Albano found in the glorification, wherein Heaven was to him only the
magnifying mirror of a glimmering earth, and the past only the
fatherland and mother-country of holy parents,--in this splendor of the
soul he found the house of his boyhood, into which he entered, festal
and like a temple, and everything common and clumsy refined or only
represented as upon a stage. His mother Albina and his sister Rabette
came with their glad looks as higher beings to his moved heart. They
drew hastily back, Julienne flew down stairs and kissed her brother,
for the first time openly, in a silent blending of pleasure and
sadness. When she released him, the tolling began out of the gloom of
the church-tower, as a signal that the dead brother was passing into
the church; then she rushed back upon Albano, and wept infinitely. She
went up with him, without saying whom he should find up there with his
foster-father. An old flute-clock, whose laborious music was offered
from time immemorial to rare guests, welled out to welcome him, as he
opened the door, with the resonances of the days of his childhood.
A tall, black-dressed female form, with a veil falling down sidewise,
who sat talking with his foster-father, turned round towards him
as he entered. It was Idoine; but the old magic semblance passed again
over his to-day so excited soul, as if it were Liana from heaven,
arrayed in immortality, prouder and bolder in the possession of
unearthly powers, retaining nothing more of her former earth than
goodness and charms. Both met each other again here with mutual
astonishment. Julienne--conscious to herself of her little concealments
and arrangements--saw a little red cloud of displeasure flit across
Idoine's mild face; it was, however, gone below the horizon, so soon as
Idoine perceived that the sister during the tolling for her brother's
funeral could not restrain her tears, and she went kindly to meet her,
seeking her hand. Idoine, easily inclined by her severity to fits of
vexation, that little skirmish of wrath, had freed herself by long,
sharp exercise from this finest, but strongest poison of the soul's
happiness, till she at last stood in her heaven as a pure, light moon,
without a rainy and cloudy atmosphere of earth.
Albano, to whom the earth, filled with the past and the dead, had
become an air-globe that soared into the ether, felt himself free
amidst his stars, and without earthly anxiety. He approached
Idoine,--although with the consciousness of the conflicting relations
of his and her house, yet with holy courage. "Her last wish in the last
garden," he said, "had been heard by Heaven." With maiden-like decision
of perception she went through the wilderness wherein she had to bend
aside, now flowers, now thorns, in order to be neither embarrassed nor
injured. She answered him, "I rejoice from my heart that you have found
your faithful sister forever." Wehrfritz was quite as much delighted as
astonished at the frankness with which she honestly spoke the truth
against all family relations. "So must one always lose much on the
earth," Albano replied to her, "in order to gain much," and turned to
his sister, as if he would thereby guard this word against a more
ambiguous sense.
The funeral bell tolled on. The strange, happy and sad mingling of
earthly lots gave all a solemn and free tone of spirit. Albina and
Rabette came up, arrayed in festive dark dresses, for the procession to
the burial church. Julienne divided herself between two brothers, and
never did her heart, which stood at once in tears and flames, swell
more romantically. She guessed how her friend Idoine thought respecting
her brother Albano, for she knew her to have a steadier voice than
to-day's was, and her sweet confusion was most easily evident to her
from the short report which the open soul had made to her of meeting
Albano again in Liana's garden; the slight maidenly recoil, too, of her
pride to-day, when she was embarrassed to find herself taken everywhere
for a risen Liana, that beloved of the youth, made Julienne not more
doubtful, but more sure.
"On a fine evening," said Albano to Idoine, "I once looked down into
your lovely Arcadia, but I was not in Arcadia." "The name," replied
she, and her clear eyes sank again to the earth, "is nothing more than
play; properly it is an alp, and yet only with herdsmen's huts in a
vale." She raised not again her large eyes, when Julienne silently took
her hand and drew her away, because now the funeral bell sounded out
with single, sad strokes, as a sign that the funeral ceremony was
coming on, in which Julienne could not possibly deny her sisterly heart
the comfort of participating. "We are going to the church," said Idoine
to the company. "So are we all, indeed," replied Wehrfritz, quickly. As
the two maidens passed by Albano, he observed for the first time on
Idoine three little freckles, as it were traces of earth and life,
which made her a mortal. He looked after the lofty, noble form, with
the long floating veil, who, beside his sister, appeared like Linda,
quite as majestically, only more delicately built, and whose holy gait
announced a priestess, who had been wont to walk in temples before
gods.
