Albano and his uncle went on to meet the announced Schoppe from village
to village. The uncle continually pushed back the hope before them like
a horizon, farther and farther, as they advanced. Once, at evening, the
Count fancied he heard Schoppe's voice close beside him; in vain, the
beloved man came not yet to his heart, and with longing impatience
Albano saw the clouds in heaven sail along over the way which his
precious one was taking beneath them on the earth. The uncle told him a
long story of a secret trouble which often weighed down the Librarian,
and of his liability to attacks of madness, which had some time ago
repelled him from him, because among all men there was none he dreaded
so much as the madman. Of Romeiro's portrait he seemed to know nothing.
Albano was silent with vexation, for the Spaniard was one of those
insufferable men who, with sleek, steady face, and with screwed-up and
helmed soul, can let another's contradiction flutter around them
without any contradiction on their part, without echo, without a
reflection or alteration, and to whom another's discourse is only a
still dew, the fall of which wears away no stone. To this was added
Albano's exasperation against his new falsehood about Schoppe's
nearness, and against his own incapacity of listening for a good, long
hour incredulously to what a liar is saying.
"Schoppe is, upon my word, already arrived at the Prince's garden by
another route," said the Spaniard at last, in quite a lively mood, and
advised turning back, in the comfortable enjoyment of that cool,
impudent faculty he had of jamming up every one who did not do homage
to him, between sharp, tedious ice-fields.
They arrived before the princely garden in the midst of nothing but
carriages, out of which were alighting the spectators of to-day's
dramatic festival. Albano found among them already his father, the
Princess, and Julienne, and, among the actors, Bouverot, his old
exercise-master Falterle, and the yellow-dressed merchant's lady in the
red shawl, who had once been less _in_ than _on_ Roquairol's heart, and
finally Roquairol himself. The Captain stepped up immediately, first
and foremost, to the well-known Albano, and said, with elaborate ease,
the play would begin soon, only Dian with his wife was still expected.
Dian, always easily moved, most of all by an invitation, could least of
all resist one when art was the occasion; through him Chariton also was
soon gained for the play, but not without one condition,--that she was
to play in the piece the part of a beloved to no one but her spouse.
When Roquairol spoke with Albano, he found it hard to laugh easily, or
to raise his eyelids, as if his face were frozen or swollen; and an
avenging, humiliating spirit inwardly weighed his down to the earth
before the pure and happy friend out of whose spring he had torn and
cast away the bright sun, and over whose life he had hung an eternal
plague-cloud.
Amidst the tumult of garden talk, and in the fruitless wish to impart
to his sister Julienne three soft words for the Linda of whose presence
he had been so long deprived, Albano saw the carriage of the Countess
roll along on the heights up to Liana's last garden, there stop, and
her and Dian and Chariton alight from it.
Then he thought of nothing but to fly to the long-missed loved one,--an
act which, before the many eyes, easily assumed the appearance of a
longing for Dian; and at this moment, in the thirst of love, he, in
fact, asked no question about eyes. "Ah, here I am, after all!" said
Linda, and came to meet him, interweaving the delicate vine-tendrils of
soft glances with his, so shyly and so lovingly; and the evening blush
of bashfulness, like a spring-redness in the night, mantled her heaven,
and the white moon of innocence stood in the midst of it. Albano was
dissolved with the melting wind of this forgiveness, reproached himself
with his sweet joy at her conversion, as if it were a selfish pride in
his victory, and could hardly, in the fair confusion of good fortune,
command his sweet astonishment and his melting heart, which would fain
dissipate itself before her like a tempest into evening dew. He threw
his soul into his eye, and gave it to his beloved. Before Chariton he
felt that he must veil himself. To Dian and Linda he said, as they
looked into the setting sun, only the word, "Ischia!"
"There lies dear Anastasius," said Chariton to Dian, "my good friend
Liana buried, and one knows not properly whereabouts in the garden, for
one sees really nothing but flowers and flowers; however, she so
ordered it." "That is very sad and fine," said Dian; "but let it
be,--gone is gone, Chariton!" and led her aside, out of indulgence to
the lovers. Albano, who overlooked nothing, and overheard everything,
showed plainly enough how much he had been agitated by Chariton's
words. Linda, too, perceived it. "Only speak out thy sadness," said
she; "I do truly love _her_ too." "I am thinking upon the living," said
he, collecting himself, and looked timidly, not upon the flower-garden,
but upon the sun-enchanted[127] evening landscape; "can one, then,
sufficiently forgive, and think no evil upon the earth? Linda, O how
thou forgivest me to-day!"
"Friend," said she, "when you sin you shall receive forgiveness; but
until then, I pray you be quiet!" He looked upon her significantly.
"Hast thou not already forgiven, and have not I too? But couldst
thou have known how intimately I lived with thee during these days on
the way to my Schoppe, and brought over the divine past into the
future--ah, can I then tell thee all in this place?" Fortunately
she--like other women, attending less to words than to looks, gestures,
and actions--heard more with the spiritual than the bodily ear, and
stepped not over the brink of the abyss which his words laid open so
near her. Thus did these two now play, like children, near the cold
thunder-charged lightning-rod, out of which at the smallest nearer
approach must dart the flashing scythe of death.
