Linda had spent the whole subsequent day in silent anguish of spirit,
thinking of the beloved, who seemed to her, as Liana had once seemed to
him, not to live in the whole living fire of love, as she did,--she had
been long besieged by the Princess, and then robbed by her of Julienne,
whom she carried off on a pleasure-drive, and who could only throw her
the intelligence, that Albano had also made an excursion to-day, in
order the earlier to embrace Schoppe,--she had remained quiet,
according to her principle, that female pride commands silence,
calmness, and even oblivion,--when at evening she received by the blind
maiden from Blumenbühl, whom she had taken into her service, the
following letter:--
"Thou once mine! Be so again! I will still die, but only for thee, not
for a people on the battle-field. Forgive yesterday and bless to-day. I
have given up again my purpose of an excursion to meet a friend, in
order to throw myself upon thy heart this very day and draw out of
thy heaven and fill mine. I cannot wait until Julienne comes back;
my heart burns for thee. To-morrow I must at all events be in the
Prince's garden, where Roquairol at last gives his Tragedian. Come this
evening--I implore thee by our love--at eight o'clock, either, if it is
clear, into the cavern of Tartarus, whose gravedigger's finery and
Orcus-furniture will certainly be only ridiculous to thee,--or, if it
is cloudy, to the end of the flute-dell.
"Thou must take only thy blind maiden with thee. Thou well knowest the
espionage that besets us on all sides. I expect and desire no answer
from thee, but at the stroke of eight, I steal through Elysium to see
where stands the goddess, my heaven, my sun, my bliss, thyself.
"Thy Albano."
As by a lightning beam from heaven, her whole being was melted into a
soft, blissful glow; for she believed what the handwriting said, that
the note was from Albano,--however unexpected so sudden a conversion
appeared to her in him;--although it was really written by Roquairol.
Let us go back even to the gloomy source of the rushing hell-flood
which stretches out its ice-cold arm after innocence and heaven.
Roquairol had remained through the winter, with all the mortifications
of his ungovernable wishes, tolerably happy and good; the evening star
of love, although for him it rather waned than waxed, stood, however,
not yet below the horizon, but only under clouds. But so soon as Linda
had travelled off with Julienne--and indeed as he immediately guessed
and early learned--to Italy; then did a new storm sweep through his
life, which tore off his last blossoms and beclouded him with the
long-laid dust; for he now, as he had himself predicted to Albano, saw
the net coming up stream toward _him_ and the Countess, which should
take both prisoners. The eating poison of his old passion for many gods
and many mistresses ran round again hotly in all the veins of his
heart:--he fell into extravagant expense, play, debts, as deeply as he
possibly could,--set luck and life at stake,--threw his iron body into
the jaws of death, who could not immediately destroy it,--and
intoxicated himself with the sorrow of a savage over his murdered life
and hopes in the funeral bowl of debauchery; a league which sensuality
and despair have often before this struck with each other on earth, on
theatres of war, and in great cities.
Only one thing still held the Captain upright, the expectation that
Albano would keep his present distance from Linda, and then, that she
would come back. At this stage the Princess returned, still keeping
fresh all her hatred of the cold Albano, whose "dupe" she held herself
to be. Roquairol easily induced his father to bring him nearer to her,
as he hoped with her to find news about Albano and everything else. He
soon became of consequence to her by the similarity of his voice and
his former friendship for her foe, and still more by his rare tact of
being to a woman always exactly what she desired.
As she had already known long since all his earlier connections and
wishes, accordingly so soon as her telegraphs of Albano had given her
the intelligence of his new love, she readily dropped him a hint on the
subject. Despite the warm part which Roquairol had to play toward her,
he was nevertheless furiously pale in her presence, breathless,
alternately trembling and stiffening; "Is it so?" he asked, in a low
tone. She showed him a letter. "Princess," said he, furiously pressing
her hand to his lips, "thou wast right; forgive me all now."
How great an idea he had had of Albano he now for the first time saw,
by his astonishment at what was the most natural thing in the world.
Never does the heart hate more bitterly than when it is compelled at
length to hate, without respecting, the object which it had formerly
been compelled to respect amidst its very hatred; just as, on the same
ground, the bad man is much more deeply and selfishly provoked by
another's hypocrisy than the good man. Roquairol fancied now he had
leave to make a real foe of the proud friend; he became, instead of a
German ruin, an Italian one, full of scorpions. The Princess was the
hot climate which makes the scorpions for the first time really
poisonous. She related to him how Albano had so long sought to win her,
and to decoy her over his deep-laid mines, merely in order, at their
explosion, to have the enjoyment of coldness and contempt, and how
indifferently he had spoken of the Captain, without condescending so
much as to hate him.
The Princess allowed the Captain to mount up one step after another on
her throne, till not another remained except her own person. She
offered him even the last step on condition of avenging her. He said he
would avenge her and himself, for Albano had solemnly in Tartarus
resigned the Countess to him. Thus did both seem to hide their real
love under the mask of revenge; the Princess hers for the Captain, he
his for Linda.
She brought closer and closer before his eye a plan which he did not
discern, however much she stimulated him by the remark that Albano was
and would be a greater favorite with women than one had hitherto
thought; that even her excellent, discreet sister Idoine, if one might
judge by her silent questions in letters, and other signs, had almost
lost through him both of the things which she had restored to him by
his sick-bed,--health and peace; and that he must never hope to see or
even to make the Countess inconstant.
