne never
bleed, except behind the curtain, and never laugh but when it rises;
just as these same distinguished ones were formerly executed only in
secret. The Prince, who was ridiculously loud on the subject of his
marriage; Bouverot, just returned from card-tables or privateering
planks, whom Liana now, since the latest intelligences, could only
endure with a shudder; and the Princess herself; who excused her
previous absence from her on account of the distraction of preparing for
the festival, and who very strangely jested at once about love and
men,--only to a Liana who guessed so little, suffered so much, and
endured so willingly, could all these beings and incidents seem anything
but the most intolerable.
Ah, what was intolerable, but the iron unchangeableness of these
connections, the fixedness of such an eternal mountain-snow? Not the
greatness, but the indefiniteness, of pain; not the minotaur of the
labyrinth, its cellar-frost, sharp-cornered rocks, and vaults, make the
breast contract and the blood curdle therein, but the long night and
winding of its egress. Even under bodily maladies, therefore, unwonted
new ones, whose last moment stretches away beyond our power of
prediction, appear to us more ominous and oppressive than recurring
ones, which, as neighboring frontier-enemies, are ever attacking us, and
find us in arms.
Thus stood the dumb Liana in a cloud, when the exulting Rabette, with a
bosom full of old joys and new hope, came running into the house,--that
sister of the holy youth who had been torn away from her, that
confederate of such glorious days. She was honorably received, and
constantly attended by a guard of honor,--the Minister's lady,--because
she might, indeed, as likely be an ambassadress of the Count as an
electress of her son. The cunning girl sought to snatch some solitary
moments with Liana by boldly begging for her company to Blumenbühl. The
company was granted, and even that of the mother freely offered, into
the bargain. Liana led the way to Blumenbühl over the still-blooming
churchyard of buried days. What a torrent of tears struggled upward in
her breast when she parted from the still happy Rabette! _She_ had
innocently left to the house one of the greatest apples of discord for
the evening meal which the Minister had ever plucked for his fruit-dish
with his apple-gatherer. Therefore he supped again _en famille_. That is
to say, a silly word had escaped Rabette about the Sunday's meeting at
Lilar. "Of that," said Froulay, in a very friendly manner, "thou hast
not made one word of remark, daughter." "I did to my mother
immediately," she replied, too fast. "I should be glad, too, to take an
interest in thy amusements," said he, saving up his fury. In the
pleasantest mood imaginable did this raftsman of so many tears and
hewn-down blossoming branches, which he let float down thereupon, take
his seat at the supper-table. He first asked servants and family for his
auxiliary ear. Thereupon he passed over to the French, although the
plate-exchangers found a rough translation thereof for themselves, a
_versio interlinearis_, on his face, by way of giving notice that the
distinguished Count had been there, and had inquired after mother and
daughter. "With good right he asked for you both," continued the moral
glacier, who loved to cool his warm food. "You are conspired, as I heard
again to-day, to keep silence towards me; but why, then, shall I still
trust you?" He hated from his heart every lie which he did not utter
himself; so he seriously regarded himself as moral, disinterested, and
gentle, merely for this reason, that he inexorably insisted upon all
this in the case of others. With an abundant supply of the stinging
nettles of persiflage,--the botanical ones also come forward best in
cold and stony soil,--he covered over all his opening and closing
lobster-claws, as we keep brook-crabs in nettles, and took first his
tender child between the claws. Her soft, submissive smile he took for
contempt and wickedness. How comes this soft one intelligibly by his
paternal name, unless one assumes the old hypothesis, that children are
usually most like that for which the pregnant mother vainly longed,
which in this case was a soft spouse? Then he assailed, but more
vehemently, the mother, in order by his mistrust to set her at variance
with his daughter; yes, in order, perhaps, to torment the latter, by
means of her mother's sufferings, into childlike sacrifices and
resolutions. He very freely declared himself--for the egotist finds the
most egotists, as love and Liana find only love, and no
self-love--against the egotism around and beside him, and concealed not
how very cordially he cursed them both for female egotists (as the old
heathen did the Christians for atheists). The Minister's lady,
accustomed to live with the Minister in no wedlock so little as in that
of souls,--as Voltaire defines friendship,--said merely to Liana, "For
whom do I suffer so?" "Ah, I know," she answered, meekly. And so he
dismissed both full of the deepest sorrows, and thought afterward of his
business matters.
