On the loveliest evening, when the heavens were transparent to the very
bottom of all the stars, the Prince let the weary assembly drive to
Lilar, in order to make a better illusion with his two invisibilities,
with the Illumination and with Liana's _tableau vivant_. With what
growing anxiety and tenderness did the honest Albano's susceptible
heart beat, as, during the rolling down from the woodland bridge into
the expectant throng of the tumultuous populace, he thought to
himself,--_She_, too, went this way into the Lilar which used to be so
dear to her. His whole realm of ideas became an evening rain before the
sun, of which one half trembles glistening before the sun and the other
vanishes in a gray mist. Ah, before Liana it had rained without
sunshine, when she to-day secretly went over merely into the Temple of
_Dream_, in order only to personate a beloved being, but not to be one.
Not a lamp was yet burning. Albano looked into every green depth after
his angel of light. Even the Prince himself, who kept the sudden
kindling up of the St. Peter's dome still awaiting his nod and beck,
anticipated the pleasure, so rare at courts, of giving a twofold
surprise. The Princess had spared the Minister the dilemma of a lie or
an answer, for she had not inquired at all after her future court-dame
Liana, like the whole of that strong class of women, indifferent to her
sex, but attaching herself so much the more fixedly to a select one.
Albano espied, in the dark, driving whirl, his foster-parents and
Rabette; but in this reeling of the ground and of the soul he could
only, like others, direct his eyes toward the veil (itself veiled)
behind which he had more than all others to find and to lose. In the
years of youth, however, no black veil, only a motley one, hangs down,
and in all its sorrows are still hopes!
The people awaited the splendor and the music. The Prince at last led
his bride toward the Temple of Dream; Charles, to-day blind to his
Rabette, not _for_ her, took with him the glowing Count. In the outer
temple nothing could be detected corresponding to its magic name; only
the windows went from the roof of this Pavilion down to the very
ground; and, instead of frames and window-sills, were set in twigs and
leaves. But when the Princess had gone in through a glass door, the
Pavilion seemed to her to have vanished away; one seemed to stand on a
solitary, open spot, guarded with some tree-stems, which all vistas of
the garden met and crossed. Wondrously, as if by sportive dreams, were
the regions of Lilar intermingled, and opposites drawn together; beside
the mountain with the thunder-house stood the one with the altar, and
hard by the enchanted wood the high, dark Tartarus reared itself.
The near and the far swallowed each other up; a fresh rainbow of
garden-hues and a faded mock-rainbow ran on beside each other, as, when
one wakes, the shadow of the dream-image glides away, still visible,
before the glittering present. While the Princess was still sinking
away into the dreamy illusion,[9] Liana--as if gliding out of the air
through a glass side-door, in Idoine's favorite attire,--in a white
dress with silver flowers, and in unadorned hair, with a veil, which,
fastened only on the left side, flowed down at full length--came
tremulously forth, and when the deceived Princess cried out, "Idoine!"
she whispered, with a trembling and scarcely audible voice: "_Je ne
suis qu'un songe_."[10] She was to say more and offer a flower; but
when the Princess, with emotion, went on to exclaim: "_Sœur
chérie!_"[11] and folded her passionately in her arms, then she forgot
all, and only wept out her heart upon another heart, because to her
another's vain languishing after a sister was so touching. Albano stood
near to the sublime scene; the bandage was torn off from all his
wounds, and their blood flowed down warmly out of them all. O, never
had she, or any other form, been so ethereally beautiful, so
heavenly-blooming, and so meek and lowly!
When she raised her eyes out of the embrace, they fell upon Albano's
pale countenance. It was pale, not with sickness, but with emotion. She
started back, quivering, and embraced the Princess again; the pale
youth had wrung from her agitated heart one tear after another; but the
two did not greet each other,--and thus began their evening.
