ON LAGO MAGGIORE.
"Any one who reads one of those older Italian romances, feels himself
irresistibly attracted by the free breath of adventure which pervades
it; I know, indeed, that in our respectable society where every one
carries his passport in his pocket book, this adventuresomeness cannot
find a place; it is proscribed, and I do not see either how it can be
otherwise in our condition as citizens.
"All the same, it meets the untrammelled wanderer here and there; it
wears a mask before its face, but it gazes fiercely and seductively
through that mask.
"I have often meditated as to wherein the charm of those fleeting
meetings consists, which in no case lay claim to any endurance; it is
the charm of freedom and want of fetters. There is something oppressive
to the mind in this consciousness of durability, in order to reconcile
oneself to it deeper reflections are needed about the necessity that
fetters man's life, and the pride of a sense of duty reconciles us to
the constraint of the unalterable.
"But adventure arouses affections and feelings, and touches strings,
which are sure to exist in human nature; never does the blood flow more
lightly and freely through our veins; never does our mental life
develop more ozone than in these tempests of passion, quickly as they
pass away again in the sky. Also, if that enduring bond and that
nobility of feeling is wanting, which only true love of the soul is
capable of giving, yet something remains that ennobles the fleeting
transport of passion, the rapture about beauty which is so closely
united to love, but which has paled and must be repudiated in our
circumstances.
"But where do these homes of adventure lie more than in the masked land
of Italy? Are we not thrilled with those spirits of revelry which in
the Venetian Carnival of that glorious _maestro_ spring and dance upon
the strings, and seem to be beside themselves in wild exhilaration?
"Here upon the Rialto, there upon the market place, mysterious glances
beckon to us, seductive pressure of the hand invites us. This is a
proud beauty of the people, who at other times wears the _fazzoletto_,
that is a lady of position who seeks a _cicisbeo_. And upon the Roman
Corso, when the long row of carriages drives down the street, we stand
upon the carriage step and a delicate hand presses a bouquet into ours.
Here adventure has risen and increased until it became crime, and gazed
ominously and fatally at us out of the soft eyes of a Lucrezia Borgia
and a Beatrice Cenci.
"But what heaven also in the land of Boccaccio, what rapture in the
air, what charm in the aroma of the perfumes, which are set free by the
day's glowing sun, which the evening's breeze wafts over the meadows,
above the marble floors in the villas and in their sleeping chambers!
There one must be a pedant, like the man from Arpinum, to think and to
write of duty in a Tusculum; we other men follow Horace's example,
wreath our heads with roses, take a wine bowl in our hands, and a
beautiful Lydia in our arms.
"Enjoy the moment! Thus preaches Hesperia, and he who wreathes himself
with its wildly growing myrtles does not remember the myrtle of German
hot-houses, with which the bride adorns herself for life. I know
Florence, that city of flowers, Rome the city of ruins; noisy Naples,
where the tide of men, and the beating of the ocean's waves blend their
roar, and whose single cyclopean eye is fire-belching Vesuvius. Yet
nowhere did I feel so much at home as on the upper Italian lakes; and
in spite of all the charms of Lago di Como, that splendid divided
radiant mirror, which is most beautiful at that point whence one can
overlook both its separate arms of water which twine themselves around
the villa-clad heights; despite the loveliness of Lago di Garda, and
its northerly port, above all others I have enshrined Lago Maggiore in
my heart and spent two years of my life upon its shores. I know all the
Swiss and Italian towns on its borders; but I lingered most fondly in
Stresa, because from it a quick passage by boat bore me to the jewels
of the lake, the Boromean islands.
