With emotion, with a sort of festive solemnity, Albano trod the
cool island. It was to him as if the breezes were always wafting to
him the words, "The place of rest." Agata begged them both to stay
with her parents, whose house lay on the shore, not far from the
suburb-town.[95] As they went over the bridge, which connects the green
rock wound round with houses to the shore and the city, she pointed out
to them joyfully in the east the individual house. As they went along
so slowly, and the high, round rock and the row of houses stood
mirrored in the water; and upon the flat roofs the beautiful women who
were trimming the festal lamps for evening spoke busily over to each
other, and greeted and questioned the returning Agata; and all faces
were so glad, all forms so comely, and the very poorest in silk; and
the lively boys pulled down little chestnut-tops; and the old father of
the isle, the tall Epomeo, stood before them all clad in vine-foliage
and spring-flowers, out of whose sweet green only scattered, white
pleasure-houses of happy mountain-dwellers peeped forth;--then was it
to Albano as if the heavy pack of life had fallen off from his
shoulders into the water, and the erect bosom drank in from afar the
cool ether flowing in from Elysium. Across the sea lay the former
stormy world, with its hot coasts.
Agata led the two into the home of her parents, on the eastern
declivity of Epomeo; and immediately, amidst the loud, exulting
welcome, cried out, quite as loudly: "Here are two fine gentlemen, who
wish to come home with me." The father said, directly: "Welcome, your
excellencies! You shall, with pleasure, keep the chambers, though many
bathing-guests will come by and by. You will find nowhere better
quarters. I was formerly only a _turner_ in the Fayence manufactory,
but have been for these eight years a vine-dresser, and can afford to
do a favor. When was there ever a better December and March[96] than
this year? Your commands, excellencies!" Suddenly Agata wept; her
mother had announced to her the interment of her youngest sister, for
which solemnity, according to the fashion of the island, an eve of joy
was appointed to-day, because they loved to congratulate each other
upon the eternal, bliss-insuring ratification of a child's innocence by
death. The old man would fain have gone at once right into narrations,
when Dian begged his Albano, after so long a commotion of souls and
bodies, to go to sleep till sunset, when he would wake him. Agata
showed him the way to his cool chamber, and he went up.
Here, before the cooling sea-zephyr, the going to sleep was itself the
slumber, and the echoing dream itself the sleep. His dream was an
incessant song, which sang itself,--"The morning is a rose, the day a
tulip, night is a lily, and evening is another morning."
He dreamed himself at last down into a long sleep. Late, in the dark,
like an Adam in renovated youth, he opened his eyes in Paradise, but
he knew not where he was. He heard distant, sweet music; unknown
flower-scents swam through the air. He looked out; the dark heaven was
strewed with golden stars, as with fiery blossoms; on the earth, on the
sea, hovered hosts of lights; and in the depths of distance hung a
clear flame steadily in the midst of heaven. A dream, of which the
scene was unknown, confounded still the actual stage with one that had
vanished; and Albano went through the silent, unpeopled house, dreaming
on, out into the open air, as into an island of spirits.
Here nightingales, first of all, with their melody drew him into the
world. He found the name Ischia again, and saw now that the castle on
the rock and the long street of roofs in the shore-town stood full of
burning lamps. He went up to the place whence the music proceeded,
which was illuminated and surrounded with people, and found a chapel
standing all in fires of joy. Before a Madonna and her child, in a
niche, a night-music was playing, amidst the loquacious rustling of joy
and devotion. Here he found again his hosts, who had all quite
forgotten him in the jubilee; and Dian said, "I would have awaked you
soon; the night and the pleasures last a great while yet."
"Do hear and see yonder the divine Vesuvius, who joins in celebrating
the festival in such right good earnest," cried Dian, who plunged as
deeply into the waves of joy as any Ischian. Albano looked over toward
the flame, flickering high in the starry heaven, and, like a god,
having the great thunder beneath it, and he saw how the night had made
the promontory of Misenum loom up like a cloud beside the volcano.
Beside them burned thousands of lamps on the royal palace of the
neighboring island Procida.