During the illusion and the embrace, at a nod from the Prince, all
twigs and gates of the garden were involved in a glistening
conflagration; all water-works of the enchanted wood started up, and
fluttered aloft with golden wings; in the inverted rain played a white,
green, golden, and gloomy world, and the jets of water and of flame
flew up mischievously against each other, like silver and gold
pheasants. And the splendor of the burning Eden embraced the Temple of
Dream, and the reflection fell on its inner green foliage-work, and
turned it to gold.
Liana, holding the hand of the admiring Princess, stepped out, with
downcast, bashful eyes, into the bright, busy city of the sun, into the
din of the music and of the exultant spectators. Upon Albano the stormy
scene came shooting like a torrent; such opposite and strangely
intermingled parts played before such opposite persons, the splendor of
the evening's gladness, and the nightly bewilderment in his bosom, made
it hard for him to walk through this evening with a firm step.
The Princess soon drew him onward in her wake and vortex; Liana she let
not go from her side. The Minister daubed and starched up with old
gallantries the erotic slave; but to every one he appeared, as the
Princess settles with creditors after the death of the Prince, to
imitate only the manner of ministers, whose spirit loves to proceed
from Father and Dauphin--_filioque_[12]--at once, in order to seat
itself, not between, but upon two princely chairs. She seemed, however,
since his manœuvring with Liana, to receive him more haughtily. He
was sufficiently blessed in the good fortune of his daughter, as his
step-son Bouverot was by her nearness, and this pair of knaves lay
deeply buried and revelling in nothing but flowers. Albano could divine
nothing more than that even a cold dragon, an orang-outang of souls,
was darkly spying out the charms of this angel.
The Minister's lady and the Lector took turns, with an easy
alternation, in guarding Liana from every word--of Albano. The Princess
let herself be conducted through the sparkling pleasure-avenues,
through the enchanted wood which was standing in moist lightnings, and
finally to the thunder-house, by way of taking the burning garden from
all points into her picturesque eye; Liana and Albano attended her
through all the walks of her withered, stale Arcadia, and held their
shattered hearts mutely and steadfastly together. True to her word
with her parents, she gave him no warmer look or tone than any other,
but no colder one neither; for her soul would not torment, but only
suffer and obey. He made--he thought--all his looks and tones gentle,
nor did the noble man avenge himself by a single manifestation of
coldness, or in fact of any insincere making-of-friends with the
princely female-recruiting-officer of crowns and hearts.
The Princess began to be unintelligible to him. They passed from the
romantic to romance, then to the question, why it did not portray
marriage. "Because," she replied, "it [romance] cannot be without
love." "And marriage?" asked Albano, uncourteously. "Cannot exist
without a friend," said she; "but Love is a god, _nec Deus intersit,
nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit_,"[13] she added, for she had
learned Latin for the sake of the poets.
Bouverot finished the verse, in order to make the sense
ambiguous,--"_Nec quarta loqui persona laboret_."[14] No one understood
this last but the Lector and the Princess.
"Why are there no lamps in that house?" she inquired. "Who lives
there?" She meant Spener's house. Liana answered only the latter
question, and concluded her glowing picture with the words, "He lives
for immortality." "What does he write?" inquired the Princess,
misunderstanding her; and Liana must needs give a Christian explanation
of the matter, whereupon the unbelieving woman smiled. There arose
forthwith a dispute for and against the eternal sleep, which took up
not much less time than they needed for making the circle of the
thunder-house. The Princess began: "We should have quite as much to say
against our every-day sleep, if it were not a fact, as against the
eternal one." "More, too, however, against our ever waking out of it,"
said Albano, striking in, and cut short the religious disturbances.
The Princess came back again with her inquiries after Spener, who had
interested her by his long mourning for her deceased father-in-law; and
Liana, sure of her mother's concurrence, poured herself out into a
stream of speech and emotion,--her eyes were forbidden to shed one,--on
which was borne along a sublime image of her teacher. How the
exaltation of this so delicate, tender soul thrilled her friend! So in
the pale, small moon and evening star do higher mountains rear
themselves than on our larger earth! "She was once inspired for thee,
too, but now no more," said Albano to himself, and stayed behind after
all the rest had gone on, because his soul had been long since full of
pains, and because now the Princess began to displease him.
