Titan: A Romance Volume I Part 28

Albano saw on the whole theatre of yesterday's war nothing left standing but a pale, kindly figure in half-mourning, who looked round after him with innocent maidenly eyes, and toward which he could not help looking over, albeit she was now more a bride of G.o.d than of a mortal. He felt now, to be sure, more strongly how high his demands upon real friends rose, than he once did, when he could heighten at pleasure the highest which he made upon the beings of his dreams, whom he always cast exactly into the temporary mould of his heart; and how he was possessed by a spirit that spared no one, that would stretch the wings of every other according to its own, because it could bear no individuality except that which was copied.

He had hitherto experienced from all his loved ones too little opposition, as Liana had too much; both extremes injure one. The spiritual as well as the physical man, without the resistance of the outer atmosphere, is blown up and burst by the inner, and without the resistance of the inner is crushed by the outer; only the equilibrium between inner resistance and outer pressure keeps a fair play-room open for life and its culture. Besides, men--since only the best of them appreciate in the best of their own s.e.x strong conviction--can hardly tolerate it in women, and would have them not merely the reflection, but even the echo, of themselves. They want, I mean, not merely the look, but also the word, that says yes.

Albano punished himself with several days of voluntary absence, till the unclean clouds should have cleared away from within him which had overshadowed the gnomon of the sundial of his inner man. "When I am quite cheerful and good-natured," said he, "I will go back to her, and err no more." He errs at this moment. Whenever a strange, uncomfortable semitone has repeatedly intruded itself between all the harmonies of two natures, it swells more and more fatally till it drowns the key-note, and ends all. The dividing tone was, in this case, the strength of the man's pitch in connection with the strength of the woman's. But the highest love is most easily wounded by the slightest difference. O, little avails it then for man to say to himself, I will be another man!

Only in the finest, only in unimpaired enthusiasm, does he propose to himself such a thing; but it is just when the feeling is impaired, when he were hardly capable of the purpose, that he has to rise to the fulfilment of it, and then he can hardly make the achievement.

The Count went in the morning, as usual, to his lecture-rooms and parlors in the city. In the former it was hard for him to fix his instruments and his eyes upon the stars of the sciences, and to take sight, sailing as he was on such a sea of emotion. In the latter he found the Lector colder than ever, the Bibliothecary warmer, the household more inflated. He went to Roquairol, whom he to-day loved and treated still more cordially, as if by way of atonement to his offended sister. Charles said at once, with his sudden and tragical flinging up of the curtain of futurity, "All was discovered,--in the highest degree of probability!" As often as lovers see that their Calypso's island--which, to be sure, lies free on the open ocean--has at length come to the eyes of the seafaring world, and that they are making sail for it, they are astonished to an astonis.h.i.+ng degree; for is there any one Paradise which has such a loose and low palisado, allowing every pa.s.ser-by to see in, as theirs?

For a long time, he related, had the Doctor's children always had something to fetch from the Architect's wife at Lilar,--flowers, medicine-phials, &c.; certainly as spy-gla.s.ses and ear-tubes of Augusti, who again was the opera-gla.s.s of his mother. In short, his father had, at least, been at the Greek woman's yesterday, but had luckily found only an empty package[189] from Rabette to him (Charles), which, according to the liberties of the ministerial Church, he had opened and closed.

"Why _luckily_?" said Albano. "I will justify and honor my love before the world." "I referred to myself," he replied; "for never was my father more friendly to me than since he broke open my last letters. He is this afternoon in Blumenbuhl, and it may well be more on my own account than my sister's."

Albano had no fear that the city could drill mining-galleries under his childhood's land, so as to blow up in one conflagration the blessed isle,--could he not trust his character and courage and Liana's own?--but it pained him now that he had so needlessly robbed the childlike Liana of the joy and merit of a childlike open-heartedness.

How he longed now for the atoning and recompensing moment of the first meeting again, after the next morning!

He stayed by his friend as by a consolation, and did not go back till the evening redness floated about in the rain-clouds. When he came, he found already awaiting him a letter from Liana, written to-day.

"O good Albano, why camest thou not? How much I had to say to thee! How I trembled for thy sake on Friday, when the frowning cloud pursued thee with its thunder! Thou hast weaned me too much from sorrow, so strange and heavy has it become to me now. I was inconsolable the whole evening; at last, when night fell, the thought sank into my mind that thou hadst been oppressed as with presentiments, and that the lightning loved to strike the thunder-house. Why, indeed, art thou there? I hurried up, and knelt by my bed, and prayed to G.o.d, although the storm had long been dispersed, that he would have preserved thee. Smile at my tardy prayer; but I said to him, 'Thou knewest indeed, all-gracious One, that I would pray.' I was consoled, too, when I looked up to the stars, and the broken ray of joy trembled within me.

