It was a fresh, blue, summer day when Albano went to his old
Blumenbühl, without knowing that he did so precisely on the St. James's
day, or paternal birthday, which he had once, in childhood, spent in
such singular preludes of his life. In the old gardens and on the old
heights round about, even over to Lilar's wood, lay everywhere, even
now, the young, glistening dew of childhood, not yet dried up by the
western sun; many tear-drops, too, stood among the drops of dew on the
flowers; but his fresh, healing spirit was on its guard against
effeminately floating away into soft transport, that Lethe of the
present. In the village he was struck with the sight of a horse whom
they were shoeing, for, by the caparison and all, he recognized it as
Roquairol's festive steed. He introduced a festival into a festival,
when he entered the noisy paternal apartment, full of birthday
electors, blooming, fully developed, erect, a confirmed man, with
determined look and gait. Rabette screamed out; Roquairol cried, "Aha!"
and the old teacher Wehmeier, "God and my master!" and his childhood's
angels, the parents, embraced him just as ever, and out of Albina's
blue eyes ran the bright drops.
But a change had come over the youth of the others, compared with his.
Rabette's countenance, the once full cheeks and blooming lips, had
fallen in, and were overlaid and overgrown with the white veil, and she
had two gray tears instead of eyes ; yet she smiled a great deal. Like
his own Gorgon-head, Roquairol's face appeared pale and hard, as if
chiselled on his gravestone; only naked piers stood in the water,--the
light arches of the beautiful bridge were gone. Albina and Rabette
looked up with a steady gaze at Albano's blooming figure; he seemed to
be an Italian growth, a Neapolitan nerved by daily bathing in the gulf.
Roquairol had his part immediately at command more easily than Albano
his truth; he demeaned himself with the highest courteousness toward
one who had broken in two for him the magic wand of life and thrown it
away as a pair of beggar's sticks,--kissed him on the cheek, kept up
the lightest, often a French tone of conversation, requested the latest
intelligence about Italy, and retailed in turn the most edifying news
from the country, as well, he said, as he could muster it up for a man
with a Hesperian standard of measurement. He related, also, "that the
Knight's brother had been there,--a man full of talent, especially the
mimetic and that sort, and of the most singularly intense fancy with
the highest coldness of character, though perhaps not always
sufficiently true. For my tragedy," added he, "he would be worth his
weight in gold. Dear brother, hold yourself forthwith as invited on the
occasion. The play is called The Tragedian; I give it soon. Rabette is
acquainted with it." She nodded. Albano glowed, but was silent.
Among all parts, the Captain succeeded most perfectly in that of a
world's-man; the show of coldness is more easy and true, also, than the
show of warmth. Albano kept a proud distance. Roquairol could not gain
in any respect by being opposite to the afflicted, faded Rabette, not
even by the intercession of that form of his, full of the ruins of
life. Albano found there something forever confused, and the wax wings
crushed down into a lump; and it was as close and confining to him as
to one who from the bright world creeps down at once into a low, damp
cavern of a cellar.
The Captain rose, reminded him once more of his invitation to the
"Tragedian," and springing on his festive horse rode away.
Behind his back every one was silent about him, as if embarrassed. The
women, a little shy of Albano's brilliant presence, found some
difficulty in venturing forth upon the subject of the old familiar
past, while the foster-father, Wehrfritz, who having steadily grown on
in his opinions and manners, and being still encased in the old cry of
dogs and canary-birds, knew nothing at all about time, expressed his
hearty thanks to his foster-son for the obliging recollection and
choice of his birthday festival, which Albano necessarily and vainly
declined, continued in his old thouing and patronizing, wrought himself
into ecstasies on the subject of the French and their future victories,
and bestowed more premiums of praise now on the older foster-son than
he ever had on the younger, in order thereby, as he hoped, to give him
as great pleasure as ever. The Magister backed the praise from a
distance, although he could not let slip the opportunity, so soon as
his pupil had pronounced Napel, Baia, Cuma, to pronounce Neapel, Baiæ,
Cumæ. Albano was pure, true, human, frank, and hearty toward all; there
was no vanity in his self-forgetting pride.
