Titan: A Romance Volume I Part 22

He continued: "Now, perhaps, this _gene_ will cease. Have you hitherto made any observations upon him?" She shook her head. "I have," he replied, "for a long time, and such as were really consoling to me,--_j'avais le nez bon quant a cela_,--he has a real liking for my Liana."

The Minister's lady here could draw no inference, and begged him, with disguised astonishment, to come to the _agreeable_ matter. Comically on his face did the show of friends.h.i.+p wrestle with the expectation that he should be under the necessity immediately of being exasperated. He replied: "Is not _this_ an agreeable matter? The knight means it in earnest. He wished now to be privately espoused to her; after three years he retires from the order, and her fortune is made. _Vous etes, je l'espere, pour cette fois, un peu sur mes interets, ils sont les votres._"

Her maternal heart, so suddenly and deeply wounded, wept, and could hardly be concealed. "Herr von Froulay!" said she, when she had composed herself a little; "I do not disguise my astonishment. Such a disparity in years, in tastes, in religion."[146]

"That is the knight's affair, not ours," he replied, refreshed by her angry confusedness, and, like the weather, in his coldness threw only fine, sharp snow, no hail. "As to Liana's heart, I beg you just to sound that." "O, that innocent heart? You are mocking!" "_Posito!_ so much the more gladly will the _innocent_ heart reconcile itself to make her father's fortune, if she is not the greatest egotist. I should never love to constrain an obedient daughter." "_N'epuisez pas ce chapitre; mon coeur est en presse._ It will cost her her life, which already hangs by such frail threads." This allusion always struck the fire of wrath from his flint. "_Tant mieux_," said he; "then it will never go further than an engagement! I had almost said--_Sacre!_ and who is to blame for that? So it fares with me at the hands of the Captain too,--in the beginning my children promise everything, then they turn out nothing. But, madam," he said, swiftly and venomously collecting himself; and, instead of compressing his lips and teeth, merely pinching moderately the auditory organs of a sleeping lap-dog; "you alone indeed know, by your influence upon Liana, how to dress and redress everything.

Perhaps she belongs to you by a still prior claim than to me. I am not then compromitted with the knight. The advantages I detail no further."

His breast was here already warmed under the vulture-skin of rage.

But the n.o.ble lady now indignantly rose, and said: "Herr von Froulay!

hitherto I have not spoken of myself. Never will I counsel or countenance or consent to it,--I will do the opposite. Herr von Bouverot is not worthy of my Liana."

The Minister, during this speech, had several times unnecessarily snapped-to the snuffers over the wax candles, and only beheaded the point of the flame; the fixed air of wrath now colored the roses of his lips (as the chemical does botanical ones) blue. "_Bon!_" he replied, "I travel; you can reflect on the subject,--but I give my word of honor, that I never consent to any other match; and though it were (whereupon he looked at the lady ironically) still more considerable[147] than the one just projected,--either the maiden obeys or she suffers, _decidez_!

_Mais je me fie a l'amour que vous portez au pere et a la fille; vous nous rendrez tous a.s.sez contens._" And then he went forth, not like a tempest, but like a rainbow, which he manufactured out of the eighth color only, namely, the black, and that with his eyebrows.

After some days of resentment with the mother and the daughter, he rode, as Luigi's business-agent, to Haarhaar to see the princely bride. The oppressed mother confided to her oldest and only friend, the Lector, the sad secret. The two had now a pure relation of friends.h.i.+p toward one another, which, in France, in consequence of the higher respect for women, is more common. In the first years of the ministerial forced marriage, which dawned not with morning dew, but with morning frost, perhaps the hawk-moth[148] Cupid fluttered after them; but by and by children drove away this sphinx. The wife is often forgotten when she becomes the mother. She, therefore, with her characteristic cool and clear strength, took all that was ambiguous in her relation to Augusti forever out of the way; and he made her firmness more easy by his own, because he, with more love of honor than of women, grew not more red at any kind of braided-work than at that of a basket,[149] and erroneously believed that a man who receives it, has as much to be ashamed of as a woman who does.

