"Thou canst surely keep awake and travel one night?" With this
question, his father hastily conducted him to the carriage that stood
ready for the journey, in order to steal him away while yet in the
midst of the glowing dream, with his recollections lulled to slumber,
and in order especially to get the start of the pale bride, who this
very night, by the same road, was to go home to the last heritage of
humanity. "In the carriage thou shalt hear all," replied Gaspard to his
son's mild question respecting their destination. Still entranced with
the light of the shining land of dreams, Albano willingly and blindly
obeyed. He still saw Liana in lofty, divine form, standing on the
evening-red ground of the sun, which was bespangled with the dew-drops
of joy, and his eye, full of splendor, reached not down into the
earth-cellar, and to the narrow cast-off chrysalis-shell of the
liberated and soaring Psyche.
Schoppe accompanied him to the torch-lighted carriage, but in perfect
silence, in order not to awaken his heart by intimating the destination
of the journey. He pressed with warmth the hand of the beautiful and
beloved youth, which returned the pressure, and said nothing but "We
shall see each other again, brother!" Thereupon, honored by no parting
look from the imperious father, he stepped back with emotion from his
friend, who continued to wave his warm farewells; and the carriage
rolled off, and, leaving a long gleam of torch-light behind it, flew
out into the high, starry night.
Freshly and meaningly did the glimmering creation broaden out before
the convalescent. Saturn was just rising, and the god of time set
himself, as a soft, flashing jewel, in the glittering magic belt of
heaven. With sealed eyes was the unconscious youth conducted down from
the pastoral cottage of his early years, and out of the shepherd's vale
of his first love, away where the great, eternal constellations of art
beckoned, into the divine land, where the dark ether of heaven is
golden, and the lofty ruins of the earth are clothed with grace, and
the nights are days. No eye looked over to the heights of Blumenbühl,
from which, at this very moment, a black train of coaches was passing
slowly down, with upright-burning funeral torches, like a moving
shadow-realm, to convey the still, good heart, wherein Albano and God
lived, with its dead wounds, to the soft place of rest. Flaming rolled
the torch-carriage up the mountain-road towards Italy.
Tearless and far-gazing, Albano's eye rested on the glimmering,
ceaselessly moving fountain-wheel of time, eternally drawing up
constellations in the east, and pouring them out in the west; and his
childlike hand gently clasped his father's.