While he looked out over the sea, whose coasts were sunk into the
night, and which lay stretching away like a second night, immeasurable
and gloomy, he saw now and then a dissolving splendor sweep over it,
which flowed on ever broader and brighter. A distant torch also showed
itself in the air, whose flashing drew long, fiery furrows through the
glimmering waves. There drew near a bark, with its sail taken in,
because the wind blew off shore. Female forms appeared on board, among
which, one of royal stature, along whose red, silken dress the
torch-glare streamed down, held her eyes fixed upon Vesuvius. As they
sailed nearer, and the bright sea blazed up on either side under the
dashing oars, it seemed as if a goddess were coming, around whom the
sea swims with enraptured flames, and who knows it not. All stepped out
on shore at some distance, where by appointment, as it seemed, servants
had been waiting to make everything easy. A smaller person, provided
with a double opera-glass, took a short farewell of the tall one, and
went away with a considerable retinue. The red-dressed one drew a white
veil over her face, and went, accompanied by two virgins, gravely and
like a princess, to the spot where Albano and the music were.
Albano stood near to her; two great black eyes, filled with fire and
resting upon life with inward earnestness, streamed through the veil,
which betrayed the proud, straight forehead and nose. In the whole
appearance there was to him something familiar and yet great; she stood
before him as a Fairy Queen, who had long ago with a heavenly
countenance bent down over his cradle and looked in with smiles and
blessings, and whom the spirit now recognizes again with its old love.
He thought perhaps of a name, which spirits had named to him, but that
presence seemed here not possible. She fixed her eye with complacency
and attention on the play of two virgins, who, neatly clad in silk,
with gold-edged silken aprons, danced gracefully, with modestly
drooping heads and downcast eyes, to the tambourine of a third; the two
other virgins, whom the stranger had brought with her, and Agata, sang
sweetly with Italian half-voice[97] to the graceful joy. "It is all
done in fact," said an old man to the strange lady, "to the honor of
the Holy Virgin and St. Nicholas." She nodded slowly a serious yes.
At this moment there stood, all at once, Luna, played about with the
sacrificial fire of Vesuvius, over in the sky, as the proud goddess of
the sun-god, not pale, but fiery, as it were a thunder-goddess over the
thunder of the mountain, and Albano cried, involuntarily, "God! the
great moon!" The stranger quickly threw back her veil, and looked round
significantly after the voice as after a familiar one; when she had
looked upon the strange youth for a long time, she turned toward the
moon over Vesuvius.
But Albano was agitated by a god, and dazzled by a wonder; he saw here
Linda de Romeiro. When she raised the veil, beauty and brightness
streamed out of a rising sun; delicate, maidenly colors, lovely lines
and sweet fulness of youth played like a flower-garland about the brow
of a goddess, with soft blossoms around the holy seriousness and mighty
will on brow and lip, and around the dark glow of the large eye. How
had the pictures lied about her,--how feebly had they expressed this
spirit and this life!
As if the hour would fain worthily invest the shining apparition, so
beautifully did heaven and earth with all rays of life play into each
other,--love-thirsty stars flew like heaven-butterflies into the
sea,--the moon had soared away over the impetuous earth-flame of
Vesuvius, and spread her tender light over the happy world, the sea and
the shores,--Epomeo hovered with his silvered woods, and with the
hermitage of his summit high in the night blue,--near by stirred the
life of the singing, dancing ones, with their prayers and their festal
rockets which they were sending aloft. When Linda had long looked
across the sea toward Vesuvius, she spoke, of herself, to the silent
Albano, by way of answering his exclamation, and making up for her
sudden turning round and staring at him. "I come from Vesuvius," said
she; "but he is quite as sublime near at hand as afar off, which is so
singular." Altogether strange and spirit-like did it sound to him, that
he really heard this voice. With one that indicated deep emotion he
replied: "In this land, however, everything is great indeed, even the
little is made great by the large,--this little human pleasure here
between the burnt-out volcano[98] and the burning one,--all is at one,
and therefore right and so godlike." At once attracted and distracted,
not knowing him, although previously struck with the resemblance of his
voice to that of Roquairol, gladly reflecting on his simple words, she
looked longer than she was aware at the ingenuous, but daring and warm
eye of the youth, made no reply, turned slowly away, and again looked
silently at the sports.
Dian, who had already for a long time been looking at the fair
stranger, found at last in his memory her name, and came to her with
the half-proud, half-embarrassed look of artists toward rank. She did
not recognize him. "The Greek, Dian," said Albano, "noble Countess!"
Surprised at the Count's recognition of her, she said to him: "I do not
know you." "You know my father," said Albano, "the Knight Cesara." "O
Dio!" cried the Spanish maiden, startled, became a lily, a rose, a
flame, sought to collect herself, and said, "How singular! A friend of
yours, the Princess Julienne, is also here."
