He hurried along with a shudder round by the spot where the
corpse-seeress had stood the previous night, in order to behold her
dreams, transformed into dark-clad human beings, wind slowly down from
the mountain-road. It was a still, warm, blue after-summer afternoon.
The evening red of the year, the ruddy-glowing foliage, stole from
mountain to mountain; on dead pastures the poisonous saffron-flowers
stood together untouched; on the overspun stubble spiders were still
working away at the flying summer, and setting up a few threads as the
ropes and sails wherewith it was to hasten its flight. The wide circle
of air and earth was still, the whole heaven cloudless, and the soul of
man heavily overcast.
Albano's heart rested upon the season as a head rests upon the
executioner's block. Naught did he see in the wide blue of heaven but
Liana soaring therein; nothing, nothing on the earth, but her
prostrate, empty form.
He felt a sharp pang when suddenly, on the heights of Blumenbühl, the
white mountain-palace flashed upon his sight. He ran down wildly along
by the abhorred, the transformed, and deformed Blumenbühl, and hurried
away up into the deep hollow pass which leads to the mountain-castle.
But where this splits into two ascending defiles, the young man, with
the veil of sorrow over his eyes, took by mistake the left, and hurried
on between its walls more and more eagerly, till, after the long chase,
he came out on the heights, and beheld the gleaming palace of sorrow
behind him. Then did it seem to him as if the landscape stretching far
away below him heaved to and fro confusedly, like a stormy sea, with
billowing fields and swimming mountains; and the heavens looked down
still and serene on the commotion. Only down below on the western
horizon slept a long, dark cloud.
He stormed down again, and in a few minutes arrived at the little
flower-garden of the house of mourning. As he strode impetuously
through it, he saw, up at the castle-windows, the backs of several
people. If they should turn round, said he, the word would immediately
go round, There comes the murderer! At this moment, the Minister's lady
came to a window, but quickly turned round when she saw him. Heavily he
went up the stairs; the Lector came feelingly to meet him, and said to
him, "Composure for yourself and forbearance for others! You have no
witness of your interview, but your own conscience," and opened to the
speechless youth the silent chamber of sickness.
Burdened and bowed down with grief, he softly entered. In an easy-chair
reclined a white-clad figure, with white, sunken cheeks, and hands laid
in one another, leaning her head, which was encircled with a variegated
wreath of wild-flowers, on the arm of the chair. It was his former
Liana. "Welcome to me, Albano!" said she, with feeble voice, but with
the old smile, like sunrise, and stretched out to receive him her hand
which she raised with difficulty; her heavy head she could not raise at
all. He drew near, sank on his knee and held the precious hand, and his
lip quivered and was dumb. "Thou art right welcome to me, my good
Albano!" she repeated, still more tenderly, with the impression that he
had not probably heard it the first time; and the well-known voice
coming back to him started all the tears of his heart into one gushing
rain. "Thou, too, Liana!" he stammered, still more softly. Wearily she
let her head fall over on the other arm of the chair, which was nearer
to her; then did her life-tired blue eyes look right closely upon his
wet and fiery ones; how did each find the other's countenance paled and
ennobled by one and the same long sorrow! Red-cheeked and in full
bloom, and with a load of sorrows, had Liana entered the strange, cold
death-realm of sore probation for the higher world, and without color
and without sorrows had she come back again, and with heavenly beauty
on the face from which earthly bloom had faded. Albano stood before
her, pale and noble also, but he brought back on his young, sick,
sunken countenance the pangs and the conflicts, and in his eye the glow
of life.
"O God, thou hast changed, Albano," she began, after a long gaze. "Thou
lookest quite hollow: art thou so sick, love?" she asked, with that old
anxiety of affection which neither the pious father nor the last
genius, who makes man cold towards life and love, ere he withdraws
them, had been able to take from her heart. "O, would to God!--No, I am
not," said he, and stifled, out of forbearance, the internal storm; for
he would so gladly have poured out his woe, his love, his death-wish
before her in one mortal cry, as a nightingale sings herself to death
and falls headlong from the branch.
Her chilled eye long rested, warming itself, upon his face, full of
inexpressible love, and at last she said with a heavy smile, "So, then,
thou lovest me again, Albano! Thou wast even in Lilar wholly in error.
After a long time my Albano will begin to learn why I separated from
him,--only for his good. On this, this my dying-day, I tell thee that
my heart has been ever true to thee. Believe me! My heart is with God,
my words are true. See, this is why I begged thee to come to me
to-day,--for thou shalt mildly, without remorse, without reproach, in
thy long-coming life, look over upon thy first youthful love. To-day
thou wilt not take it ill of thy little Linda[59] that she speaks of
dying,--seest thou haply that I was then in the right? Bring me the
leaf yonder!"