"It was one beautiful summer's evening that I stood upon the topmost
terrace of the Isola Bella; the lake glistened in the evening's crimson
splendour; varied lights danced in the winding cypress walks, in the
concealed shell-grottoes, and played upon the statues and obelisks of
the uppermost terrace. The sister isles, the towns on the shores, the
vine-surrounded villa-clad hills lay on the opposite side in a softer
sheen. Sasso Ferrato, with its rocky walls, rose up defiantly in the
lake; as if bathed in a red-hot glow, stood the ice-armour of the snowy
peaks which guard the Alpine passes, which here lead down to the lake
of Geneva, yonder to that of the four Cantons. Picturesquely the fiery
red of the sinking sun contrasted with the glorious green of the Lago.
"How often people have blamed the _baroque_ taste, the green _roccoco_
of this Isola Bella! And yet, why should one not place a jewel in a
brilliant artistic setting? This Isola Bella is the most beautiful
belvidere on the lake; why should that belvidere not be splendidly
decorated? The art which is lavished upon that small spot of earth does
not detract from that vast nature which encloses it with her gigantic
Alps! And then there is something soothing in these hiding places
amongst the trees, these shell-grottoes--they invite one to quiet talk,
to silent happiness; and how full is the heart, when the magic of this
glorious nature, these evening lights, those perfumes flowing from a
hundred flower calex--the whole of that fervidly-breathing life has
inspired us!
"As I stood upon the terrace, lost in dreams, two ladies appeared,
accompanied by a servant in livery, who remained standing close beneath
the unicorn, the arms of the Boromei; they were both tall slender
figures of distinguished appearance. I bowed politely and addressed
them; one was able to speak German, and the circumstance that we could
thus converse without being understood by her companion, soon gave us
the semblance of a certain intimacy; her whole manner was animated; she
treated every subject of conversation with great vivacity, she
expressed the most supreme admiration for the beauties of the scenery,
in doing which, however, she preferred to employ Italian exclamations
and expressions, and Tasso's language sounded so mellow, so mellifluous
from her lips that I listened with silent satisfaction to that melody
as if to an artistic treat.
"I looked more closely at her; she was a beautiful woman. The nobility
of her features was in harmony with that magnificent form; the
sculptors' and painters' ideals in the Academy and Pitti Palace of the
city of flowers seemed to have gained life in her. Everything within me
cried: that is beauty, such as is fitting for this enchanted garden;
thus must the queen of these isles, these waves have been! And it
appeared to me as if the evening's crimson, which flowed down the tall
figure, and then glided into the waves, was a glorifying effulgence
shed forth from her. She dazzled and enchained me; I also soon remarked
that her words, looks, countenance, told of the perfect sympathy with
which I inspired her.
"The other lady was distant and reserved; her demeanour was that of a
proud princess. As she took her departure, she dismissed me as it were
with a slight bow; but in her companion's eyes I read something like
the hope of meeting again.
"I would not disappoint this hope, and daily, at sunset, found myself
on the terrace of Isola Bella. Two evenings I waited in vain; but how
great was my joyful surprise when, on the third evening, I met her,
and, indeed, quite alone. I welcomed her with a heartfelt and warmly
returned pressure of the hand.
"'My friend has left,' said she, soon after the first exchange of
greetings; I learned that she now lived quite by herself in a villa at
Stresa. Our conversation became lively, but it avoided everything
personal. She knew Germany and German affairs, but her enthusiasm was
all for beautiful Italy, where Art and Nature both disclose themselves
in such enrapturing beauty. We spoke of poets, painters, theatres and
music. The sun had disappeared behind the hills; only its reflection
still hung upon the rosy-tinted western clouds, but to-day the scene on
the terrace was peculiarly animated. Countless miladies, with red
guide-books, and guttural-voiced milords succeeded one another; they
cast a few cursory glances at the lake, convinced themselves that all
the guaranteed items of its decorations stood on their proper places,
as they are described in books--here, the Isola Madre and del
Pescatore, there the Sasso Ferrato, here Stresa, yonder Pallanza--and
finally took leave with an expression of perfect satisfaction. Then
came a few noisy Frenchmen and women, who uttered their delight on
finding a morsel of Versailles in this Italian water-basin, and then
sought the laurel tree in which Napoleon had cut the word '_battaglia_'
before the battle of Marengo.
