Thus did the days, with their cities and landscapes, fly by, and the
world mirrored itself in Albano's life as in a poem. One faculty after
another, the whole bowed harvest of his inner being, gradually rose up
again green and dripping; but, at the same time, the thorn of grief
also grew strong. While his eye and spirit were filling themselves with
the world and all spoils of knowledge, the evil spectre of pain still
kept his abode in the ruins, and came forth when the heart was alone,
and seized it.
He touched Vienna, where he must needs be pleased to be introduced to
several distinguished friends of Gaspard, who here, for the first time,
disclosed to him that he belonged not to the _Cavalleros del Turone_,
but was an Austrian Knight of the Fleece. "It is so singularly familiar
to me here," said Albano; "whence can this arise?" "From some
resemblance to another city," said Gaspard; "whoever travels much comes
out of like cities into like." Every day his father grew more dear and
intelligible to him, and yet no more confidential or intimate. After a
warm day and familiar conversation with Gaspard, one stood, at the
next succeeding interview, again in the very antechamber of his
acquaintance; as in the case of hard-natured maidens, after every
May-month's day the melted May-frost begins to fall anew. Age respects
love, but, unlike youth, it respects little the signs of love. However,
Albano maintained the pride of letting his father see him wholly and
with all his differences, without hiding his summer from the face of
winter.
From day to day Gaspard found letters to himself at the post-offices,
particularly from Pestitz, as Albano saw externally by the post-marks,
for not one was handed over to him. He desired more and more to
overtake the Princess, who was now only one day's journey in advance of
them. They saw already those giants of winter, the Swiss and Tyrolese
Alps, in their encampment; those sons of the gods stood, armed with
avalanches and cataracts and winters, sentinels around the divine land
where gods and men reciprocally imitated each other. How often did
Albano, when the sun at evening glowingly blended with the snow-clad
Alpine heights, gaze with a pang of sadness at those thrones, which he
had once beheld quite otherwise, much more golden, so hopefully and
trustingly, from _Isola Bella_! The heights of thy past life, said he
to himself, are also white, and no Alpine horns any longer sound up
there, among serene, sunny days, and thou art deep in the valley!
They passed, even now, the popular festival of a belated vintage. The
Knight informed himself about everything with the curiosity of a
wine-dealer, and with the science of a vine-dresser. So did he botanize
universally upon the earth after every spear and sprig of knowledge.
Albano wondered at this, since he had heretofore believed that Gaspard
sought and strove after nothing but the Paris--and Hesperides-apples of
art, because, in his station, he could have no occasion for any other
fruits, or need their meat and their kernel, either to enjoy or to
plant them.
They sank into the depths of the mountains of Tyrol. The heights stood
already wrapped in the close, white bier-cloth of winter, and through
the valleys the cold storm went to and fro, the only living thing.
Albano's longing after the mild land of youth grew, between the storms
and the Alps, higher and higher; and Rome's image, the nearer it
approached him, assumed more colossal dimensions. Gaspard made the
journey go on wings, in order to anticipate the rain-clouds of autumn.
In a dark travelling night they worked their passage, as it were, away
through the mountains, like their companion, the river Adige, which
tears up a giant rock, and heaves it into the mild plain, and softly
speeds on its level way. The sun appeared,--and Italy.
It had rained. A bland air fluttered from the cypress hills through the
valley, and through the vine-festoons of the mulberry-trees, and had
forced its way along between blossoms and the fruits of the Seville
oranges. The Adige seemed to rest, like a curling giant-snake, upon the
motley-colored landscape of country-houses and olive-groves, and to set
rainbows upon one another. Life played in the ether; only summer birds
floated in the light blue; only the Venus-chariot of pleasure rolled
over the soft hills.
Albano's full soul gushed out, as it were, into the broad bed which led
him from the mild plain to the magnificent Rome! "When we journey
back," said Gaspard, "then remember thy approach." They stopped at a
village with great stone houses. Albano was looking upon the warm
out-o'-door life around him, the uncovered head, the naked breast, and
the sparkling eyes of the men, the great sheep with silken wool, the
little, black, lively pigs, and the black turkey-cocks, when he
suddenly heard his name and a German greeting from a balcony overhead.
