The Lector would gladly have thrown this letter into the paper-mill, so
little was there in it that was "_ostensible_." To be sure, Gaspard's
murderously polished and pointed irony about Liana's sickliness, if he
showed her the letter, would still remain, to this innocent,
unsuspecting peace-princess, a sheathed blade. The north-wind of
egotism, too, which ran through the communication would not, as it was,
after all, a favorable side-wind for Albano's prosperous passage
through life, be felt or heeded by the lovers; but that was the very
rub; for she might look upon Gaspard's disguised "No" as a "Yes," and
just fatally entangle herself in the thread whereby a friend would draw
her up over her steep precipice.
Meanwhile the letter must be delivered; but he did it with long,
hesitating evasions, which were intended apparently to withdraw the
veil for her from the covered "No." She read it with fear, smiled,
weeping, at the murderous irony, and said, softly, "Yes indeed!" The
Lector had already half a hope in his eye. "If the knight," said she,
"thinks so, can I do less? No, good Albano; now I remain true to thee.
My life is so short, therefore let it be cheering and devoted to him as
long as is in my power."
She thanked the Lector so warmly and pleasantly for the arrow from
Spain, that he had not the capacity of being hard enough to thrust home
its darkly poisoned end into the fair heart. She begged him, for the
sake of sparing him, not to be present at her firm explanation with her
father, but rather, at most, out of indulgence to her own and her
mother's feelings, to take upon himself the task of making her
explanation to her mother. He consented simply to--both, instead of
one, of these things.
The gentle form stepped quietly into her father's presence, and there,
shrinking not before thunder and lightning, carried her explanation
through to a close, saying that she severely rued her disapproved love,
that she would bear all penalties, and do and suffer all, both here and
with the Princess, as "_cher père_" should demand, but that she dared
not longer offend the innocent Count of Zesara by the show of a most
undutiful desertion. At this address the Minister, who had suffered
himself, in consequence of her recent submissive self-denial, to be
lifted up by refreshing expectations, now stretched prostrate on the
ground, dashed down from his Tarpeian rock, could not utter a single
sound but this: "Imbécille! thou marriest Herr von Bouverot; he takes
thy picture tomorrow; thou sittest to him." He took her, with stern
hand and three terribly long strides, to his lady. "She will remain,"
said he, "under guard in her chamber; no one may visit her except my
son-in-law; he will paint the Imbécille _en miniature_." "Go,
Imbécille!" said he, beside himself. Her entire want of womanly cunning
had actually, to the statesman, drawn a curtain over her deep, sharp
eye. A straightforward man and mind resembles a straight alley, which
appears only half as long as one which runs by crooks and turns.
The Lector, who never meant to be regarded as a special amateur of
connubial sham-fights, had already taken himself off. The thirty years'
war of the spouses--for it only wanted a few years of that--gained life
and reinforcement. The old bridegroom diffused over his face that
convulsive smile which, with some men, resembles the convulsive quiver
of the cork when it announces the bite of the fish. He asked whether he
were now wrong in trusting neither daughter nor mother, both of whom he
charged with a partisan understanding against him, and insisted that
now, after such proofs, he ought not to be blamed either for stricter
measures or for a straightforward march to his object; and with the
sitting, for which the German gentleman had twice begged him, he
commenced the campaign. The Minister's lady, as a punishment for Liana,
remained silent on the subject of so excessively great a present to
Bouverot as a miniature likeness would be.
The tender daughter, jammed and crushed in the meeting between two
stone statues, represented to her mother, that she could not possibly
hold out under so long inspection of a man's eye, and least of all Herr
von Bouverot's, whose looks often went like thorns into her soul.
Hereupon the father replied and retorted in the mother's name, by
drawing a chair up to the desk, and inviting, on the spot, the German
gentleman to come to-morrow and paint. Then Liana was sent away with a
word which drew even from this delicate flower the lightning-spark of a
momentary hatred.
The Imperial peace-protocol lay open now before the two spouses, and
there merely wanted some one to dictate, when the Minister's lady rose
up, and said, "You must learn to respect me more."
She had the coach tackled, and drove off to the Court Chaplain,
Spener's. She knew Liana's respect for him, and his omnipotence over
her pious disposition. Even to herself he was still imposing. Down from
that earlier theological age in which the Lutheran Father-confessor
still reigned nearer to the Catholic, he had, through the power and
magnanimity of his character, brought a shepherd's staff, which was
distinguished from a bishop's staff only by being made of better wood.
