On the way to Isola Bella, he thought of his hour of contention with
the vehement Linda, and the character of this war-goddess. He shuddered
at the very recollection of the steep precipice upon which, within a
few days, he had leaned so far over; for Linda is so decided, knows no
alternative between passion and annihilation. And yet, in this time of
cool reflection, he felt her imperious demand upon his liberty more
severely than ever, and said to himself, firmly, "Woman must not be
allowed to circumscribe or rule the holy domain of man's development."
On the other hand, it was, to be sure, all love, and an excess of it;
and the longer he journeyed and compared, so much the darker and
lonelier was it on that spot of his life upon which she alone cast the
great flame. She moved before him much more clearly and nearly in
spirit by his still contemplation of her spirit, than in bodily
presence, because the former presented her at once in harmony, the
latter with the individual dissonances without the solution. Her power
of all-sided impartiality towards all characters had appeared to him,
for a woman, quite as rare as it was great, especially as he himself
let this power work more in the shape of respect for her and in a glad,
free appreciation of great, eccentric, poetical manifestations, but not
of all, even the flat and the worthless.
Alike mighty and full-grown stood Love and Liberty within him, side by
side. They were bound together and reconciled only by a new resolution
to be gentle, not merely strong, to lay before her with all frankness
his right of freedom and his loving soul, and to be to her the noble
character which belonged to her. "Am I not such, if I really will it?"
said he.
In the highest joy of life, in perfect oneness with himself and
destiny, he made his journey to Isola Bella as rapidly as if he were
going to find there a beloved, instead of merely awaiting one. How many
a thing seemed now smaller along his road, to which he applied the
Roman measure, and not the German, and before which he now, as his
father had foretold him, passed along flying!
At last he saw the artificial Alp of Isola Bella standing in the waves,
and disembarked joyfully with his teacher, Dian, in the garden of
childhood, where he was to expect so much, and, with fresh Italian
life-blossoms on his heart, bid farewell to the land of promise.
He waited several long days, yearning and anxious for his two friends,
although his sunny companion was always reminding him to make allowance
for the rapidity of his own journey. His determination to be gentle
grew continually more and more unnecessary and involuntary. The very
island itself, with its springs born of perfumes and with the distant
garland of Alps, melted his soul. In the former year he had seen it
more in leaves than in blossoms. It was, indeed, his land of childhood.
From many places on the lake stars glimmered up to him out of a deep,
early, after-midnight hour of life. Here had he for the first time
found his father, and for the first time seen Linda's form across the
waters; here he finds and loses them again, after the longest
separation, for a still longer one; and here he stands in the gateway
between north and south. The free, fragrant land, full of islands, the
Jacob's-ladder of his life mounts back into the ether, and he goes down
into a cold region full of constraint and eyewitnesses; his love is
judged by his father, it is assailed by the downfallen friend. "Ye days
in Ischia," he sighed, "ye hours in Vesuvius and in Tivoli, can you
reverse your course? can you ever come back again and overflow anew the
insatiable heart, that it may drink, and say, 'It is enough'?"
To his Dian, as if by way of justifying himself and his illimitable
longing, he spoke frequently of Chariton and their children, and asked
him how it was with his heart when he thought of them. "Don't talk to
me so much of them," said he, after his manner, feeling more than he
suspected or betrayed, "we are still so cruelly far off from them; one
only spoils one's journey without cause. But when I have them all....
Well, ah God!" Then he paused, snatched the youth to his arms, and did
not kiss him.
On a fresh, blue morning Albano stood, before the resurrection of the
sun in heaven, on the high, bloom-encircled pyramid of terraces, where
he had once, on awaking, seen his dear father flee without farewell;
and he gazed with emotion down into the vacant, broad lake, and around
on the summits of the glaciers, which already bloomed in the reflection
of Aurora riding down from on high,--and no one was with him but the
past. He looked upon himself and into his breast, and thought: "What
a long, heavy time has already passed through this bosom since that
day! A whole world has become a dream within me! And the heart still
beats fresh and sound within thee!" All at once he saw, in the light
morning-smoke of the lake, a skiff rowing along. Slowly, lazily it
waded, for he saw it from a great distance. At last it glided, it flew;
the sail bloomed up in the morning-blaze, and the green waves became a
wild-fire, playing around it, as formerly in Ischia, on that evening,
around Linda's skiff.
Linda it was, and his sister. They looked up, and motioned a greeting.
He cried, in hasty joy, "Dian! Dian!" and ran down the long flight of
steps, all astonished and enraptured at the wide-spread splendor,
because, on account of the glad apparition, he had not seen the sun
rise, for it was he who was strewing before the loved one the fair
flames, like morning flowers along the path of the waters.
