When they came out into the festive world, how did the cool blue of
heaven come floating, fanning down upon them instead of earthly airs!
How sparkled the world and the day--and the future! How brightly foamed
over in the goblet of life the draught of love made for each of the
three beings out of two intoxicating ingredients!
They followed the path to the summit of Epomeo, but in an elastic,
yielding freedom, and in a rapid variety of nature which is not to be
matched anywhere upon the earth. They met valleys with laurels and
cherries, with roses and primroses at once. There came cool defiles
filled out with ripe oranges and apples, beside high rocks of aloes and
pomegranates, and on the summits of the cherry and apple tree stirred
overhead the vine and orange blossoms. In the blooming clefts warbled
secure nightingales, and out of the crevices poisonless serpents' heads
darted to the light,--sometimes appeared a cloister in a citron-grove,
sometimes a white house attached to a vine-garden, now a cool grotto,
now a kitchen garden near red clover, now a little meadow full of white
rose-flowers and narcissi, and at every turn a man, who went by
singing, dancing, and accosting them. Heights and gardens alternately
hid and revealed the land and the water, and often for a long time the
far-stretching sea and its cloud-coasts glimmered after them like a
second heaven through the green twigs.
They drew nearer and nearer to the hermit's house on the summit,
rocking themselves upon the gay, golden flag-feathers of life. They
spoke to each other now and then a word of joy, not, however, by way of
communicating each other, but because the heart could not help it, and
a word was nothing but a sigh of happiness. They stood at last upon the
throne of the earth, and looked down as from the sun. Round about them
the sea lay camped, melting away into the blue of the horizon,--from
Capua, far in the depths of the distance, stretched the white
Apennines around Vesuvius and over on the long coast of Sorrento still
onward,--and from Posilippo the lands pursued the sea even beyond Mola
and Terracina,--on the opened world-surface appeared everything, the
promontories, the yellow crater-margins on the coasts and the islands
round about, which the terrible, veiled fire-god under the sea had
driven up out of his fiery realm to the light of the sun,--and the
lovely Ischia with its little cities on the shores and with its little
gardens and craters, stood like a green blooming ship in the great sea,
and rested on innumerable waves.
Then vanished the greatnesses of the earth from below, only the earth
was great and the sun with his heavens. "O how happy we are!" said
Albano. Yes, you were happy there; who will be so after you? Cradling
himself upon the tree of life, at which his childish eye had already so
early and longingly gazed upward, he gave utterance to all that exalted
and possessed him. "Therein I recognize the all-powerful mother; angry
and flaming, she comes up from the bottom of the sea, plants a burning
land, and then does she again, smiling, distribute flowers among her
children; so let man be, volcano--then flower." "What in comparison
with this," said Julienne, "are all the winter amusements of the German
May-moon! Is not that a smaller Switzerland only in a greater lake of
Geneva?" The Countess, who through her Spain was more initiated in such
charms, kept herself for the most part still. "Man," said she, "is the
Oread and Hamadryad or some other divinity, and inspires wood and vale,
and man himself, again, is inspired by man."
The Hermit appeared, and said, their meal, which was sent up, had long
since arrived; he also took occasion to praise his situation. "Often,"
said he, and made Julienne laugh, "my mountain smokes like Vesuvius,
and bathing-guests look up, and apprehend something, but it is only
because I am baking my bread up here." They encamped themselves in the
shady open air. They must needs be ever looking down again upon the
lovely, diminished island, which with its gardens planted within
gardens, with its springs intertwined with autumns, lay so whole and so
near, a great family garden, where the people all dwell together,
because there are no different lands to become entangled with each
other, and the bees and the larks fly not far out over the garden of
the sea. Like still, open flowers were the three souls beside each
other; fragrantly flies the flower-dust to and fro, to generate new
flowers. Linda sank away completely into her great deep heart; unused
to love, she would fain gaze therein and find joy, while no word of
Albano's escaped her, for it bespoke its birth of love in the heart.
