Albano for a long time remained mute in a by-chamber. His father left
him to the healing influence of quiet. Schoppe waited for him
patiently, that he might console him by looking upon and listening to
him. At last they heard him in there praying fervently: "Liana, appear
to me and give me peace!" Directly after he stepped out strong and free
as an unchained giant, with all the blood-roses on his face,--with
lightnings in his eyes,--with hasty tread. "Schoppe," said he, "come
with me to the observatory; there hangs high in heaven a bright star;
on that she is buried: I must know that, Schoppe!"
The noble soul lay in the violent hands of a fever. He was just going
out with him, when he beheld the Knight, who gazed upon him intently.
"Only do not become numb and palsied again, my father!" said he,
embraced him but gently, and forgot what he had been going to do.
Schoppe went for Doctor Sphex. Albano returned to his chamber, and
walked slowly up and down there with bowed head and folded hands, and
said to himself consolingly, "Only wait, however, till it strikes
again." Sphex came and saw and--said, "It is simply an inflammatory
fever." But no force could bring him to the point of undressing himself
for bed, or even for a bleeding. "What!" said he, modestly; "she may
surely appear to me at any moment and give me peace. No! no!" The
physician prescribed a whole cooling snow-heaven for the purpose of
snowing the crater full. These coolings and frost-conductors also the
wild youth refused. But then the Knight assailed him with that
thundering voice of his, and with that fury in his eye which revealed
the ever-enduring but covered wrath-fire of the haughty breast:
"Albano, take it!" Then the patient became considerate and compliant,
and said: "O my father, I do indeed love thee!"
Through the whole night, of which the faithful Schoppe remained watcher
and physician, the crazed body kept on playing its feverish part,
driving the youth up and down, and at every stroke of the clocks
constraining him to kneel down and pray: "Liana, do appear, and give me
peace!" How often did Schoppe, otherwise so poor in expression, hold
him fast with a long embrace, only to beguile the harassed one into a
short repose. Incomprehensible to the physician the next morning were
the energies of this iron and white-hot nature, which fever, pain, and
walking had not yet bowed, and on which all prescribed ice-fields
hissed and dried up,--and frightful appeared to him the consequences,
as Albano continued to be his own incendiary, and, at every striking of
the hour, fell on his knees and languished and looked for the heavenly
apparition.
His father, however, left him, like a humanity, to his own energies; he
said he was glad to see such a rare case of unenfeebled youthful vigor,
and felt no fear at all; and he gave, too, with perfect calmness, his
orders about packing up everything for the journey to Italy. He visited
the court, i. e. everybody. Upon any one who knew what he was wont to
demand of men and deny to them, this general complaisance towards all
the world inflicted the pang of wounded honor, even if Gaspard
addressed him too. He first visited the Prince, who, although the
Knight, when in Italy, had quietly administered to him the poisoned
Host of love, together with her poison-chalice, always hung upon him
familiarly. The Knight inspected with him the new accessions to the
works of art; the two sharply and freely compared their opinions in
regard to them, and gave each other commissions for the approaching
absence.
Thereupon he went to his travelling companion, the Princess, towards
whom, indeed, his galling pride had not left behind one particle of
flower-dust from his former love, who, however, in the smooth, cold
mirror of his epic soul, in which all figures moved about freely and in
clear conception, occupied, by virtue of her powerful individuality,
the foreground, as a central figure. As he placed freedom, unity, even
license of spirit, far above sickly pietism, hypocritical imitation of
other people's talents and penitent warfare with one's self, he held
the Princess, even with her cynicism of tongue, as "in her way dear and
deserving." She inquired with much interest after his son's condition
and prospect of travelling with them; he gave her, with his old
calmness, the best hopes.
The Princess Julienne was inaccessible. She had been compelled to see
how the faithful playmate of her youth had been drawn by a harsh,
hostile arm from the flowery shore into the flood of death, and how the
poor girl had drifted away exhausted; this completely prostrated her,
and gladly would she have plunged headlong after the victim. She had
not been, the day before, in a condition to go with the two veiled ones
to the castle.
Gaspard now hastened to one of these, the Countess Romeiro, with whom
he found the other also, the Princess Idoine. The latter had not been
able to read so much in every letter about the sister of her face and
soul, without travelling from her Arcadia in person to see her and
prove the fair relationship; but when she arrived in her veil at the
house of mourning, her kinswoman had already drawn hers over her dying
eye; and when it arose, she saw herself extinguished, and beheld, in
the deep mirror of time, her own dying image. She kept silence within
herself, as if before God, but her heart, her whole life, was stirred.