He obeyed; it was a sketch which she had made with trembling hand to
represent Linda's noble head. Albano did not look upon the leaf. "Take
it to thyself," said she; he did so. "How kind and compliant thou art!"
said she. "Thou deservest her,--I name her not to thee,--as the reward
of thy fidelity towards me. She is more worthy of thee than I; she is
blooming, like thyself, not sick, like me; but never do her wrong; it
is my last wish that thou shouldst love her. Wilt thou distress me,
determined spirit, by a vehement No?"
"Heavenly soul!" he cried, and looked upon her beseechingly, and
presented her the stifled No as an offering to the dead. "I answer thee
not. Ah, forgive, forgive that earlier time!" For now he saw for the
first time, how meekly, gently, and yet fervently, the still, tender
soul had loved him, who even yet, in the dissolution of the body, spoke
and loved as in the beautiful days of Lilar, just as the melting bell
in the burning steeple still continues, from the midst of the flames,
to sound out the hours.
"Now, then, farewell, beloved!" she said, calmly, and without a tear,
and her feeble hand offered to press his; "a happy journey into the
beautiful land! Accept eternal thanks for thy love and truth, for the
thousand joyous hours which I will, up yonder, at length deserve;[60]
for Lilar's fair flowers.... The children of my Chariton have put them
on me.[61] ... _Je ne suis qu'un songe_.[62] What was I going to say to
thee, Albano? My farewell! Forsake not my brother! O how thou weepest!
I will still pray for thee!"
The dying have dry eyes. The tempestuous weather of life ends with cold
air. They know not how their babbling tongue cuts into widely rent
hearts. This most gentle soul knew not how she thrust sword upon sword
through Albano, who now felt that to the saint whom already the
spring-gales, the spring-fragrances of the eternal shore were floating
to meet and welcome, he could be nothing more, give nothing more, nor
even so much as take from her her humility.
When she had said it, her head, with the crown of flowers, raised
itself upright; inspired, she drew her hand out of his, and prayed
aloud with fervor: "Hear my prayer, O God! and let him be happy till he
enters into thy glory. And should he err and waver, then spare him, O
God, and let me appear to him and exhort him. But to thee alone, O
all-gracious one, be praise and thanks uttered for my pleasant,
peaceful life on the earth; thou wilt, after I have rested, bestow
on me up yonder the fair morning in which I may work.... Wake me
early from the sleep of death.... Wake me, wake!... Mother, the
morning-red[63] lies already upon the trees."
At this moment, her mother, with other persons, rushed into the
chamber. Her vision, bewildered with the drowsiness of death and the
wandering of her speech, announced that the cold sleep with open eyes
was now at hand. "Appear to me, thou art indeed with God!" cried
Albano, distracted. In vain would Augusti have led him away; without
answering, without stirring, he stood fast-rooted there. Liana grew
paler and paler; death arrayed her in the white bridal garment of
Heaven; then his eye ceased its weeping, grief froze, and the broad,
heavy ice of anguish filled his breast.
Liana's eye was fixed steadily on a light spot of the softly veiled
evening heavens, as if seeking and waiting for the heavens to lift and
show the sun. Indifferent to all present, her brother stormed in with
his lamentation: "Go not to God, or I shall see thee no more! Look on
me, bless, sanctify me, give me thy peace, sister!" She was silently
lost in the lightening and breaking sun-cloud. "She takes thee for me,"
said Albano to Charles, on account of the similarity of their voices,
"and gives thee not her peace." "Steal not my voice!" said Charles,
angrily. "O, leave her in peace," said the mother, out of whose
downcast eyes only a few light tears fell trembling on the garland of
the daughter, whose faint head, upturned toward heaven, she held,
leaning against herself, with both hands.
All at once, when the sun opened the clouds like eyelids, and looked
serenely from beneath, the still form quivered. The dying see double;
she saw two sun-balls, and cried, clinging to her mother, "Ah, mother,
how large and fiery his eyes are!" She saw Death standing in heaven.
"Cover me with the pall," she begged, distressfully,--"my veil!" Her
brother caught it up, and covered with it the wandering eyes and the
flowers and locks. The sun, too, mercifully veiled himself again with
clouds.
"Think on Almighty God!" said the pious father to her, in a loud voice.
"I think of him," answered the veiled one, in a low tone. The aurora of
the second world stands black before mortals. They all trembled. Albano
and Roquairol grasped and pressed each other's hands, the latter from
hatred, Albano from agony, as one gnashes at metal. The chamber was
full of uncongenial, discordant people, whom death made equal. At one
side Albano saw that a strange form, repulsive to him, had stolen in.