The Lector could foresee that she would also, after her divorce,--which she postponed only for Liana's sake,--remain single, if only for this reason, in order not to deprive her daughter of an allodial estate, Klosterdorf, for the reservation of which she had now for one and twenty years exposed herself to the battering-ram and scythe-chariot and blunderbuss of the old Minister. Whether she was not even silently intending her dear Liana for a man so firm and tender, who differed from her in nothing but in a worldly coolness toward positive religion, is another and more delicate question. Such a reciprocal gift were worthy such a mother and friend, who must know from her heart, that combined feelings of tenderness and honor prepare for a loved soul a surer bliss than the love which genius offers, that alternation of flying heat and flying cold,--that fire which, like the electric, always twice destroys,--in the stroke and in the rebound. The Lector himself started not that question; for he never made rash, unsafe plans; and what one would have been more so than that of such a connection, in his poverty, or with such a father-in-law, in a country where, as in the Electorate of Saxony, a statute, so beneficial (for parents), can countermand even a marriage of many years' standing, which has been concluded without parental consent?

With moist eyes the Minister's lady showed him the new storm-clouds, which had again descended upon her and her Liana. She could build upon his fine eye for the world, upon his dumb lip and upon his ready hand for business. He said, as ever, he had foreseen all this; but proved to her that Bouverot, if only from avarice, would never exchange his knightly cross for the wedding-ring, whatever designs he might cherish with regard to Liana. He gave her to surmise, so far as a tender regard to her sore relations would tolerate, to what degree of readiness for compliance with Bouverot's wishes the very frailty of Liana's life might allure the Minister, in order to harvest it before it had done blooming.

For Froulay could much more nimbly swallow demands against honor than injuries done to his vanity, as the victim of hydrophobia can much more easily get down solid morsels than fluids. Yet all this did not sound so immorally hard to the Minister's lady as readers of the middling cla.s.ses might imagine; I appeal to the more sensible among the higher.

Augusti and the Minister's lady saw that something must certainly be done for Liana during the Minister's absence; and both wonderfully coincided in their project. Liana must go into the country this pleasant season,--she must muster up health for the wars that were in prospect,--she must be put out of the way of the knight's visits, which now the birthday would multiply fourfold,--even the Minister must have nothing to object to the place. And where can this be? Simply under the roof of the Director Wehrfritz, who cannot endure the German gentleman, because he knows his poisonous relation to the Prince. But of course there are first still other mountains to be climbed than that which lies on the way to Blumenbuhl.

The reader himself must now get over a low one; and that is a short comico-tragic Extra-leaf upon

THE GREEN-MARKET OF DAUGHTERS.

The following is certain: every owner of a very beautiful or very rich daughter keeps, as it were, a Pitt under his roof, which to himself is of no service, and which he must put to its first use after it has long lain idle, by selling it to a _Regent_.[150] Strictly and commercially speaking, daughters are not an article of trade; for the parental grand adventurers no one can confound with those female dealers in second-hand frippery, and stall-women, whose transit-business one does not love to name; but a stock, with which one gains in a South Sea, or a clod, wherewith one transfers symbolically (_scortatione_) real estate. "_Je ne vends que mes paysages et donne les figures par dessus le marche_,"[151] said Claude Lorraine, like a father,--and could easily say it, because he had the figures painted in his landscapes by _others_;--even so in the purchase or marriage-contract only the knightly seats are supposed, and the bride who resides upon them is thrown into the bargain. Even so, higher up, is a princess merely a blooming twig, which a princely sponsor plucks off and carries home, not for the sake of the _fruits_, but because a _bee-swarm_ of lands and people has attached itself thereto.

If a father, like our Minister, has not much, then he can p.a.w.n his children, as the Egyptians did their parents (namely, the mummies of them), as mortgages and hand-pledges or imperial p.a.w.ns, which are not redeemed.

At present the mercantile order, which formerly dealt only in foreign products, has got possession of this branch of commerce also; methinks, however, they might find room enough in their lower vaults to be selfish and d.a.m.ned, without going up stairs to the daughter. In Guinea only the n.o.bility can trade; with us they are cut off and debarred from almost all trade, except the small trade in daughters, and the few other things which grow on their own estates; hence is it that they hold so fast to this liberty of trade, and that the n.o.blesse seem here to be a Hanse alliance for this delicate branch of business; so that one may, in some manner, compare the high standing[152] of this cla.s.s with the _higher_ one (in a literal sense) which marketable people in Rome were obliged to mount[153] in order to be seen.

