The Fog.--Lilienbad.
Receive us with thy flowery Eden, veiled Lilienbad, me, Gustavus and my
sister, give our dreams an earthly floor that they may play before us,
and be thou as beautiful in thy twilight haze as a Past!
To-day we made our entry and our _avant-courier_ was a sporting
butterfly which we drove before us from one flowery station to another.
And the path of my pen, also, shall lead over no less charming ground.
The morning of to-day had submerged the whole Auenthal landscape under
a sea of fog. The cloudy heavens rested low down upon our flowers. We
sallied forth and went into these fluid heavens, into which, generally,
only the Alps carry us up. Overhead on this globe of mist the sun
painted itself like a paling mock-sun; at last the white ocean ran off
into long streams--on the woods lay hanging mountains, every low place
was covered with gleaming clouds, overhead the blue celestial circle
opened wider and wider, till at length the earth took off from the
heavens its tremulous veil and gazed joyfully into the great, eternal
face--the white raiment of heaven (as my sister said) laid together by
itself still fluttered on the trees, and the fleeces of cloud still
overhung blossoms and floated as blond-laces around flowers--at last
the landscape was sprinkled with the glittering gold-grains of the dew,
and the meadows were overlaid as with magnified wings of butterflies. A
cleansed and exhilarating May air cooled as with ice the draught of the
lungs, the sun looked down joyously upon our sparkling spring and gazed
and glowed into all globules of dew, as God does into all souls.... Oh,
if I, this morning, when all things seemed to embrace us and when we
sought to embrace all, could not answer myself, when I asked myself:
"Was ever thy virtue as pure as thy enjoyment and for what hours does
_this_ one come to reward thee?"--still less can I now answer, when I
see that man can renew his joys, but not his deserts by remembrance,
and that the fibres of our brains are the chords of an AEolian harp,
which under the breath of a long-forgotten hour begin again to sound.
The great Spirit of the Universe could not transform for us the whole
stubborn chaotic mass with flowers; but he gave our spirits the power
to make out of the second more ductile chaos, out of the globe
of the brain, nothing but rose-fields and sunny shapes. Fortunate
Rousseau--more fortunate than thou thyself knowest! The heaven which
thou hast now won will differ in nothing from that which thy fancy here
laid out, except in this, that thou inhabitest it not alone....
But just that makes the infinite difference; and where could I have
felt it more sweetly, than by the side of my sister, whose glances have
been the reflection of our sky, whose sighs the echo of our brotherly
and sisterly harmony. Only be thou always so, precious darling! who
hast suffered as much from the sick man as I from the sickness! Besides
I know not which I oftener take back from thee, my blame or my praise!
Full of unuttered thoughts we arrived at Unter-Scheerau and found our
pale traveling-companion all ready, my Gustavus. He was silent much of
the time and his words lay under the pressure of his thoughts; the
outer sunshine paled to inner moonlight, for no man is cheery when
he is seeking or hoping to find the best that one can lose here
below--Health and Love. As in such cases the chords of the soul do not
fail to be put out of tune save under the lightest fingers, _i. e_.,
those of woman, accordingly I let _mine_ rest and _female_ fingers
play, those of my sister.
When, at length, we had waded through many a stream of fragrance--for
one often, out in the air, goes along by little flower-gales, without
knowing whence they blow;--and when all the haze of the day's joy had
condensed, before the eye, into an evening-dew and sunk with the sun;
when that part of the sky over which the sun flamed began to glow white
before glowing red, whereas the eastern quarter came forth in dark blue
to meet the night; when we had followed with our eyes every bird and
butterfly and traveler going in the direction of Lilienbad;--then at
last did the lovely vale, into which we brought with us so many hopes
as seeds of future joys, open to us its bosom. Our entry was at the
eastern end; at the western the sun looked at us along the earth toward
which he was going down, and as if from rapture over his well-spent
day, melted into an evening-redness which floated through the whole
valley and ascended even to the summits of the trees. I never saw the
like; it lay, as if it had fallen in drops, in the bushes, on the grass
and foliage and painted sky and earth to the likeness of one rosy cup.
Single cottages, sometimes pairs of them, embowered themselves with
trees; living lattices of twigs pressed themselves up on the prospects
of the chambers and overspread the happy one who looked out at these
pictures of bliss with shadows, perfumes, blossoms and fruits. The sun
had gone down: the vale, like a widowed princess, put on a veil of
white fragrant mist, and with its thousand throats sank into silence.
Oh, if our days in Lilienbad should be destined one day to die on
thorns; if, instead of sections of joy, I should have to write sections
of sorrow; if this is one day to be, then the reader will know it
beforehand in the fact of my leaving off from the section the word
"joy," and instead of the superscription make only crosses. But it is
impossible; I can conclude my sheet in peace. Beata still breathes a
low evening-song into her chorded echo; when both have died away then
will sleep extinguish the light of the senses in the dwellers of
Lilienbad and spread out the night-piece of dream in the twilight of
souls....