Albano alighted again at the Prince Lauria's, who had hitherto swum in
such a flood-tide of new incidents, that he had hardly been conscious
of the absence, and was disposed to wonder at the return. Meanwhile the
German war against France had been settled upon. This news he brought
to his grandson, full of the joyful expectation what great scenes such
a struggle must unfold. Even Albano was for a long time carried away
with him by this high stream, before he thought that this intelligence
would work otherwise and more dishearteningly on his sister than on
him. But the heroic fire, into which he talked himself with the
political Lauria, preluded to him easy victory over a sister's
affection.
He was going to announce his arrival to his two friends, when he heard
from the Prince that they had both, as he had heard from the Princess
Altieri, with whom they resided, already gone to Tivoli. How happily he
departed, guessing the friendly design of this episode journey, out of
Rome, radiant as it was with love and spring, and looked quite as gayly
towards the future, where his life opened so bloomingly before him, as
toward Tivoli, where he hoped to press two hearts to one.
He found, when he arrived in the town of Tivoli, that the ardent
maidens had already stolen away to the cascade. As a man in the Vale of
Tempe, or before the Lake of Geneva, passes along only in a careless
dream over the shore by the watery images of the heavens and the earth,
because the blooming originals round about seize and kindle him,--even
so the rocks of the thickly peopled landscape, and the round Temple of
Vesta, and the vales dissolving into one another, from the Roman gate
to the temple,--this shining procession glided by only as dream- and
water-images before a heart, in which a living loved one bloomed, and
crowded out a world with a world's fulness.
He roved around amidst the swarm of prospects, without finding the
fairest, when a short, pale-yellow, richly dressed man eyed him with a
shrivelled up face, and with a silken arm pointed unasked the way to
the falls, saying if he were looking after the ladies, he would find
them at the great cascade.
Albano said nothing, went onward, saw two, and recognized Linda by her
tall form. At length the three friends saw, found, embraced each other,
and the magnificent water-storm breathed into the delight. Linda spake
tender words of love, and felt as if she were dumb, for the beautiful
tempest of streams tore the tender syllables to pieces like
butterflies. They had not heard each other, and stood before each
other, pining for their sounds, encompassed with five thunders, with
weeping eyes, full of love and joy. Holy spot, where already so many
thousand hearts have sacredly burned and blissfully wept, and been
constrained to say, Life is great! Serenely and steadily sparkles the
city overhead in the sunshine down over the watery crater; proudly does
the rent Temple of Vesta, garlanded with almond-blossoms, look down
from its rock upon the whirlpools which undermine it; and opposite to
it the tempestuous Anio preludes at once all that earth and heaven have
of greatness,--the rainbow, the eternal lightning and thunder, rain,
cloud, and earthquake.
They gave each other signs to go, and to seek the more quiet vale. How
sounded to them therein the words, brother, sister, Linda, like new
human tones in Paradise! Here, before ascending the hill full of new
waterfalls, lightnings, and colors, they sought to report to each other
their journeys and their news. Julienne made the happy report that her
brother, the Prince, gave again hope of recovery, since he had, with
waking eyes, as he insisted, seen his dead father, who had promised him
a longer life. The fair Linda bloomed in the Paradise like a veiled
goddess who had long been seeking and at last found her beloved on the
earth. She took his hand often, and pressed it against her eyes and
lips, and whispered, hardly audibly, when he spoke to her or Julienne,
"Dear! friendly man!" As to the scenery she was silent, for she never
spoke of any till she had once come out of it.
Julienne, so happy about her brother's recovery, began all manner of
jokes,--said she regretted having sent to her Lewis, from Naples, a
vain specific against his malady, and at length asked Albano, "Dost
thou know a youth named _Cardito_? He wants to know thee." He said,
"No," but related how a little stout man had seemed to know him
hereabouts, and showed him the way to the cascade. Julienne started,
and said it was decidedly the Haarhaar Prince, who so maliciously built
his hopes upon Luigi's death and throne. He lived in Tivoli, in the
house of the Duke of Modena, and was certainly going about as a spy
upon them all. In order to tune herself again after this hated discord,
she continued her question about _Cardito_, and said, "It is a very
beautiful, sound Corsican (that living deformity is surely the Prince),
and he declares very seriously war against thee."