It is a common objection of young and (so-called) sensitive hearts, that this sort of transaction very much constrains, or in fact crushes love; whereas nothing perhaps makes so good a preparation for it as this very thing. For when the bargain is once concluded and entered by the bookkeeper (the parson) in the ledger, then does the time truly come on when the daughter can consider and provide for her heart, namely, the fair season after marriage, which is universally a.s.sumed in France and Italy, and is gradually coming to be in Germany also, as the more suitable time for a female heart to choose freely among the host of men; her state then, like the Venetian, grows out of a commercial into a conquering one. The husband himself, too, is quite as little interrupted afterward as beforehand in his love by this short business transaction; all is, that now--as in Nuremberg every Jew is followed by an old woman--close upon the heels of our bridegroom a young one is seen. Nay, often, the nuptial tradesman conceives an inclination even for the article which he has carried home with him,--which is an uncommon piece of good fortune; and as Moses Mendelssohn, with his bundle of silken wares under his arm, thought out his _letters_ upon the _affections_, so do better men, amidst their business, meditate love-letters on this branch of trade, and deal with the virgin--as merchants in Messina[154]

do with the holy virgin--in Co.; but of course such profitable connections of love with business must always be rare birds, and are little to be counted upon.

The foregoing I wrote for parents who are fond of sporting with children's happiness; I will now out of their and my sport make something serious. I ask you, in the first place, about your right to prescribe for morally free beings their inclinations, or even the show of inclination, and by one act of despotism to stretch the poisonous leaden sceptre over a whole free life. Your ten years more of apprentices.h.i.+p to life make as little distinction in the reciprocal liberty as talent or its want. Why do you not as well enjoin upon your daughters _friends.h.i.+p_ for life? Why do you not, in the second marriage, exercise the same right? But you have even no right to reject, except in the age of minority, when the child has not yet any right to choose. Or do you demand, upon their leaving the paternal roof, as pay for training them up to freedom, the sacrifice of this very freedom itself?

You act as if you had been educators, without having been yourselves educated; whereas you are merely paying off to your children a heavy inherited debt to your parents, which you can never pay back to _them_; and I know but one unpaid creditor in this respect, the first man, and but one insolvent debtor, the last. Or do you s.h.i.+eld yourselves under the barbarously immoral Roman prejudice, which offers children for sale as white negroes of the parents, because the power allowed at an earlier period over the non-moral being slips over, un.o.bserved from the gradualness of its development, into a power over the moral being?

If you may, out of love, force children to their happiness, so may they afterward, quite as well out of grat.i.tude force you to yours. But what is, then, the happiness for which you are to throw away their whole heart, with all its dreams? Chiefly _your own_; _your_ glory and aggrandizement, _your_ feuds and friends.h.i.+ps, are they to quench and buy with the offering of their innermost souls. Dare you own aloud your silent presuppositions in regard to the happiness of a forced marriage; for example, the dispensableness of love in wedlock, the hope of a death, the (perhaps) double infidelity, as well toward the connubial merchant as toward the extra-connubial lover? You must presuppose them sinners,[155] in order not to be yourselves robbers?

Tell me not that marriages of inclination often turn out ill, and forced marriages often well enough, as may be seen in the instance of the Moravians, the old Germans, and Orientals. Name me rather all barbaric times and nations, in which--for both indeed only reckon the man, never the wife--a happy marriage means nothing more than a happy husband. No one stands by near enough to hear and to count a woman's sighs; the unheard pang becomes at last speechless; new wounds weaken the bleeding of the oldest. Further: the ill-luck of fancy-marriages is chargeable upon your very opposition to them, and your war against the married couple. Still further: every forced marriage is, in fact, for the most part, half a marriage of fancy. Finally: the best marriages are in the middling cla.s.s, where the bond is more apt to be love; and the worst in the higher, where it is more a mercenary motive; and as often as in these cla.s.ses a prince should choose merely with his heart, he would get a heart, and never lose nor betray it.

