"P. S. His old teacher, Wehmeier, likewise greets his darling in
strange lands; and we all rejoice in the prospect of his return. A."
"P. S. Brother, I, too, must make a P. S. Schoppe has painted _you know
who_, and _scenes_, even, have arisen out of the circumstance. But more
of this when we meet. The Princesse Idoine has visited our Princess
often this winter. R."
As letters accommodate themselves more to the place, where they were
born, than to that where they are delivered, it often happens that what
went out as seed, arrives, after its long journey, already in a
germinating state, and with roots, and inversely in the shape of
blossoms rather than of dry seed; and every sheet is a double birth of
two distant times, that of writing and that of reading. Thus was
Albano, now under this serener sky, on this soil of a greater world of
the past, and with a soul full of new springs, the less overtaken and
darkened by Rabette's letter, through which the northern winter clouds
had passed. The ingenuous Rabette, the mild Albina came after him in
fancy but softly over the strange mountains and through the strange
climes, and laid a cooling hand on his hot brow; his old Schoppe stood
in his old worth before him, and Liana floated again through the lofty
blue. Toward the weather-beaten Roquairol he felt not so much as
compassion, but a hard contempt; and Linda's steadfast mind was exactly
after his, like the proud look and gait of Roman women. He now thought
over many things more cheerfully than ever, and even wished to look
once in the magic-face of that Heroine.
In _Fondi_ the Neapolitan world-garden began, and when they entered
upon the road to _Mola_, they went deeper and deeper into blossoms and
flowers. In flying sheets--addressed, perhaps, to his father, still
more probably to his Schoppe--his bliss and his soul expressed
themselves; it treasured up, as it were, some stray orange-blossoms
dropped out of the Eden through which they had so rapidly flown. Here
they are:--
"Shortly before sundown on Ascension-day we arrived in Mola; the native
Dian was full as much overcome with the green majesty, which he had not
seen for a long time, as I, and I do not yet believe him when he says
that it blooms and smells more finely about Naples. I did not go at all
into the city, for the sun hung already toward the sea. Around me
streams the incense smoke of reeking flowers from citron-woods and
meadows of jessamin and narcissus. On my left the blue Apennine flings
his fountain-waters from mountain to mountain, and on my right the
mighty sea presses upon the mighty earth, and the earth stretches out a
firm arm and holds a shining city[91] hung with gardens, far out into
the multitudinous waves,--and into the unfathomable sea lofty islands
have been cast as unfathomable mountains;[92] low in the south and east
a glimmering mist-land, the coast of Sorrento, grasps round the sea
like a crooked-up Jupiter's-arm, and behind the distant Naples stands
Vesuvius, with a cloud in heaven under the moon. 'Fall on thy knees,
fortunate one,' said Dian, 'before the sumptuous prospect!' O God, why
not do it in earnest? For who can behold in the glow of evening the
monstrous realm of waters, how yonder busy and restless motion grows
still in the distance, and only sparkles, and at last, blue and golden,
blends with the sky, and how the earth here shuts in the delicate,
floating fire with her long lands into a rosy, steady earth-shadow, who
can behold the fire-rain of infinite life, the weaving magic circle of
all forces in the water, in the sky, on the earth, without kneeling
down before the infinite spirit of Nature and saying, 'How near to me
thou art, O Ineffable!' O here he is both near and far, bliss and hope
come glimmering from the misty coast, and also from the neighboring
fountains, which the hills pour down into the sea, and in the white
blossoms over my head. O does not, then, this sun, around which burning
waves flutter, and the blue overhead and over yonder, and the kindling
lands of men, worlds within the world,--does not this distance call out
the heart and all its aspiring wishes? Will it not create and grasp
into the distance and snatch its life blossoms from the highest peak of
heaven? But when it looks around itself upon its own ground, there too
again is the girdle of Venus thrown around the blooming circumference,
brightly green grows the tall myrtle-tree near its little dark myrtle,
the orange glimmers in the high, cold grass, and overhead hangs its
fragrant blossom, the wheat waves with broad leaves between the enamels
of the almond and the narcissus, and far off stands the cypress, and
the palm towers proudly;[93] all is flower and fruit, spring and
harvest. 'Shall I go this way? shall I go that way?' asks the heart in
its bliss.
"Thus did I see the sun go down under the waves,--the reddening coasts
fled away under their misty veils,--the world went out, land after
land, from one island to another,--the last gold-dust was wafted away
from the heights,--and the prayer-bells of the convents led up the
heart above the stars. O how happy and how wistful was my heart, at
once a wish and a flame, and in my innermost being a prayer of
gratitude went forth for this, that I was and am upon this earth.
"Never shall I forget that! If we throw away life as too small for our
wishes, still do they not belong to life itself, and did they not come
from it? If the crowned earth rears around us such blossoming shores,
such sunny mountains, would she fain enclose therewith unhappy beings?
Why is our heart narrower than our eye? why does a cloud hardly a mile
long oppress us, when that very cloud stands itself under the stars of
immensity? Is not every morning and every hope a beginning of spring?
What are the thickest prison-walls of life but vine-trellises built up
for the ripening of the wine-glow? And as life always cuts itself up
into quarters, why must it be merely the last, and not quite as often
the first, upon which a full-beaming moon follows? 'O God,' said I, as
I went back through the green world which next morning becomes a
glowing one, 'never let me ascribe thy eternity to any one time, except
the most blissful; joy is eternal, but not pain, for this last thou
hast not created.'
