Gaspard received his son with the usual stately coldness of the first
hour, as letters begin more coldly than they end. Not until this
morning-frost had melted away and it grew warmer around him, did Albano
disclose to him, without fear or pusillanimous blushing, and with
matured manliness, the bond which he had forever concluded with Linda
and with himself, and begged him for the third yes. "So after all,"
replied the Knight, "the old enchanter has carried it through at last;
of course under the reinforcement of a young enchantress. That I shall
never disturb thee in anything which thou seizest upon with whole soul
and forever, that thou knowest already from a similar case in the last
year." Albano grew red at the bitter mention of his first love, but had
gained strength within a half-year to preserve a manly silence, in
cases where he once spoke out like a youth. Gaspard, more glad and warm
than usual towards him to-day, nevertheless went on, when he perceived
his sensitiveness: "I pronounce it good! As the seal-engraver in the
beginning stamps the arms in wax, and then, and not till then, etches
them on the precious stone, so does man essay to impress his upon more
than one heart, until he at last gets the firmest. It must be owned
thou hast not made the worst choice in my ward, and I gladly give my
word of assent to it."
Albano pressed the hand which drew the sweet knot of love still
tighter, and said, in the entrancement of gratitude: "I found my
sister, too, the Princess. I put no question to her, however, as
lately, but count upon time." "Mocker!" said Gaspard, and assumed,
seemingly by way of cooling him off, the cruel appearance of thinking
his pure, noble son had been disposed to retort upon him the bantering
allusion to having many love-affairs. "Only be silent about all in thy
innermost heart, as I myself have hitherto been, and conceal thy
knowledge from the court. Give me thy word of honor."
Albano said he had already given it to Julienne also. He was, however,
driven back, by Gaspard's whole deportment, upon conclusions which
placed moral garlands neither upon his father nor upon Julienne's
mother.
Gaspard added, furthermore, that it was a misfortune for a man to be
entangled with fantastic women,--as Albano already knew his mother to
have been,--and, in fact, with three at once, and advised him to march
on boldly, as hitherto, through all riddles, and leave them to solve
themselves. Thereupon he proposed to him, as a test of the third female
fancy-monger, the question whether he already knew that the Countess,
notwithstanding his guardianship, had still her living father, who
would appear for the first time on her wedding-day. He said, "Yes."
Gaspard then continued: This reason, of itself,--in order that Linda
might find her father, and all of them the peace of clearness at
last,--decided him for an early, secret marriage of the two through the
honorable Spener.
Albano, really terrified at the prospect of the near and speedy
transformation of blissful hours into blissful years, and no more able
to think of his Titaness as wife than to think of her as child,
answered, modestly and with disinterested reference to Linda's dread of
wedlock, that, as to the time of sealing his happiness, no one must or
could decide but Linda herself.
Gaspard was well content. "I only insist upon your adjourning the
matter awhile," he subjoined. "My friend the Prince is again near his
end; the beneficial effect which a spiritual apparition had wrought
upon him has gradually subsided, and he fears daily the return of the
phantom, which has promised to foretell him his last hours. At such a
time your festival does not serve my purpose. To speak in confidence,
the poor patient had himself an eye to the fair bride. It is, after
all, but fair to spare him the highest certainty of his loss. On his
account I also postpone my departure."
As if a man should enter into the new-created paradise, and all birds
at once--nightingales and eagles and owls and birds-of-paradise and
vultures and larks--should beset him, so confusedly did Albano feel
himself excited by these mutually crossing prospects, and he perceived
that there could be no dependence nor defence here, except in his own
heart and Linda's.
Gaspard seemed to be impatient to see the Countess again, whom he
called his only friend. "Unfortunately, I did not believe my brother in
Rome," he added, "when he insisted on having met both ladies in Naples.
_Apropos_, that brother passed through here some time ago, on his way
to Spain; in Rome he asserted he was travelling to Greece. Thou seest
with what poetic pleasure and geniality he carries on pure lying."
Gaspard parted from him very warmly, with the words, "Albano, I am very
well satisfied with thee; I should be infinitely so if the purity of
the youth had passed over into the man; I have not yet found it so."
Albano was about to affirm and swear with emotion. "That is why," he
continued, waving away the oath with a light motion of the hand, "thou
foundest me so glad about thy good fortune, for the Princess's friend
had already announced to me thy love in the morning. Take heed to
thyself before her, for she hates thee without bounds."
With a hard and horrible aspect, like a new and extraordinary beast of
prey behind the grating, does a real though unarmed hatred present
itself for the first time before a good heart. Albano demanded no
confirmation or explanation of this sad intelligence, for the love and
error of the Princess, her acquaintance with his former coldness toward
Linda, her silent bitterness toward Linda herself, were quite flames
enough for her to cook the strongest poison by.
He took up his residence again, at the request of his father, at the
house of Doctor Sphex, situated, unmeaningly to him, down in the
valley; and Gaspard resumed his abode in the palace, near his sick
friend. The Knight speedily presented him to the court, which soon
observed and remarked the brown of travel, the sharper lightning of the
eye, and the whole latest development of his great form. The Princess
received him with the lightest, finest coldness, a sort of _aqua
toffana_, which seems only pure, tasteless water. The Prince sat
upright in his sick-bed, with peevish face, before drawings of
Herculaneum, and was letting himself be informed on the subject by
Bouverot. As a face upon which, in the late, gray years of life, fair
joyousness can still picture itself, announces a fair life and fair
heart, so the saint never wears a more heavenly smile than on his
sick-bed, nor the reprobate a more hard and painful one. Albano turned
his eye away from the sickly, withered _brother of his sister_.
Languishing, he looked back toward the past Hesperia, and forward to
the gate of paradise which was finally to open, and show Linda and his
sister in Eden. "It will certainly meet your approval," Gaspard had
said, "that, under the pretext of Luigi's sickness, I have had them
both quartered in the old palace at Lilar, where thou canst see them
more unobserved." He met the Minister Froulay, and the Lector came to
meet him; with both came a dark, manifold shadowy retinue of hard, old
recollections. He had not yet seen Captain Roquairol, who was now to
him the evening cloud of a sunken spring day.
He carried as speedily as he could his dumb heart--which was an
Æolian-harp in a dead calm--to his childhood's Blumenbühl, to greet the
parental beings, and to read the papers of his soul's nearest neighbor,
Schoppe, for whose promised return he now longed more than ever.