Albano, with the new haste which now reigned in his actions, was
already, beneath the cool morning star, flying from the happy soil. He
told the architect, Dian, all his whole blessedness, because he knew
how very much of a youth the man still remained in matters of love.
"Bravo!" answered Dian, "who can escape without love in Italy? At least
none of us. It is to be hoped your magnificent Juno is not so haughty
toward you as toward other people: then there may well be for you a
life of the gods."
In the morning breezes, irradiated with sun and wave, he swept gliding
along on the blue, liquid mirror between two heavens, and his eye was
blest when it looked back at the Olympus of Epomeo, and blest when it
looked back again on the coasts that gleamed up and down on the long,
outspread market-place of the earth.
When they came through the midst of those glimmering palaces, the
ships, to the stationary ones, they found the people in the ecstasy of
a saint's festival. He was compelled to bury the blue day and the sea
in temples, in picture-halls, in fourth stories, where, according to
the custom, several of the grandees dwelt, to whom he delivered letters
from his father, and more beautifully in the subterranean, gloomy
street which arches itself through the blooming Posilippo.
Only the prospect that, in the very next solitude, he should converse
with his distant heart quieted his spirit, which was always flying away
from the present. At evening they ascended the finest of the heights
above Naples, the cloister of Camaldole, where, among the pleasures of
the prospect, he saw, standing in gray distance behind Posilippo, the
lofty Epomeo. He could no longer contain himself, but began, in a spot
more thickly hidden with blossoms than others, which he had sought out
for the purpose, the following letter to Linda:--
"At last, noble soul, I can speak to thee, and behold again thy island,
although only as a sunny-red evening cloud looming in the horizon.
Linda, Linda, O that I have and have had thee! Does, then, the two
days' divine dream last even over into the cold to-day? Thou art now so
far off and dumb, and I hear no yes. When, in Rome, on the dome of St.
Peter's, I looked into the blue morning heavens, and life swelled and
sounded around me as the breezes swept by, then it seemed to me as if I
must fling myself into a flying royal ship, and seek a shore which
grows green under the farthest constellation; as if I must flutter
down, like a cascade, through the heavens, and tear my way below there
through this stony life, pressing onward, and destroying and bearing
everything before me and with me. And so is it with me again at this
moment, and still more emphatically. I could fly over to thee, and say,
'Thou art my glory, my laurel-wreath, my eternity, but I must deserve
thee; I can do nothing for thee, except what I do for myself.' In the
olden time, beloved youths were great, deeds were their graces, and the
coat of mail their festal dress. Today, as I looked across on the Gulf
of Baja, and on the ruins where the gardens and palaces of the great
Romans still lie in ruins or names, and when I saw the old, defying
giants stand in the midst of flowers and oranges, and in tepid,
incense-breathing breezes, refreshed and quickened by them, but not
softened and subdued,--lifting with the hand the heavy trident which
moved three quarters of the globe, and with sinewy breast going forth
to meet winter in the north, burning heat in Africa, and every
wound,--then did my whole heart ask, 'Is it so with thee?' O Linda, can
a man be otherwise? The lion roams over the earth, the eagle sweeps
through the heavens, and the king of these kings should have his path
on the earth and in the heavens at once. I have as yet been and done
nothing; but when life is as yet an empty mist, canst thou overcome it,
or seize it fast and dash it to pieces? Wilt thou one day, thou
Uranide, love a man? then will I shrink back from no one. But words are
to actions only the sawdust of the club of Hercules, as Schoppe says.
So soon as war and freedom clash against each other, then will I
deserve thee in the storm of the times, and bring with me to thee
actions and immortal love.
"Here I stand on the divine heights of the cloister-garden, and look
down into a green, heavenly realm which knows no equal. The sun is
already away over the gulf, and flings his rose-fire among the ships,
and a whole shore full of palaces and full of men burns red. Through
the long, wide-extending streets below me rolls up already the din of
the festival, and the roofs are full of decorated men and women, and
full of music. Balconies and gondolas wait to welcome the divine night
with songs. And here am I alone, and am nevertheless so happy, and
yearn without pain. But had I been standing here four days ago, Linda,
when, as yet, I knew thee not and had thee not, and had I been looking
upon such an evening as this,--upon the golden sea,--the gay Portici,
upon which sun and sea are rippling with flames,--the majestic
Vesuvius, wound round with gold-green myrtles, and with his gray, ashen
head full of the glow of the sun,--and, behind me, the green plain full
of clouds of flower-dust, which rise out of gardens and rain down in
gardens again,--and the whole busy, magic circle of glad energies,--a
world swimming in light and life,--then, Linda, without thee, would a
cold pang have darted through the warm bliss, and remembrances with
mourning masks would have gone about in the golden light of evening.
"O Linda, how hast thou cleansed and widened my world, and I am now
happy everywhere! Thou hast transformed the heavy, sharp ploughshare of
life, which painfully toils at the harvest, into a light brush and
pencil, which plays about till it has wrought out a god's form. Have I
not seen to-day every temple and every hill more glad, as if gilded by
thee, and every beauty, whether it bloomed on a statue, on canvas, on
the singing lip, or on the summits, wear a richer lustre, and felt it
breathe a richer fragrance? and then did I not fly up from the little
flower to the blooming Linda?
"How the dark Power holds sway behind the cloud! It gives us sealed
orders, that we may break them open at a later time, upon a distant
spot. O God! upon Ischia's Epomeo it was for me first to open mine.
Then rose a moment over life, and bore eternity; the butterfly brought
the goddess!
"Evening goes down, and I must be silent. Might I only know how thy
evening is! My life consists now of two hours, thine and mine, and I
can no longer live with myself alone. May this day have stolen away
from thee richly and mildly, and thy evening have been like mine! Only
Vesuvius now reddens in the lingering sun. The islands slowly fade away
in the dark sea. I behold now, without speaking to thee, the great
evening, but, O God, so otherwise than in Rome! Blissfully shall I fix
my eye only on thy island as it is about to be extinguished in the
glittering din of the evening twilight, and yet long shall I look
thitherward, when already the summit of Epomeo is dissolved in night;
and then shall I look cheerfully down into the grave of colors
encircled with lights below me. Happy songs will steal through the
twilight; the stars will glimmer affectionately; and I shall say, 'I am
alone and still, but inexpressibly happy, for Linda has my heart, and I
weep only out of love, because I think of her heart'; and then I shall
go down in blissful rapture through the blossom-smoke of the mountain."
He came slowly back to Naples to his friend Dian; all the festive
merriment which met him, the whole odeum of joy, in which the ringing
wheel of the hurdy-gurdy dizzily rolled round, seemed to him to be
merely his echo; whereas, in general, not till the external, sensitive
chords of man are struck, do the inner ones sound after them. All he
wanted was to be ever hurrying onward, and--if it might be--to proceed
this very night on his way to Vesuvius. For him there was now only one
season of the day. The warmer climate, together with love and May,
seemed to awaken all the spring winds of his powers; they blew with an
impetuosity which made him conscious of them himself. Only before his
beloved was he--still sore from the wounds of the past--merely a
zephyr, which spares the dusting blossoms.
On the next day he proposed to ascend Vesuvius, and on the morning
after await his Dian in Portici, when he had first seen from the top of
the volcano the spectacle of sunrise.