Ever did Schoppe let fly at himself more curses than on the morrow,
during Albano's recital, and on this account, to be sure, that he had
not stayed so as to arrest the Baldhead, the fly-wheel of so many
ghostly movements, in the midst of the revolutions, by dashing right at
the spokes. He earnestly besought the Count, at the next appearance, at
least,--especially in Italy,--to tear off, without mercy, the
Baldhead's mask, though life hung upon it. The youth had been moved too
intensely by the events of the night. He therefore spoke of them
reluctantly, and without dwelling upon them. As in him all sensations
stirred more intensely and overpoweringly than in Roquairol, he had
not, like him, pleasure in portraying them, but shrank from it. He
looked up the little old likeness of his sister which his father had
given him on the island. What a striking reflection of the nightly
image in the mirror! This moss of age on a sister must have been
artificially produced there, merely for the purpose of hiding the
resemblance. The presumption of its being Julienne he gave up again,
after the denial of the veiled one, and from the improbability of such
a nocturnal performance, and postponed measuring the altitudes of all
these incomprehensible airy apparitions till he should have the aid of
his daily expected father.
Ah, over all his thoughts swept incessantly in vulture-circles a
distant, dark form, the destroying angel, that would fain stoop
greedily upon the helpless Liana! The staring stiffness of the
corpse-seeress on the Blumenbühl road--especially since the sad billet
of the Princess--now in the dark intersecting thicket paths, into which
his life's course had entangled itself, danced on before him as a
juggling phantom of terror.
A new and single resolve stood now in his soul like a rigid arm fast by
the way-side, pointing ever in one direction, up the Blumenbühl road.
"Thou must go to her," said the resolve; "she must not die in the
delusive belief of thy anger and thy old severity; thou must see her
again, to ask her pardon, and then shalt thou weep till her grave opens
and takes her away." "O, how I then," he said to himself, "before the
dying-throne of this angel, shall bruise with contrition my hard,
haughty, wild heart, and take back everything, everything whereby I
blinded and wounded the tender soul in Lilar, that she may not despise
too much the short days of her love, and that her heart may at least
part from me with one little farewell pleasure! And that, O God, grant
us!"
In vain did Schoppe propose thereupon, that he should seek with him the
business-office of the night-wonders, which so probably must be found
in the Gothic-temple; this very day he would force his way into the
presence of his pale loved one. Schoppe continued to insist vehemently
on the visit to Lilar, and at last demanded it, and commanded
compliance; but now it was a lost case, and Albano's refusal was
panoplied. "Plague take it! why let myself, then, be boiled in these
tear-pots?" said Schoppe, and marched out.
But after a short time he came back with a billet from--Gaspard,
wherein the latter demanded for to-day relay-horses from the
post-house, and with a proposition from himself that they should go to
meet his father. How refreshingly did the nearness of his father
breathe over Albano's sultry waste! Nevertheless, he said No the second
time; his long willing and warring and every hour's lapse veiled Liana
more and more darkly from him in her cloud, and he thought anxiously of
his dream about her on Isola Bella;[57] and finally he had his
suspicions aroused by Schoppe's holding him back so significantly.
And herein he erred not. Schoppe acted upon quite other grounds than
Albano had yet learned. The Lector, namely, who with wise old honesty
kept a distant watch, through Schoppe's agency, over the rebellious
youth, whom, however, he took every occasion to praise, had pointed out
to his proxy the up-towering, leaden-heavy cloud-pile which was moving
onward and lowering over the head of the youth; namely, Liana's
impending death.
At first, for some time the quarrel with her parents, that poetic
hardening, as it were, of Liana's nerves, had been to them wine of
iron, but afterward they melted in the soft water of renunciation,
autumnal rest and devotion. There is a bland calm which loosens men as
well as ships; a warmth in which the wax-figure of the spirit melts
down. Every day, too, came the pious father and spread her wings,
loosed her from earthly hopes and earthly anxieties, and led her up
into the glory of the throne of God. The fair spring-breezes of her
ended love she let breathe again, but in a higher region; they were now
thin, mild, ethereal zephyrs, breaths of flowers. She knew now, at
once, that she was dying and loved God. She stood already like a sun,
tranquil and far away in her heaven, but like a sun she seemed to
move obediently around the little day of her mother, and shed on her a
soft warmth. Her tears flowed out as sweetly as sighs, as evening dew
out of evening redness. As one sinks, blissfully cradled, in joyous
dreams, so she floated, long borne up, drawn slowly onward, with
buoyant fleshly-garment, on the flood of death.
Only a single earthly obstacle had hitherto broken the gentle
fall,--the ardent expectation of the coming of the Romeiro, whom she so
dearly loved as the friend of her friend Julienne. At last she made her
appearance, and took too powerful a hold of Liana's fancy; for it was
just the wings of fantasy which, in this tender, constant swan,[58]
were too strong. How did the sick one humble herself at the feet of
this shining goddess! How unworthy did she find herself of her former
love for Albano! So little had Spener, humble only before God, been
able to prevent her taking up with her two jewels out of her former
life into her present glorified state, her old lowliness before men and
her old anxiety for those she loved.
