Titan: A Romance Volume I Part 23

He went down the bridge and up the western triumphal-arch, and the glimmering Lilar lay before him in repose. Lo! there he saw the old "pious father" on the bal.u.s.trade of the arch, fast asleep. But how different was the revered form from the picture of it which he had shaped to himself according to that of the deceased Prince. The white locks, flowing richly down under the Quaker hat, the femininely and poetically rounded brow, the arched nose and the youthful lip, which even in late life had not yet withered, and the childlikeness of the soft face, announced a heart which, in the evening-twilight of age, takes its rest and looks toward the stars. How lonely is the holy sleep!

The Death-angel has conducted man out of the light world into the dark hermitage built over it; his friends stand without near the cell; within, the hermit talks with himself, and his darkness grows brighter and brighter, and jewels and pastures and whole spring-days gleam out at last,--and all is clear and broad! Albano stood before the sleep with an earnest soul, which contemplates life and its riddles;--not only the incoming and the outgoing of life are hidden with a manifold veil, but even the short path itself; as around Egyptian temples, so around the greatest of all temples sphinxes lie, and, reversing the case as it was with the sphinx, he only solves the riddle who dies.

The old man spoke, behind the speech-grating of sleep, with dead ones who had journeyed with him over the morning meadows of youth, and addressed with heavy lip the dead Prince and his spouse. How sublimely did the curtain of the venerable countenance, pictured over with a long life, hang down before the pastoral world of youth dancing behind it, and how touchingly did the gray form roam round with its youthful crown in the cold evening dew of life, taking it for morning-dew, and looking toward the east, and toward the sun! The youth ventured only to touch lovingly a lock of the old man; he meant to leave him, in order not to alarm him with a strange form, before the rising moon should have touched his eyelids and awakened him. Only he would first crown the teacher of his loved one with the twigs of a neighboring laurel. When he came back from it, the moon had already penetrated with her radiance through the great eyelids, and the old man opened them before the exalted youth, who, with the glowing rosy moon of his countenance, glorified by the moon overhead, stood before him like a genius with the crown. "Justus!" cried the old man, "is it thou?" He took him for the old Prince, who, with just such blooming cheeks and open eyes, had pa.s.sed before him in the under-world of dreams.

But he soon came back out of the dreamy Elysium into the botanical, and knew even Albano's name. The Count, with open mien, grasped his hands, and said to him how long and profoundly he had respected him. Spener answered in few and quiet words, as old men do who have seen everything on the earth so often. The glory of the moonlight flowed down now on the tall form, and the quietly open eye was illumined,--an eye which not so much penetrates as lets everything penetrate it. The almost cold stillness of the features, the youthful gait of the tall form, which bore its years upright as a crown upon the head, not as a burden upon the back, more as flowers than as fruit, the singular mixture of former manly ardor and of womanly tenderness,--all this called up before Albano the image of a prophet of the Eastern land. That broad stream which came roaring down through the alps of youth, glides now calmly and smoothly through its pastures; but throw rocks before it, and again it starts up roaring.

The old man looked upon the youthful youth, the oftener the more warmly.

In our days youth is, in young men, a bodily and spiritual beauty at once. He invited him to accompany him this beautiful night to his quiet cottage, which stands overhead there near the church-spire, that looks down from above into flute-dell. On the singular, mazy paths which they now took, Lilar was transformed to Albano's eyes into a new world; like flying silver clouds of night, the glimmering beauties were continually s.h.i.+fting and arranging themselves together into new groups, and occasionally the two companions penetrated through exotic shrubbery with lively-colored blossoms and wondrous odors. The pious father asked him with interest about his former and present life.

They came to the opening of a dark pa.s.sage into the earth. Spener, in a friendly manner, took Albano's right hand, and said this way led _up_ to his mountain-abode. But soon it seemed to go downward. The stream of the vale, the Rosana, sounded even in here, but only single drops of moonlight trickled through scattered mountain openings overspun with twigs. The excavation extended farther downward; still more remotely murmured the water in the vale. And yet a nightingale sang a lay that grew nearer and nearer. Albano was composed and silent. Everywhere they went along before narrow gates of splendor which only a star of heaven seemed to fling in. They descended now to a distant, illuminated magic bower of bright red and poisonous dark flowers, arched over at once with little peaked leaves and great broad foliage; and a confusing white light, partly sprinkled about by the living rays that gushed in, and partly flying off from the lilies only as white dust, drew the eye into an intoxicating whirl. Zesara entered with a dazzled eye, and as he looked to the right, in the direction of the fire that rained in, he found Spener's eye sharply fixed upon something to the left; he looked thither, and saw an old man, entirely like the deceased Prince, dart by and stalk into a side cavern; his hand quivered with affright, so did Spener's,--the latter pressed hastily on downward; and at last there glistened a blue, starry opening: they stepped out....

Heavens! a new starry arch; a pale sun moves through the stars, and they swim, as in play, after him,--below reposes an enraptured earth full of glitter and flowers; its mountains run gleaming away up toward the arch of heaven, and bend over toward Sirius; and through the unknown land delights glide, like dreams over which man weeps for joy.