Rabette found at last a lifting-screw to wind her polished and yet
familiar brother out of the receiving-room up into her or his former
apartment, so as to be alone on his breast. As they stepped in, she
immediately began, as she said, "Dost thou still know the chamber,
Albano?" to weep infinitely, with the tears which had been so long
gathering; and Albano showed her in his own, his long-cherished
sympathy, but tore open thereby all the wounds of the past. She herself
seized upon the remedy, namely, the telling of her story,--however
earnestly he persisted that he knew, and, indeed, could well guess
all,--and drying her eyes, informed him how all stood,--and that
Charles was a good deal with his mother in Arcadia; that the Minister
still acted the old tyrant toward his only child, and did not dole out
to him a farthing more than ever, although he was always heaping up
greater and greater debts, especially since there was no longer any
Liana silently to wipe them away; that he borrowed everywhere, only,
however, he never would accept anything from her; that he still
continued to desire and know nothing but the Countess, and that God
knew what all this would come to. Anticipating all inquiry, she added:
"He knows the whole already, all thy intercourse with that same person.
He behaves quietly and pleasantly about it, but I know him as well as I
want to. Ah!" she sighed, in the fulness of anguish, and added
immediately, with the same voice: "Thou lookest at me; is it not true
thou findest me very haggard to what I once was?" "Yes, indeed, poor
girl!" "I drank much vinegar on his account, because Charles loves
slender figures; and grief has much to do with it too," said she.
Albano would have consoled her with the nearer possibility of a union
of Charles with her, since the impossibility of every other union had
been decided, and readily tendered his services for any prefatory word
or coercive measure. "Before God and us, he is thy husband," said he.
"That he never could have been," replied she, blushing, "for he never
could have been honest; and did I not write thee that I am now too
proud for it, too?" "Then cast him off forever!" said he. "Ah!" said
she, fearfully, "do I know, then, that he meditates no harm against
himself? Then I should reproach myself with it eternally."
Involuntarily he could not but compare with this loving, holy fear, the
hardness of the Princess, who could relate so gladly and proudly how
many a love-smitten life had fallen a victim to her prudish heart and
coquettish face. "What wilt thou do now?" he asked. "I weep," said she.
"Ah, Albano, that is enough, indeed, that thou hast given me hearing
and counsel; I am cheerful again. But be once more his friend."
He was silent, a little angry at the naughtiness of women, which, under
pretence of seeking advice, only desires a hearing. "What is that?" he
asked, showing her a leaf. "That is perfectly my hand, and I never
wrote it!" She looked at it, and said Charles was often trying
experiments with her in this way at handwriting. He wondered, and said:
"Nothing, but imitating and counterfeiting all the time! But how canst
thou think of my forgiving him?" Some descriptions of travels on her
table, formerly so poor in books, met his eye. "I wanted to know, of
course," said she, "how you might probably be faring in this, that, and
the other place, and that is why I read the long stuff." "Thou art
still my sister!" said he, and kissed her heartily. She still asked him
much and urgently about his new connection; but chary of words with his
full heart, he hastened down stairs.
The first word down below to the Provincial Director was a request for
the "deposed letter of Schoppe's." Wehrfritz brought the broad letter,
which had been laid up in the little iron box of bonds, and delivered
it he hoped, he said, in good order. Hardly could Albano keep back his
tears, when he held the crinkled but precious traces of the beloved
hand, which certainly never in its life had swerved or stained itself,
in his own. As he did not break the seal, they all began good-naturedly
to portray to him his friend Schoppe, according to the presumptions and
views which man so boldly and complacently indulges upon every higher
spirit, with all his actions or colors, as if actions or colors were
strokes and outlines. Wehrfritz and Wehmeier deplored that he was
growing mad, if not already so. The Magister held back with his
main-proof, till the Provincial Director should have contributed the
lesser auxiliary ones.
His life beneath this palace-roof was uncovered and showed up, but in a
friendly spirit. "He had hitherto"--so went the reports--"had no real
or solid aim." Wehrfritz swore he had himself seen him reading the
Literary Gazette, just as it was folded together half-sheetwise, and
said he of course ascribed it less to insanity than to absence of mind,
because he knew with what pleasure the man always took into his hands
and understandingly perused the Imperial Advertiser, which the same
declared to be the gate-key to the great imperial city, Germany. In the
midst of company the Librarian had looked upon his hands with the
words: "There sits a gentleman here in bodily presence, and I in him,
but who is the same?" Of work he had done very little, seldom looked
into a book of any importance, as Herr Wehmeier knew, but got along
more easily with the worst of all stuff, for instance, whole volumes of
dream-interpretations. His dearest society had been his wolf-dog, with
whom for whole hours he would carry on regular discourse, and of whose
growling he seriously asserted it sounded like a very distant thunder.
