On the morrow more sunshine and strength returned to Albano's breast.
He had now himself to heave up the mountain in the flat-pressed
plain of his life. Only to _see_ Pestitz again, where all the
tournament-pleasures of his shining days had vanished, except the single
Dian,--he abhorred the thought. "When this friend has once his
grave-mound over his breast, then I go, and take leave of no one,"
said he.
Just then the hated uncle arrived, with the carriages full of magic
wands, and said, weepingly, he was going to the Carthusian cloister, to
atone for many sins, and he would first willingly explain to his
nephew, as well with words as by the carriages, all that he desired. "I
believe nothing you say," said Albano. "I can now tell the whole truth,
for the gloomy one has nothing more to do with me, I think, _cousin_,"
replied the Spaniard. "Is not that," he added, in a low tone, with a
shy look at Siebenkäs, "the gloomy one, _cousin?_" Albano would not
know nor hear anything. Siebenkäs asked him who the gloomy one was. It
was the infinite man, he began, very black and gloomy, and had for the
first time stalked over toward him across the sea, when he stood on the
coast before a fog. At night he had often heard him call, and sometimes
had repeated his ventriloquial speeches. He had immediately appeared to
him, with a handful of threatenings, whenever he had told many truths
after sundown. Therefore had he feared exceedingly before the present
gentleman in the Chapel of the Cross; but now, since he had been
converted without suffering any harm in the chapel, he would tell
truths all day long, and in the Carthusian convent he intended to do so
still more.
"Cloisters are the very places where they do not generally dwell; for
this reason, I suppose, the vow of silence is required, the observance
of which is always more favorable to truth than its breach is," replied
Siebenkäs. "O heretic, heretic!" cried the Spaniard, with such an
unexpected anger that Albano at once received, through this sign of
human feeling, pledges of his present sincerity, as well as of his
narrower spiritual circumference. Now, for the first time, he asked him
outright about the soil and the seed which he had hitherto used, in
order to force the swift flowers of his miracles.
At this question he caused a casket to be brought up. "Ask," said he.
"How did Romeiro's form rise out of _Lago Maggiore?_" said Albano. The
uncle unlocked the casket, showed a wax figure, and said, "It was only
her mother." Albano shuddered before this near mock-sun of his sunken
one, and at the presumption of relationship with which Schoppe had
inspired him. "Am I related to her?" he quickly asked. The uncle
replied, with confusion, "It may haply be otherwise." Albano asked
about the monk who made the heavenly ascension in Mola. "He stood
overhead filled with gas;[147] I down below on the wall," said the
uncle. Albano would hear no further. The casket contained, besides,
ear-trumpets and speaking-trumpets, a face-skin, blue glass, through
which landscapes appeared snowed over, silk flowers, with powder of an
_endormeur_, &c. Albano would not see anything more.
"Evil being! who set thee on to this?" asked Albano. "My strong
brother," said the uncle, for so he usually called the Knight. "He gave
me my living, and he would fain shoot me dead; for he laughs very much
when men are very finely cheated." "O, not a syllable of that!" cried
Albano, painfully, whose anger against the Knight made all his veins
spirt out fiery tears and poison. "Wretch! how didst thou become what
thou art?" "So! a wretch am I?" he asked, with icy coldness. He then
stated--but in an abrupt and confused manner, which attended him in
every language in his own part, whereas in a strange name (for
instance, the Baldhead's) he could speak long and well--that he had a
dark-gray and a blue eye, a hidden bald head, and a remarkable memory
since coming to manhood, and had therefore wished to become an actor,
because he had nothing to do, for he had never been in love; but, so
long as he did not improvisate, it had not gone well with him. He had
always had in his mind Joseph Clark, who could counterfeit any grown
person, and the deceiver Price, who went round in a threefold
character. Then the gloomy one had again come over to him one evening
in a shore fog across the water, and had murmured, as out of a belly,
"_Peppo_, _Peppo_,[148] swallow back the true word; I will directly
utter another"; and from that hour forth he had had the faculty of
ventriloquizing. He had thereby caused dead and dumb persons, and
speaking-machines, and parrots, and sleepers, and strange people in the
theatre, to speak well, but never any one in church, and that was
indeed a satisfaction to him. He had often given an unceasing echo to
rocks, so that men did not know at all when to go away. He had also
once caused a whole battle-field full of dead men to talk with itself,
in all languages, to the astonishment of the old general.
"Where was that?" asked Siebenkäs. The Spaniard came to himself, and
replied, "I don't know; is it true, then? '_Omnes homines sunt
mendaces_,' says the Holy Scripture." "As little true," said Albano,
"as your gloomy ghost!" "O Mary, no!" said he, decidedly; "when I
predicted anything, he caused it indeed, after all, to turn out true.
Then he appeared to me, and said, 'Dost thou see, Peppo, mind and only
never speak a truth!' And in the night, when I went by your side to
Lilar, he went down in the valley as a man through the air." "I saw
that too," said Albano; "he floated onward without stirring." "That was
one," said Siebenkäs, smiling, "who stood, with his legs hidden, in a
boat that glided onward, and nothing more." Then the Spaniard looked at
this fac-simile of the corpse with the old horror with which he had
hitherto secretly taken it for the gloomy spirit himself, murmured in
Albano's ear, "See, this being knows it," and said, in justification of
his truths, "The sun is not yet gone down," and, without listening to
human entreaties, whose power had never been known to him, without
sorrow or joy, hurried off to enter before sundown into the neighboring
Carthusian monastery. All the implements of deception he had left where
they were.
"A frightful man!" said Siebenkäs. "Some time ago, when he would fain
rejoice at something, he looked as if a pang seized upon his face. And
that he should stand there so thin and haggard, and look down sidewise,
and swallow his syllables! I am certain he could kill without changing
his look, even to anger." "O, he is the gloomy spirit that he sees;
don't call him up!" said Albano, hurrying away into a wholly new world,
which had now suddenly risen before his spirit.