"What is that? Am I on or under the earth?" said Albano, astounded; and his wandering eye fled for refuge to the face of a living man,--"I saw a dead man." Much more affectionately than before, the old man answered, "This is Lilar; behind us is my little house!" He explained the mechanical illusion[161] of the descent. "Here, now, have I stood so many thousand times, and feasted myself with so fervent a heart on the works of G.o.d. How looked the form, my son?" "Like the dead Prince," said Alban. In a startled, but almost commanding tone, Spener said, with a low voice, "Be silent, like me, until his time,--it was not he. Thy salvation and the salvation of many hangs thereon. Go no more to-day through the pa.s.sage."

Albano, half-angered by all the experience of this singular day, said, "Well, then, I go back through Tartarus. But what means the ghostly creation that everywhere pursues me?" "Thou hast," said the old man, lovingly and refres.h.i.+ngly, laying a finger on the youth's brow, "nothing but invisible friends about thee,--and cast thyself everywhere upon G.o.d.

There are a great many Christians who say, G.o.d is near or far off, that his wisdom and his goodness appear quite specially in one age or another,--truly that is idle deception; is he not the unchangeable, eternal Love, and does he not love and bless us at one hour just as much as at another?" As we ought, properly, to call the eclipse of the sun an eclipse of the earth, so it is man who is obscured, never the Infinite; but we are like the people who look at the obscuration of the sun in the water, and then, when the water trembles, cry out, "See how the glorious sun struggles!"

Albano stepped into the solitude of the old man's neatly ordered dwelling, only with heaviness, because, in the hot ashes of his volcano, every feeling put forth and throve the more luxuriantly. Spener pointed over from his mountain-ridge to the little so-called "Thunderhouse,"[162] and advised him to occupy it this summer. Albano took his leave at length, but his agitated heart was a sea, in which the morning sun is glowingly still half reflected, and into which, at evening, a lead-colored storm dips, and which swells glistening under the storm. He looked up from below at the old man, who was looking after him; but he would hardly have wondered to-day if _he_ had either sunk or ascended. With indignant and spirited resolutions, to stake and sacrifice his life for his love, at which cold hands were grasping, he strode without any fear through Tartarus, which, by the magnifying mirror of night, was distorted into a black giant armament: thus is the spirit-world only a region of our inner world, and _I_ fear only _myself_. When he stood before the altar of the heart in the dumb night, where nothing was audible but the thoughts, then did the bold spirit advise him repeatedly to call upon the dead old man, and swear aloud by his heart, full of dust; but when he looked up to the fair heavens, his heart was consecrated, and only prayed, "O good G.o.d, give me Liana!"

It grew dark; the clouds, which he had taken for the s.h.i.+ning mountains of a new earth, stretching away into the heavens, had reached the moon, and overshadowed it with darkness.

FOOTNOTES:

[138] _Tempestiarii_, or Storm-makers, was a name given, in the Middle Ages, to the master-wizards who could conjure up foul weather. Weather-prayers were used in the churches against them, and other wizard-masters called in to counteract the former.

[139] The Polish dancer always carries a rod under the fur-dress, wherewith his partner is excused by a blow or two, when she makes a misstep.--_Upper Siles. Monthly Mag._, July, 1788.

[140] Dread of spirits.

[141] The German for this is _sauer-stoff_ (sour-stuff).--TR.

[142] A noted review in Richter's day, published at Erlangen near Nuremberg.--TR.

[143] Thus did the turnkeys name their prisoners.

[144] Alexand. ab Al., v. 4.

[145] To distinguish himself from the eagle of the Emperor, who holds something in both claws.

[146] Bouverot was a Catholic.

[147] He meant one with the poor Lector.

[148] Literally, "twilight-bird."--TR.

[149] To _get the basket_ means a refusal.--TR.

[150] I do not mean (as perhaps may appear from the _selling_) Pitt the Minister, but Pitt the Diamond, which the father of the present Pitt traded away to the Duke Regent of France, and for whose splinters he got twelve thousand ducats into the bargain.

[151] I sell only my landscapes, and throw in the figures.

[152] _Stand_, in German, has the double meaning of an _estate_ and a _stand_.--TR.

[153] Plaut. Bacch., Act 4, Scen. 7, 4, 16, 17.

[154] Seventh Part of the new Collection of Travels.

[155] I speak more particularly of the daughters, because they are the most frequent and greatest victims; the sons are bloodless ma.s.s-offerings.

[156] Pliny, Nat. Hist., VIII. 16.

[157] And this is quite probable. Dr. Edward Hill reckoned that in England eight thousand die annually of unhappy love,--of broken hearts, as the Englishwomen touchingly express it. Beddoes shows that vegetable food--and of this such victims are particularly fond--fosters consumption, and that females incline to this. Besides, the times of longing, which of itself, even without disappointment, as homesickness shows, is a poisonous revolving leaden ball, occur in youth, when the seed of pectoral maladies most easily springs up. O many married ones fall, under misconstructions, victims to the death-angel, into whose hand they had, previously to marriage, put the sword they themselves had sharpened!

[158] Forster's Views, Vol. I.