"It was a restless coming and going! As if in silent accord, we turned
our steps towards the lonely shaded walks of the evergreen island,
beneath the pines and cypresses, laurels and camellia trees. We did not
talk much; often we walked silently side by side. The dusk of evening
and of the green leaves seemed to hold us chained in some sweet spell.
When we spoke, we spoke of that which was nearest to us, which stirred
our feelings, of Nature's charms and the splendour of the manifold
southern plants which were assembled there like a green court-dress for
the old Palazzos; nor were the northern fir trees wanting, and I
remarked that they reminded me of my home. Yet she asked no more about
it. It was like a secret understanding between us not to disturb our
mutual _incognito_, and thus even to envelop the circumstances of our
lives in the same charm of twilight as that which hovered over the
enchanted island.
"We descended the steps of the palazzo to the shore; an elegant
gondola, with a gondolier in livery, was awaiting them.
"'May I invite you,' asked she, 'to accompany me in my bark as far as
Stresa?'
"I accepted this invitation with pleasure.
"The moon had risen; the mountains' shadows floated in the silvery
waves. The skiff drew a broad furrow in the molten silver that seemed
to drip from the oars; the pines by the villas on the shore intercepted
the moonlight with their broad fans. Like a sparkling plateau the
glaciers of the Simplon Pass gleamed above a little cloud.
"How many magnificent villas shone beneath intensely dark, silvered
green on the shores! Which was hers? I did not venture to ask, and she
did not point to the spot on which she had taken up her abode.
"We stand under so many influences of culture, that not only our
thoughts, but also our feelings, are regulated by it. That which great
poets have described, bears for us the significance of personal
experience; it is just as vivid in our imagination. Shakespeare's
characters, which he received from Italian novels, stood before my
fancy. Not a Julia was my companion, but she reminded me much of
Portia; was not this the same moonlight glamour that hovered around
the Belmont Villa? She possessed the figure and demeanour of a
much-courted, aristocratic lady, the spirit and fervour of that
enterprising rich heiress: where was her Villa Belmont? In her
presence, I stood beneath the magic spell of Shakespearean poetry.
"At Stresa, I went on shore; her skiff was rowed still farther on. She
vanished like a beautiful dream in the twilight of the moon's
illumination that in the shrubs on the shore mingled with the shadowed
mirror of the waters.
"For three evenings in succession I returned to the Isola Bella, and on
each evening I found the mysterious beauty there. This adventure had
gay shimmering butterfly's wings; I could not brush the coloured down
from them. Naturally, liking and intimacy grew out of this constant
intercourse; I hazarded bolder expression of the same. I praised her as
my Armida, who held me within her spell; I praised the greater bliss
that Rinaldo had enjoyed. She did not turn aside; she looked at me with
her luminous eyes, as though she would read deeply in my soul. Then she
sighed, plucked a camellia which bloomed beside us, and pulled it
musingly to pieces.
"As we traversed the little fishing harbour of the island, in order to
enter our gondola for the homeward journey, we perceived that a heavy
storm was coming toward us from the Simplon, and with increasing
rapidity was darkening the lake. Its billows surged uneasily, and the
forks of lightning broke in the disturbed mirror of the waves. The
return passage was impossible; where should we wait until the storm was
over?
"'I know a comfortable place of refuge,' said she; 'here, the little
fisherman's chapel. It is, as a rule, lifeless and deserted; the
fishermen only pray there when they go out to fish. It is the Madonna
of eels and salmon-trout who protects that sanctuary.'
"We entered the little church; all was still and pleasant there.
Outside the tempest raged, and the thunder rolled with such might that
the building rocked on its foundations.
"Italian churches are accustomed to be used as asylums of love.
Protestant churches would be desecrated by every love which does not
come before the altar; the Madonna's eye rests without anger upon the
bliss of lovers exchanging vows.