Now, then, what sort of a hand is that into which you so often force the fairest, finest, richest, but rebellious one? Commonly, a black, old, withered, greedy fist. For decrepit, rich, or aspiring libertines have too much of the connoisseur, too much satiety and freedom, to steal any other than the most splendid creatures; the less perfect fall into the hands and homes of mere lovers and amateurs. But how base is a man, who, abandoned of his own character, backed merely by the despotic edict of a stranger, paying for his fortune with a stolen one, can now drag away the unprotected soul from the yearning eyes of a weeping love into a long, cold life, and clasp her to his arms as against the edges of frosty swords, and therein so near to his eye see her bleed and grow pale and quiver! The man of honor even gives with a blush, but he takes not with a blush; and the better lion, the beast, spares woman;[156]

but these soul-buyers extort from constrained beings at last even the testimony of free-will.

Mother of the poor heart, which thou wilt bless by misfortune, hear me!

Suppose thy daughter should harden herself against the misery which is forced upon her, hast thou not reduced her rich dream of life to empty sleep, and taken out of it love's islands of the blest, and all that bloomed thereon; the fair days when one roamed over them, and the perpetual happy retrospect of them when they already lie with their blooming peaks low in the horizon? Mother, if this happy time was ever in thy breast, then s.n.a.t.c.h it not from thy daughter; and if it was barbarously torn from thee, then think of thy bitter pang, and bequeath it not!

Suppose, further, she makes the kidnapper of her soul happy, reckon now what she might have been to its darling; and whether she does not then deserve anything better than to gratify a jailer, locked in with her forever by one shutting of the prison-door. But it seldom fares so well as this; thou wilt heap a double disaster upon thy soul,--the long agony of thy daughter, and the growing coldness of her husband, who by and by comes to feel and resent refusals. Thou hast cast a shadow over the time when man first needs the morning-sun,--namely, youth. O, sooner make all other seasons of the day of life cloudy; they are all alike, the third and the fourth and fifth decades; only at sunrise let it not rain into life; only this one never returning, irredeemable time darken not!

But how, if thou shouldst be sacrificing not merely joys, relations, a happy marriage, hopes, a whole posterity, to thy plans and commands, but the very being herself[157] whom thou constrainest? Who can justify thee, or dry thy tears, when thy best daughter,--for she is the very one who will be most likely to obey, be dumb and die, as the monks of La Trappe see their cloister burn down, without one of them breaking the vow of silence,[158]--when she, I say, like a fruit half in the sun and half in the shade, blooms outwardly, and inwardly grows cold and pale; when she, dying after her lifeless heart, at last can no longer conceal anything from thee, but for years bears round the paleness and the pangs of decline in the very orient of life; and when thou canst not console her, because thou hast crushed her, and thy conscience cannot suppress the name of infanticide; and when at last the worn-out victim lies there under thy tears, and the wrestling creature, so affrighted and so young, so faint, and yet thirsting for life, forgiving and complaining, with languis.h.i.+ng and longing looks, with painfully confused and conflicting emotions, sinks with her blooming limbs into the bottomless flood of death,--O guilty mother on the sh.o.r.e, thou who hast pushed her in, who will comfort thee? But I would call every guiltless one, and show her the bitter dying, and ask her, Shall thy child also perish thus?

59. CYCLE.

It was a romantic day for Zesara, even outwardly; sun-sparks and rain-drops played dazzlingly through the heavens. He had received a letter from his father, dated at Madrid, which stamped at last the black seal of certainty on the threatened death of his sister, and in which there was nothing agreeable but the intelligence that Don Gaspard, with the Countess of Romeiro, whose guardians.h.i.+p he was now concluding, would travel in autumn (the Italian spring) to Italy. Two tones had been, in his life, stolen away from the musical scale of love; he had never known by experience what it was to love a brother or a sister. The coincidence of her death-night with that night in Tartarus, this whole clawing into the holy images and wishes of his heart, stirred up his spirit, and he felt with indignation how impotently a whole a.s.sailing world might seek to remove Liana's image from his soul; and again he painfully felt, that this very Liana herself believed in her near decline.

In this situation was he found by an unexpected invitation from the Minister's lady herself,--sun-sparks and rain-drops played in his heaven also. He flew; in the antechamber stood the angel who broke the six apocalyptic seals,--Rabette. She had run to meet him from a bashfulness before company, and had embraced him sooner than he her. How gladly did he look into the familiar, honest face! with tears he heard the name of brother, when he had lost a sister to-day!