"But in the morning Rabette made me sad again. She had seen thee weeping on the road. A thousand times have I asked myself, whether I am to blame for that. Can it have come from this,--for she says so,--that I afflict thee too much with my death thoughts? Never more shalt thou hear them; the veil, too, is laid away; but I calculated upon thee according to my brother, to whom, as he himself says, the dusk of death is an evening-twilight, in which forms seem to him more lovely. Truly, I am quite blest; for thou art even so, and yet hast so little in having me,--only a small flower for thy heart, but I have thyself. Leave me my grave-mound; therefrom, as from a mountain, comes better, more fruitful soil into my valley. O how one loves, Albano, when all around us crumbles and sinks and melts away in smoke, and when, still, the bond and splendor of love stand firm and inviolate on the fleeting ground of life, as I have often seen with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a rainbow hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting, impetuous floods! O, would that the nightingales were yet singing; now I could sing with them! Thy aeolian-harp, my harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my hand! My father was with us, and more cheerful and friendly toward all than ever. Lo, even he is kindly disposed! My parents surely send no tempest into our feast of roses. I readily did him the pleasure, therefore,--forgive it!--of promising him, that I would receive no visits from strangers in a strange house--because, he said, it was improper. I must go home for some days on account of the Prince's marriage; but I shall see thee soon. O forgive! When my father speaks softly, my soul cannot possibly say, No. Farewell, my n.o.ble one!

L.

"P. S. Soon a little leaf will come fluttering again over to thy mountain. Only continue in perpetual joy! O G.o.d! why am I not stronger? What beings shouldst thou then take to thy heart!--Thou dear one!"

How was he shamed by this full-blooming love, which never rightly knows when it is misunderstood, and which presupposes no other fault than its own! How sadly did the thought of the commanded separation affect him now, after the voluntary one! He could now love her as a guarding angel _before_ Paradise, how much more as a giving angel _in_ it! But it is hard for a man, as the youth felt, clearly to distinguish in the female heart, especially in this one, intention from instinct, ideas from feelings, and in this dark, full heaven to count and arrange all the stars. Everything like hardness, every unpromising bud, arose at last as a flower; and her worth unfolded itself piece-wise like spring; whereas, generally, from other maidens, a traveller who visits them carries away with him directly at his first evening's departure a little complete flower-catalogue of all their charms and arts, as a Brocken-pa.s.senger gets at the tavern a neat nosegay of the various kinds of mosses which are found on the mountain.

He supposed she was now with her parents; and he followed, not as a pouting schoolboy, but as a harmonious man, the giant of destiny. In the garden rainy weather held sway, the crop of every heavy tempest, which, like a war, always devastates the scene of conflict.

The promised leaflet appeared: "Only be happy. We shall see each other very, very soon, and then most blissfully. Forgive me! Ah, I long exceedingly!"

Now he experienced what days they were which had _once_--that is, only a few days ago--pa.s.sed before him as divine apparitions, and which now again were to come up in the East as returning stars! Why does a blessing, not till it is lost, cut its way like a sharp diamond so deeply into the heart? Why must we first have lamented a thing, before we ardently and painfully love it? Albano threw both past and future away from him, that he might dwell wholly and purely in that present which Liana had promised him.

71. CYCLE.

On Sunday morning, when all the blue heavens stood open, and the earth was festally decked with pearls and twigs, a gentle finger tapped at Albano's door, which could belong to none but a female hand. It was Liana who entered at so early an hour; Rabette and Charles without uttered a loud greeting. On his exulting breast fell the beautiful maiden, blooming from, her walk, with blessed, bright eyes, a freshly bedewed rose-bud. It was his finest morning; he had a clear feeling of Liana's love. As the aeolian-harp sounded in, she looked towards it, remembered with a blush that fairest evening of the covenant, and listened in silence, and dried her eyes when she turned them again towards Albano. But he could not enter into this temple of joy without having cleansed and healed himself by a frank confession of his late errors. What a sweet rivalry ensued between them of confessing and forgiving, when Liana lovingly exclaimed and owned that she had not understood him lately, that only she was the blamable one, and that she would begin this very moment to speak better. She could not give herself any comfort about the secret pangs which she had caused her friend. As mahogany furniture cracks in no temperature, and contracts no spots, and needs no polis.h.i.+ng, so was it with this heart, Albano's felt, as he now swore to himself always, even when he did not understand her, to say to himself, She is right.