It was the Princess; her carriages stood just aside; Bouverot and
Fraischdöfer were with her. How like balsam it steals through the
heart, in a strange land, and though it were the loveliest, to meet
again a brother or a sister inhabitant of a rougher land, as if one
were meeting in the second world a kindred son of earth! The Adige,
too, that had previously in the wild mountains accompanied him under
the name of the Etsch, followed him with its fairer designation into
the plain. The Princess seemed to him, he knew not why, to have become
milder, more maidenly in form and look, and he reproached himself with
his earlier error. But he only committed a later one. Beyond Vienna her
strongly drawn physiognomy was surpassed by sharper southern ones, and
the striking[72] colors in which she loved to array herself were
outshone by the Italian. A strange soil is a masquerade ball-room or a
watering-place hall, where only human relations, and no political ones,
prevail, and in a strange land men are least strangers. All touched
each other in friendliness, as strange hands feel after and grasp each
other during the ascent of mountains. With what veneration did Albano
look upon the Princess! For he thought, "She would fain have taken the
departed one with her into the healing Eden. O, the saint would indeed
be happy this morning, and her blue eye would weep for bliss." Then his
did so, but not for bliss; and thus are the fire-works of life, like
others, built always by and upon water. Then was the oath solemnly
sworn within him before the beautiful face of the dead Liana: "I will
be truly the friend of this her friend!" Man plays a new part in the
drama of life most warmly and best; over our introductory sermons the
Holy Spirit floats, brooding with the wings of a dove; only by and by
do the eggs lie cold. Albano, never yet initiated into any friendship
but a man's, worshipped that of woman as a rising star, and for this,
as for the former, he found far more capacities of sacrifice treasured
up in his warm soul than for love. Man is in friendship what woman is in
love, and the reverse; namely, more covetous of the object than of the
feeling for it.
With new swelling sails and flying streamers, in gayly decorated
singing-vessels, with propitious side winds, did the gay passage fly
through cities and pastures.
Nothing hangs out over the _corso_ of a long journey a finer festoon of
fruits and flowers, for a carriage which goes before, than a couple of
carriages coming after. What fellowship of joy and danger in night
quarters! What bespeaking of lines of march! What joy over the
adventures past and to come, namely, over the reports of the same! And
how each loves the others!
Only toward Bouverot Albano showed a steady coldness; but the Knight
was friendly. Albano, brought up more among books than among men, often
wondered within himself, that in the former the same difference of
sentiments passed by him so lightly, which among the latter assailed
him so sharply. At last his father asked him upon one occasion, "Why
dost thou demean thyself so strangely toward Herr von Bouverot? Nothing
exasperates more than a considerate, quiet hatred; a passionate hatred
does so far less." "Because it is my law," he answered, "to flee and to
hate the everlasting untruthfulness of men in their connections with
each other. Out of mere humanity to place one's self on a par with
unlike persons, designedly to make a friendly face to any one, to have
such a feeling towards a man, that one is not at liberty to speak it
out to him on the spot, that may well be deemed complete slavery, and
confounds the purest." "Whoso will love nothing but his likeness,"
replied Gaspard, "has nothing but himself to love. Von Bouverot," he
added, laughing, "is, after all, a brave host and travelling
_compagnon_." Albano, who could withstand even people whom he
respected, made no inquisition upon his father, but thought the German
gentleman only the more despicable.
That gentleman, born a pettifogger and pedler, had, it must be
observed, cleared a pathway of deep footprints for himself in the snow
of the Knight and the Princess,--both of whom, like all long
travellers,[73] were uncommonly avaricious,--by overseeing and
overreaching all hosts and Italians in settling up the _Patto_,[74] and
even by his understanding the art of being profoundly coarse just at
the right time, whereas upon turning from the host to the Princess he
would become as much a man of the world again as Fontenelle or any
Frenchman, who in such cases always counts up and curses longer than he
eats. The Knight of the Fleece, who, as he confessed, had never
travelled so cheaply, covered him, therefore, with the laurel which
grew all about here, and looked as gay as he had never looked before.
Only to his son was the cold, wrathful, coarse man a volcano, ejecting
slime and water. Ride a mile ahead of a crowned head or a classic
author, who is also one, and in general before people who have money,
but not to spare, and only save them a few gold pieces a day,--never
shall you have seen the said heads more glad or grateful than in such a
case!
Everywhere Albano would fain have alighted, and stepped in among great
ruins and into the splendor of the scattered insignia, which had been
lost by the conquerors of the world out of their triumphal chariots on
the way to Rome. But the Knight advised him to spare and save his eyes
and inspiration for Rome itself. How his heart beat, when at last in
the waste _Campagna_, which lay full of lava-eruptions around the nest
of the Roman eagles, those world-driven storm-birds, they rolled along
over the Flaminian road! But he and Gaspard felt themselves wonderfully
oppressed. One seemed to be wading through the stagnant lake of a
sultry sulphurous atmosphere, which his father ascribed to the
brimstone huts at Baccano,--he thirsted for the snow on the distant
mountains,--the heavens were dark-blue and still,--single lofty clouds
flew arrow-swift through the silent wilderness. A man in the distance
set down again an urn which he had dug up, and prayed, anxiously
looking to heaven, and telling his beads. Albano turned toward the
mountains, to which the evening sun was sinking, as if dissolved in
piercing splendor. All at once the Knight ordered the postilion to
stop, who passionately threw up his arms toward heaven, while it went
on rumbling under the carriage, and exclaimed, "Holy mother of God, an
earthquake!" But Gaspard touched his son, who seemed intoxicated with
the splendors of sunset, and said, pointing, "_Ecco Roma!_" Albano
looked, and saw in the depths of the distance the dome of St. Peter's
gleaming in the sun. The sun went down, the earth quaked once more, but
in his spirit nothing was save Rome.