He posted himself alone, and looked at the ringing, gleaming war-dance
of joy. The children ran illuminated through the uproar and in the
bright green foliage. The tones hovered and hung twining together into
one wreath, high in their ether above the noisy swarm of men, and sang
down to them their heavenly songs. Only in me, said he to himself, do
the tones and the lights toss a sea of agony to and fro, in no one
else, in her not at all; she has brought with her for all others her
old gladdening heart of love, not for me; she has not thus far
suffered, she blooms in health. He considered not, however, that in
fact his struggles also had shed not a drop of water into the dark red
glow of his youth; in Liana well might wounds from such conflicts, like
those of the scratched Aphrodite, only dye the white roses red.
But he determined to remain a man before so many eyes, and to await the
crisis and Liana's solitude. He therefore exchanged several rational
words with his foster relatives from Blumenbühl;--he said to Rabette:
"It pleases you, does it not?" He startled, unintentionally, the
Captain, who was hovering about some new faces from Haarhaar, with the
unmeaning question, "Why dost thou leave my sister so alone?"
But as often as he looked at Liana, who to-day went in her long veil,
as the only one without any thick, heavy gala-wrappage, as if she were
a young, breathing, tender form among painted stone statues, so
bashfully putting others to the blush, glistening and trembling like an
egrette,--so often did masses of flame fly wildly to and fro within
him. Passion, as the epilepsy often does with its victims, hurries us
away, precisely at the dangerous crises of life, to shores and
precipices. He leaned his head against a tree, slightly bowed down;
then Charles came along out of his waltzes of joy, and asked him, with
alarm, what provoked him so; for his bending down had cast gloomy, wild
shadows upon his tense, muscular face; "Nothing," said he, and the face
gleamed mildly when he lifted it up. At this moment, also, came the
unreflecting Rabette, and would fain draw him into the general joy, and
said, "Does anything ail thee?" "Thou!" he replied, and looked at her
very indignantly.
"Go into the gloomy oak-grove to Gaspard's rock!" cried his heart. "Thy
father never bowed; be his son!" Thereupon he strode away through the
world of brilliancy; but when, far within, amidst the darkness, he
leaned his head upon the rock, and the tones came toyingly and
teasingly in after him, and he thought to himself, how he could have
loved such a noble soul,--O how exceedingly!--then it was as if
something said within him, "Now thou hast thy _first_ sorrow on earth!"
As during an earthquake doors fly open and bells ring, so at the
thought, "first sorrow," was his soul rent asunder, and hard tears
dashed down. But he wondered at hearing himself weep, and indignantly
wiped his face on the cool moss.
Weakened, not hardened, he stepped out into the enchanted land,
besprinkled with glimmering jewels, and among the tones which came
dancing more rapturously to meet him, and would fain snatch his soul
away and lift it up and set it on high places, so that it might look
down into far and wide spring-times of life! Here on this once blessed
soil he saw lying the shattered, trampled pearl-string of his future
days. "O how happy we might have been this evening!" thought he, and
looked into the bright Feast of Tabernacles, into the gilded but
living branchwork,--into the green, flitting reflection, rocked
by the night-wind, and into the wild-fire of burning bushes in the
flowing waters. On the arched triumphal gates stood lights like
heaven-descended constellations of the wain, and behind him the dark
cloister-wall of Tartarus, which showed sublimely in its summits
only single small lights; and, over beyond, the silent mountains
sleeping in night, and here the noisy life of men, playing with the
night-butterflies about the lamps!
Thus does the fire within us of itself create in us the storm-wind
which fans it still higher. The tones that floated by him spoke to him
every thought which he would fain kill. As man sees himself, so does he
often hear himself, in the presence of a sound of music.
At this moment Liana went off some distance from the crowd with
Augusti. "I will speak with her, then it will be over," said he to
himself, as he drew near her, battling and wrestling with himself: he
saw plainly that she wanted to be back again among strange listeners.