"Indeed, it was only a delusion of my senses when I believed she cast
an angry glance upon me, while I held my beautiful companion firmly,
and pressed a fervid kiss upon her lips; it was only a sudden flash of
lightning that quivered over the altar-picture.
"The glorious woman whom I encircled with my arms, was just as little
wrath as the Madonna.
"And yet--is it not temerity of the man who only ventures to offer to
the woman transient love? Has she not the right to a love that shall
fill his whole life? May he without awe, without the fear of
conscience, touch this holy thing?
"I was intoxicated by the moment; I did not think of the future. I
accepted nothing, I declined nothing, but the _gens d'arme_ who dwells
in our bosom, to whom I had not listened for so long, asserted himself.
I felt, in spite of all, in the presence of those fiery kisses,
something of a subject's duty. I mentioned my name, position and place
of habitation.
"But she laid her hand, as if imploringly, upon my lips--
"'Not these confessions, which I shall not, cannot return; shall we,
then, frighten away the present beautiful dream? The witchery of
happiness lies in mystery. You must never learn my name! Give me your
word never to try to discover it.'
"I promised; but demanded urgently that her whole heart should be mine.
She looked wondrously beautiful in the darkened chapel, when a ray of
lightning, illumining her fine features, seemed to trace her figure in
dazzling outlines in the twilight.
"'I only remain here three more days; then I disappear for ever--'from
you also.'
"'Three days--well, but three days of perfect happiness may atone for
everlasting separation. Three days--but they must be three days that
can never be forgotten. Let us not think of the cold duty that
constrains us to part, let us but remember that three days are still
before us--yet I do not even know your name!'
"'Call me Giulia; it is one of the names that I bear.'
"In crash upon crash the storm discharged itself above us; more
tempestuous became my vows. She bent towards me, whispering--
"'Men think but lightly of a heart that is quickly won, and are ever
ready to repay fond love with forgetfulness and contempt.'
"I protested that that would never be the case with me.
"'And I asseverate that my heart never yet was weak enough to cherish a
love which could have no hope of being a part of my life. I have
struggled against love in sleepless nights, but it seemed to me as if
the genius of my life rose up erectly and distinctly before me, and
said--'If into your poor ruined life a sunny ray of happiness should
fall, oh, then, open all your windows to it! And if it be only a short
gleam of light that soon passes away, yet it will remain in your soul,
full of consolation for the gloom into which the coming night plunges
you. If misfortune be solemnly decreed to you by heaven and earth, if
it hold you in an indissoluble spell, oh, then have courage to grasp
happiness yourself; grasp that which heaven and earth would deny you.
But intense love is bliss, bliss unutterable; its intensity is not
measured by its lastingness--the moment is its watchword. In your arms,
from your kisses I have felt what, until now, life could never give me;
what only as the dream of the supreme was quickened in my soul. To
every human being is granted one supreme moment--once birth and
death--once the bliss of perfect love!"
"'My Giulia!' cried I, deeply stirred by her fervour.
"'Never, never can I be yours!' cried she, 'but we will meet again to
say farewell! I live in the Princess Dolgia's villa! This evening come
to the pavilion; here is the garden key. No one will see you; at that
hour all is deserted, the Princess herself is from home; only few
servants are left at the villa.'
"I kissed her lips and hands in wild devotion.
"The tempest, meanwhile, had receded farther down the lake; the moon
stood amid the broken clouds, which raced in wild career around the
summits of the Alps. Our bark glided softly over the now bright, now
dark waves. This time Giulia showed me her villa. It was a splendid
building, buried amongst flowers; it shone brightly in the moonlight.
"'There, on the left, is the pavilion,' said Giulia, as she designated
a Turkish kiosque. Laurels and myrtles surrounded it; a red fir, also,
from the far north, lent its shade.
"As we stepped on land, a man came out of the bushes on the shore,
close to Giulia. I could not recognise his features; they were half
enveloped in a kerchief.
