Since the extinction of the engagement, and since Gaspard's letters,
Albano's eye had been directed toward the fairest ruins of
time,--unless one excepts the earth itself,--to Italy; and his injured
vision held fast to this new portal of his life, which was to usher him
into the presence of the fairest and greatest which nature and man can
create. How did the fire-mountains, and Rome's ruins, and her warm,
golden-blue heavens, already unfold to him their splendor, when in
fancy he led the suffering Liana before them, and her holy eyes
refreshed themselves with measuring the heights! A man who travels with
his beloved to Italy has in the very fact that he might do without one
of the two, both double. And Albano hoped for this felicity, since all
testimonies which he met with of Liana's restoration to health promised
as much. As to Dr. Sphex,--the only one who opened a pit for her, and
in it cast a death-bell, and swore to everybody, she would fall with
the leaves of autumn,--him he saw no more. He wished, however,--he said
to himself,--in this whole joint-tour, only her happiness, not at all
her love. So did he see himself always in his self-mirror, namely, only
veiled; so did he regard himself often as too stern, although he was so
little of that; so did he take himself to be conqueror of his own
heart, when his fair countenance already wore pale, sickly hues.
The present stood as yet dark above him, but its neighboring times, the
future and the past, lay full of light. What a journey, in which a
beloved, a father, a friend, a female friend, are of themselves, on the
very road, the curiosities which others find only when they reach the
end!
The Princess was the female friend. Since Gaspard's letters to her and
to him, since the hope of a longer and nearer enjoyment of his society,
she found more and more pleasure in subduing all clouds round about
her, so as to smile and shine upon her friend only out of a blue
heaven. She alone at court seemed to take mildly and rightly the blunt
youth, whose proud frankness so often ran against the disguised pride
of the Count, and particularly against the open pride of the Prince;
she alone seemed--as nothing is seldomer guessed in and by _circles_
than fair sensibility, especially by courtly ones and especially manly
sensibility--softly to spy out his, and to increase its warmth by her
sympathy. She alone honored him with that strict, significant attention
which mankind so seldom give, as well as can so seldom appreciate,
because they never have occasion but for love and passion, in order
to--render justice, incapable, otherwise than by comet-light, by
warm-flames and fires of joy, to read the best hand. All that he was,
she simply presupposed in him; his pre-eminent qualities were only her
demands and his passports; she made his individuality neither her model
nor her reflection; both were painters, no pictures. He heard often,
indeed, that she had a masculine severity, especially in her
dictatorial capacity, but not, however, that she was womanishly
inhuman. To the customary vermin of courtlings, which gives itself
elevation on its worm-rings only by crawling, she was repulsive and
torturing; although, as a new-comer, she should, it would seem, have
been a new-born child, that brings with it raisins to the older
children. On Sunday, when at courts, as on the stage in Berlin,
spiritual popular pieces are always brought out, she was (among the
Sunday-born-children, who see more spirits than they have) a Monday's
child, which wishes to find for itself one, who, whether he has
ever been dubbed noble or not, at all events knows how to distinguish
an original from the copy, as well in his own self as in a
picture-gallery. On that account many lords, and still more ladies,
thanked God, if they had occasion to say nothing more to her than "God
bless you!"
In this way she appeared to the Count every day more worthy of his
father. As into a warm spring sunshine did he enter for the first time
into the flattering magic circle of female friendship, which even here
cast and moulded two wings for love out of the wax-cells of the enjoyed
honey; it was, however, with him love for Liana, to whom the friend
could most easily give wings for Italy. He felt that soon an hour of
overflowing esteem would strike, when he could confidingly open the
high-walled cloister-garden of his former love. For she made room for
him to be near her as often as the narrow compass of a throne and the
all-betraying height of its location would admit. But something
disturbed, watched, beset both,--a rival neighbor, as it seemed. It was
the singular Julienne, who always, when things were getting on, stepped
out of her box on to the stage of the Princess, and confounded the
play. Frequently she came after him; sometimes he had gotten
invitations from her just the moment before others from the Princess
followed, which hers, therefore, as it seemed, must have anticipated.
What did she mean? Would she possibly win from a youth whom she had so
often provoked by her contempt of men, and by the lightning-like
dartings of her indignation, his love, merely, perhaps, because he had
always so warmly reciprocated her friendly glances, as those of so dear
a--friend of his beloved? Or did she want of him only hatred for the
honored Princess, and that indeed out of envy and the usual resemblance
of women to ivory, whose _white_ hue so readily becomes _yellow_, and
which only by a thorough warming gets the fair color again?
These questions were rather repeated than answered by an evening which
he and Julienne spent at the Princess's. A good reading was to give the
picture-exhibition of Goethe's Tasso. Fine art, and nothing but art,
was with the Princess the art of Passau[35] against court- and
life-wounds; and, in general, the world-system was to her only a
complete picture-gallery and Pembroke cabinet and gallery of antiques.
The reading parts were so distributed by the manager, the Princess,
that she herself got the Princess, Julienne the _confidente_ Leonore,
Albano the Poet Tasso, a youthful-cheeked Chamberlain the Duke, and
Froulay Alphonso. This latter, who had learned to prefer works of
artifice to works of art, and the princely cabinet to any cabinet of
art, in spite of his heart stood ready there for a journey to the
mountain of the muses, arrayed for that purpose by the Princess in a
mountain-habit. Thus forced more and more every day into the poetical
fashion, he looked, of course, like any other abortion, which has
come into the world with pantaloons, queue, and the like all born on
him, on purpose to condemn the modish way of the world, just like a
street-sweeper in Cassel.
Albano read with outward and inward glow, not toward the reading
Princess, but toward the Princess she personated, from a habit of his
heart which life always set a-glow; and the Princess read the _rôle_ of
her _rôle_ very well, of course. Her artistic feeling told her, even
without the prompting of tender sensibility, that in Goethe's
Tasso,--which, for the most part, is related to the Italian Tasso, as
the heavenly Jerusalem to the Jerusalem delivered,--the Princess is
almost Princess of Princesses. Never did the god of the muses and of
the sun pass more beautifully through the constellation Virgo than
here. Never was veiled love more radiantly unveiled.
The Minister read off the powerful proser Alphonso, as he scolds at
Tasso and Albano, as well as a trumpeter of cavalry reads the notes
which are affixed to his sleeve; in fact, he found the man quite
sensible.
The younger[36] Princess might, in the general poetic concert, have
done her share of the talking some quarter of an hour, more or less,
when she suddenly threw down, in a lively manner, the beautiful volume
of Goethe's works, of which there were three copies there, and said,
with her impetuosity, "A stupid part! I cannot abide it!" All the world
was silent. The senior[37] Princess looked at her significantly; the
junior Princess looked at _her_ still more significantly, and went out,
without coming back again. A court dame took up the reading, and went
calmly on.
To most of those present this interlude was properly the most
interesting; and they willingly continued to think of it during the
reading of the latter part. The Princess, who had long believed the
Princess loved the Count, was delighted with the inconsiderateness of
her adversary. Albano, although her warm eye had struck him of old,
explained to himself the absconding on the ground of chagrin at the
subordinateness of her part in the reading, and the general
incompatibility of the two women; for while Julienne, at her own
expense, slighted the Princess, and took little pains to conceal her
opinion, so also did that of the Princess appear involuntarily. So soon
as one party manifests its hatred, the second can hardly conceal its
from the third.