Overflowing with mildness, and deep in thought she sat there, with her
great eye half under the downcast eyelid,--after her manner, always
long silent as well as long speaking. As the diamond sparkles just like
the dewdrop, but only with steady power and even without the sun, her
heart resembled the softest in all feminine mildness and purity, and
excelled it only in strength. With delight Julienne beheld, when, now
and then, after a childlike forgetting of Albano, (because her stream
of speech had borne her from one world to another,) suddenly and with
unembarrassed joy, she replaced her finely formed hand in the youth's,
to whom a pressure of her hand was nothing less than a tender embrace.
They took the nearest way down back to Albano's residence, which was
ever looking up to them from its vine-shrubbery. They were ever so
little with each other,--in the morning Albano was to travel. He must
write from Portici, a messenger must come to take the letter,--"And he
brings me one, too," said he. "Certainly not!" said Linda. Albano
begged. "She will soon change and write," said Julienne. She said no.
By degrees furrows of shade stole down the mountain along with the dark
lava-streams, and in the poplars nightingales began already their
melodious twilight. They drew near to Albano's house. Dian ran out with
delight to meet the Princess. Albano begged him, without having asked
either, to procure a bark, in order that they might enjoy the evening.
Compulsory proposals of pleasure are precisely those to which maidens
love best to say yes. Dian was immediately at hand with a boat; he
always and quickly joined his pleasure to that of others.
They all embarked and moved along among the sunflowers, which every ray
of the sun planted thicker and thicker upon the watery beds. Albano--in
his present glow, accustomed to the manners of the warm land where the
lover speaks before the mother and she speaks of him with the daughter,
where Love wears no veil, but only hatred and the face, and where the
_myrtle_, in every sense, is the setting of the fields--forgot himself
a moment before Dian, and took Linda's hand; she quickly snatched it
away from him, true to the manner of maidens, which is lavish of the
arm and chary of the finger and the thimble. But she looked on him
softly, when she had repelled him.
They passed along again, on their passage from east to north, before
the rock with houses and before the streets of the suburb town on the
shore. All was glad and friendly,--all sang that did not prattle,--the
roofs were occupied with looms of silk ribbons, and the websters spoke
and sang from roof to roof. Julienne could hardly keep her eye away
from this southern sociableness and harmony. They put out farther into
the sea, and the sun went down nearer to it. The waves and the
breezes played with one another, the former breathing, the latter
undulating,--sky and sea were arched into one blue concave, and in its
centre floated, free as a spirit in the universe, the light skiff of
love. The circle of the world became a golden, swollen harvest-wreath
full of glowing coasts and islands,--gondolas flew singing into the
distance, and had torches already prepared for the night, (sometimes a
flying-fish traced his arc behind them in the air,) and Dian responded
to their familiar songs as they glided along by. Yonder were seen great
ships, proudly and slowly sailing along, fluttering like the sky, with
red and blue plumes, and like conquerors bound to port. Everywhere was
the must of life poured out, and it worked impetuously. So played a
divine world around man! "O here in this great scene," said Albano,
"where everything finds place, Paradises and dark Orcus-coasts of lava,
and the yielding sea, and the gray Gorgon-head of Vesuvius, and the
playing children of men, and the blossoms and all,--here where one must
glow like a lava,--could not one, like the hot lava round about him,
bury himself in the waves, in all his glow, if one knew that anything
of this hour could pass away, even so much as a remembrance thereof, or
a throbbing of the pulse for a loved heart? Were not that better?"
"Perhaps," said Linda. Julienne was carried in thought by the softening
pleasure to the distant sick-bed of her brother, and said, smiling:
"Cannot one do like the fair sun over yonder, and go under the waves
and yet come back again? And yet, after all, if you look upon his going
down rightly, there is no such thing in reality."
The sun stood already big as a great golden shield held from heaven
above the Pontian islands, and gilded their blue,--the white, rocky
crown of thorns, Capri, lay in glowing light, and from Sorrento's
coasts to Gaeta's glimmering gold had shot up along the walls of the
world,--the earth rolled with her axis, as with a music-barrel, near
the sun, and struck from the great luminary rays and tones,--sideward
lay in ambush the giant messenger of night, camped on the sea, the
immense shadow of Epomeo.
