The climax of Jean Paul Richter's inspiration, and of his
obscurity, was reached in "Titan," published during 1801-3. He
meant it to be his greatest romance, and posterity has
confirmed his judgement. Of all his works, it is the most
characteristic of its author. It has all the peculiarities of
his style, peculiarities that are reflected in the prose of
Thomas Carlyle, his most eminent British admirer and
interpreter. The book itself took ten years to write, and
according to his correspondence, Richter intended to call it
"Anti-Titan," having in view his attacks on the material
selfishness of the age which, to gain its own ends, would move
mountains. The motive--a comparison between a man of moral
grandeur and one of grandiose immorality--came to Richter
while he was engaged on "Hesperus," a fact that explains why
certain characters from the earlier romance reappear in
"Titan."
_I.--Liana_
For many years Albano, the young Spanish Count Cesara, had lived within
sight of the capital city of the state of Hohenfliess; yet he had never
entered it--his mother, so his father told him, had shut it against him,
desiring that he should be reared in the Carthusian monastery of rural
life, not sullied in his youth by mingling with courtiers and men of the
world.
And now the gates of Pestitz were open to him. Contemplate the heated
face of my hero, who at last is riding into the streets, built up in his
fancy of temples of the sun, where who knows but that at every long
window, on every balcony, his beloved Liana may be standing?
Gaspard, Count Cesara, Knight of the Fleece, had met his son, for the
first time in Albano's memory, at Lake Maggiore, and Albano had come
away from the meeting with a feeling of chill that poisoned his heart,
eager as it was to love and be loved, and a vague, discomposing sense
that in his birth there was a mystery. But the thought of his father's
coldness, all thoughts that troubled and confused, were forgotten on his
entry into Pestitz, in the eager hope of seeing Liana, his beloved, and
his friend, her brother, Charles Roquairol; for neither his beloved nor
her brother had he ever yet in his life beheld.
The love and the friendship were of the imagination, and the imagination
was begotten of the accounts given by Von Falterle, the
accomplishments-master of Albano in the village of Blümenbuhl, and of
his former pupil Liana, daughter of the Minister von Froulay. It was his
wont to paste up long altar-pieces of Liana's charms, charms which her
father had sought to enhance by means of delicate and almost meagre
fare, by shutting up his orangery, whose window he seldom lifted off
from this flower of a milder clime--until she had become a tender
creature of pastil-dust, which the gusts of fate and monsoons of climate
could almost blow to pieces. In Albano's silent heart, therefore, there
was to be seen a saintly image of Liana, the ascending Raphael's Mary,
but, like the pictures of the saints in Passion-week, hanging behind a
veil.
And as for her brother, the madcap Roquairol, who in his thirteenth year
had shot at himself with suicidal intent because the little Countess
Linda de Romeiro, Albano's father's ward, had turned her back upon him,
could our hero's admiration be withheld from a youth of his own age who
already possessed all the accomplishments and had tasted all the
passions?
When Albano entered Pestitz, eager that his dreams of love and
friendship should be realised, the aged Prince of Hohenfliess had just
departed this life, and Liana, intimate friend of the Princess Julienne,
daughter of the dead prince, was smitten with temporary blindness, due
to emotion and consequent headache. Albano first beheld her in the
garden of her father, the minister, standing in the glimmer of the moon.
The blest youth saw irradiated the young, open, still Mary's-brow, and
the delicate proportions, which, like the white attire, seemed to exalt
the form. Thou too fortunate man!--to whom the only visible goddess,
Beauty, appears so suddenly, in her omnipotence!
Ah, why must a deep, cold cloud steal through this pure and lofty
heaven?
The inauguration of the new prince was held--of the enfeebled Prince
Luigi--upon whose expected speedy decease the neighbouring princely
house of Haarkaar founded its hopes of acquiring the dominions of
Hohenfliess. It was on the night of an inauguration ball that Albano,
having poured out his heart to Roquairol in a letter, met his
long-hoped-for friend, and sealed their affections by declaring that he
would never wed Linda de Romeiro, whom it was thought Count Gaspard had
designed for his son's bride, and for whom Roquairol's youthful passion
had not been extinguished.
When Liana recovered her sight, she was sent to Blümenbuhl for
restoration of health--to the home of Albano's foster-father, the
provincial-director Wehrfritz. Thither often came Albano; thither also
came Roquairol, to bask in the wondering admiration that Rabette,
Albano's foster-sister, bestowed on him with all the fervour of her
innocent rural mind. Albano's dream was fulfilled; he loved Liana in
realty as he had loved her in imagination. Roquairol thought he loved
Rabette; in truth, her simplicity was to this experienced conqueror of
feminine hearts but a new and, for the moment, overmastering sensation.