"That shall he verily have," said Albano, who now comprehended all,
and--related all. Cardito was that Corsican with whom he had formerly
split on the subject of the Gallic war. "Brother, that is still thy
serious meaning?" said Julienne, with protracted accent. "Now
especially," said he, with decision, in order immediately to exclude
all strife. Linda with intensity pressed his hand to her eyes, as if
she would cover them with it. "Well, argue thy case with me, as
reasonably as thou canst, and let's hear thy grounds of justification;
but first let us ascend the hill, that one may have something to see at
the same time," said the sister.
On the hill, before the green of the flashing vale, where the stream,
like a wounded eagle, has beat its wings all about on the earth, before
the three lesser cascades that leap down with their lightnings upon the
flowers, Albano began, with emotion and inspiration: "I have only one
reason, dear sister; I am not yet anything,--I am no poet, no artist,
no philosopher,--but nothing, namely, a Count. I have, however, powers
for much; why shall I not say so? Verily, if a Da Vinci is all things,
or a Crichton, or if a Richelieu, though he asserts the political
throne, will yet mount the poetic, also, shall not another be justified
in lesser wishes? And, by Heaven! properly speaking, a man will, after
all, be everything, for he cannot help it; he longs and aspires after
that, and the inner, stifled heart weeps drops of blood, which no human
hand can wipe away,--only the high iron barriers of necessity hold him
back. Sister, Linda, what have I, after all, yet done upon the earth?"
"Thou hast made this question, and this is enough in the sight of God,"
said Julienne, moved by the proud, wounded modesty of the youth, and by
his beautiful voice, which, when indignant, sounded as if he were
tenderly touched. "Words! what are words?" said he. "O one surely may
well be ashamed that one has even to think and speak of anything before
he does it, although poor, imperfect man cannot otherwise, but every
action, like a statue, must first be modelled in the miserable wax of
words. Ah, Linda, do not here deeds lie everywhere around us, instead
of words and wishes? Have not I, also, an arm, a heart, a beloved, and
powers, as well as others, and shall I go out of the world with a
musty, mouldy Spanish or German Count's life? O my Linda, do thou
contend for me!"
"I am not," said she, looking sharply toward the principal little
cascade, which stormed down from among the trees overhead,--"I am not
of many or eloquent words; and, moreover, I do not quite understand
you. I must always translate words for myself into ideas and truths,
and I cannot always do it. In the case of your words, Count, I cannot
form any idea at all. He whom love alone does not satisfy, cannot have
been filled with it. Of course, so all-forgetting with their hearts as
we, so concentrated upon one idea of life, men never are. Ah, and so
little is man to man, an image of man is more to him, and every little
future!"
"Thou, too, Brutus!" said Albano, astonished. "Would you," he
continued, collecting himself, "lay out an eternity of that
elysium-life in Ischia as adequate to a man? Would you send him as a
youth into the cloister of the most blissful repose? Certainly only as
an old man. The former would be like planting the tree top downward in
the dark earth."
"There spoke the German again," said she; "for ever and ever real,
indefatigable industry. The tranquil Neapolitans, the people on the
Apennines or the Pyrenees, on the Ganges, in Otaheite, full of
enjoyment and contemplativeness, are to this Spaniard an abomination. I
should think, if a man were only somewhat for himself, not for others,
that would be all-sufficient. What _great actions_ are I do not know at
all; all I know is a _great life_; for something like them every sinner
can do."
"Verily, that is true," said he; "there is nothing more pitiable than a
man who will show himself by this or that, which appears to himself
great, rare, and without relation to his being, and therefore does not
belong to him at all. Every nature puts forth its own fruit, and cannot
do otherwise; but its child can never seem great to it, but always only
small, or just as it should be. If it be otherwise, then it must be
that an entirely foreign fruit has been hung upon its branches."
