He thought, namely, of the paper, hitherto hidden by the cloud of
sorrow, which Schoppe had brought out of the princely vault, and of the
maternal image which he was to have found under the ocular glass.
Before he began to read, he held the image under the glass before the
stranger, to see if by any accident he might know it. "Very well! It is
the deceased Princess Eleonore, so far as a frontispiece engraving to
the provincial hymn-book allows one to presume upon resemblances; for
the Princess herself I never saw."
With emotion, Albano drew the paper out of the cracked marble capsule;
but he was still more moved when he read the signature, "Eleonore," and
then the following in French:--
"My Son: To-day have I seen thee again,[149] after long times in thy B.
(Blumenbühl); my heart is full of joy and anxiety, and thy beautiful
image floats before my weeping eyes. Why can I not have thee about me
and in my daily sight? How am I bound and distressed! But always did I
forge for myself fetters, and beg others to fasten them upon me. Hear
thine own history from the mouth of thy mother; from no other will it
come to thee more acceptably and truly.
"The Prince and I lived long in an unfruitful marriage, which flattered
our cousin Hh. (Haarhaar) with more and more lively hopes of the
succession. At a late period thy brother L. (Luigi) annihilated them.
One could hardly forgive us that. The Count C. (Cesara) retains the
proofs of some dark actions (_de quelques noirceurs_) which were to
cost thy poor brother, otherwise weakly, his life. Thy father was with
me in Rome just as we learned it. 'They will surely get the better of
us at last,' said thy father. In Rome we made the acquaintance of the
Prince di Lauria, who would not give his beautiful daughter to the
Count C. (Cesara) till he should have become Knight of the Golden
Fleece. The Prince procured this order for him at the Imperial Court.
"For this Madam Cesara thought she ought to be very grateful to me,
_une femme fort décidée, se repliant sur elle-même, son individualité
exagératrice perca à travers ses vertus et ses vices et son sexe_. We
learned to love each other. Her romantic spirit communicated with mine,
particularly in the Land of Romance. This result was helped by the fact
that she and I found ourselves at the same time in the right condition
of female enthusiasm, namely, the hope of being mothers. She was
confined with an exquisitely beautiful girl, exactly like her,
Severina, or as she was called afterward, Linda. Here we made the
singular contract, that, if I bore a son, we would exchange; I could
educate a daughter without hazard, and with her my son could grow up
without incurring that danger which had always threatened thy brother
in my house. She said, too, I could better guide a daughter, she a son,
as she had little respect for her sex. The Count was well satisfied
with the plan; the Hh. Court had just before refused him the oldest
princess, for whom he had been a suitor, under the ironical and
insulting pretext of her yet childish youth, and he for the sake of
avenging offended honor and injured vanity,--for he was a very handsome
man, and used only to victory,--was ready for any measures and contests
against the haughty court. Only the Prince did not approve of it; he
considered an education abroad, &c., quite ambiguous and critical. But
we women interwove ourselves so much the more deeply into our romantic
idea.
"Two days after I brought forth thee and--Julienne at a birth. On this
rich emergency no one had reckoned. Here much turned up quite otherwise
and more easily than had been expected. 'I keep,' said I to the
Countess, 'my daughter, thou keepest thine; as to Albano (so shall he
be called), let the Prince decide.' Thy father allowed that thou
shouldst be brought up as son of the Count, indeed, but under his eye,
with the honest W. (Wehrfritz). Meanwhile he made provisions whose
solid value I then, in the fanciful enthusiasm of friendship, was not
in a condition wholly to weigh. At present I only wonder that I was
then so full of spirit. The documents of thy genealogy were not only
thrice made out,--I, the Count, and the Court Chaplain Spener, were put
in possession of them,--but subsequently thou wast presented even to
the Emperor Joseph II. as our princely son, and his gracious letter,
which I shall one day commit to thy brothers and sisters, is of itself
sufficiently decisive.