Julienne sought again and again to dissuade her; but one evening--when
she learned that Albano was to be taken to Italy--she twined herself
around Linda's heart, and told her, with her wonted over-fulness of
feeling, only Albano deserved her. Linda answered with astonishment;
she could not comprehend a self-annihilating love; in _her_ case she
should die. "And am not I, then, dying?" said Liana.
Julienne, thereupon, immediately begged Liana to spare the
embarrassment of the noble Countess on this subject. Liana, without
being offended, remained silent; but the new desire now possessed her
to see once more her lost Albano, and show him her former fidelity and
his error, and with dying heart to make over to him a new and great
one. She was very frank in uttering all the last wishes of her holy
soul. Her mother and Augusti held her from her purpose as long as they
could, that she might not take so dark, poisonous a flower as the
pleasure of such a meeting must be to her sick heart. But she entreated
her mother: How could it harm her this year, as it was not till the
next--according to Caroline's prediction--she was to go hence?
Meanwhile they sought to put farther and farther off from her the last
purpose, in the hope that Gaspard would carry away the Count, and with
the intention, only in the extreme case of having to give up all hopes,
of gratifying for her this fatal wish.
Then she turned with her request to her brother; but he, partly from
mortified vanity and partly from love for his sister, depicted Albano
on the colder side, said he was going off to a gay country, would
easily cease to regret her, &c. How did it almost provoke the gentle
soul, because, with a woman's sharpsightedness, she detected in this an
approaching breach of love towards Albano and Rabette, and a return of
partiality for Linda, who was to be left behind! She had already for
some time been curious about Rabette's being so long invisible. For the
poor soul had not, since her fall, since the burial of her innocence,
been in a state to be prevailed upon, by prayers or commands, to appear
with her downcast, sinful eye before the friend of eternal purity; and
now it was absolutely impossible for her, since Linda's arrival and
visits had crushed even the lightest, lingering gossamer-web of her
flying summer, and her throat, full of anguish, was stifled and choked
with the closeness of the funeral-veil. "Brother, brother," said Liana,
with inspiration, "think what our poor parents get from us children! I
fulfil no hope of theirs; every hope rests on thee! Ah, how angry will
our father be!" she added, with her old dread and love. Her brother
held it right to keep from her the truth (about Rabette's degradation
and concealment), which would this time wear the form of an armed fate,
and so he put in the place of the truth his brotherly love. Hence he
had hitherto denied himself the only opportunity of speaking with the
Countess--by Liana's sick chair. "Thou must die," he once said to her
in enthusiasm; "it is well that thy web is so delicate, that the
cross-play of so many talons may rend it asunder. What mightest thou
not have suffered, even to thy seventieth year, from the world and men!"
He, too, believed--from his own experience--that there are more sorrows
of women than of men, just as, in heaven, there are more eclipses of the
moon than of the sun.
So things stood till the night when Albano saw the Baldhead, the
playing of the eclipses, and his veiled sister. That night one string
after another snapped in Liana's life; a rapid change came over her;
and early the next morning she had already received the last sacrament
from her Spener's hands. The Lector got this sad intelligence from the
Minister's lady at nine of the morning. Hence it was that he sought so
eagerly through Schoppe to hold back the youth from the sight of a
dying bride.
Subsequently came Gaspard's billet, which put it into the heads of
both to try to induce him to go meet his father, and--by a message to
him--to persuade the latter, at least for some days, to turn back with
Albano from the approaching earthquake, that the ground might sink
before the son should tread upon it.
But this, too, as has been already related, missed the mark. Albano
acquainted Schoppe directly with his suspicion of some unpleasant
event. The latter was just on the point of giving an answer, when he
was spared the necessity by a panting messenger from Blumenbühl, who
handed Albano the following note from Spener:--
"P. P.
"Your highborn grace must with all speed be informed that the mortally
sick Fraülein von Froulay desires most earnestly this very day to speak
with your highness _in person_; and you have so much the more need to
haste, as, according to her own representation, she can hardly with the
least probability be expected, especially as patients of this _genre_
can always foresee their death accurately, to survive the present
evening, but must pass out of this mortality into the eternal glory. In
my own person, I need hardly admonish your grace as a Christian, that a
soft, still, pious, and devout demeanor would be far more suitable and
seemly than cruel worldly sorrow beside the dying-bed of this glorious
bride of Christ, in regard to whose death every heart will wish, 'Lord,
be my death like that of this just one!' With this suggestion, I
remain, with distinguished respect,
"Your highborn grace's submissive
"Joachim Spener, _Court Chaplain_.
"P. S. If your highness does not come directly with the messenger, I
beg earnestly the favor of a few lines in reply."
Albano said not a word, gave the note to his friend, pressed his hand
gently, took his hat, and went slowly and with dry eyes out into the
road that led up to the mountain-castle.