The reason of her appearance was this: when the Director was at the Minister's lady's the last time, the latter had, with easy, disguised hand, opened her house to his daughter, "for the sake of a knowledge of empty city life, and for change,"--in order that she might hereafter venture to knock at _his_ door on her own daughter's behalf. He said he would "forward the female wild deer to her with pleasure, and all possible despatch." And as in Blumenbuhl Rabette had answered him No, then Yes, then No, then Yes, and had held with her mother, even before midnight, an imperial-exchequer-revision, a mint-probation-day about everything which a human being from the country can wear in the city, she packed up there and unpacked here.

"Ah, I am afraid in there," said she to Albano; "they are all too clever, and I am now so stupid!" He found beside the domestic trio the Princess also, and the little Helena from Lilar, that lovely medallion of a fine day to his stirred heart. Indescribably was he smitten with Liana's womanly advances to Rabette, as if he shared her with her. With courtesy and tenderness, a mildness also, which was without falsehood or pride, came to the help of the embarra.s.sed playmate, on whose face the inborn gayety and eloquence of nature now singularly contrasted with her artificial dumb gravity. Charles, with his ready familiarity, was more in a condition to entangle than to extricate her; only Liana gave to her soul and tongue, if only by the embroidery-frame, a free field; Rabette could write with the embroidering needle, no illuminated and initial letters, indeed, but still a good running-hand.

She gave--turning her face toward her brother's, in order to pluck courage therefrom--a clear report of the dangerous road and upsets, laughing all the while, after the manner of the people when they are telling their mishaps. Her brother was to her, at the company's expense, both company and world; upon him alone streamed forth her warmth and speech. She said she could from her chamber see him "play on the harpsichord." Liana immediately led both thither. How richly and sublimely, beyond Rabette's demands upon city-life, was the maidenly _hospitium_ set out, from the tulip (not a blooming one, but a work-basket of Liana's,--although every tulip is such a basket for the finger of spring) even to the piano-forte, of which she, of course, for the present can use no more than seven treble-keys for half a waltz?

Five moderate trunks of clothes--for therewith she thought to come out, and show the city that the country too could wear clothes--represented to him in their well-known flower-pieces and tin bands the old impressions (_incunabula_) of his earliest days of life; and to-day every trace of the old season of love refreshed him. She made him look for his windows, from one of which the Librarian was fixing a hard gaze on a paving-stone in the street to see how often he could hit it by spitting.

Here alone, in the presence only of the brother, Liana spoke more loudly to the sister the word of friends.h.i.+p, and a.s.sured her how happy she meant to make her, and how sincere she was in all that she promised. O look not into the flame of the pure, religious, sisterly love with any yellow eye of jealousy! Can you not comprehend that this fair soul even now distributes its rich flames among all sisterly hearts, until love concentrates them into _one_ sun; as, according to the ancients, the scattered lightnings of night gather themselves in the morning into one solid solar orb? She was, everywhere, an eye for every heart; like a mother, she never once forgot the little in the great; and she poured out (let no one deny me the privilege of printing this minute example) for little Helena the cup of coffee, which the Doctor forbade, half full of cream, in order that it might be without strength or harm.

The impatient Princess had already looked ten times toward the heavens, through which now beams of light, now rain-columns flew, till at length out of the consumed cloud-snow the broad fields of blue grew up, and Julienne could lead out the delighted young people into the garden, to the annoyance of the Minister's lady, who did not like to expose Liana to the _Serein_,--five or six blasts of the evening-wind, and the wading through rain-water that stood a nineteenth of a line[159] deep. She herself stayed behind. How new-born, glistening, and inviting was all down below! The larks soared out of the distant fields like tones, and warbled near over the garden,--in all the leaves hung stars, and the evening air threw the liquid jewelry, the trembling earrings, from the blossoms down upon the flowers, and bore sweet incense to meet the bees.

The Idyl of the year, Spring, parcelled its sweet pastoral land among the young souls. Albano took his sister's hand, but he listened vacantly to her intelligence from home. Liana went far in advance with the Princess, and bathed herself in the open heavens of confidential communion.