[159] A line (French) is one twelfth of an inch.--TR.

[160] Because he had just said he did not know her.--TR.

[161] Weigel. in Jena, invented the inverted bridge (_pons heteroc.l.i.tus_), a stairway on which a person seems to descend, by going up.--_Bush's Handbook of Inventions_, Vol. VII.

[162] It had the name from its height and its being so often struck with lightning.

THIRTEENTH JUBILEE.

ROQUAIROL'S LOVE.--PHILIPPIC AGAINST LOVERS.--THE PICTURES.--ALBANO ALBANI.--THE HARMONIC TeTE-a-TeTE.--THE RIDE TO BLUMENBuHL.

60. CYCLE.

Out of the drops which the harmonica had wrung from Rabette's heart the old enchanter, Fate, is perhaps preparing, as other enchanters do out of blood, dark forms; for Roquairol had seen it, and wondered at the sensibility of a heart which hitherto had been set in motion more by occupations than by romances. Now he drew nearer to her with a new interest. Since the night of the oath, he had drawn his heart out of all unworthy fetters. In this freedom of victory, he went forward proudly, and stretched out his arms more lightly and longingly after n.o.ble love.

He now visited his sister incessantly; but he still kept to himself.

Rabette was not fair enough for him, beside his tender sister. She was an artificial ribbon-rose beside one by Van der Ruysch; she said herself, naively, that she looked, with her village-complexion in white lawn, like black-tea in white cups. But in her healthy eyes, not yet corroded into dimness by tragical drops, and on her fresh lips, life glowed; her powerful chin and her arched nose threatened and promised spirit and strength; and her upright and downright heart grasped and repelled decidedly and intensely. He determined to prove her. The Talmud[163] forbids to inquire after the price of a thing, when one does not mean to buy it; but the Roquairols always cheapen and look further.

They tear a soul in two, as children do a bee, in order to eat out of it the honey which it would gather. They borrow from the eel, not only his dexterity in slipping away, but also the power to twine around the arm and crush it.

And now he let all the dazzling powers of his multi-form nature play before her,--the sense of his ascendency permitted him to move freely and gracefully, and the careless heart seemed open on all sides,--he linked so freely earnestness and jest, glow and glitter, the greatest and the least, and energy with mildness. Unhappy girl! now art thou his; and he s.n.a.t.c.hes thee from thy _terra firma_ with rapacious wings up into the air, and then hurls thee down. Like a vine running on a lightning-rod, thou wilt richly unfold thy powers and bloom up on him; but he will draw down the lightning upon himself and thy blossoms, and strip thee of thy leaves and rend thee utterly.

Rabette had never conceived of such a man, much less seen one; he made his way by main force into her sound heart, and a new world went in after him. Through Liana's love for the Captain, hers mounted still higher; and the two could speak of their brothers in friendly reciprocation. The good Liana sought to bring to the help of her friend many a thing which would hardly take hold, particularly mythology, which, by reason of the French p.r.o.nunciation of the names of the G.o.ds, was still more unserviceable to her. Even with books Liana sought to bring them together; so that reading was to her a sort of week-day Divine service, which she attended with true devotion, and was always delighted when it was over. Through all these water-wheels of knowledge streamed Roquairol's love, and helped drive and draw. How many blushes now flitted without any occasion over her whole face! The laugh which once expressed her gayety, came now too often, and betokened only a helpless heart, which longed to sigh.

So stood matters with her when Charles once playfully stole behind her and covered her eyes with his hand, in order, under the mask of her brother's voice, to give her soft, sisterly names. She confounded the similar voices; she pressed the hand heartily, but her eye was hot and moist. Then she discovered the mistake, and flew with the concealed evening and morning redness of her countenance out of the room. Now he looked closer into the eyes of Liana, who blamed him for it, and hers too had wept. She would fain at first conceal from him the object of the sisterly emotion; but another's No was to him, of old, an auxiliary verb,--a fair wind blowing him into port. Liana grew more and more agitated; at last she related how Rabette's account of Albano's youthful history had drawn from her in turn the history of his early relations, and that she had portrayed to her the b.l.o.o.d.y night of the masquerade, and even shown his b.l.o.o.d.y dress. "And then," said Liana, "she wept with me as heartily as if she had been thy sister. O, it is a dear heart!"

Charles saw the two linked together like two pastures, namely, by the rainbow which stands over both with its drops; he drew her with thankful love to his breast. "Art thou then happy?" asked Liana, in a tone ominous of something sad.

She must needs disclose to him her full heart, and tell him all. He heard with astonishment, how that whole Tartarus-night, on which the unknown voice had promised Linda de Romeiro to his friend, had been made known to her. By whom? She held an inexorable silence; he contented himself, because, to be sure, it could only have been Augusti, who was the only one that knew of it. "And now believest thou, thou heart from heaven," said he, "that I and the brother of my soul could ever separate by robbing each other? O, it is all otherwise, all otherwise! He curses the mock-spirits and the object of the mimicry. O he loves me; and my heart will rejoice in the day when it is his!" The touching ambiguity of these last words dissolved him in a sacred melancholy.