As Schoppe had taken with him his great sword-cane, Albano presumed he
had gone after the Spaniard, as destroying-angel. He hurried to his
uncle's hotel. A servant told him a red cloak with a thick cane had
been there, and desired to be admitted to the gentleman, but that they
had despatched him, according to the directions of the latter, to the
palace, and meanwhile the gentleman had posted off to the Prince's
garden to meet his strong brother. Albano asked, "Who is the strong
brother?" "His Excellency your father," replied the servant. Albano
hastened to the palace. Here all was haste and confusion about the
sickbed of the Prince, who threatened soon to exchange it for the bed
of state. Hurrying servants met him. One could tell him he had seen a
red mantle go into the great mirror-room. Albano stepped in; it was
empty, but full of strange traces. A great mirror lay on the floor, an
arras door behind stood open, an open souvenir, wheels, and articles of
female apparel, were scattered about an old waxen head. It seemed to
him he saw something he had seen before, and yet could not name to
himself. Suddenly he beheld in a corner-mirror a second reflection of
himself far in behind the image of his youthful face, but covered with
age, and similar to the waxen head. He looked round him, a relieved
cylindrical mirror unlocked to him, as it were, time itself, and he saw
in its depths his gray old age.
Shuddering, he left the singular apartment. A gentlewoman of Julienne
came across his way. She could tell him that she had seen the
"Profile-cutter," in a red mantle, with a pocket spy-glass in his hand,
go out across the castle yard. He hastened after, when Augusti came to
meet him below the gate, with the request of the Prince, that he would
visit him once more. "Cannot possibly now; I must first have my crazy
Schoppe again," replied he. In his bosom no one lived but his friend;
moreover, he took the Prince, in this case, to be only the mask of his
talkative sister. "I saw him on the way to Blumenbühl," said the
Lector. He darted off. At the gate, Augusti's intelligence was
confirmed by the guard.
On the road to Blumenbühl he was met by the carriage of the court
chaplain, Spener, who was on his way to the Prince. Albano asked after
Schoppe. Spener informed him he had talked with him for some time
before a solitary house, where he had stopped an hour for the sake of a
sick old penitent daughter; had found him well, uncommonly sensible,
only older and more reserved than usual. To the question as to his
route, the court chaplain replied he had gone toward the city. This
appeared to him impossible, but Spener's people confirmed the story,
and spoke of the man as wearing a green coat. Albano spoke of a red
cloak; Spener and all the rest stuck to the green coat.
He turned back to his own house, where, perhaps, he thought, Schoppe
might be seeking and awaiting him. The bondman of the Doctor, the lank
Malt, ran to meet him with the intelligence that Herr von Augusti had
just been looking for him, and that the sick gentleman had gone out at
the old gate in a new green coat. It was the street to the Prince's
garden, which, according to Albano's presumption, he had certainly
taken, so soon as he had been informed of the Spaniard's having taken
the same. Out of doors it was confirmed by Falterle, who related how he
had, in his way out, overtaken him, and immediately inquired: "Whither
so fast, Mr. Librarian?" whereupon he had stood still, looked at him
seriously, and given the answer, "Who are you? You are mad," and then
hastened on. Albano inquired about the dress. "In green," replied
Falterle. Now his way was decided. The loitering rider could even
avouch that the uncle had previously taken the same.