On a glorious evening Albano and Liana stood on a sloping
mountain-ridge; overhead was a heaven filled with a life-intoxicated,
tumultuous creation, as the sun-god stalked away over his evening-world.
He seized Liana's hands and pressed them wildly to his breast; flames
and tears suffused his eyes and his cheeks, and he stammered, "Liana, I
love thee!"
She stepped back, and drew her white veil over her face.
"Wouldst thou love the dead?" she said.
He knew her meaning. Her friend Caroline, whom she had loved and who had
died, had appeared in a vision, and announced that she would die in the
next year.
"The vision was not true!" cried Albano.
"Caroline, answer him!" Liana folded her hands as if in prayer; then she
raised the veil, looked at him tenderly, and said, in a low tone, "I
will love thee, good Albano, if I do not make thee miserable."
"I will die with thee!" said he.
Charles appeared with Rabette; he, also, had spoken frantic words of
love, and Rabette clung around him compassionately, as a mother around
her child.
A few more days of joyous life at Blümenbuhl, and Liana returned to her
home at Pestitz. Then for weeks Albano saw nothing of her, heard nothing
of her. Liana was in sore trouble. Her father had disapproved of the
match; what mattered much more to her, her mother also. The mother's
opposition was on the quite decisive ground that she could not endure
Albano.
The Minister von Froulay had more specific reasons for his hostility--
the most specific of all being that he had designed his daughter for one
Bouverot, a disreputable court intriguer, his leaning towards Bouverot
being based on financial liabilities, and stimulated by financial
expectations. The minister's lady detested Bouverot, but in desiring
separation between Liana and Albano, she was her husband's ally. Behold,
then, Liana torn between duty towards her mother and love for Albano.
Once Albano saw her, but heard no explanation. The prince was wedded to
the Princess of Haarbaar, and it was at a wedding festivity in the
grounds of the pleasure palace of Lilar that Albano looked upon his
beloved. But she was pledged for the time to tell him nothing, and she
told him nothing. The princess looked curiously at her, for Liana
exactly resembled the princess's younger sister, the philanthropic
Idoine, who devoted herself to the idyllic happiness of her peasantry in
the Arcadian village that it was her whim to rule.
To the aged and saintly court chaplain, Spener, Liana at last brought
her perplexities. Here the history moves in veils. How he extorted from
her the promise to renounce her Albano for ever is a mystery watched and
hidden by the Great Sphinx of the oath she swore to him.
On the next day Albano was summoned, and stood with quivering lips
before the beloved.
"I am true to you--even unto death," she said; "but all is over."
He looked upon her, wild, wondering.
"I have resigned you," she said; "and my parents are not to blame. There
is a mystery that has constrained me--"
"Oh, God!" he cried. "Is it thus with external fidelity and love?" In
whirling, cruel passion he pictured his love, her coldness, his pain,
her violated oath.
"I did not think thou wert so hard," she said. "Oh, it grows dark to me;
let me to my mother!"
Albano gazed into the groping, timid face, and guessed all--her
blindness had returned!
The mother rushed up. "May God bring you retribution for this!" cried
Albano to her. "Farewell, unhappy Liana!"
For many days Albano lived without love or hope, in bitter
self-reproach; every recollection darted into him a scorpion-sting. And
to him in his agony came the tormenting news that the fickle Roquairol
had deserted Rabette. He drove the false one from his presence; sister
and brother, beloved and friend, were now utterly lost to him.
At length he learned that Liana had recovered her sight, and that she
was dying. Once more, for the last time, he was admitted to her
presence. She reclined in an easy-chair, white-clad, with white, sunken
cheeks.
"Welcome, Albano!" she said feebly, but with the old smile. "Some day
thou wilt know why I parted from thee. On this, my dying day, I tell
thee my heart has been true to thee." She handed him a sheet with a
sketch she had made with trembling hand of the noble head of Linda de
Romeiro. "It is my last wish that them shouldst love her," she said.
"She is more worthy of thee."
"Ah, forgive, forgive!" sobbed Albano.
"Farewell, beloved!" she said calmly, while her feeble hand pressed his.
For a while she was silent. Suddenly she said, with a low tone of
gladness, "Caroline! Here, here, Caroline! How beautiful thou art!"