The resemblance was so striking that Julienne begged her never to
appear before the afflicted mother. Idoine was, it is true, taller,
more sharply cut and less rosy than Liana in her days of bloom; but the
last pale hour, wherein the latter appeared beside her, made the
whitened form taller and the face nobler, and withdrew the flowery veil
of maidenhood from the sharp outline.
Idoine said little to the Knight, and only looked on and saw how her
friend Linda overflowed with real childlike love in return for his
almost paternal affection. Both maidens he treated with a respectful,
warm, and tender morality, which must have appeared wonderful to an eye
(for example, the Prince's) which had often witnessed the unmerciful
irony wherewith he so loved to draw downward in a slow spiral of
licentious discourses, rotten, worm-eaten hearts,--half installed in
God's church and half in the Devil's chapel,--shy, soft, sensitive
sinners, inwardly-bottomless Fantasts, the Roquairols, for instance,
more and more deeply and with ever-increasing pleasure to the centre of
infamy. The Prince thought, in such cases, "He thinks exactly as I do;"
but Gaspard did with him just so.
Even the trembling, pale Julienne stole in, at last, to see him. They
avoided, so far as they could, for her sake, the open grave of her
friend; but she asked, herself, after the sick lover of that friend
very urgently. The Knight, who for most answers of moment had provided
himself with an original phrase-book of nothings, particularly with
ice-flowers of speech, such as, "It is going on as well as can be
expected under the circumstances," or, "Such things are to be looked
for," or, "It will all come right," made use on this occasion of the
last-named flower of rhetoric, and replied, "It will all come right."
When he reached home, nothing had come right, but the flood of the
evil was at its highest. There lay the youth--dressed, in bed,--unable
to walk any longer,--in a burning heat,--talking wildly,--and yet at
every stroke of the clock uttering his old prayer to the high, shut-up
heavens. Hitherto his firm, vigorous brain had been able to hold fast
its reason, at least for all that did not touch Liana; but gradually
the whole mass went over into the fermentation of the fever. In vain
did his father, once, when he knelt and prayed for the apparition of
the dead, arm himself with all the wrath and thunder of his
personality. "Give me peace!" Albano continued to pray, softly, and, as
he said it, looked him softly in the face.
Schoppe, at this point, with the look of one who has a weighty mystery,
took the father aside, and said he knew an unfailing remedy. Gaspard
evinced curiosity. "The Princess Idoine," said he, "must not concern
herself at all about miserable childish trifles, but just when it
strikes and he kneels, boldly present herself to him as the blessed
spirit, and conclude the plaguy peace." Contrary to what might have
been presumed, the Knight said, ill-humoredly, "It is improper." In
vain Schoppe sought to preach him over to the sunny side,--he only went
farther over to the wintry side at the appearance of another's
intention; no one could bring him to a gentle warmth but himself.
At last Gaspard, after his manner, let so much drift-ice of
above-mentioned phrases drive over the permanent ground-ice of his
character, that Schoppe proudly and indignantly held his peace.
Besides, the preparations for the journey went on as if the father
meant to snatch his son as a brand from the fever-burning, and tear him
distractedly out of the old circles of love. Schoppe made known to him
his intention of staying at home; he said he had nothing against it.
Now did Schoppe feel on his own scratched-up face the cutting North of
this character, to which he had generally been partial: "'Trust no
long, lank Spaniard,' was the just saying of Cardanus,"[64] said he.
Albano was sick, and therefore not inconsolable. He drew from the Lethe
of madness the dark draught of oblivion of the present; only when he
knelt did he see mirrored in the stream his lacerated form and a cloudy
heaven. He heard nothing of this,--how the poor named their names, that
they might weep gratefully around their sleeping benefactress, and how
under their lamentations the once healing music of their countenances
now lay deaf and dumb. He heard nothing of the raving of her brother,
nor of the loud (acoustically arranged) grief of her father, nor of the
stiff mother wrapped in dull anguish. He knew not beforehand that the
pale Charis would appear one evening in her coronation-chamber in the
midst of lights for the last time on earth, crowned, decked, and
slumbering. To him, indeed, at every hour died an infinite hope, but
each hour bore him also a new one.
"Poor brother," said Schoppe the next day, in noble indignation, "I
swear to thee, thou shalt get thy peace to-day." The pale patient
looked upon him imploringly. "Yes, by Heaven!" Schoppe swore, and
almost wept.