"Liana, what have I then done to thee?" said he, with the deep-souled
tone of a tender heart, bitterly despising the Lector's presence and
powers. "Only do not desire an answer to-day, dear Count," said she,
turning back, and took in haste Augusti's arm; but he remarked not that
she did it to avoid sinking. Upon this he cast at the Lector a fiery
look, hoping to be offended and then avenged,--left her in haste and
silence;--the sweetest wine of love a hot ray had sharpened into
vinegar;--and he slipped away, without knowing it, into the temple of
dream.
He went up and down therein, murmuring, "_Je ne suis qu'un songe_"; but
was soon driven out into Tartarus by his disgust at so many copies of
himself moving round with him, and by the eternal spring of tones
flying after him, which just now beside the upturned flower-bed of life
was so intolerable.
In Tartarus all the apparatus of horror seemed to him now very
diminutive and ridiculous. Just then, not far from the Catacomb avenue,
Roquairol and Rabette came to meet him. Roquairol's flaming face was
extinguished and Rabette's turned backward, when Albano passionately
strode forth to meet them, and, still more imbittered by the
remembrance of the time when their heavens were contemporaneous, and
flaming up under the wind which blew upon his glowing ruins, attacked
the Captain with: "Art thou a friend? Art thou no devil? Thou hast
referred me to this evening: never, never say a word more of it!" Both
trembled, confused and colorless; Albano, without further reflection,
ascribed the growing pale and turning away to their sympathy for his
martyrdom. What a confounding, hostile night!
He roved onward and onward, the licking fire of the joy and music that
pursued him tormented him unspeakably,--the tones were to him mocking
tropical birds of fairer, warmer zones that came fluttering to meet
him. "I will just go to my bed, so soon as it once becomes still within
there!" He was half a mile off, when the music of Lilar still continued
to sound after him; he sternly stopped his ears, but Lilar still
sounded on within them,--then he perceived that he was only listening
to himself. But all the time it seemed to him as if the merry ringing
must, as in _Don Juan_, resolve itself into a cry of murder at the
presence of ghosts.
The avenue of coming days ran to a frightful point before him, when he
now snatched out from them the moon of his heaven, which had once
gleamed upon his childish heart and upon the paths of Blumenbühl. The
blooming, dancing genius of his past, all unseen, with only the wreath
of joy in its hand, stole away behind him, while he struggled with the
dark angel of futurity going before him, who dragged him along after
him through sounding thickets,--through sleepy villages,--through
moist, trickling valleys. At last Albano looked up to heaven, beneath
the innumerable eternal stars, to the hanging blossom-garden of God. "I
am not ashamed before you," said he, "because I weep on this ball, and
am oppressed before your immensity. Up there ye stand, all of you, far
asunder,--and on all great worlds every poor spirit has, after all,
only one little spot beneath its feet where it is happy or miserable.
When only this night has once gone by, and I am gone to my bed;
to-morrow I shall certainly be a man and stand fast!"
Suddenly he heard several times an almost exasperated cry of
lamentation. At length he beheld, near a stream, outstretched white
sleeves or arms; he went to the female form. "Alas! I am blind of God,"
said she; "I too was at the illumination, and have strayed away; I am
generally acquainted with road and lane; over yonder lies our village;
I hear the shepherd dog, but I cannot find the bridge over the water."
It was the grown-up blind girl of the herdsman's hut. "Does it still go
on pleasantly there?" he asked, as he guided her along. "All over!"
said she. On the bridge of the Rosana she would not, out of vanity, let
herself be directed any farther.
He returned through the pleasant bushes, which were already dripping
with the dew of morning, to an eminence before Lilar. All was still
down below there; a few scattered lamps flickered in the flute-dell,
and in Tartarus a couple, like deadly tiger-eyes, still lingered. He
went down into the vacant land away over the silent, flat grave,--up
through his gloomy, downward-ascending cavern-avenue,--and into his
bed. "To-morrow!" said he with energy, and meant his vow of
steadfastness.