It was his impenetrable father, whose great, dark eyes were fastened
sharply and sternly on his son. Out of a second chamber two tall,
veiled female forms gazed at the third, and saw no face, and no one saw
theirs.
Liana played with her fingers at the veil. Evening stood in the
chamber, and the silence between the lightning-flash and the
thunder-clap. "Think upon Almighty God!" cried Spener. She answered
not. He continued: "Of our source, and of our sea; he alone stands by
thee now in the dark, when the earth, and its dwellers, and all lights
of life, are sinking away beyond thy reach!" Suddenly she began, and
said, with a low tone of gladness, and with words swiftly following
each other, as when one talks in sleep, and with increasing rapture and
rapidity, "Caroline! here, here, Caroline! This is my hand,--how
beautiful thou art!" The invisible angel who had consecrated her first
love, who had attended her whole life, gleamed again, like a new-risen
moon, over the whole dark scene of death; and the splendor gently
melted the little May night into the great spring morning of the second
world.
Now the veiled nun of heaven leaned, quite still, on her mother. The
death-angel stood invisible and wrathful among his victims. With great
wings hung the screech-owl of anguish over mortal eyes, and pecked with
black beak down into the breast, and nothing was heard in the stillness
but the owl. More darkly rolled the Knight's melancholy eyes to and fro
in their deep sockets between the still bride and the still son; and
Gaspard and the destroying angel gazed upon each other gloomily.
At that moment Liana's harp sent out a clear, high, ringing tone far
into the silence. The Fatal Sister who spun at her life knew the
signal, checked herself, and stood up; and the sister with the scissors
came. Liana's fingers ceased to play, and beneath the veil all became
still and motionless.
"Thy head is heavy and cold, my daughter," said the disconsolate
mother. "Tear the veil away!" cried the brother; and when he drew it
down, there lay Liana, peaceful and smiling beneath it, but dead,--the
blue eyes open toward heaven, the transfigured mouth still breathing
love, the maidenly lily-brow encircled with the flower-wreath which had
sunk down around it; and pale and glorified with the moonlight of the
higher world was the strange form which passed majestically forth from
the midst of the puny living among its lofty dead.
Then gushed the golden sun through the clouds and through all the
tears, and circumfused with the blooming evening twilight, with the
youthful rose-oil of his evening clouds, the faded sister of heaven;
and the transfigured countenance wore again the bloom of youth. In
heaven all the clouds, touched with her wings as she swept through
them, burst out into long, red blossoms; and through the high, misty
veil, fluttering up over the earth, glowed the thousand roses which had
been strown about or sprung up on the cloud-path on which the virgin
passed up over the earth to the Eternal.
But Albano, the forsaken Albano, stood without tears or eyes or words
among the commonplaces of sorrow, in the crimson evening fire of the
holy chamber of transfiguration, amidst the earthly bustle that went on
round the still form. In the depths of the past, Sorrow showed him a
Medusa's-head; and he still looked upon it when his heart was already
petrified by it, and he heard continually the gloomy head murmur the
words, "How bitterly did the dead one, when in Lilar, weep at the harsh
Albano!" Her brother, upon his rack, said many barbarous words to him.
He heard or heeded them not, because he was listening to the horrible
Gorgon head.
"Son," cried Gaspard Cesara, earnestly,--"son, dost thou not know me?"
Through the heavy, deathly heart a life-voice flashes upon him. He
looks round, and sees his father, with terror arranges him into a
shape, and falls upon his breast, and cries only, "Father!" and again
and again, "Father!" He continued to cry out, grasping him violently
like a foe, and said: "Father, that is Liana!" Still more passionate
grew the embrace, not from love, only from agony. "Come to thyself, and
to me, dear Albano," said the Knight. "O, I will do so; she is dead
now, father!" said he, with a choked voice; and now his grief broke
upon his father like a cloud upon a mountain, into one incessant
tear,--it streamed forth as if the innermost soul would bleed itself to
death out of all the open veins,--but the weeping only stirred up his
sorrows, as a rain-storm does a battle-field: he became more
inconsolable and impetuous, and sullenly repeated the previous
exclamation.
"Albano!" said Gaspard, after some time, with stronger voice, "wilt
thou accompany me?" "Gladly, my father!" said he, and followed him, as
a bleeding child with its wound follows its mother. "To-morrow I will
speak," said Albano, in the carriage, and took his father's hand. His
wide-open eyes hung swollen and blind upon the warm evening-sun, which
already rested on the mountains; he continued smiling and pale, and
weeping softly; nor did he mark when the sun went down, and he arrived
in the city.
"To-morrow, my father!" said he languidly and beseechingly to the
Knight; and shut himself in. Nothing more was heard from him.