She solved for him the riddle of her appearing to-day with those friendly looks which a good nature redoubles, when it has anything to sweeten,--namely, she was going back to Pest.i.tz to-day; but the carriage would not come till late, till evening, in fact, about tea-time, and so there remained a whole day before them; and she hoped her father would not take this circuitous route through Lilar as a breach of her promise.

A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold. Thereupon she sought to make him quite calm about the peaceful intentions of her father, and represented his strictness, in subjecting himself and others to convenience, as the reason of his prohibition, as well as of her being summoned back to the wedding-festival. Albano, so soon after the oath which he had just sworn to himself, kept it, and said, She is right.

The Captain came in with the red-cheeked Rabette, whose eyes glistened with joy. The small apartment did not, by narrowness and confusion, make the pleasure less. Charles, generally so much like Vesuvius, which in the first hours of morning is still covered with snow, presented already a warm summit; he seated himself at the instrument and thundered into the noisy presence with a prestissimo (which lay open) of Haydn's,--that true hour-caller of rejoicing hours,--and played, to the astonishment of the females, the hardest part so easily, at sight, that he rather played into it, than from it, and kept composing much (for instance, the ba.s.s) himself; whereas Albano, with almost comic fidelity, gave you the exact truth in music quite as much as in history, which, again, always became in Charles's mouth a piece of his own personal biography. The morning added wings to all their souls, whereas noon always binds men's wings down,--hence Aurora goes with winged steeds, and the G.o.d of day with wingless ones. "But how now are our seven pleasure-stations to be made out?" inquired Charles, "for the day lies like a garden-hall, with nothing but pleasure-avenues on all sides open before us." "Charles, is it not, then, a matter of indifference _where_ a man loves?" said Albano. Blessed one, whose heart needs nothing but one heart more, no park into the bargain, no _opera seria_, no Mozart, no Raphael, no eclipse of the moon, not so much as moonlight, and no read or acted romance!

"First, I must see my Chariton," said Liana. "Yes," added her brother, immediately, "she can bring our dinner after us into the gothic temple."

He proposed, namely, on this lovely day, to dine in the twelfth century, and to sit by a sombre, motley window-light, and on sharp-cornered, heavy, thick furniture, and, as it were, darkly under the earth of a green present, glistening overhead, to sit with blooming faces; for thus did he overload the fullest enjoyments with external contrasts, and enjoyed every happy present most in the near gleam and reflection of the sharpened sickle which was to mow them away.[190] "G.o.d forbid and avert it, friend!" said Rabette. Albano, too, deemed the friendly Greek, her laughing children, and the neighboring rose-fields far preferable, and, with the aid of Liana, prevailed. Before the embowered cottage the children came running to meet them, Helena, with her little ap.r.o.n full of orange-blossoms, which she had picked up, for the breaking of them off had been forbidden her, and Pollux, in the last, light bandage of his broken arm, the hand of which had now been obliged to work with its companion, the right hand, at puckering up and cracking the rose-leaves.

Both gave notice: "Mother was not ready yet, and had dressed them first." But presently, neat and simple as a priestess destined to dance around the altar of G.o.ds of joy, sprang Chariton to meet her Liana, and, as she came, continued adjusting her hastily donned clothes by a light hitching and twitching. "This," said Roquairol, after he had easily obtained from Rabette a nodding a.s.sent thereto, because she had not understood his French request for the same, "is my spouse since yesterday,"--and he enjoyed without further circ.u.mstance the right of thouing her, which she, since the friendly encouragement of the Minister, accepted the more fondly with maidenly presentiments.

When Liana kindly announced four noonday guests for Chariton, there stood in the dark eyes of the Greek gleams of joy, and the little face, with great arched Italian eyebrows, became a stereotype smile, which was not culinary embarra.s.sment, but merely tongueless joy; which only made her white semicircle of teeth s.h.i.+ne more broadly, when Charles spoke right out: "Surely thou canst help her, wife!" "Of course!" said Rabette, quite delighted; because her heart had no longer any other lips than her two hands, for which, if they could only lay hold of hard work, it was full as much as if they were pressed by the hand of a lover. Did she not again and again curse her awkward, hesitating throat, when Roquairol, in her presence, poured out his sounding and fiery torrents of speech? On this occasion, when he had again set off the surroundings with artificial, shadowy refinements, he insisted upon it, of course, that Chariton should be executive secretary, and Rabette only corresponding secretary. Liana, too, out of a like womanliness, would fain do something for her darling; but since she, as a maiden of rank, could not cook anything, but only bake a little, accordingly it was a.s.signed her,--but reluctantly on the part of her friend, who never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else than, like other b.u.t.terflies, by his side among the flowers,--at a quite late moment, and for a s.p.a.ce of ten minutes, with her eyes and in extraordinary cases with her three writing-fingers, to co-operate in making the snow-b.a.l.l.s, which were to close and crown the dessert.