At this moment the sun touched the sea, and a golden lightning darted
trembling round through the humid ether,--and he cradled himself on a
thousand fiery wave-wings, and he quivered and hung, burning and
glowing with love, on the sea, and the sea, burning, drank all his
glow. Then it threw, as if he was about to pass away forever, the veil
of an infinite splendor over the pale-growing god. Then it became still
on the earth; a floating evening redness overflowed with rose-oil all
the waves; the holy islands of sundown stood transfigured; the remotest
coasts drew near and showed their redness of delight; on all heights
hung rose-garlands; Epomeo glowed upward even to the ether, and on the
eternal cloud-tree, which grows up out of the hollow Vesuvius, went out
on the summit the last thin glimmering of splendor.
Speechless, the companions turned from the west toward the shore. The
sailors began again to talk. "Make thy brother," Linda softly begged
her friend, "keep himself always turned toward the west." She fulfilled
the request without immediately guessing its motive. Linda looked
continually into his beautifully irradiated face: "Ask him again," said
she a second time, "the twilight is too deep, and my weak eyes see so
poorly without light." It was not done, for they immediately went on
shore. The earth trembled beneath and after them as they trod upon it,
as a sounding-board of the blissful hour. Albano was fastened in
speechless emotion upon the beloved face, which he must soon leave
again. "I'll write to you," said she, unasked, with so touching a
recall of her former threat, that, had he not been among strange eyes,
he must have fallen, intoxicated with gratitude upon her hand, upon her
noble heart. Hard was the parting, and the end of an harmonious day in
which the tone of every single minute had been again a tri-clang. By
this time Dian had already departed. "Not even the roses of evening,"
said Julienne, "are without thorns." "An abrupt leave-taking is always
the best; we will go home," said Linda. Albano begged that he might be
allowed to attend her. "Whither?" said Linda. Softly she added, for the
sake of her eyes, "I can hardly see you any longer; however, only come,
I can hear, nevertheless." "Beautiful inconstant one!" said Julienne.
"I change myself," said she, "but no other does it; only as far as the
chapel, Albano; you sail early in the morning." "Even earlier; perhaps
this very night," said he.
While they thus more and more slowly descended the mountain, and the
nightingales warbled, and the myrtle-blossoms breathed their perfume,
and the tepid breezes fluttered, and overhead the whole second world,
like a veiled nun, looked with a holy eye through the silver-grating of
the constellations, every heart overflowed with faithful love, and the
brother and the sister and the beloved took alternately each other's
hand.
At once Linda stood upon the spot of yesterday's union and said, "Here
he must go, Julienne!" and swiftly drew her hand out of his, and
smoothed lightly his locks and cheek and then his eye, and asked,
"How?" in the confusion of a dream. "Immediately," said Julienne; "one
must, however, wait at least for the Italian winter, for the moon,
before one can even go home." Then the brother fell upon the bosom of
the tender sister, who would fain hereby procure for him a longer
tarrying, and for her friend the privilege of seeing him again by a
stronger illumination, and he exclaimed, with tears, "O sister! how
much hast thou done for me, before I could do anything for thee, or
even thank thee! Thou givest me, indeed, everything,--every joy, the
highest felicity; O, what art thou like!" "There is the moon!" cried
she; "now farewell, and a happy journey!"
Like a silvery day the moon had climbed the mountains, and the
transfigured beloved one saw again the blooming face of her beloved. He
took her hand and said, "Farewell, Linda!" Long looked they upon each
other, their eyes full of soul, and they grew more strange and exalted
in each other's eyes. Then did he, without knowing how, press to his
heart the noble maiden, like a blessed spirit embracing a spring
sun,--and he touched her holy countenance with his, and like the red
mornings of two worlds their lips melted together. Linda closed her
eyes, and kissed with trembling, and only a single life and bliss
rolled and glowed between two hearts and lips. Julienne gently enfolded
the embrace with her own, and desired no other bliss. Thereupon all
parted, without speaking again, or looking round.