Long did Albano wait for his friend on the following day; no one
appeared, no man knew anything of him. On the second morning a report
got wind that the Countess in the night, and Gaspard in the morning,
had travelled off. "Has Schoppe driven both away by the truth?" he
asked himself, forsaken and alone. In vain did he try to track Schoppe
for several days after; not once had he been seen. "Thou, too, dear
Schoppe!" said he, and shuddered at the barbarity of fate toward
himself. As he thus surveyed himself, and looked out over the still,
dark waste of his life, all at once it seemed to him as if his life
suddenly lighted up, and a sun-glance fell upon the whole liquid mirror
of the dark time which had elapsed. A voice, spake within him: "What
has there been then? Men, dreams, blue days, black nights, have flown
hither without me, without me flown away again, like the flitting
summer, which the hand of man can neither weave nor hold fast. What is
there left? A wide woe over the whole heart; but the heart, too,
remains,--empty, of course, but firm, sound, hot. Loved ones are lost,
not love itself; the blossoms are fallen, not the branches. Verily, I
still wish; I still will; the past has not stolen from me the future.
Arms I still have to embrace withal, and a hand to lay upon the sword,
and an eye to survey the world. But what has gone down will come again,
and flee again, and only that will remain true to thee which is
forsaken,--thyself alone. Freedom is the glad eternity; calamity is for
the slave the breaking out of a fire in the prison. No; I will _be_,
not _have_. What! can the holy storm of tones only stir a particle of
dust, while the rude, agitated air displaces mountains of ashes? Only
where like tones and strings and hearts dwell, there do they move
softly and invisibly. Only sound on, then, sacred string-music of the
heart, but wish not to change anything in the rough, hard world, which
owns and obeys only the winds, not tones."
At this moment, he was found by the Lector Augusti, who brought, by
word of mouth, instant entreaties from the Princesse Julienne to go
with him to Gaspard's chamber, where she had the weightiest words to
say to him about Schoppe. He complied readily; he expected, first and
chiefly, to find with her a key to his Schoppe's covered fate; he saw,
too, from the bold choice of a messenger, how important to his poor
sister his appearance must be.
In Gaspard's apartment Augusti suddenly left him to announce him,
and--leave him, alone. Through his life rolled now a slow thunder;
whether it came from heaven, from a stream, or only from a mill, as yet
he knew not. Julienne burst in, weeping, unable to speak for the
violent beating of her heart. "Thou art going away?" asked she. "Yes!"
said he, and besought her to be less passionate; for he knew how easily
another's impetuosity set him on fire, as he could not even play chess
or fence, for any length of time, without becoming angry. She entreated
him still more passionately only to stay till Gaspard came back. "Is he
coming back?" asked Albano. "How otherwise? But not the unworthy
bride," said she. "Julienne," replied he, seriously, "O, be not as hard
against her as fate has been, and let me be silent!" "I hate now all
men, and thee, too," said she. "That comes of your poetical souls. O,
what honest bride would have let herself so easily be blinded by such a
suicide? Who? But I see thou dost not know all." "But is it of any
use?" he asked.