So long as the night lasted, the images of Albano's dream went on
gleaming with the constellations, and not until the bright morning rose
were they all extinguished. Gaspard told him, smilingly, he was on his
way to Italy. He received the intelligence of his going abroad with an
unexpected composure. He merely asked where his Schoppe was. When told
that _he_ had not been disposed to join them, then did he seem to see
all at once in fancy's eye the Linden-city come following after him
over the mountains and valleys, and his last friend standing in the
middle of the market-place all alone, engaged in mock-play with
himself, by way of quieting his true, strong heart, which would fain
worry down its grief and hold fast its love. With this friend, whom he
would not let go out of his soul, Albano drew after him, as by a
Jupiter's-chain, the whole stage and world of his past, and every sad
scene came close up to him. Cities and lands rolled along before him
unseen. The waves which sorrow lashes up around us, stand high between
us and the world, and make our ship solitary in the midst of a haven
full of vessels. He turned away with a shudder from every beautiful
virgin; she reminded him, like a dirge, of her who was pale in death;
forever did Liana's white face, uncovered,--like a corpse in
Italy,[70]--seem to be travelling along on the endless way to the
grave, and only indistinguishable forms with masks followed after her
alive. So is it with man and his grief; by a process the reverse of
ship-drawing, in which the living drag the dead along with them, here
the dead takes the living with him, and draws them after him far into
his cold realm.
Time gradually unfolded his grief, instead of weakening it. His life
had become a night, in which the moon is under the earth, and he could
not believe that Luna would gradually return with an increasing bow of
light. Not joys, but only actions,--those remote stars of night,--were
now his aim. He held it unjust to keep back in the presence of his
father the tears which often forced themselves from him in the midst of
conversation, merely because his father took no interest in them; still
he showed him, nevertheless, by the energy of his discourses and
resolves, the vigorous youth. Only the reproach which he had cast upon
himself for his guilt in Liana's death had suffered itself to be
swallowed up in the peace which Idoine had given him, although he now
held her apparition to have been only a feverish waking dream about
Liana.
His father kept a profound silence about Idoine's appearance on the
stage of action, as well as all disagreeable recollections. He spoke
much, however, of Italy and of the spoils of art which Albano would
acquire there, especially through the company of the Princess, the
Counsellor of Arts, and the German gentleman, who had gone on before
them, and whom one might soon overtake. The son turned to him at last
with the bold inquiry whether he really had a sister still, and related
the adventure with the Baldhead. "It might well be," said Gaspard, with
a disagreeable jocosity, "that thou hadst still more sisters and
brothers than I knew of. But what I know is, that thy twin-sister
Severina died this year in her cloister. For what, then, dost thou take
the night-adventure?" "I should almost think it a dream," he replied.
Here, accidentally, his hand found its way to his pocket, and to his
astonishment struck upon the half-ring which his sister had presented
him. The strangeness of the whole thing sank deep among his sensations,
and that night of horror passed swiftly and coldly through his noon. He
and his father examined the ends of the divided ring, on each of which
a broken-off signature ended abruptly. "There is _nothing_ miraculous,
however," said the Knight. "How do we know, then, that there is
anything natural?" said Albano. "Mystery," replied Gaspard, "or the
spirit-world, dwells only in the spirit." "We must," the son continued,
"even in the case of the commonest optical tricks, derive our pleasure
from something else than the resolving of the deception of fancy into a
deception of the senses, because otherwise the magic would necessarily
please us more _after_ the solution than before. These are the points
and poles of human nature, upon which the eternal polar clouds hang.
Our maps of the kingdom of truth and spirits are the map-stones, which
stand for ruins and villages; these are _lies_, but still they are
_likenesses_. The spirit, forever an exile among bodies, desires
spirits." "That is just about what I meant, too," said Gaspard.
Albano, however, insisted more distinctly upon his decision respecting
the Baldhead and the sister. "Anything else," said the Knight, quite
petulantly; "it is to me a very disagreeable conversation. Take the
world in _thy_ way and be quiet!" "Dear father," asked Albano, with
surprise, "do you mean at some future time to definitely enlighten me
on the subject?" "So soon as I can," said the Knight, abruptly, with
such sharp and stinging glances at the son, that the latter, flinching
from them, as from arrows, hastily bent away his head out of the
carriage; when he for the first time observed that his father did not
mean him at all; for he still continued to look as sharply in the same
direction as if he were close upon the point of falling into his old
torpor.