Late in the evening Albano arrived at the Prince's garden. He saw some
carriages at the yard of the little garden castle. At last people of
his father's met him, who could tell him Schoppe had walked about,
tranquil and cheerful, for some time in the garden, with a Mr. von
Hafenreffer of Haarhaar, and had gone with him to the city. "With a man
he has, to be sure, a guardian genius and keeper again," thought
Albano, and the cold rain which had hitherto annoyed him passed away,
although the heavens still remained dull. With his agitated heart,
surrounded as it was in this landscape only by a dark horizon, he
shunned all society, and therefore now the pleasure-castle. Passing by
at a distance, he ventured to cast mournful glance at the island of
slumber, where Roquairol's grave-hill, like a burnt-out volcano, was to
be seen near the white Sphinx. "There, at last, lies the ungovernable
balance-wheel, broken and still, lifted out of the stream of time; only
with the grave closed the Janus-temple of thy life, thou tormented
and tormenting spirit," thought Albano, full of pity, for he had once
loved the dead one so much. Over on the garden-mountain, with the
linden-tree, reposed the gentle sister, the friendly, lovely angel of
peace, amidst the war-din of life,--she, eternal peace, as he, eternal
war. He determined to go up thither, and to be alone with the bride of
heaven, and to seek out, on the soil consecrated to flowers, the bed
beneath which her flower-ashes lay covered up from storms. At the mere
thought of such a purpose, streams of tears, like sorrows, burst from
his eyes; for he had been dissolved into dreaminess by his previous
night-vigils and anxieties, and by so many a misfortune, too, which in
so short a time had pierced through his fair, firm life, from one end
to the other, with poisonous sting and tooth.
As he went up the hill in the yet moonless, but richly starred
twilight, wherein the evening star was the only moon, as it were a
smaller mirror of the sun, he saw a couple of gray-clad persons make
earnest signs out of the Prince's garden, as if they would forbid his
proceeding. He went on unconcerned; indeed, he did not even know
whether his brain, glowing from its vigils and agitated by the shocks
of life, did not cause these forms to flutter before him, as out of a
concave mirror.
As if he were entering a roofless, Grecian temple, so did he step into
the holy cloister-garden of the still nun, wherein the linden-tree
spoke loud, and the silent flowers, like children, played above the
reposing one, and nodded and rocked. High and far stretched the starry
arches, like glimmering triumphal arches, over the little spot of
earth, over the hallowed spot, where Liana's mortal veil, the little
luminous and rosy cloud, had sunk down, when it had no longer to bear
the angel, who had gone up into the ether, and needed no cloud any
more. Suddenly the shuddering Albano beheld the white form of Liana
leaning against the linden, and turned toward the evening star and the
ruddy evening glow. Long did he contemplate, in the averted form, the
heavenly descending facial line with which Liana had so often
unconsciously stood as a saint beside him. He still believed some
dream, the Proteus of man's past, had drawn down the airy image from
heaven, and made it play before him, and he expected to see it pass
away. It lingered, though quiet and mute. Kneeling down, as before the
open gate of the wide, long heaven full of transfiguration and
divinity, and as if he had been caught up out of these earthly vales,
he exclaimed, "Apparition, comest thou from God? art thou Liana?" and
it seemed to him as if he were dying.
Quickly the white form looked round, and saw the youth. She rose
slowly, and said, "My name is Idoine; I am innocent of the cruel
deception, most unhappy youth." Then he covered his eyes, from a
sudden, sharp pang at the return of the cold, heavy reality. Thereupon
he looked at the fair maiden again, and his whole being trembled at her
glorified resemblance to the departed. So smiled once Liana's delicate
mouth in love and sorrow; so opened her mild eye; so fell her fine hair
around a dazzling-white, sweet face; so was her whole beautiful soul
and life painted upon her countenance. Only Idoine stood there greater,
like a risen one, prouder and taller her stature, paler her complexion,
more thoughtful the maidenly brow. She could not, when he looked upon
her so silently and comparingly, repress her sympathy for the deceived
and unhappy one, and she wept, and he too.
"Do I, too, distress you?" said he, in the highest emotion. With the
tone of the virgin who lay beneath the flowers, Idoine innocently said,
"I only weep that I am not Liana." Quickly she added, "Ah, this place
is so holy, and yet the human heart is not enough so." He understood
not her self-reproach. Reverence and openheartedness and inspiration
mastered him; life stood up and stood out shining from the narrow
bounds of troublous reality, as out of a coffin; heaven came down
nearer with its lofty stars, and the two stood in the midst of them.
"Noble Princess," said he, "we have neither of us any apology to make
here; the holy spot, like a second world, takes away all sense of
mutual strangeness. Idoine, I know that you once gave me peace; and,
before the hidden tabernacle of the spirit in whose sense you spoke, I
here thank you."