At last she said, slowly, the fearful words, "Roquairol, you have his
voice, and she has by night no eye." "Heaven and hell!" he exclaimed,
turning alternately red and pale, and looking at once into heaven and
hell, whose doors sprang open before him. "_Va!_"[124] he added,
quickly, without having yet fathomed the black depth of this
white-foaming sea. The Princess embraced him ardently, he her still
more so. "In a poetic fiction," said he, "_thy_ thought would easily
have come to me, but in actual life I have no cunning!" "O knave!" said
she. As soon and as long as he might venture, he said Thou, because he
knew the heart, especially woman's. Soon after, when they had been
still more frank towards each other, said she: "If she remains innocent
with you, then you have offended no one, and no one has lost; if not,
then either she _was not_ so, or she deserved the proof and punishment
of being deluded." "Yes, that is divine,--that fits into the
magnificent _Tragedian_, just before the end," said he, but would not
explain himself on the subject.
Now was an object and centre supplied to the wild circles of his
action. He coldly dissected Albano's love-letters into great and little
characters, merely in order to copy them faithfully; hence it was that
Albano once found at Rabette's his handwriting without his thoughts. He
inquired of Rabette about all Albano's lesser relations, in order to
elaborate his parts, even to the smallest particular, and even so he
read all Italian tourists, in order to speak freely with Linda about
every beautiful spot, where he, as the sham-Albano, had enjoyed with
her Hesperian life. It tickled him that he could thus, with the flame
in his breast, and with the cold ice-light in his head, now for once
lay out and considerately manage, in real life, all theatrical
preparations and complications, just as he had once done for the stage.
He saw Albano, whose haughty treatment he had experienced, come from
his journey; he saw the blooming goddess walk in Lilar; he heard,
through the spies of the Princess, of their engagement; high heaved his
dead sea in heavy waves, and sought to drag down its victims from their
flight, even from heaven. Immediately after the tragedy which he
proposed to enact with Linda, his own was to come in the Prince's
garden, which he from time to time promised and postponed; he had to
wait and spy long till a time should appear into which so many teeth of
a double machinery might catch at once.
At length the time appeared, and he wrote the above-exhibited letter to
Linda. All was reckoned upon and settled, and every assistance of
accident woven in with the plan. His tragedy had long been committed to
memory by his acquaintances, although never rehearsed, because he, as
he said, meant to surprise his fellow-players themselves with his part
in the very midst of the play. The pleasure which he always had in
bidding farewell,--because here the emotion refreshed him at once by
its shortness and by its strength,--he now gave himself with as many as
loved him. From Rabette he parted with so tempestuous a tenderness that
she said to him, with alarm, "Charles, I hope this does not signify
anything evil?" "All is evil in me, just now," said he.
Through the intercession of the Princess the most important spectators
were invited for the next day to his tragedy, even Gaspard and
Julienne, together with the court. The mystery took. Even from the
Princess his part was concealed. Only his father, who would have been
glad to follow the court, he struck off the list by putting him into a
great rage, for he knew of no other way of keeping him back than by
this thorn-hedge. His mother and Rabette he had conjured by their
welfare, by his welfare, not to be spectators of his play.
A new wind of fortune had come to help him raise his flying-machine,
through the singular brother of the Knight, who heard with such joy of
the Iron Mask of his tragic mask, that he came to him with the proposal
of introducing to him a new and wonderful player. "All the parts are
taken up," said the poet. "Make a chorus between the acts, and give it
to one," said the Spaniard. Roquairol asked after the player's name.
The Spaniard led him to his hotel. No sooner had they entered, than a
voice from within his chamber called, in a guttural, animal's voice,
"Back again so soon, my master?" They found within nothing but a black
jay. "Post the bird on the stage, let him be the Chorus; let him repeat
in half-song,[125] _mezza voce_, only two or three lines; the effect
will be felt," said the Spaniard.
Roquairol was astonished at the long recitations of the jay. The
Spaniard begged him to dictate a still longer one, that he might with
his own ears hear him drill it into the bird. Roquairol gave him, "In
life dwells deception, not on the stage." The Spaniard gave out, at
first, merely a word to be repeated, then another, repeated it three
times, then said, snapping his fingers by way of incitement to the
creature, "_Allons diablesse!_" and the animal stuttered out, in a
deep, hollow tone, the whole line. Roquairol found in this comic
bestial-mask something frightful, and accepted the proposal to compose
some lines of a chorus and assign them to the bird, on one unique
condition, namely, that the Spaniard would, the evening previous, draw
away his nephew Albano from Pestitz, under some pretext or other, and
then appear with him in the Prince's garden. The Spaniard said, "Sir
Captain, I need no pretext; I have a true reason. I am to travel with
him to meet his friend Schoppe, who will come to-morrow evening; he,
too, will be one of your spectators."
Albano, in his perplexed frame of mind toward Linda, and in his
impatient expectation of Schoppe, could not have accepted anything so
readily as a little plan for an excursion, by which he might the
earlier have this beloved Schoppe on his breast. Julienne was entreated
by the Princess, in the presence of the sick Prince, to accompany her
to Idoine, who waited for her half-way at a frontier castle, and to go
back the next day into the Prince's garden. She declined. The sick
brother, according to concert between him and the Princess, put in the
petitions which had been requested of him. The sister fulfilled them.
And now all was arranged for the evening on which Roquairol was to see
Linda. So glimmer by night in the sheds of an innocent hamlet the
inserted brands of the incendiary; the storm-wind roars around the
weary, sleeping inmates; the robbers stand on the mountains in the
mists of evening, and look down in expectation of the moment when the
fiery swords of the flames shall gleam out on all sides through the
mist, and rob and murder with them, as they rush down on the dismayed
and defenceless.