Liana's fingers ceased to play; she lay peaceful and smiling, but dead.
_II.--Linda De Romeiro_
Albano's state for a long time was one of fever. He lay dressed in bed,
unable to walk, in a burning heat, talking wildly, and as each hour
struck on the clock, springing up to kneel down and utter the prayer,
"Liana, appear, and give me peace!" to the high, shut-up heavens.
"Poor brother!" said Schoppe the librarian, his old preceptor and dear
friend. "I swear to thee thou shalt get thy peace to-day."
He went to Linda de Romeiro, now in Pestitz after long wandering, and
placed his design before her. Would the Princess Idoine, Liana's
likeness, appear before Albano as a vision and give him peace? Linda
consented to plead with Idoine. But Idoine made a difficulty. It was not
the unusualness and impropriety of the thing that she dreaded, but the
untruthfulness and unworthiness of playing false with the holy name of a
departed soul, and cheating a sick man with a superficial similarity.
At length Idoine gave her decision. "If a human life hangs upon this, I
must conquer my feeling."
As eight o'clock struck, Albano knelt in the dusk, crying, "Peace,
peace!"
Idoine trembled as she heard him; but she entered, clothed in white, the
image of the dead Liana.
"Albano, have peace!" she said, in a low and faltering tone.
"Liana!" he groaned, weeping.
"Peace!" cried she more strongly, and vanished.
"I have my peace now, good Schoppe," said Albano softly, "and now I will
sleep."
Time gradually unfolded Albano's grief instead of weakening it. His life
had become a night, in which the moon is under the earth, and he could
not believe that Luna would gradually return with an increasing bow of
light. Not joys, but only actions--those remote stars of night--were now
his aim. As he travelled with his father in Italy after his recovery,
the news of the French Revolution gave an object to his eagerness.
"Take here my word," he wrote to Schoppe, "that as soon as the probable
war of Gallic freedom breaks out I take my part decidedly in it, for
it."
But at Ischia, Albano was dazzled by a wonder; he saw Linda de Romeiro.
When she raised her veil, beauty and brightness streamed out of a rising
sun; delicate, maidenly colours, lovely lines and sweet fullness of
youth played like a flower garland about the brow of a goddess, with
soft blossoms around the holy seriousness and mighty will on brow and
lip, and around the dark glow of the large eye.
As Albano and Linda walked on the mountain Epomeo, looking upon the
coasts and promontories of that rare region, upon cities and sea, upon
Vesuvius without flame or thunder, white with sand or snow, Albano's
heart was an asbestos leaf written over and cast into the fire--burning,
not consuming; his whole former life went out, the leaf shone fiery and
pure for Linda's hand. He gazed into her face lovingly and serenely as a
sun-god in morning redness, and pressed her hands. "Give them to me for
ever!" said he earnestly.
She inclined modestly her beautiful head upon his breast, but
immediately raised it again, with its large, moist eyes, and said
hurriedly, "Go now! Early to-morrow come, Albano! Adio! Adio!"
Count Gaspard bestowed his paternal consent on the union, and the lovers
returned separately to Hohenfliess. A difference arose; Albano was still
bent on warring for France, Linda sought to dissuade him. They
quarrelled, and parted in anger.
On the day after the quarrel Linda received a letter in Albano's
handwriting begging forgiveness, and asking for a meeting in the gardens
of Lilar. She went there at the appointed evening hour, although, owing
to the night-blindness from which, like many Spaniards, she often
suffered, she could not see her lover. But she kissed him, and heard his
burning words of love.
But Albano had not written, and had not entered Lilar. Roquairol's old
passion for Linda was undiminished; his rage at Albano was beyond
bounds. He could mimic Albano's writing and voice; he knew of Linda's
night-blindness. On the next night, in the presence of Albano and Linda,
he slew himself with his own hand.
The death of Roquairol lay like a blight between the lovers. They parted
for ever.
_III.--Idoine_
"War!" This word alone gave Albano peace. He made himself ready for a
journey to France, and ere he set forth he sought out the little spot of
earth, beneath a linden-tree, where reposed the gentle Liana, the
friendly, lovely angel of peace.
Suddenly, with a shudder, he beheld the white form of Liana herself
leaning against the linden. He believed some dream had drawn down the
airy image from heaven, and he expected to see it pass away. It
lingered, though quiet and mute. Kneeling down, he exclaimed,
"Apparition, comest thou from God? Art thou Liana?"