This general distress was increased by something which should have
lessened it. The Minister was vexed that he had daily, in the midst of
his wrath, to consult the taste of the women upon his--exterior. He
wanted, at the marriage festival,--for the sake of his beloved,--to be a
true bird of paradise, a Paradeur, a _Vénus a belles fesses_.[213] Of
old he had loved to act the double part of statesman and courtier, and
would fain, by way of monopolizing pride and vanity, grow into a
Diogenes-Aristippus. Something of this, however, was not vanity; but
that tormenting spirit of the male sex, the spirit of order and
orthodoxy, would not go out of him. He was a man who would flourish
against his very livery the clothes-switch wherewith the servant had let
a few particles of dust settle on the state coat; still more dangerous
was it--because he sat between two looking-glasses, the frizzling-glass
and the large mirror in the stove-screen--to lay the dust rightly on his
own wool; and hardest of all was it for him to be satisfied with the
_fixing_ of his children. Liana, as artist, had now to suggest the
proper color of a new surtout. _Sachets_, or smelling-bags, he directed
to be filled, and with them his pockets; and a musk-plant pot placed in
his window, not because he wished to use the leaves for perfume (that he
expected of his fingers), but because he wished to anoint his fingers by
rubbing the leaves together. Patent pomatum for the hands, and English
pressed ornamental paper also for the same (when they wished to use a
_billet-doux_ pen), and other knickknacks, excited less attention than
the snuff which he procured for himself; not, however, for his nose, but
for his lips, in order to rub them red. In fact, he would have rendered
himself quite ridiculous in the eyes of many a merry blade, if such a
one had seen him draw privately out of his souvenir the hair-tweezers,
and with them the hair out of his eyebrows, just where the saddle of
life, as upon a horse's back, had worn it white; and only the Minister
himself could look serious during the process, when he sat before the
looking-glass, smiling through all the finest ways of smiling,--the best
one he caught and kept,--or when he tried the most graceful modes of
throwing one's self on the sofa,--how often he had to practise
this!--and finally, in short, through all his operations upon himself.
Fortunately for the mother, the good Lector came; from the hand of this
old friend she had so often taken, if not a Jacob's ladder, yet a
mining-ladder, upon which to climb out of the abyss; hopefully she now
laid before him all her trouble. He promised some help, upon the
condition of speaking with Liana alone in her chamber. He went to her
and declared tenderly his knowledge and her situation.
How did the childlike maiden blush at the sharp day-beams which smote
the scented night-violet of her love! But the friend of her childhood
spoke softly to this smitten heart, and of his equal love for her and
her friend; of the temperament of her father, and of the necessity of
considerate measures; and said the best was to make him a sacred vow
that she would yield to her parent's wish of her strictly avoiding the
Count, only until he had received from his father, to whom he himself,
as attendant of the son, had long been obliged to communicate
intelligence and inquiries about the new connection, the yes or no in
respect to it; if it were "no,"--which he would not answer for,--then
Albano must solve the riddle; if it were "yes," he himself would stand
security for a second on the part of her parents; at the same time,
however, he must lay claim to her profoundest silence toward them in
relation to his inquiries, whereby they might perhaps find themselves
compromitted. Thereby he rooted himself only the more deeply in her
confidence.
She asked, trembling, how long the answer would tarry? "Six, eight,
eleven days after the nuptials at most!" said he, reckoning. Yes, good
Augusti! "Ah! we are all suffering, indeed," said she, and added,
confidentially, and out of a weeping breast: "But is he well?" "He is
diligent," was the reply.