"Annoyed at this obtrusion, I was about to send him away, but she
restrained my interference with a slight movement of the hand. He spoke
vehemently to her in Italian, but, in an to me, incomprehensible
dialect. His gestures were somewhat menacing, so that I held myself in
readiness to come to the assistance of my beloved one; but he withdrew
quietly, apparently satisfied with Giulia's replies.
"She looked pale as she held out her hand, bidding me farewell for a
short time.
"All my spirits were in a state of ebullition. I ascended the heights
behind Stresa. I was impelled along a pathless course through vineyards
and chestnut groves; the sky was again overcast. Gloomily lay the
surface of the lake, but it was as though, beneath the covering of
clouds, a hotter breath brooded over the earth.
"I inhaled deep draughts of the burning air of that voluptuous
nature--my pulses were at fever height.
"At the same time I was possessed with a sick dread of losing the key,
and every moment I felt if it were still in my pocket.
"The evening hour struck from the church tower of the little town on
the shore. For half-an-hour already I had been wandering round the
villa, in which no lights were shining.
"The marble balustrades and pillars gazed gloomily into the cloudy
night, but the air was perfumed with a hundred invisible flowers.
"Then something like a will-o'-the-wisp quivered in the pavilion! a
little lamp illuminated the branches of the red fir-tree which kept
guard before it. I opened the garden door and entered the leafy walks.
"She was waiting for me at the entrance of the dainty little round
building. Mats covered the floor; ottomans with soft cushions were
spread round the walls, which higher up were wreathed with garlands of
flowers.
"The air wafted an exquisite perfume inside and through the open
window.
"She appeared more beautiful to me than ever; she was a night-flower,
created for night and moonlight. Her complexion was of that
_morbidezza_ of the Venetian women, which lends them such a melancholy
charm; and by day, too, she wore her hair in the artistic manner of the
Venetians, plaited at the side, behind a daintily-coiled head-dress.
But now it flowed in dark abundance over the yellow shimmering moiré
dress. She received me sadly: was not the coming parting hovering over
our bliss of the present moment as restless foreboding hovers over
every happiness?
"I have often read in books written by those who are learned in art,
that all beauty is a self-sufficing copy of the eternal idea, whose
enjoyment alone can grant harmonious contentment, that its reign ceases
when the will's emotion desecrates its impalpable glory.
"It is heresy to think otherwise about it, and yet I do think
otherwise. Even that people of god-like beauty, the Hellenes, thought
otherwise, else they would never have invented the legend of Pygmalion:
that is the solution of the enigma--beauty which does not only satisfy
the ideal senses, which overpowers the whole man, so that without
volition he is seized by its magic power.
"Amongst the Lemures of the East Prussian exorcists, woman, in her
magical power, had first crossed my path; and that spirit of adoration
which so long had held me in its bondage, was vanquished for evermore.
"Here, beneath Italy's laurels and myrtles, I was Pygmalion; but it was
no cold marble that I folded in my arms. Was I ever a poet, I was one
then; hymns of rapture flowed through my soul.
"For three evenings I was permitted to visit her; on the third the full
moon stood above the red fir tree. The cracking of its branches in the
night wind reminded me of my distant home.
"We wandered silently in the garden, forgetful of time--of
everything--but that the oppression of the parting hour weighed upon
us. She must go; she repeated it; I did not ask her why--I asked
nothing. I still stood beneath the whole magic of her presence. Morning
dawned at last, and released the dark masses of the groups of trees
from the darkness with which they had been blended.
"It was a morning full of mournful sadness; tears hung on Giulia's long
eye-lashes.
"'Let your thoughts return to these days, these happy days, as to a
fairy-tale--for me they were more, far more! They have quite effaced
all the rest of my life; and yet I must return to joyless gloom. I
must--and, therefore--farewell!'
"One more burning kiss, one last embrace; I felt her tears upon my
cheeks; her locks flowed over me like a tide of endless pain--we
parted!
