Like a concert that suddenly flutters up with a hundred wings did the
swift presence of old love and joy break over the forsaken youth (so
troubled about his friend) in beautiful waves; and smitten with
delight, he saw Linda again as on Ischia; but she saw him again as in
another Elysium; she was more soft, tender, ardent, remembering his
past scenes in this garden. She would not relate nor hear anything at
all about her own travelling adventures. Albano buried his mystery of
Schoppe in his mighty but trembling breast; only to his father he
burned to disclose it. He was incessantly representing to himself the
possibility of a relationship, and the facility with which Schoppe
might confound the pretended sister with the true one, Julienne; this
very evening he meant to ask his father.
He imparted to her the paternal consent to their alliance with great
joy, but not with the greatest, because Schoppe's letter echoed in his
bosom. Julienne perceived that only a cascade instead of a cataract
came out of him to-day, and sought with a sly pleasantry to draw him
out, by making him answer, which she easily did, through the whole
range of questions touching important personalities of his and her
acquaintance. She had some inclination to weave and to paint on the
theatre curtain, or even to pierce a prompter's-hole in it. She began
the questions at Idoine,--who shortly after his arrival had taken her
departure back again from the city,--and left off with them at
Schoppe,--inquiring after the object of his journey; but Albano had not
seen the former, and as to the latter, Schoppe, he said, had confided
it to him alone. A beautiful, inflexible marble vein of firmness ran
through his being. Linda's black eye was an open, true German one, and
looked upon him only to love him.
Out of the flute-dell came the rest of the company, the Lector and
others; Julienne constrained the lovers to a separation, saying: "Here
is no Ischia; without me you cannot see each other here in the palace
at all; I will announce it to thee always through thy father, when I am
here."
When he stood alone in Lilar with the heavy thought of Schoppe and
Linda, and surveyed the lovely regions and scenes of fair hours, then
it seemed to him all at once as if, in the twilight, Elysium, like a
charming face, distorted itself into an expression of scorn at him and
at life. Little malicious fays sit on the little children's tables, as
if they were tender children, and very much loved to see men and human
pleasure; anon they start up as wild huntresses, and run through the
blossoms; a thousand hands turn up the garden with its blossoming
trees, and point its black, gloomy thicket of roots like summits up
into heaven; Gorgon heads look out of the twigs, and up in the
thunder-house there is an incessant weeping and laughing;--nothing is
fair and soft but the great, daring Tartarus.
However, as it was the shortest way to his father, Albano went, stern
and angry, through the garden, over the swan bridge, along by the
Temple of Dream, by Chariton's little cottage, by the rose arbors, and
over the woodland bridge, and soon was in the princely palace with his
father, who had just come back from the sick Luigi. With ironical
expression of countenance, his father related to him how the patient
had begun to swell again, merely because he feared that his dead
father, who had promised to appear to him a second time as a sign of
death, would give the sign and immediately call him away. Then Albano
related, without any introduction, and without mention of Schoppe and
of his connections, the hypothesis of the most singular relationship,
without putting, out of respect for his father, any long, searching
questions, or even more than the short, swift one, "Is Linda my
sister?" His father quietly heard him through. "Every man," said he,
angrily, "has a rainy corner of his life, out of which foul weather
proceeds, and follows after him. Mine is the carrying about of
mysteries with me. From whom hast thou the latest?" "On that subject
sacred duty bids me be silent," he replied. "In that case," said
Gaspard, "thou wouldst better have been silent altogether: he who gives
up the smallest part of a secret, has the rest no longer in his power.
How much dost thou suppose that I know of the matter?" "Ah, what can I
suppose?" said Albano. "Didst thou think upon my consent to thy union
with the Countess?" said Gaspard, more angry. "Should I then keep
silence? and did not sister Julienne in the end disentangle herself
from all mysteries?" Here Gaspard looked at him sharply, and asked,
"Canst thou rely upon the earnest word of a man, without wavering,
swerving, however eloquently appearances may discourse to the
contrary?" "I can," said Albano. "The Countess is not thy sister; rely
upon my word!" said Gaspard. "Father, I do so!" said Albano, full of
joy; "and now not a word further on the subject."
But the old man, now more composed, went on to say that this new error
gave him an occasion now earnestly to insist upon Linda's consent to a
speedy union, because her father, perhaps himself the mysterious
wonder-worker who had hitherto baffled all attempts at detection, had
absolutely fixed, as the time of his appearance, the wedding-day. He
indicated yet once more to his son his desire to know the way in which
he had arrived at that hypothesis; but to no purpose: holy friendship
could not be desecrated or deserted, and his breast closed mightily
around his open heart, as the dark rock closes about the bright
crystal.
So he parted, warm and happy, from his silent father. In the hard hour
of the letter-reading, he had only climbed an artificial, rocky region
of life, and there lay the gay gardens again, stretching away even to
the horizon; yet, after all, the vain, painful error of his Schoppe,
and the thought of that spirit so desolated by love and hatred, which,
even in the tone of the letter, seemed to bow itself down, and the
prospect of his madness, passed like a distant funeral chime dolefully
through his fair landscape, and the happy heart grew full and still.