"Is it you again, ye divine ones? O speak, weep for joy, that I am
blest and have you once more. Come ye then again with your real old
love?" Thus he went on speaking in eloquent ecstasy, born of his
long-dreaming expectation. Linda looked with secret angelic pleasure,
with lovely reflection into the high-playing flames of his love; and
his sister enjoyed in a sweet emotion of sympathy the beautiful
mildness on both their countenances, which, in union with energy, is as
enchanting as moonlight on a mountain. Descriptions of travels were
begun by both parties, but ended by neither; arrangements for the day
and plannings out of the island were projected, but none chosen.
Julienne held up before his heart his own word and her stipulation,
that at evening he must pursue his journey, as a slight cooling against
the fire of joy that burned therein; sadly he looked up to the
friendly, serene morning sun, as if it were not mounting higher, but
already going downward.
They went now on a lovely stroll through the island; everywhere bloomed
beside the present a still past, under the rose a forget-me-not. Here,
in this grotto before the leaping waves, had he once played with his
sister Severina, and on this island was her death announced to him.
"But, Julia, thou art my Severina, and more," said he. "I think," said
she, softly, "quite as much." Not far from the arcade was it that he
had for the first time gazed into the face of his father. "But O when
wilt thou find _thy_ father at last? Speak about this, good Linda!"
said he. She blushed, and said, "I shall find him when fate permits."
"But when is that?" "I know nothing about it," said she, with a soft
hesitation. Then Julienne touched him, nodding, and said, in as much
French Latin as she could muster together, but in an indifferent tone,
as if she were soliloquizing to the air, "_Non eam interroga amplius,
nam pater veniet_ (_ut dicitur_) _die nuptiarum_."[106] He looked at
her with astonishment; she nodded repeatedly. "Julia," said Linda,
smiling, "is like women, as cunning in acting as she is open in
speaking. I could not have disguised myself from a brother so long."
"When the brother and sister," replied she, "do not find each other
till they are equally grown up and with all perfections, they can
easily become lovers of each other, while other sisters have first for
many years to conquer the faults of the brother growing up."
Now they came upon the gallery, amid lemon-blossoms, where Gaspard had
let his son see so many veils and masks hanging about the future; then
Albano said, with displeasure, "Here I had to let many riddles be
announced to me,--and there"--he meant the spot in the sea where
Linda's image had first appeared to him on the waves--"even this
precious form was mimicked." "My God!" said Linda, vehemently, "why
speak any more of it at all? O it was so wicked to do it!" "No one,
however, has lost much by it," said Julienne, joking, "except a couple
who have lost their hearts, and I my anonymousness!" "Could we not both
answer, Albano?" said Linda, softly, and raised her eyes. "By Heaven,
that we could!" said he, strongly, for without those preludes they
would have sought and found each other earlier.
Amidst these lookings into a past so singularly interwoven with
futurity, they had stepped into the Borromæan palace, which to-day was
fortunately without occupants; because Albano, at Linda's request,
was to usher them both into the chamber, where he and Severina were
brought up. The palace-keeper, supposing they were only in quest
of a prospect,--for the nursery apartments were in the fifth
story,--would have led them out on the roof; he insisted they were
dusty children's-chambers, and had been locked up from time immemorial.
With difficulty the man turned, with a rusty key, a rust-eaten lock.
They stepped into the bedusted, clear-obscure, high, empty chamber,
wherein a vacant cradle, a flower-pot with a little Chinese rose-bush
dried up like its earth, a child's pewter watch, a girl's baby-kitchen
with old-fashioned utensils, a rolled-up shining harpsichord string, a
German almanack of 1772, many black seals with bare antique heads, a
dried-up twig of the liana, and the like, lay as cast-off lumber round
about. Man looks with emotion down into the far, low-lying time, when
the spindle of his life ran round as yet almost naked without threads;
for his beginning borders more nearly upon his end than the middle, and
the outward bound and the homeward bound coasts of our life hang over
into the dark sea. Albano was touched with melancholy at the scene
around him, and at this glimpse of human life and this out-look upon
his own green fields yet standing in wintry lowness,--and at the sight
of the spot where he had lived with a mother and a sister, who had
vanished from the earth, yes, even out of his imaginings. He took up
the pewter watch, and said, "Is there a better watch for that age which
knows no time but only eternity, than this one with only an index and
no wheel-work?"
Linda was surprised as she drew away a curtain from a glass casket and
a waxen child, of angelic beauty, lying therein, caught the light in
her clear eyes. "It is the dead Severina," said Albano, hastily, with
the harsh adjective "dead," which Linda could not well endure. It
became more and more uncomfortable to him in the clear-obscure
chamber,--a streak of sunshine burned in singularly down through the
lofty window,--animated resurrection-dust played therein,--the spirits
of the sister and of Liana might at any moment flash across the earthly
light,--and the mountains out in real life receded into the distance.