The conversation flowed now more smoothly. She spoke of his father, and
expressed her gratitude as his ward. "That is a mighty nature of his,
which guards itself against everything common," said she, at once,
against the fashion of the quality, speaking even partially of persons.
The son was made happy by this praise of a father; he enhanced it, and
asked in pleased expectation how she took his coldness.
"Coldness?" said she, with liveliness, "I hate the word cordially. If
ever a rare man has a whole will and no half of one, and rests upon his
power, and does not, like a crustaceous animal, cleave to every other,
then he is called cold. Is not the sun, when he approaches us, cold
too?" "Death is cold," cried Albano, very much moved, because he often
imagined that he himself had more force than love; "but there may well
be a sublime coldness, a sublime pain, which with eagle's talon
snatches the heart away on high, but tears it in pieces in mid-heaven
and before the sun."
She looked upon him with a look of greatness. "Truly you speak like a
woman," said she; "they alone have nothing to will or to do without the
might of love; but it was prettily said." Dian, good for nothing as to
general observations, and apt only at individual ones, interrupted her
with questions about particular works of art in Naples; she very
frankly communicated her characteristic views, although with tolerable
decision. Albano thought at first of his artistic friend, the
draughtsman Schoppe, and asked about him. "At my departure," said she,
"he was still in Pestitz, though I cannot comprehend what such an
extraordinary being would fain do there; that is a powerful man, but
quite jumbled up and not clear. He is very much your friend." "How
does," asked Dian, half joking, "my old patron, the Lector Augusti?"
She answered concisely, and almost with a certain sensitiveness at the
familiarity of his question: "It goes well with him at court. Few
natures," she continued, turning to Albano, on the subject of Augusti,
"are doomed to meet so much injustice of judgment as such simple, cool,
consistent ones as his." Albano could not entirely say yes, but he
recognized with satisfaction in her respect for the strangest
individuality of character the pupil of his father, who prized a plant,
not according to the smoothness or roughness of its skin, but according
to its bloom. Never does a man portray his own character more vividly
than in his manner of portraying another's. But Linda's lofty candor on
the subject, which is as often wanting in finely cultivated females as
refinement and reserve are in powerful men, took the strongest hold of
the youth, and he thought he should be sinning if he did not exercise
his great natural frankness towards her in a twofold degree.
She called her maidens to depart with her. Dian went off. "These are
more necessary to me," said she to Albano, "than they seem." She had,
namely, she related, something of the ocular malady[99] of many Spanish
women, of being infinitely short-sighted in the night. He begged to be
permitted to accompany her, and it was granted; he would have guided
her, after what she had said, but she forbade it.
During the walk she often stood still, to look at the beautiful flame
of Vesuvius. "He stands there," said Albano, "in this pastoral poem of
Nature, like a tragic muse, and exalts everything, as a war does the
age." "Do you believe that of war," said she. "A man must have," he
replied, "either great men or great objects before him, otherwise his
powers degenerate, as the magnet's do, when it has lain for a long time
without being turned toward the right corners of the world." "How
true," said she: "what say you to a Gallic war?" He owned his wish that
it might break out, and his own disposition to take part in it. He
could not help, even at the expense of his future liberty, being
open-hearted towards her. "Blessed are you men," said she; "you dig
your way down through the snow of life, and find at last the green
harvest underneath. That can no woman do. A woman is surely a stupid
thing in nature. I respect one and another head of the Revolution,
particularly that political monster of energy, Mirabeau, although I
cannot like him."
During these discoursings they came upon the ascent of Epomeo. Agata
accompanied the two playmates of her earlier days with full tongue and
hungry ear for so many mutual news-tellings. As he now went along
beside the beautiful virgin, and occasionally looked in her face, which
was made still more beautiful by mental energy, and became at once
flower, blossom, and fruit (whereas generally the converse holds, and
the head gains by the face): then did he pass a severe judgment upon
his previous deportment toward this noble being, although he as well as
she, out of delicacy, remained silent about the former juggling play
with her name, as well as about the wonderfulness of to-day's meeting.
