Take now a nearer look at the blind Liana! From the day when her mother
bore her home, a ruined creature, there gradually began for her, under
her solar eclipse, a cooler and a tranquil life. Earth had changed; her
duties towards it seemed rolled off from her; the silver-glance of
youth, like a human look, now blinded; her short joys, those little
May-flowers, plucked off already under the morning-star; the object of
her first love, alas! as her mother had predicted, not so tender as she
had thought, but very masculine, rough, and wild, like her father, time
and the future extinguished, and the coming days for her only a blind,
painted show-gate, which men's hands do not open, and through which she
can no longer force her way, except with her unencumbered soul, when it
has thrown back on the earth the heavy trailing mantle of the flesh.
Her heart clung now--as Albano did to a man's--more than ever to a
female heart, which beat more tenderly and without the fever of the
passions; just as the compass-needle shows itself as a spiral lily, so
did virtue show itself to her as female beauty.
Her mother never left her blind-chair; she read to her, even the French
prayers, and kept her up by consolation; and she was easily consoled,
for she saw not her mother's distressed face, and heard only the quiet
tones of her voice. Julienne, since the burial of the first love, had
thrown off an old crust, and a fresh flame for her friend sprang up in
her heart. "I have dealt by thee honestly," said she, upon one
occasion; then they secretly declared themselves to each other, and
then their souls, like flower-leaves, linked themselves together to
form one sweet cup. The Princess spoke seriously about studies and
sciences, and gained even the mother, whom in men's society she had
pleased less. At evening, before retiring, Caroline flew down, still,
as from the heaven of joy, into her realm of shadows, and grew daily in
brilliancy and beauty of complexion, but spoke no more; and Liana fell
softly to sleep, while they looked upon each other.
At times a pang came to her when she thought that she should perhaps
never see her precious parents, especially her mother, any more; then
it seemed to her as if she were herself invisible and already making
her pilgrimage alone down the deep, dark avenue to the next world and
heard her friends and companions at the gate far behind calling after
her. Then she tenderly sent her love over, as if out of death, and
rejoiced in the great reunion. Spener visited his pupil daily; his
manly voice, full of strengthening and solace, was, in her darkness,
the evening-prayer-bell, which leads the traveller out of the dusky
thicket back to the more cheerful lights. Thus was her holy heart drawn
up to still greater heights of holiness, and the dark passion-flowers
of her sorrows shut themselves up to sleep in the tepid night of
blindness. How different are the sufferings of the sinner and those of
the saint! The former are an eclipse of the moon, by which the dark
night becomes still blacker and wilder; the latter are a solar eclipse,
which cools off the hot day, and casts a romantic shade, and wherein
the nightingales begin to warble.
In this way Liana maintained, in the midst of the sighs of others
around her, and in the tempestuous weather that enveloped her, a
tranquil, healing bosom. So does the tender white cloud often in the
beginning hurry away, a torn and tattered fugitive through the heavens,
but at last move along in rounded form and slow pace overhead there,
when down below the storm still sweeps over the earth, and whirls and
tears everything. But, good Liana, all the thirty-two winds, let them
waft pleasant days to thee or blow them away, hold on longer than the
dead calm of repose!