He had been fond of sitting before the looking-glass, and had entered
into a long conversation with himself. Sometimes he had looked into the
camera-obscura, then on a sudden out into the landscape again, to
compare the two, and had asserted, unoptically enough, that the busy,
gliding images of the camera were magnified by the outer world, but
deceptively imitated. "It was a shy bird," added the Director, "for all
that. Divers of my acquaintances in the neighboring estates let him
paint them, because he did it cheap; he always knew, however, how to
slip something into the face so that one's physiognomy should appear
quite ridiculous or simple, and that he called his flattering. Of
course after that, no one could expect in the long run anything
_honnette_ from him."
"Were it permitted me," Wehmeier began, "I would now communicate to Mr.
Count a fact in regard to Mr. Librarian, which, perhaps--such is at
least my opinion--is as _frappant_ as many another. The school-house,
as you certainly still well remember, stands close to the church."
Thereupon he related, in a long narrative, the following: "Once, at
dead of night, he heard the organ going. He listened at the church
door, and distinctly heard Schoppe sing and play a short stanza of a
popular hymn. Thereupon the said Schoppe came down, with a loud noise,
from the choir, and mounted the pulpit, and commenced an occasional
sermon to himself with the words: 'My devout hearer and friend in
Christ.' In the exordium he touched upon the silent, but unhappily so
fleeting bliss which one enjoyed _before_ life, although not according
to correct Homiletic principles, since the second part almost repeated
the introduction. Thereupon he sang a pulpit stanza to himself, and
taking from the 3d chapter of Job, where the writer shows the happiness
of non-existence, the 26th verse as his text, which reads thus: 'Was I
not in safety, had I not rest, was I not quiet? Yet trouble
came,'[111]--he proposed to himself as his theme the joys and sorrows
of a Christian; in the first part the sorrows, in the second the joys.
Thereupon he crowded together concisely, but in a droll style and
speech, and yet with Scriptural expressions, too, all the misery and
distress on earth,--under which he enumerated singular things: long
sermons, the two poles, ugly faces, compliments, games, and the world's
stupidity. Thereupon he passed over abruptly to the consolation in the
second part, and described the future joys of a Christian, which, as he
blasphemously said, consisted in a heavenly ascension into future
nothingness, in the death after death, in an eternal deliverance from
self. Then (shocking it was to hear it) he addressed the neighboring
dead down below under the church and in the princely vault, and asked,
whether they had aught to complain of? 'Arise,' said he; 'seat
yourselves in the pews, and open your eyes, in case they are wet with
weeping. But they are drier than your dust. O how still and lovely lies
the infinite past world, swathed in its own shadow, softly laid on the
bed of its own ashes, without a single remaining dream-limb upon which
a wound can be inflicted. Swift, old Swift, thou who once in thy latter
days wast not so very much in thy head, and didst read through, every
birthday, the whole chapter from which the text of our harvest sermon
is taken,--Swift, how contented thou now art and entirely restored, the
hatred of thy bosom burnt out, the round pearl, thy Self, eaten up, at
last, and dissolved in the hot tear of life, and the tear alone stands
there sparkling! And thou, too, hadst once preached before the Sexton
like me!' Here Schoppe wept, and excused himself for his emotion, God
knows before whom. Thereupon he passed to the practical improvement,
and sharply insisted on both hearer and preacher growing better; upon
downright honest truthfulness; fidelity of friends; high-mindedness,
bitter hatred of suavity, snake-like movements, and weak
lasciviousness. Finally, he had concluded the devotions with a prayer
to God, that, if it should be his lot some day to lose his health or
understanding, or the like, he would still be pleased to let him die
like a man, and darted at once out of the church door. He put me,"
added Wehmeir, "almost out of my senses for terror, when he all at once
flew at me angrily; 'Mock corpse, why creepest thou about the grave?'
and I, pale and hurried, made my way home without having made the least
reply to him. But what says Mr. Count?"
Albano shook his head with vehemence without one enlightening word,
with pain and tears on his face. He merely took a sudden leave of all,
and begged them to pardon his haste; and sought the evening sun and
freedom, in order to read the letter of the noble man, and learn the
purpose of his journey. He struck into the old road to Lilar, where he
hoped to find, on the joyous southern breast of his radiant Dian
Southern gayety and Southern ways again; for his heart had been
upheaved by an earthquake, because, after all, many a wild sign in this
Schoppe, as it were an immoderate lightening and flashing of this star,
seemed to him to announce a setting and doomsday, which to his extreme
pain he was constrained to ascribe to the rising of the new star of
love, which had kindled this world of his nature.