Suddenly Julienne stood still, chatting playfully with her, in order to let the Count come up, and to inquire after letters from Don Gaspard, and after tidings of the Countess Romeiro. He communicated, with glowing countenance, the contents of to-day's letter. In Julienne's physiognomy there was a smile almost of raillery. To the intelligence of Linda's intended journey she replied: "That is just herself; she will fain learn everything,--travel over everything. I wager she climbs up _on_ Mont Blanc and _into_ Vesuvius. Liana and I call her, for this reason, the t.i.taness." How graciously did Liana listen, with her eyes wholly on her female friend! "You are not acquainted with her?" she inquired of the tortured one. He answered, emphatically, in the negative. Roquairol came up; "_Pa.s.sez, Monsieur_," said she, making room, and giving him a sign to move on. Liana looked very earnestly after. "_La voici!_" said Julienne, letting the cover of a likeness spring up, by a pressure, on a ring of her little hand. Good youth! it was exactly the form which arose, that magic night, out of Lago Maggiore, sent to thee by the spirits! "She is. .h.i.t there, exactly," said she to the agitated man.

"Very," said he, confusedly. She did not investigate this contradictory[160] "very"; but Liana looked at him; "very--beautifully and boldly!" he continued; "but I do not love boldness in women." "O, one can readily believe that of men!" replied Julienne; "no hostile power loves it in the other party."

They pa.s.sed along now through the chestnut avenue by the holy spot where Albano had seen, for the first time, the bride of his hopes s.h.i.+ning and suffering behind the water-jets. O it was here that he would gladly, with that soul of his painfully excited by the mutual reaction of wonderful circ.u.mstances, have knelt down before the still angel so near him! The tender Julienne perceived that she had to spare an agitated heart; after a tolerably loud silence, she said, in a serious tone: "A lovely evening,--we'll go to the water-house. There is where Liana was cured, Count! The fountains must leap, too." "O the fountains!" said Albano, and looked with indescribable emotion upon Liana. She thought, however, he meant those in the flute-dell. Helena cried out behind for them to wait, and came tripping along after with two little hands full of dewy auriculas, which she had plucked, and gave them all to Liana, expecting from her, as collatress of benefices, the flower-distribution.

"The little one, too, still thinks of the beautiful Sunday at Lilar,"

said Liana. She gave the Princess one or two, and Helena nodded; and when Liana looked at her, she nodded again, as a sign the Count should have something too: "More yet!" she cried, when he had got some; and the more Liana gave, the more did the child cry, "More,"--as children are wont to do, in the hyperboles of their tendency to the infinite.

They went over a green bridge, and came into a neat room. Instead of the piano-forte formerly there, stood a gla.s.s chapel of the G.o.ddess of music, a harmonica. The Captain screwed in behind a tapestry-door, and immediately all the confined spring-waters shot up outside with silvery wings toward heaven. O how the sprinkled world burned as they stepped out on the top!

Why wast thou, my Albano, just at this hour not entirely happy? Why, then, do pains pierce through all our unions,--and why does the heart, like its veins, bleed most richly when it is heated? Above them lay the still, wounded heavens in the bandage of a long, white ma.s.s of cloud; the evening sun stood as yet behind the palace, but on both sides of it his purple mantle of clouds floated in broad folds away across the sky; and if one turned round toward the east to the mountains of Blumenbuhl, green living flames streamed upward, and, like golden birds, the _ignes fatui_ danced through the moist twigs and on the eastern windows, but the fountains still threw their white silver into the gold.

Then the sun swam forth, with red hot breast, drawing golden circles in the clouds, and the arching water-shoots burned bright. Julienne bent upon Albano--near whom she had constantly remained, as if by way of atonement--a hearty look, as if he were her brother, and Charles said to Liana, "Sister, thy evening song!" "With all my heart," said she; for she was right glad of the opportunity to withdraw herself, with the melancholy seriousness of her enjoyment, and down below in the solitary room to utter aloud, on the harmonica-bells, all that which rapture and the eyes bury in silence.

She went down; the melodious requiem of the day went up,--the zephyr of sound, the harmonica, flew, waving, over the garden-blossoms,--and the tones cradled themselves on the thin lilies of the up-growing water, and the silver lilies burst aloft for pleasure, and from the brightness of the sun, into flamy blossoms, and over yonder reposed mother sun in a blue pasture, and looked greatly and tenderly upon her human children.