Silently they went on in the rare night and region. All at once she
stopped on an eminence, around which the dowry of Nature was heaped up
on all sides in mountains. They looked round in the splendor; the Swan
of Heaven, the moon, floated high over Vesuvius in the ether,--the
giant serpent of the world, the sea, lay fast asleep in his bed that
stretches from pole to pole,--the coasts and promontories glimmered
only, like midnight dreams,--clefts full of tree-blossoms overflowed
with ethereal dew made of light, and in the vales below stood dark
smoke-columns upon hot fountains, and overhead they floated away in
splendor,--all around lay, high up, illuminated chapels, and low around
the shore dark cities,--the winds stood still, the rose-perfumes and
the myrtle-perfumes stole forth alone,--soft and bland floated the blue
night around the ravished earth; from around the warm moon the ether
retired, and she sank down love-intoxicated out of mid-heaven larger
and larger into the sweet earth-spring. Vesuvius stood now, without
flame or thunder, white with sand or snow, in the east,--in the
darkening blue the gold grains of the fiery stars were sowed far
abroad.
It was the rare time when life has its transit through a
superterrestrial sun. Albano and Linda accompanied each other with holy
eyes, and their looks softly disengaged themselves from each other
again; they gazed into the world, and into the heart, and expressed
nothing. Linda turned softly round and walked silently onward.
Just then, all at once, one of the prattling maidens behind them called
out: "There is really an earthquake coming; I actually feel it; good
night!" It was Agata. "God grant one," said Albano. "O why?" said
Linda, eagerly, but in a low tone. "All that the infinite mother wills
and sends is to me to-day childishly dear, even death;--are not we,
too, part and parcel of her immortality?" said he. "Yes, man may feel
and believe this in joy; only in sorrow let him not speak of
immortality; in such impotency of soul he is not worthy of it."
Albano's spirit here rose up from its princely seat to greet its lofty
kinswoman, and said, "Immortal one! and though no one else were so!"
She silently smiled and went on. His heart was an asbestos-leaf written
over and cast into the fire, burning, not consuming; his whole former
life went out, the leaf shone fiery and pure for Linda's hand.
When they reached the last eminence below which Linda's and Julienne's
dwelling lay, and they stood near each other on the point of
separation, then the maiden suddenly cried out below: "An earthquake!"
Out of hell a thunder-car rolled on in the subterranean ways,--a broad
lightning flapped its wings up and down in the pure heaven under the
stars,--the earth and the stars trembled, and affrighted eagles flew
through the lofty night. Albano had grasped the hands of the tottering
Linda. Her face had faded before the moon to a pale, godlike statue of
marble. By this time it was all over; only some stars of the earth
still shot down out of the steadfast heavens into the sea, and wondrous
clouds went up round about from below. "Am I not very timid?" said she,
faintly. Albano gazed into her face livingly and serenely as a sun-god
in morning-redness, and pressed her hands. She would have drawn them
away violently. "Give them to me forever!" said he, earnestly. "Bold
man," said she, in confusion, "who art thou? Dost thou know me? If thou
art as I, then swear and say whether thou hast always been true!"
Albano looked toward Heaven, his life was balanced; God was near him;
he answered softly and firmly: "Linda, always!" "So have I!" said she,
and inclined modestly her beautiful head upon his breast, but
immediately raised it again, with its large moist eyes, and said,
hurriedly: "Go now! Early to-morrow come, Albano! Adio! Adio!"
The maidens came up. Albano went down, his bosom filled with living
warmth, with living radiance. Nature breathed with fresher perfumes out
of the gardens; the sea murmured again below; and on Vesuvius burned a
Love's-torch, a festal fire of joy. Through the night-skies some eagles
were still sailing toward the moon, as toward a sun; and against the
arch of heaven the Jacob's-ladder stood leaning with golden rounds of
stars.
As Albano was walking along so solitary in his bliss, dissolved in the
rapture of love, the fragrance of the vales, the radiance of the
heights, dreaming, hovering, he saw birds of passage flying across the
sea in the direction of the Apennines, on their way to Germany, where
Liana had lived. "Holy One above!" cried his heart, "thou desiredst
this joy; appear and bless it!" Unexpectedly he stood before a chapel
niche wherein the Holy Virgin stood. The moon transfigured the pale
statue,--the Virgin took life beneath the radiance, and became more
like Liana,--he knelt down, and ardently gave God his prayers of
gratitude and Liana his tears. When he rose, turtle-doves were cooing
in dreams, and a nightingale warbled; the hot fountains smoked
glimmering, and the happy singing of far-off people came up to his
ears.