So he brought her, burdened with two secrets, and for the present
consenting to an interim-separation, back to her mother; but she
bestowed only upon the Lector the reward of a friendly look. He desired,
meantime,--after his Carthusian manner,--no other reward than the most
good-natured silence toward the Minister on the subject of his
interference, since the latter might hold his deserts in this connection
much greater than they were.
The eight days' improvement and abstinence was announced to the
Minister. He believed, however,--keeping in reserve a mistrust towards
his lady,--that he could carry the war farther into the enemy's country
with his own weapons; nevertheless, he contented himself, at the same
time, with the new respite and Liana's disincarceration, for the sake of
driving his daughter before him to his beloved at the nuptial festival,
blooming and healthy as a sparkling pea-hen.
Roquairol at this moment came back, and ushered into the house a cloud
or two full of beautiful, bright morning redness. He delivered to his
father tidings and greetings from the Princess. To Liana he brought the
echo of that beloved voice, which had once said to her heaven: "Let it
be!"--ah! the last melody among the discords of the unharmonious time!
He guessed easily--for he learned little from his mother, who neglected
him, and nothing from her daughter--how all stood. When he was actually
on the point of slipping Albano's letter to her, in the twilight of
evening, into her work-bag, and she said, with an ah! of love, "No, it
is against my word,--but at some future time, Charles!"--then he saw, as
he expressed it, "with crying indignation, his sister, in Charon's open
boat, sailing into the Tartarus of all sorrows." About his friend he
thought less than of his sister. The friendly, flattering Minister--he
presented, as a proof of it, a valuable saddle to the Captain--informed
him of Rabette's visit, and gave hints about betrothment and the like.
Charles said, boldly: "He postponed every thought of his own happiness,
so long as his dear sister saw none before her." By way of drawing the
old gentleman again into more interest for Liana, he suggested to him a
romantic invention for the marriage festival, which Froulay did not
dream of, when he already stood quite close to it; namely, Idoine (the
sister of the bride) was strikingly like Liana. The Princess loved her
inexpressibly, but saw her only seldom, because on account of her strong
character, which once refused a royal marriage, she lived in a village
built and governed by herself, in a courtly exile from court. He now
proposed to his father the poetic question, whether, on the illumination
night, Liana might not for a few minutes, in the dream-temple, which was
entirely suited to this beautiful illusion, delight the Princess with
the image of her beloved sister.
Whether it was that love toward the Princess made the Minister bolder,
or he was intoxicated by the desire of brilliantly introducing Liana to
her office of court-lady; suffice it, he found in the idea good sense.
If anything supplied tobacco for the calumet of the _ex parte_ peace
which he had made with his son, it was this theatrical part. He hastened
immediately to the Prince and the Princess with the prayer for his
permission and her sympathy; and then, when he had secured both, he
hastened on to his Orestes, Bouverot, and said: "_Il m'est venu une idée
tres singulière qui peut-être l'est trop; cependant le prince l'a
approuvée_," etc.,--and finally--for he must not forget her either--to
Liana.
The Captain had already sought to persuade her beforehand. The mother
opposed the dramatic imitation from self-respect, and Liana from
humility; such a representation seemed to her a piece of presumption.
But at last she gave in, simply because the sisterly love of the
Princess had seemed to her so great and unattainable, just as if she did
not cherish a similar sentiment in her own heart; thus she always
regarded only the image in the mirror, not herself, as beautiful; just
as the astronomer thinks the same evening, with its red splendors and
night shadows, more sublime and enchanting, when he finds it in the
moon, than when he stands in the midst of it on the earth. Perhaps, too,
there entered another element of secret sweetness into Liana's love for
the Prince's bride, namely, a step-daughter's affection; because she
should once have been the bride of the Knight Gaspard. Women regard
relationship more than we; hence, too, their ancestral pride is always
several ancestors older than ours.
Thus, then, did she make ready her oppressed heart for the light plays
of the shining festival, which the coming Cycles are to present on the
New-Year's holiday, as it were, of a new Jubilee.