Hardly had the two disappeared, when Albano's old acquaintances,
especially the women, to whom Julienne's presence had always held near
in view Albano's family-tree, crowded on his heart with all signs of
long-repressed cordiality, full of wishes, joys, and tears. "Be my
parents still," said Albano. "Bravery is everything in this world,"
said the Director. "I did my part like a mother," said Albina, "but who
could have known _this!_" Rabette said nothing; her joy and love were
overpowering as her recollections. "My sister Rabette," said Albano,
"gave me, when I first went to Italy, the words embroidered on a purse,
'Think of us.' This prayer I will fulfil for you all in every
vicissitude of fortune";--and here, although too modest to say it, he
thought of things which he might perhaps do, as Prince, for his
foster-father, among which came first the restoration of his reverting
male fee. "Thus, then, is many a former sorrow of the heart, for us--"
began Albina. "O, what's to do with hearts? what's to do with sorrows?"
said Wehrfritz; "to-day all is right and smooth." But Rabette
understood her mother very well.
All betook themselves on their way to the temple of mourning. They
heard as they approached the church the music of the hymn, "How softly
they rest"; at a considerable distance bugles were essaying gladder
tones. Rabette pressed Albano's hand and said, very softly, "It has
been well with me, because I have learned all." She had, since hearing
how Roquairol had murdered a manifold happiness and himself, cast all
her love after the wretched man into his grave to moulder with him,
without shedding a tear as she did it. Her heart leaped at the thought
of Idoine's goodness, of her resemblance, with the mention of which her
father had to-day made the angel blush, and of her beautiful comforting
of Julienne, who had wept incessantly before Albano's arrival. Albina
praised Julienne more on account of her sisterly affection. Rabette was
silent about her; the two were sisterly rivals; moreover, Julienne had,
according to her sharp, inexorable system, looked upon her very coldly
as a victim of the Roquairol whom she so despised; whereas Idoine, who,
by her greater knowledge of human nature, had learned to unite mildness
toward female errors of the heart and moment with severity toward men,
had only been gentle and just.
When they stepped into the church full of mourning lamps, Albano stole
away into an unlighted corner, so as neither to disturb nor be
disturbed. At the bright altar stood the serene and venerable Spener,
with his uncovered head full of silver locks; the long coffin of the
brother stood before the altar between rows of lights. In the arch
of the church hung night, and forms were lost in the gloom; below
rays and bright shadows and people crossed each other. Albano saw the
iron-grated door of the hereditary sepulchre, through which his blessed
parents had gone down, standing open like a gate of death; and it was
to him as if once more Schoppe's tumultuous spirit stalked in, to break
into the last house of man. The thought of his brother affected him but
little, but the neighborhood of his still parents, who had so long
watched for him, and whom he had never thanked, and the incessant tears
of his sister, whom he saw in the gallery over the gate of death, took
mighty hold of his heart, out of which the deep, eternal tones of
lamentation drew tears, like the warm blood of sorrow and of love. He
saw Idoine, with her half red, half white Lancaster rose on the black
silk, standing beside his sister, drawing the veil over her eyes
against many a comparing look. Here, near such altar-lights, had once
the oppressed Liana knelt while swearing the renunciation of her love.
The whole constellation of his shining past, of his lofty beings, had
gone down below the horizon, and only _one_ bright star of all the
group stood glimmering still above the earth: Idoine.
Just then the youth was seen by his friend Dian, who came hastening
towards him. Without much ceremony, the Greek embraced him, and said,
"Hail, hail to the beautiful transformation! There stands my Chariton;
she, too, would greet thee after the manner of her speech."[158] But
Chariton was looking continually at Idoine, on account of her
resemblance. "Well, my good Dian, I have paid many a heart and fortune
for it, and I wonder that fate has spared me thee," said Albano.
Thereupon he asked him, as architect of the church, about the condition
of the hereditary sepulchre, because he wished afterward to have the
ashes of his parents uncovered, in order at least to kneel down before
them in silent gratitude. "Of that," said Dian, surprised, "I know very
little; but it is a shocking purpose, and what good is to come of it?"
The music ceased; Spener, in a low tone, began his discourse. He spoke
not, however, of the Prince at his feet, nor yet of his loved ones in
the hereditary tomb, but of the real life that knows no death, and
which man must beget in himself. He said that, for himself, though an
old man, he wished neither to die nor to live, because one could
already, even here, be with God, so soon as one only had God within
him, and that we ought to be able to see without grief our holiest
wishes wither like sunflowers, because, after all, the lofty sun still
beams on, which forever raises and nourishes new ones, and that a man
must not so much prepare himself for eternity as plant in himself the
eternity which is still, pure, light, deep, and everything.