She must needs narrate to him twice over Liana's relations; the ardent,
indignant old man could not at all comprehend or believe a love which
must have been spun out right under his old eyes without his knowledge.
"Your excellence," he at length answered, "has, indeed, committed a
mistake in not communicating to me this important circumstance before
to-day. How easily, with God's help, would I have conducted all to a
blessed issue! However, there is nothing lost. Let your excellence send
the maiden this very night to me, but alone, without you; that must be
done; then I stand pledged for the rest!"
Objections and cautions would merely have inflamed the old man's
ambition and anger,--both which still worked on beneath the ice of his
hoary hair; she therefore confidently promised him all, with that
submissiveness, which she had also transmitted as an inheritance to
Liana.
Right hopefully did Liana receive the command of a night ride to the
good, pious father. She started off with only her devoted maiden. With
deeply agitated soul she appeared before her father-confessor. She
opened herself to him as to a God; he decided just as if he were one.
What a sight for another eye less proud than Spener's would have been
this lowly, but composed saint, whose heart, like a sunbeam, always
appeared loveliest in its breaking asunder.
But here the history moves in veils! The old man commanded her maiden
to stay behind, and took her alone over into the silent Blumenbühl. He
unlocked for her the church, lighted a torch at the altar, in order
that the desolate darkness might not play any prelude to her timid eye,
and completed what her parents could not.
How he extorted from her the promise to renounce her Albano forever is
a mystery watched and hidden by the Great Sphinx of the oath which she
swore to him,--only the far-off man, who lost the fair soul, had from
the observatory of the suns gazed at the bright church-windows and
discovered behind them disturbing apparitions, without knowing that
they were true, and decided his life.
She went back again coldly across the meadows and mountains of old
days, which had once been so bright, to the dwelling of the old man,
who dismissed her with greater reverence than had marked his reception
of her. On the night-journey she was mute, and wrapped up in herself,
and exchanged not a word with her maiden. Her parents still awaited
her; the mother looked anxiously out into the night and into the
future. At length the living carriage rolled into the court. Great and
mighty as one who, having been executed in innocence, starts up into
life again before the dissector and, regarding him as the judge on
high, speaks with unfettered freedom and gladness, so did she come into
the presence of her parents: like the cold marble of a god's form, she
stood there, pale, tearlessly cold and calm. She knew it not, and she
willed it not, but she soared high over life, even beyond a child's
love,--she could not kiss her mother so fervently as once,--she stood
undismayed before her blustering father, and said, then, without a
tear, without emotion, without a blush, and with soft voice, "I have
this night renounced my love before God. The pious father has convinced
me." "And had the man better reasons for it _in petto_ than I?" said
Froulay. "Yes," said she; "but I have sworn in the Temple to keep
silence until time discloses all. Now I pray you by the All-just One
only to allow me to give him back in person his letters, and tell him
that I cease to be his, not, however, from fickleness, but from duty; I
entreat this, dear parents. Then may God dispose of the rest, and I
shall never be disobedient to you again." The wretched father, puffed
up still more by this triumph, would fain have made this last prayer of
the dying heart bitter to her, and even insinuated a flying suspicion
of the motive of the interview; but the mother, smitten in her fair
soul by the fairest, interceded warmly, and contemptuously and
arbitrarily decided in the affirmative. Nor did Liana seem to take much
notice of the paternal No. When he had gone, the mother, weeping for
bliss, snatched the silent form to her embrace; but Liana wept not so
easily upon her bosom as once out of love, whether it was that her
heart was too much exalted, or that it came back just as slowly into
the old condition as it went out of it. "Receive thanks, daughter,"
said the mother; "I shall now make thy life more happy." "It was happy
enough. I was to die; therefore I must needs love," said she. So she
went smiling into the arms of sleep, with hard-beating heart. But in
dream it appeared to her as if she were sinking away in a swoon, losing
her mother, and struggling up again fearfully out of the grasp of
flying death, and then weeping for joy that she lived again. Thereupon
she awoke, and the glad drops, softly released by the dream, still
flowed from her open eyes, and softened like a thawing-wind the stiff
soil of life.
Ye great or blessed spirits above us! When man here, under the poor
clouds of life, throws away his fortune, because he prizes it less than
his heart, then is he as blessed and as great as you. And we are all
worthy of a holier earth, because the sight of the sacrifice exalts,
and does not oppress us, and because we shed burning tears, not from
pity, but from the deepest, holiest love and joy.