"Albano, how true! But you had once never more than half a will; how is
it?" said Linda. "Neither have I now," said he, without severity. "One
is gentlest when one is strongest in a resolution." He endeavored now
carefully to spare and avoid his own words,--which were the oil and
wind to his fire,--and he did it the more because words, after all, are
of no help against anything, but much rather blow up instead of blowing
out the feelings of another. He was also mindful, in this connection,
of the frequent cases in which he had, by a single word, with all
innocence, excited Linda to a flame. They stopped, and he looked out
over the divine land, when Linda, after a silent look into his face, in
spite of her apparently calm philosophizing, at once passionately
grasped his hand and cried, "No, thou canst not!--by my happiness, by
all saints, by the holy Virgin, by the Almighty,--thou canst, thou must
not!" There is a robbery against which man always protests with an
irrepressible fire, and though a goddess committed it out of love, and
offered him in compensation a world of paradises; it is the robbery of
his freedom and free development. Yes, its being love,--despotic,
however, at once exercising and robbing freedom,--only exasperates him
the more, and out of the _cloud_ of error grows by and by the _tempest_
of passion. Linda repeated, "Thou canst not." He looked upon her
excited, brilliant countenance, whose Southern intensity resembled
more, however, an enthusiasm than indignation, and said, firmly, "O
Linda, I shall indeed both dare and do!" "No! I say no!" cried she.
"Brother!" the sister began. "O sister," cried he, "speak softly; I am
a man, and have violent faults." The sublime war of the water with
the earth and with rocks, the intermingling storms of the flashing
rain-constellations around him, drew him as on wings into the
whirl,--the great cascade flung its shower out of high trees, and out
of heaven sprinkled incessantly a glimmering world,--and in the east
the sea showed itself afar in dark sleep, and the setting sun sank
gleaming into the general splendor.
"Certainly I will speak softly," said the Princess, who, much more
sensitive and resonant than Linda, had some trouble in tuning her tone
of speech to her promise; "nothing further is needed than the
consideration that our quarrel is premature; I make merely the request
to adjourn it till October, and the promise that _then_ the issue will
be quite different." "O let it be!" said Albano. Linda nodded softly
and slowly, and, contrary to expectation, laid his hand with both hers
on her heart, and looked upon him weeping, with her large eyes, to
which fire was more usual than water. He was melted at beholding that
this powerful nature had only intensity without hate or wrath, and
infinitely was he refreshed by his former secret suppression of his
passionate flames.
The sister was softened by both, and a minute of the tenderest love
soon entwined the three beings in one embrace. The hyperboles of anger
are never so serious with man as those of love; the former only the
other party must believe, the latter he believes himself. All had been
brightened and cleared up by this free expression.
If generally a cold past moment shuts up to lovers, as a cold night
does to bees, the flowers out of which they take the honey, here,
however, after the storm, the clear blue air of heaven had become purer
and stiller, and the tranquillity became bliss, as the bliss
tranquillity. Through Albano, although rapidly, the Fury of fear had
passed, who holds an inverted telescope, and through it shows man a
very distant, empty heaven, without stars. But not so through Linda;
she had throughout spoken in love and hope, and for her glowing heart
there were no icy places. Therefore was he now so happy and so blessed
by the contemplation of that vigorous nature! A long, deep chain of
valleys, wherein wine and oil flowed in the fragrance of blossoms, led
them all towards the great Rome. For a space the youth could accompany
them; at last, for a long separation, he must tear heart and eye away
from the loved ones, when over the green, glistening vales the mighty
dome of St. Peter's already sparkled, and the cypresses, proudly
encircled only with cypresses, bore the gold of evening on their twigs
without stirring them. All had their eyes on the fair Rome, but their
hearts were only on Isola Bella, where they promised to find each other
again.