"After the little garden door was shut, something rustled near me
amongst the shrubs, beneath the chestnuts; as I went farther on, I
perceived a figure creeping behind me, which reminded me of that
singular stranger who had already once played the spy upon us on the
shore; however, I did not trouble myself about him, but went to my
hotel, without again looking behind me.
"I kept my promise faithfully not to enquire about this queen of the
night who had bloomed for me in such enrapturing splendour on the banks
of that magic lake; held to it so faithfully that for a long time I
avoided asking myself who that mysterious beauty could be?
"There is a heart's shrine for relics which one may not touch without
destroying the charm that clings to those sacred recollections--the
lotos-flower, which is the cradle of a god no hand may touch.
"Never to be forgotten are the days and nights on the shores of that
beautiful lake. I have seen lakes in the highlands of Mongolia, amongst
the mountain-giants of Thibet; but all these pictures were effaced
beside the burning outlines in which the Lago Maggiore printed itself
upon my soul.
"All the same in later times I often surprised myself in reprehensible
curiosity; who was this Lady of the Lake? Her highly-bred manner told
that she was a lady of distinction--an equal of her friend, that
princess, in whose society I had first seen her. But the fetter that
bound her? Was it the bond of matrimony, for which, however, in Italy,
in the most aristocratic circles, the _cicisbeat_ offers a
compensation, rendered sacred by custom!
"I thought of the Countess Guiccioli, Byron's beautiful beloved--she
did not conceal her happiness from her husband--and tie used to drive
his favoured rival out in Ravenna, in his carriage and six--yes, the
former rented quarters in the Count's castle.
"The secret that my Giulia preserved so fearfully must be of another
kind. Perhaps she was being persecuted--politically persecuted; there
are highly-born women enough in Italy, who stand upon the list of the
proscribed; and if she never spoke of politics it was, perhaps, in
order to avert all such thoughts from me. In this way, too, it would be
easiest to explain the appearance of that obnoxious stranger, who
surely was a subordinate agent of her political party.
"Certainly, I always asked myself again and again, whether love which
withholds every confession excepting that of its own existence, which
veils everything excepting its own intensity, is not an error? Love
requires the whole man to be pledged, and may not appear with a mask,
such as the Parisian ladies of simplicity carry before their faces.
Otherwise it is but an adventure, and as an entrancing adventure I
preserve that meeting in my memory; but I am weary of adventures, they
have seduced me long enough, rendered my life disturbed and unsteady;
precipitated my soul from one intoxication into another, but at last,
after all, only left internal desolation behind.
"And now this mysterious Giulia appears suddenly here, in my castle.
Has she given up her secret--does a duty no longer bind her to maintain
it? Has a turning-point in the circumstances of her life been attained?
What brings her hither?--only love for me? My name, my place of abode,
she knew--she has noted it better than I believed, as she seemed too
indifferent to listen to it; but what does she seek here--what can she
bring me but disappointment? The glamour of the magic-lantern is burned
down; here are no evergreen islands, no myrtles and laurels--and a
Venus Aphrodite would shiver with cold, if she had to rise out of these
chilly waters.
"To all these questions, which shall no longer disquiet me, I have the
answer ready--my betrothal to Eva Kalzow--and this I will hasten, in
order to oppose a decided fact as a defence against the adventure which
seeks me here. I have broken with my past, and I will not that what is
past should interfere any longer with my present life."
Blanden had finished his recital; Doctor Kuhl, who had listened
attentively, let the cigar in his hand die slowly out, as, after a
rather long silence, he began to hum a popular air.
"And you say absolutely nothing?" Blanden enquired of his friend.
"I think," replied Kuhl, "a _principessa_ always remains a
_principessa_--a Venus a Venus--in the North as in the South; I should
have her turned out at the first opportunity, by your friend the
Landrath, if she let herself be seen again in this district. She is a
sort of beautiful pagan goddess--a sort of Bride of Corinth--and these
ghosts are dangerous, especially for brides who are not so very
distant, and whom the clergyman shall bless. But it has become late!
One more dip in the sea, and then I will dream of your marble bride!"