Canst thou, then, hold thy heart, Albano, so that it shall remain concealed with its joys and sorrows, when thou hearest the peaceful virgin walking in the moonlight of tones? O when the tone which trickles down in the ether announces to her the early wasting away of her life, and when the soft, long-drawn melodies flow away from her like the rose-oil of many crushed days; dost thou not think of that, Albano? How the human creature plays! The little Helena flings up auriculas at the flas.h.i.+ng water-veins, in order that she may dash one of them with the spray of the intercepted jet, and the youth Zesara bends far over the bal.u.s.trade, and lets the stream of water leap off from his sloping hand upon his hot face and eye, in order to cool and conceal himself. The fiery veil was s.n.a.t.c.hed from him by his sister; Rabette was one of those persons whom this musical tremor gnaws upon even physically, just as, on the other hand, the Captain was little affected by the harmonica, and indeed was always least moved when others were most so; there were no pains with which the innocent girl was less familiar than with sweet ones; the bitter-sweet melancholy into which she sank away in the idle solitude of Sundays, she and others had scolded at as mere sullenness.

At this moment she felt all at once, with a blush, her stout heart seized, whirled round, and scalded through as by hot whirlpools. Besides it had to-day already been swayed to and fro by the meeting with her brother again, the leaving of her mother, and her confused bashfulness before strangers, and even by the sight of the sunny-red mountain of Blumenbuhl. In vain did the fresh brown eyes and the overripe full lip battle against the uprending pain; the hot springs tore their way through, and the blooming face with the strong chin grew red and full of tears. Painfully ashamed, and dreading to be taken for a child, especially as all her companions' emotions had remained invisible, she pressed her handkerchief over her burning face, and said to her brother, "I must go away, I am not well, I shall choke,"--and ran down to the gentle Liana.

Yes, thou needest only carry thither thy shy pangs! Liana turned, and saw her hastily and violently drying her eyes. Ah, hers too were indeed full. When Rabette saw it, she said, courageously, "I absolutely cannot hear it,--I must scream,--I am really ashamed of myself." "O thou dear heart," cried Liana, joyfully falling upon her neck, "be not ashamed, and look into my eye! Sister, come to me, as often as thou art troubled; I will gladly weep with thy soul, and dry thy eye even sooner than my own." There was an overmastering enchantment in these tones,--in these looks of love, because Liana fancied she was mourning over some eclipsed star or other of her life. And never did trembling grat.i.tude embrace more freshly and youthfully a venerated heart than did Rabette Liana.

And now came Albano. Awakened by the dying away of the cradle-song, he had hurried after her, leaving all the cold and other drops unwiped from his fiery cheeks. "What ails thee, sister?" he asked, hastily. Liana, still lingering in the embrace and the inspiration, answered quickly, "You have a good sister; I will love her as her brother does." The sweet words of the so deeply affected souls and the fiery storm of his being carried him away, and he clasped the embracing ones and pressed the sisterly hearts to each other and kissed his sister; when, at the sight of Liana's confused bending aside of her head, he was terrified and flamed up crimson.

He must needs fly. With these wild agitations he could not stay in the presence of Liana, and before the cold, mirroring glances of the company. But the night was to be as wonderful as the day; he hastened with live looks, that appeared like angry ones, out of the city to the t.i.taness, Nature, who at once calms and exalts us. He went along by exposed mill-wheels, about which the stream wound itself in foam. The evening clouds stretched themselves out like giants at rest, and basked in the ruddy dawn of America, and the storm swept among them, and the fiery Briareuses started up; night built the triumphal-arch of the milky-way, and the giants marched gloomily under. And in every element Nature, like a storm-bird, beat her rustling wings.

Albano lay, without knowing it, on the woodland bridge of Lilar, under which the wind-streams went roaring through. He glowed like the clouds with the lingering tinges of _his_ sun; his inner wings were, like those of the ostrich, full of spines, and wounded while they lifted him; the romantic spiritual day, the letter of his father, Liana's tearful eyes, his boldness, and then his bliss and remorse about it, and now the sublime night-world on all sides round about him, pa.s.sed to and fro within him and shook his young heart; he touched with his fiery cheek the moistened tree-tops, and did not cool himself, and he was near to that sounding, flying heart, the nightingale, and yet hardly heard her.

Like a sun, his heart goes through his pale thoughts, and quenches on its path one constellation after another. On the earth and in the heavens, in the past and in the future, stood before Albano only one form; "Liana," said his heart, "Liana," said all nature.