Idoine answered, "I did it without knowing you, and therefore I could
allow myself the short use or abuse of a fleeting resemblance. Had it
depended upon me, I certainly never would have so painfully awakened
your recollections with so insignificant a resemblance as an external
one is. But her heart deserves your remembrance and your sorrow. They
wrote me you were no longer in the linden city." She sought now to
hasten her departure. "In a few days," he answered, "I, too, shall
travel. I seek comfort in war from the peace of the grave, and the
solitude which makes my life still." "Earnest activity, believe me,
always reconciles one with life at last," said Idoine; but the tranquil
words were borne by a trembling voice, for, by help of her sister, she
had got a sight of the whole gray, rainy land of his present existence,
and her heart was full of deep sympathy for her kind.
Here he looked at her sharply; her nun-like eyelids, which always,
during her speaking, drooped over the whole of her large eyes, made her
so like a slumbering saint. He was reminded by her last words of her
beneficent life in Arcadia, where the gay flower-dust of her ideas and
dreams, unlike the heavy, dead gold-dust of mere riches, lightly
fluttering round in cheerful life, enlivening all with unobserved
influence, at length displayed its fruit in firm woods and gardens on
the earth. Everything within him loved her, and cried, "She only could
be thy last as well as thy first love"; and his whole heart, opened by
wounds, was unfolded to the still soul. But a serious, severe spirit
closed it again: "Unhappy one, love no one again; for a dark,
destroying angel goes behind thy love with a sword, and whatever rosy
lip thou pressest to thine he touches with the sharp edge or poisoned
point, and it withers or bleeds to death!"
He saw already the glitter of this sword glide through the long
darkness; for Idoine had made a vow never to stretch out her hand in
the covenant of love below her princely rank. So stood the two beside
each other, separate in one heaven, a sun and a moon, divided by an
earth. She hastened her departure. Albano thought it not right to
accompany her, as he now divined that the gray-clad persons who had
beckoned him back were her servants, placed there to guard her
solitude. She offered him her hand at the garden-gate, and said, "May
you live to be more happy, dear Count; one day I hope to find you again
as happy as you ought to make yourself." The touch of the hand, like
that of a heavenly one offering itself out of the clouds, streamed
through him with a glorified fire from that world where risen ones
hover, light and luminous, and the lofty, awe-awakening form inspired
his heart. He could not say what he subdued and buried within him, but
neither could he say any other cold, disguised word. He knelt down,
pressed her hand to his bosom, looked with tears to the starry heaven,
and only said, "Peace, all-gracious one!" Idoine turned hastily away,
and, after a few swift steps, passed slowly down the little hill into
the Prince's garden.
A few minutes after, he saw the torches of her carriage fly through the
night, in which she loved to brave the danger of travelling. Around the
hill it was dark; the evening redness and the evening star had gone
down; the earth was a smoke and rubbish-heap of night; a mausoleum of
clouds reared itself on the horizon. But in Albano there was a certain
incomprehensible gladness, a luminous point in the darkness of the
heart; and, as he looked upon the gleaming atom, it spread itself out,
became a splendor, a world, a boundless and endless sun. Now he
recognized it; it was the real infinite and divine love, which can be
still and suffer, because it knows only _one_ good, but not its own.
He was rejoiced at having veiled his breast, and at his resolve not to
see her again in the city. "So silently," he said, half praying, half
aloud, "will I love her forever. Her peace, her bliss, her fair
aspiration, shall be ever holy to me, and her form hidden from me, and
remote as that of her heavenly sister; but when the battle for right
begins, and the tones of music flutter with the banners in the air, and
the heart beats more eagerly, to bleed more profusely, then let thy
form, O Idoine, hover before me in the heavens, and I will fight for
thee; and if, in the tumult, an unknown destroying angel draws the
poisoned edge across my breast, then will I hold thee fast in my
fainting heart till the earth is to me no more.".
He looked round serenely, after this prayer, at the churchyard of the
virgin heart; he felt that Liana alone might be permitted to know, and
that she would bless it.