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 her again,
and his whole being trembled at her glorified resemblance to the
departed--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; she wept, and he too.
"Do I, too, distress you?" said he, in the highest emotion.
"I only weep," she innocently said, "that I am not Liana."
"Noble princess," he replied, "this holy spot takes away all sense of
mutual strangeness. Idoine, I know that you once gave me peace, and here
I thank you."
"I did it," she said, "without knowing you, and therefore could allow
myself the use of a fleeting resemblance."
He looked at her sharply; everything within him loved her, and his whole
heart, opened by wounds, was unfolded to the still soul. But a stern
spirit closed it. "Unhappy one, love no one again; for a dark,
destroying angel goes with poisoned sword behind thy love."
Idoine turned to go. He knelt, pressed her hand to his bosom, and only
said, "Peace, all-gracious one!" Idoine, after a few swift steps, passed
out of his sight.
Albano hastened preparations for his journey; but ere the preparations
were ended, a letter was brought to him that caused him to abandon the
project altogether. It was a letter from the long-dead Princess
Eleonore, wife of the old prince who had died when Albano had first
entered Pestitz. Now, in the fullness of time, was the letter placed
before Albano's eyes and the token of the fullness of time was the
death, without issue, of Prince Luigi, and the seeming inheritance of
his dominions by the House of Haarkaar.
Thus the letter began:
"My son,--Hear thine own history from the mouth of thy mother; from no
other will it come to thee more acceptably.
"The birth of thy brother Luigi at a late period of our married life
annihilated the hopes of succession of the house of Haarkaar. But Count
Cesara discovered proofs of some dark actions which were to cost thy
poor brother his life. 'They will surely get the better of us at last,'
said thy father.
"Madame Cesara and I loved each other; we were both of romantic spirit.
She had just borne a lovely daughter, called Linda. We made the singular
contract that, if I bore a son, we would exchange; with her, my son
could grow up without incurring the danger which had always threatened
thy brother in my house.
"Soon afterwards I brought forth thee and thy sister Julienne at a
birth. 'I keep' I said, to the countess, 'my daughter, thou keepest
thine; as to Albano, let the prince decide.' Thy father allowed that
thou shouldst be brought up as son of the count. The documents of thy
genealogy were thrice made out, and I, the count, and the court chaplain
Spener, were put in possession of them. The Countess Cesara went off
with Linda to Valencia, and took the name Romeiro. By this change of
names all would be covered up as it now stands.
"Ah, I shall not live to be permitted openly to clasp thy son in my
arms! May it go well with thee, dearest child! God guide all our weak
expedients for the best.
"Thy faithful mother,
"ELEONORE"
Albano stood for a long time speechless. Joy of life, new powers and
plans, delight in the prospect of the throne, the images of new
relations, and displeasure at the past, stormed through each other in
his spirit.
He went out, and in the twilight stood upon the mountains, whence he
could overlook, but with other eyes than once, the city which was to be
the circus and theatre of his powers. He belongs now to a German house,
the people around him are his kinsmen; the prefiguring ideals, which he
had once sketched to himself at the coronation of his brother, of the
warm rays wherewith a prince as a constellation can enlighten and enrich
lands, were now put into his hands for fulfilment. His pious father,
still blessed by the grandchildren of the country, pointed to him the
pure sun-track of his princely duty: only actions give life strength,
only moderation gives it a charm.
He descended to Blümenbuhl. The funeral bell of the little church of
Blümenbuhl tolled for Luigi. Albano joined his sister Julienne, and they
betook themselves with Idoine and Rabette to the church. At the bright
altar was the venerable Spener; the long coffin of the brother stood
before the altar between rows of lights. Here, near such altar-lights,
had once the oppressed Liana knelt while swearing the renunciation of
her love. The whole constellation of Albano's shining past had gone down
below the horizon, and only one bright star of all the group stood
glimmering still above the earth--Idoine.
After the solemn service, Idoine 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. 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.
"How many a time, Albano," said Julienne, "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
eyes met hers.
"Idoine," said he, "I have that heart still; it is unhappy, but
unstained."
Then Idoine hid herself quickly and passionately in Julienne's bosom,
and said, scarcely audibly, "Julienne, if Albano rightly knows me, then
be my sister!"
"I do know thee, holy being!" said Albano, and clasped his bride to his
bosom.
"Look up at the fair heaven!" cried Julienne. "The rainbow of eternal
peace blooms there, and the tempests are over, and the world's all so
bright and green. Wake up, my brother and sister!"
* * * * *