Many a human breast in the church felt the poisonous point of the past
broken off by this discourse. On Albano's rising sea it had poured
smooth oil, and all about his life was even and radiant. Julienne's
eyes had grown dry and full of serene light, and Idoine's had filled
with glimmering moisture, for her heart had to-day been stirred too
often not to weep in this sweet, devout, and exalting emotion. Once it
seemed to Albano, as he looked towards her, as if she shone
supernaturally, and as if, just as the sun from under the earth beams
upon a moon, so Liana from the other world were beaming upon her
countenance, and adorning this likeness of herself with a holiness
beyond the reach of earth.
At the close of the discourse, Albano went quietly to the two friends,
pressed his sister's hand, and begged her not to wait for the end of
the sad festival. She was comforted and willing. As they stepped out of
the church, a wondrous bright moonlight was spread over earth, like a
sweet morning light of the higher world. Julienne begged them, instead
of going in between four walls, into the prison of eyes and words, and
the midst of all the din, rather to behold first the still, bright
landscape.
All of them bore in their breasts the holy world of the serene old man
out into the fair night. Not a speck of cloud, not a breath of air,
stirred through the wide heaven; the stars reigned alone; earthly
distances were lost in the depth of white shadows; and all mountains
stood in the silvery fire of the moon. "O, how I love your serene, holy
old man!" said Idoine to Albano, when she had already often pressed
Julienne's hand. "How happy I am! Ah, life, like the water of the sea,
is not quite sweet till it rises towards heaven." Suddenly distant
bugle-tones came pealing out to them, which well-meaning country-folk
sounded as a greeting before Albano's foster-home. "How comes it," said
Julienne, "that in the open air and at night even the most
insignificant music is pleasant and stirring?" "Perhaps because our
inner music harmonizes with it more clearly and purely," said Idoine.
"And because, before the spheral music of the universe, human art and
human simplicity are, at last, equally great!" added Albano. "That is
just what I meant, for that is also, after all, only within ourselves,"
said Idoine, and looked lovingly and frankly into his eyes, which sank
before hers, as if the moon, the mild after-summer of the sun, now
dazzled him with its splendor.
Since the church festival, she had addressed herself to him oftener;
her sweet voice was more tender, though more tremulous; her maidenly
shyness of the resemblance to Liana seemed conquered or forgotten, as
on that evening in the last garden. During Spener's discourse, her
existence had decided itself within her, and on her virgin love, as on
a spring soil by one warm evening rain, all buds had been opened into
bloom. As he now looked upon this clear, mild eye, under the pure,
cloudless brow, and the fine mouth, with inexhaustible good-will
towards every living thing breathing over it, he could hardly conceive
that this delicate lily, this light incense exhaled from morning
redness and morning flowers, was the habitation of that firm spirit
which could rule life, just as the tender cloud or the little
nightingale's breast contains the thrilling peal of sound.
They stood now on the bright mountain, covered with the evergreen of
youthful remembrance, where Albano had once slumbered in dreams of the
future, as on a light and lofty island in the midst of the shadow-sea
of two vales. The mountain-ridges of the linden city, the eternal goal
of his youthful days, were snowed over by the moon, and the
constellations stood upon them gleaming and great. He looked now upon
Idoine: how truly did this soul belong among the stars! "When the world
is purged from this low day; when heaven, with its holiest, farthest
suns, looks upon this earthly land; when the heart and the nightingale
alone speak,--then only does her holy time come up in heaven; then is
her lofty, tranquil spirit seen and understood, and by day only her
charms," thought Albano.
"How many a time, my good Albano," said the sister, "hast thou here, in
thy long-left youthful years, looked toward the mountains for thine own
ones,--for thy hidden parents and brothers and sisters,--for thou hadst
always a good heart!" Here Idoine unconsciously looked at him with
inexpressible love, and his eye met hers. "Idoine," said he,--and their
souls gazed into each other, as into suddenly rising heavens, and he
took the maiden's hand,--"I have that heart still; it is unhappy, but
unstained." Then Idoine hid herself quickly and passionately in
Julienne's bosom, and said, scarce audibly, "Julienne, if Albano
rightly knows me, then be my sister!"
"I do know thee, holy being!" said Albano, and clasped to _one_
bosom sister and bride; and from all of them there wept but _one_
joy-enraptured heart. "O ye parents," prayed the sister, "O thou God,
bless, then, both of them and me, that so it may be forever!" And as
she lifted her eyes to heaven, while the lovers lingered in the short,
holy elysium of the first kiss, innumerable immortals looked down out
of the deep-blue eternity, the distant tones and the mild rays were
blended together, and the slumbering realm of the moon resounded. "Look
up to the fair heaven!" cried the sister to the lovers, in the ecstasy
of her joy; "the rainbow of eternal peace blooms there, and the
tempests are over, and the world is all so bright and green. Wake up,
my brother and sister!"