"'Friend,' said Dian to me, on the way, when I could not well conceal
from him my inner commotion, 'what may not your feelings be, then, when
you look back upon Naples on the passage over to Ischia! For it is
plain to perceive that you were born in a northern land.' 'Dear
friend,' said I, 'every one is born _with_ his north or south; whether
in an outer one beside, that is of little consequence.'"
So far his leaf upon Mola. But a wonderful circumstance seemed this
very night to take him at his word in respect to the last assurance
contained in his letter. In the yard of the inn were assembled many
boatmen and others; all were contending violently about an opinion, and
the most were continually saying: "To-day, to be sure, is Ascension
Day, and _he_, too, has wrought miracles." "Ascension?" thought Albano,
and remembered his birthday, which often fell on this festival. Dian
came up and related, laughing, how the people were expecting down below
the ascension of a monk, who had promised it this night, and many
believed him for this reason, because he had already done a wonderful
work, namely, given a dead man his speech for two hours, before all
Mola. They both were agreed to witness the work. The multitude
swelled,--the promised man came not, who was to lead them to the place
of ascension,--all became angry rather than incredulous. At length late
at night a mask appeared and gave, with a motion of the hand, a sign to
follow it. All streamed after, even Albano and his friend. The pure
moon shone fresh out of blue skies, the wide garden of the country
slept in its blossoms, but all breathed fragrance, the slumbering and
the waking flowers.
The mask led the crowd to the ruins of Cicero's house, or tower, and
pointed upward. Overhead, on the wall, stood a trembling man. Albano
found his face more and more familiar. At last the man said: "I am a
father of death: may the Father of life be merciful to me. How it goes
with me I know not. There stands one among you," he added at once in a
strange, namely, in the Spanish language, "to whom I appeared one Good
Friday on Isola Bella, and announced the death of his sister; let him
journey on to Ischia, there will he find his sister."
Albano could not hear these words without excitement and indignation.
The form of the Father of Death upon that island he saw now right
clearly upon these ruins; and his promise to appear to him on a Good
Friday came again to his mind. He tried now to work his way up to the
ruins, so as to attack the monk. An inhabitant of Mola cried, when he
heard the strange language: "The monk is talking with the Devil." The
ascensionist said nothing to the contrary,--he trembled more
violently,--but the people sought for him who had said it, and cried,
"It is he with the mask, for he is no more to be found." At last the
monk, quaking, begged they would be still when he vanished, and pray
for him, and never seek his body. Albano was now close behind his back,
unseen by Dian. Just then, high in the dark blue, came a flock of
quails flying slowly along. The monk swiftly and staggeringly flung
himself up, scattered the birds, cried out in the dark distance,
"Pray!" and vanished away into the broad air.
The people cried and shouted with exultation, and part prayed; many
believed now the Devil was in the play. Among the spectators lay a man
with his face to the earth, and continually cried, "God have mercy on
me!" But no man brought him to an explanation. Dian, privately a little
superstitious, said his understanding was at a stand-still here. But
Albano explained how a complot of ghosts had been long twitching and
drawing at his life's curtain, but some day he should yet certainly
thrust his hand successfully through the curtain, and he was firmly
resolved immediately to cross over from Naples to Ischia, to see his
sister. "Verily," he added, "in this mother country of wonder, fantasy,
and everything great, one as easily believes in fair, enriching
miracles of fate, as one does in the north in dreadful robbing miracles
of spirits."
Dian was also for the earliest visit to the island of Ischia; "Because
otherwise," he added, "when Albano had delivered his letters in Naples,
and had been drawn in to the _Ricevimenti_,[94] or on Posilippo and
Vesuvius, then there would be no getting away."
On the day following they departed from Mola. The lovely sea played
hide-and-seek with them on their way, and only the golden sky never
veiled itself. Naples' goblet of joy already intoxicated one from afar
with its fragrance and spirit. Albano cast inspired looks at _Campania
Felice_, at the Colosseum in Capua, and at the broad garden, full of
gardens, and even at the rough Appian Way, which its old name made
softer.
But he sighed for the island of Ischia, that Arcadia of the ocean, and
that wonderful place where he was to find a sister. It was not in their
power earlier than in the early part of Saturday night--if indeed
waking and glancing life can be called night, particularly an Italian
Saturday night--to reach _Aversa_. Albano insisted upon their
continuing on in the night toward Naples. Dian was still reluctant. By
chance there stood in the post-house a beautiful girl, who might be
about fourteen years old, very much troubled at having missed the
coach, and determined this very night to go on to Naples, in order to
reach Ischia, where her parents were, early enough on the holy Sabbath.
"She had come," she said, "from _Santa Agata_; her name was only
_Agata_, and not _Santa_." "Probably her old joke," said Dian, but he
was now--with his love of hovering about every fair form--himself quite
in a mood for the night-ride, that so they might carry the black-eyed
one along with them, who looked joyously and brightly into the fire of
strange eyes. She accepted the invitation cheerfully, and prattled
familiarly, like a naturalist, about Epomeo and Vesuvius, and predicted
for them innumerable pleasures on the island, and altogether showed an
intelligence and thoughtfulness far above her years. At last they all
flew along under the bright stars out into the lovely night.