Gaspard's expression about the indwelling of the spiritual world within
the spirit, and his look, and the thought of his palsy lent a romantic
awfulness to the hour and the silence in Albano's eyes. Down below on
the bank of the stream stood a concourse of people, and one came
running like a fugitive or a spokesman out of the crowd. A boy at
some distance threw himself down on a hill, and laid his ear to the
earth, in order to hear somewhat accurately the rolling of their
carriage-wheels. In the village where they made their noonday halt
there was an incessant tolling. Their host was at the same time a
miller; the din of waves and wheels filled the whole house; and
canary-birds sent their additional jargoning through the jargon.
There are moments when the two worlds, the earthly and the spiritual,
sweep by near to each other, and when earthly day and heavenly night
touch each other in twilights. As the shadows of the shining clouds of
heaven run along over the blossoms and harvests of earth, so does
heaven universally cast upon the common surface of reality its light
shadows and reflections. So did Albano find it now. The ring and the
mystic word of his cold father had dazzled him like lightning. Below at
the house-door he found a maiden, who carried along before her a box of
citrons. Suddenly and unpleasantly the tolling stopped; he looked
up to the belfry, and a white hawk sat upon the vane. Soon came the
bell-ringer himself, to get something to drink, and began upon the
chamberlain with strong and yet not ill-meant curses, for having kept
him tolling there these three weeks, and said he only wished that such
a one as that distinguished personage himself had been the previous
year had only been obliged to toll regularly three days after the
decease of the blessed daughter. He urged the miller to "buy some of
the citrons, because they were good, juicy, and had a thin rind; and he
and the 'parson's boy'[71] must recognize them as coming from the
burial of the gracious Fräulein; and in fourteen days, at all events,
he would need some for the assembled clergy, as bride-father!" "What
are the customs here?" asked Albano.
"Why, you see, when any one dies," said the sexton, very respectful and
friendly, "then the parson and my littleness get a citron, and so does
the corpse too; but if any one is married, then the clergy get the
same, and so also the bride. This is the fashion with us, my most
gracious master."
Albano went out into the garden back of the house, into which the
exposed mill-wheels threw their silver sparks, and which was as if
swallowed up in the splendor and uproar of the open water. While he
looked into the glimmering, flying whirlpools, the citrons which the
corpse as well as the bride got hovered before his excited mind.
Emotion is full of similes. Time was, thought he, when Liana should
have journeyed to the citron-land, and into the low woods where the
snow of blossoms and the gold of fruits play together between green and
blue, and there she was to have gained health and refreshment; now she
holds the citron in her cold, dead hand, and she is not quickened.
He looked round, and seemed to stand in a strange world. In the blue of
heaven an invisible storm without clouds swept along like a spirit;
long rows of hills shifted and sparkled with red fruits and red leaves;
out of the gay trees glowing apples were flung; and the storm flew from
summit to summit, and down upon the earth, and roared along down the
whole course of the disturbed stream. One could fancy spirits played
around the earth, or would appear upon it, so singularly seemed the
bright welkin stirred and illuminated. By this time, Albano had come
unconsciously into a dark, wooded wilderness; therein leaped, unseen,
unheard, a pure, light fountain out of the earth upon the earth; the
storm without was still, only the fountain was heard. "The holy one is
near me," said his heart. "Is not the fountain her image? Is it not the
very image of her eternal tears? Does she not press upward out of the
earth, where she dwells?" All at once he saw in his hand, as if
another's hand had laid it therein, the sketch of Linda's head which
Liana, with dying hands, had made and presented; but his fancy
powerfully impressed upon the picture the resemblance to the artist, so
clearly did he see Liana's soft face upon the paper.
He went forth again into the shining world. "How poor I am!" he cried.
"I see her upon the golden cloud which sails from the evening sun
toward morning; I see her in the cool fountain of the vale, and on the
moon, and on the flower. I see her everywhere; and she rests only on
one spot. O, how poor!" And he looked up to heaven, and a single long
cloud was floating therein, swiftly and far away.