When he looked again upon the blooming Linda, all at once she appeared
to him changed, strange, supernatural, as if she appeared among
spirits, and was going hence again. She looked upon him significantly,
with the words, "One is not at home here, let us go!" "Woman!" said he,
with strong voice, in German, making answer to an inward terror, and
grasped her hand, "we will hold together like a live heart, if one
should try to tear it asunder." Linda replied, "I cannot stay longer,
Julienne!" and they went.
On the threshold it occurred to the Count to look into the next
chamber; he opened it and shrank back, but cried, "You only go on," and
he himself went in. He had, namely, beheld himself twice imaged as in a
mirror. Within the chamber he found himself standing in wax in a niche
in French uniform, but as a youth still, and close by, which the door
had concealed, his father also as a youth, dressed in the old fashion,
but beautiful as a Grecian god; the warm, full, flowery face had not
yet been iced over in the winter of mature life, and still bloomed with
love. He plunged deep into the sea of the past. The colossal statues
out of doors, and the illuminated mountain ridges had risen up out of
the dark waves, and stood in dripping splendor. There was a call from
without. He looked again into his face, but angrily. "Why twice over?"
said he, and crushed his face, but it was to him like suicide and
laying hands upon his very self and soul. The form of his father he
still more begrudged to the strange, unguarded place, but it was to him
too holy for the slightest touch.
He went back, and remained silent on the subject of the images, in
order not to ruffle the great, stubborn wings of Linda's fancy. The
green, glistening, blooming day soon swallowed up the cold shadows
which had fallen in from the heights and grave-mounds of the past. "But
now," said Albano to Linda, "as you have just come out of my nursery,
lead me once into yours." "I will not crown thee until we are at the
right place," said she, and broke off and bound together twigs of the
laurel wood, through whose swarm of light and dark waves they were now
passing, for a garland. Bodily activity gave to this maiden, who, with
more than common ease, knit together tones and colors and ideas, a
peculiarly touching aspect of childlikeness and naive condescension.
She braided the wreath, but with difficulty, confounded once the
arbutus with the laurel that resembles it, put in one more blooming
myrtle-twig, and decked his curled hair with it, but very seriously.
"The garland becomes thee; the high laurels up on the summit thou wilt
one day get for thyself," said she. He thought she was playing behind
this seriousness; but she looked joyfully and searchingly and smilingly
on the crowned one, but like a mother, and said: "It is right so! What
wilt thou more? I will bring it. Albano, I have at this hour a very
peculiar and new love for thee. I could do much for thee, endure much.
My heart is moved with exceeding love. Kiss me not. I will tell thee."
The fair womanliness which loves the beloved more ardently and
intimately when it has for the first time gone over his homestead, the
scenes of his childhood, his dwelling-places, unconsciously filled her
strong heart. He kissed her not; he looked upon her, and wept in the
ecstasy of love. She inclined her head towards him, and said, but
cheerfully, "It is hard for me to weep, dearest! I will tell thee what
thou desiredst to know about my childhood. Of the first places of my
childhood but a very faint impression remains with me,--perhaps because
we were always travelling, and because I look more for persons than for
scenes,--except my having stayed longest in Valencia. Probably from
this early travelling I derive my travelling mania. After all, however,
it lies in my nature. But _you_ always believe, like the Germans, that
you learn that which you properly inherit or create. By my mother I was
more hated and loved than by any one. I am now clear about her. She was
wholly born for art or for the arts, although I believe that she was
originally marked out by the gods for the stage. She was everything
this minute, nothing the next; curses and prayers, belief and unbelief,
hatred and love, alternated in this epic nature. She could have
lavished a world, and she could have stolen one. She once pressed me to
her heart, and said, 'Wert thou not my daughter, I would steal or kill
thee out of mere love'; and that was when I had said, 'I love Medea
more than Creusa.'
"However, she was too inconsistent to be wholly loved; I loved my
invisible father far more. I thought he was _God the Father_. I once
imagined he must dwell in the _Porta Cœli_;[107] for whole hours
together I went round the garden of the dead of the cloister, and
looked longingly through the palms over the roses of the graves; I hung
on every living thing, even to pain. A dying canary-bird once made me
sick, and I thought the mass for the dead was read for him. On God and
spirits also I hung in a sort of intoxication. They once flashed by
before me in the fire which I struck out of sugar in the dark. I never
played, but read early. As I was very serious, and my form developed
itself precociously, I was early treated as a grown person, and I
desired it too. No one was earnest enough for me, except my guardian,
who, with secret hand, governed my development. Over books and in
travelling carriages my early life passed away. I envied men, and their
knowledge, and their freedom, but they did not please me, still less
did women. I passed for proud--and at an earlier period I was so
too--and for fantastical. I took it not ill, and said, 'You have your
way, and I mine.'" The narrative was interrupted by Dian and Julienne.