Both went on with their illusions near the lightning. The sun went down
with his flames by the little mountain and the smooth flowery grave
over into the distant plains. Out of the depths of the princely garden
came tones fluttering up through the long evening rays and deified the
golden landscape. The rays were solitary wings, that sought their
heart, and joined it, and then flew onward--and the loving hearts
became full of wings. The rays sank, the tones soared. Around Linda and
Albano lay a golden circle of gardens and mountains and green valleys,
and every flower rocked with its riches under the last lingering gold,
and became the cradle of the eye, the cradle of the heart. The lovers
looked at each other, and upon the earth, with inspired looks; the
shining world appeared to them only in the magic mirror of their
hearts, and they were, themselves, both, only floating images therein.
"Linda, I will be more gentle," said he. "I swear it by the saint in
whose garden we stand!" "Be so, dear one; in Lilar thou wast not so!"
said she. He understood it of his storminess toward Liana. "Bury this
recollection in thy love!" said he, reddening. She looked upon him like
a virgin,--her inner being had remained virginal and innocent,--as the
peach turns its red and glowing side toward the sun, but keeps under
the leaves the tender white. Her eye drank from his, his drank from
hers; the heavens mingled with her heaven, the purple sun glimmered
back out of the warm dew of loving eyes. "O that I might now kiss
thee!" said Albano. "Ah, that thou mightest!" said Linda. "So goldenly
did the sun once go down into the sea!" said he. "And afterward we gave
each other the first kiss!" said she. "We will see each other now much
oftener," said he. "Yes, indeed, and longer by day; by night I, poor
one, have, indeed, no eye. Even now is my eye already going down
yonder," said she, as the sun sank from sight.
It was a good, gentle spirit, or Liana's own,--that spirit which
conducts man by the gradual transition of twilight over into night,
which pours soothing tears into sorrow and into ecstasy, and which
suffers not the short path of love's evening star to be overcast with
clouds,--this spirit it was which saved their tongues and ears from the
terrible sound which would at once have torn up the golden magic circle
of evening into an all-surrounding blaze of hell.
"Who is that coming so hastily yonder?" said Linda. "My foe," said
Albano. Roquairol had missed him, and had heard of Linda's arrival; in
the hell-torment of anxiety, lest what had happened the night before
might reveal itself before them this evening, he hurried, under the
pretext of going to get Dian as a performer and Albano as a hearer, up
the mountain. Like a centaur, half man, half wild beast, he broke in
upon the melodious souls and joys with the hollow, confused war of his
whole being. But hardly had he perceived in their looks the
consecration of rapture, and seen that the black curtain still lay fast
upon his murder, when the grim spirit of jealousy reared itself within
him. "She is now my betrothed," he said to himself; and the solar
eclipse of confused repentance was eclipsed by the tempest of chagrin.
Linda, kindling into anger from an inward shudder at his similarity of
voice, stood before him like a diamond, clear, sparkling, hard and
cutting; but Albano, amidst the echoes of the harmony, stood gently on
the churchyard of the sister of this brother, and not without some
confusion. Roquairol was haunted again by yesterday's unclean
suspicion, that perhaps Albano and Linda were no longer innocent.
Angrily, he now invited Linda to make one of the spectators at his
tragedy. "You told me," said she to Albano, "it concluded so
tragically; I am no friend of that." "He is not at all acquainted with
it," said Roquairol. "No," said Albano. As the serpent looked down upon
the paradise of the first pair, so looked he with the pleasing
consciousness that he could hand them the apple from the tree of
knowledge which should immediately drive them out from theirs.
"Besides," she subjoined, "I see badly in the evening, or not at all."
Roquairol affected to be surprised at that, joked upon the gain which
it would be to him as first lover in the play, if she only _heard_ him,
and begged Dian to unite in entreating her. Not inborn, but acquired
coldness, has at command the highest falsehood; the former is capable
only of dissimulation, the latter of simulation also, because it at
once knows and uses all ways and means of kindling a fire, and keeps
its firm standing on slippery ice by the ashes of former heat. When
Albano himself at length advised her to take part in the tragic
enjoyment, and grant her friends of both sexes below there the fair,
pure enjoyment of her presence, then she consented, not without
wondering at his retraction.
She took Chariton into her carriage. The men walked on ahead. On the
way Roquairol said to Dian, who had to play the character of Albano in
the piece, "So soon as I have said, in the fourth act, 'Even spiritual
love goes to meet sensual, and, after all, like a seafarer on his way
eastward, arrives at last in the lands of sundown,' then you fall in."
Dian laughed, and said, "I'll fall in. In Italy, however, the passage
begins at once as a southerly and westerly one." Albano was silent for
vexation, and repented having helped persuade Linda to this doubtful
festival. The Princess cast sundry rapid glances of contempt at the
cheated Linda, and she answered them with the like; distinguished women
betray their sex most in hostile contact with distinguished ones.