"The Count himself now took an active part in the mystery,--whether out
of love for his daughter or from spite against the H. court,--by
demanding, as a reward for his participation, that one day thou and
Linda should make a match. Here the Countess stepped in again with her
wonders and fancies. 'Linda will certainly resemble me in soul as she
now does in form,--force can then never move her,--but magic of the
heart, of the fairy-world, the charm of wonder, may draw and melt and
bind her.' I know her very words. A singular plan of enchantment was
then sketched, whose limits the Count, through the submissiveness with
which his brother, adept in a thousand arts, let himself be hired for
everything, extended still further, beside making the plan thereby more
agreeable. Linda will, long before thou hast read this, have appeared
to thee; her name will have been named; thy birth mysteriously
announced. May thy spirit, O may it be happily reconciled to it all,
and may the difficult play pour winnings into thy lap when the cards
are turned up. I am anxious; how can I be otherwise? O what tidings
have I not received even from Italy through the Count, before which now
all the hopes I have set upon my Lewis (Luigi) are at once
extinguished! Now would Hh. (Haarhaar) have conquered through the
wicked B. (Bouverot), had it not been that thou livest. And I cannot
but be so happy, that thou livest clear of his poisonous influences.
Yes, it seems as if the Count had intentionally and gladly let the
destruction of thy brother take place in order to strike so much the
stronger terror with thy resurrection. Yet I will not do him injustice.
But whom shall a mother trust, whom mistrust, at court? And which
danger is the greater?
"For the space of three years thou wast obliged, for appearance' sake,
to stay on Isola Bella with thy pretended twin-sister, Severina,
although under the eye of the Prince, while I, with Julienne, went
back to Germany. Longer, however, it could not last, much as thy
foster-mother wished it; thou wast too much like thy father. This
resemblance cost me many tears,--for on this account thou couldst never
go from B. to P. (Pestitz) so long as the Prince still wore youthful
features,--even the portraits of his youthful form I had, therefore,
gradually to steal away and give in charge to the faithful Spener. Yes,
this learned man told me that a convex mirror, which transformed young
faces into old ones, had to be put aside, because thou immediately
stoodst there as the old Prince when thou didst look into it. O, when
my good, pious prince in his feeble days unconsciously prattled all
sorts of things, and made me more and more anxious about the fate of
the weighty secret, how I trembled, when he one morning (fortunately
only Spener and a certain daughter of the Minister von Fr., a gentle,
pure spirit, were by), said right out and joyfully, 'Our dear son,
Eleonore, was up at the altar last evening; he is certainly a good
young man, he knelt down and prayed beautifully, and I said to him
only, for I would not discover myself, Go home, go home, my friend; the
thunder is already near.'[150] I know that several individuals have
already let fall hints about a natural son of the Prince.
"The Countess C. (Cesara) went off with S. (Severina) to V. (Valencia);
previously, however, giving herself the name R. (Romeiro), and her
daughter the name L. (Linda). The Prince di Lauria had to be drawn into
this game, and his consent obtained, for the sake of the inheritance.
By this change of names all could be covered up as closely as it now
stands. Nine years after, the noble R. (Romeiro) died, and the Count
had, under the prerogative of a guardian, the daughter in his sole
protection and care.
"I saw her here shortly after the death of her mother.[151] When the
flower has entirely unfolded itself out of this full bud, it belongs,
as the fullest rose, to thy heart; only may the ghostly game, which I
have too light-mindedly sworn to the Countess, pass over without
mishap! Should I come to my death-bed before the Prince, I must also
draw thy sister and thy brother into thy secret, so as to close my eyes
in perfect assurance. Ah, I shall not live to be permitted openly to
clasp my son in my arms! The symptoms of my decline come more and more
frequent. May it go well with thee, dearest child! Grow up to be holy
and honest as thy father! God guide all our weak expedients for the
best!
"Thy faithful mother,
"Eleonore.
"P. S. Certain other very weighty secrets I cannot trust to paper, but
my dying lips shall let them sink into the heart of thy sister.
Farewell! Farewell!"