Never had kitchen ball-queen a broader canopy, or a more beautifully carved sceptre and apple, or fairer _dames d'atour_[191] than Chariton, and vessels and fire were quite thrown into the shade thereby.

Now the happy couples--and the children too--went out into the joyful day, into the youthful garden, in order, like planets, with their moons, to stand now near each other, now far off, now in opposition, and now in conjunction, on their heavenly orbit around the same sun. "We will launch out at a venture," said Charles, in port, "and see whether we do not meet." Albano went with Liana after the children, who were already skipping along on the little houses through the rose-walks, on the bridge over the singing wood. He whose heart beats in such calm blissfulness, seeks in the invisible church no visible one: the whole temple of nature is the temple of love, and everywhere stand altars and pulpits. On the smoothly descending life-stream man stands without rudder, happy in his skiff, and leaves it to its own will.

Then the children, mindful of the maternal prohibition against excursions, led the way up along the right, over the bridged eminence, to the western triumphal arch; and Helena, merely as guide of the little convalescent, ran forward quite unexpectedly and wildly with his hand.

How gladly did Albano follow the little pilots and pointers! Heavens!

when they looked round them on the magnificent height, and into the rich outspread day, and then into each other's eyes, how freely and broadly did the arches of their life-bridge rear themselves, and s.h.i.+ps, with swollen sails and proudly towering masts, sail away beneath! Rose-trees clambered up the triumphal arches, the children reached up, s.n.a.t.c.hed roses from their summits, and trudged away (working out and proving the unusual obedience) over four gates, in order, from the fifth, to look down into the smooth, s.h.i.+ning lake, and to descend into the "enchanted wood," where art, like the children, played her pranks.

Out of the entrance of the wood came forth Charles and Rabette, on their way back to Chariton over the arches, the former bound to the wine-cellar (he had something empty therefrom in his hand), and she intending to run a moment into the kitchen. He went blissfully, as if on wings, and said: "Life travels to-day in the constellation of the wain, far away through the blue." He turned round, however, to let the _Pleiades_ rise before them, that is, the so-called "inverted rain,"

which ascends only for the s.p.a.ce of five minutes, and properly only in an illumination. He led them all into the wondrous wood, through a light that lay in noonday slumber, glowing under free trees, whose stems, standing far asunder, only tendered each other their long twigs. At the focus of the picturesque paths, he let them await the play of the rain.

The children sprang after him with their hopes, and, backed by the courage of the grown ones, sat down by them, on designated seats of the G.o.ds, or children's seats, between two little round lakes.

While Charles ran swiftly up and down in zigzag, attending to the hydraulic and other mechanism,--nearly according to the points of the labyrinth-garden in Versailles,--they could fly about through the magic wood that rose everywhere. An all-powerful arm of the Rosana, which swept by without, struck in among the flowers, and bore a heavy, rich world; now the water was a fixed mirror, now a winding, beating vein, now a gus.h.i.+ng spring, now a flash of lightning behind flowers, or a dark eye behind leafy veils; tapering sh.o.r.es, short beds, children's gardens, round islands, little hills, and tongues of land lay between: they held their motley, blooming children on arm and bosom, and the blue eyes of the forget-me-not, and the full tulip-cheeks, and the white-cheeked lilies played together like brothers and sisters apart from strangers, but roses ran through all. Now they heard a murmuring and purling; the lakes beside them bubbled up; on a peeled May-tree, fenced in on an island, the yellow fir-needles began to drop from above; from the hanging birches on the tongue of land, an inner rain dripped and glided down; out of the two lakes beside them water-jets flew like flying-fishes toward heaven. Now it gushed everywhere, and rows of fountains, those water-children, played with the flower-children. Like birds, streams fluttered with broad wings out of the laurel-hedges, and fell into the groups of roses. On a hill full of oaks, a water-snake crawled up; victoriously shot out from all the mouths of the sh.o.r.es besieging arches to the summits; suddenly the cheated spectators found themselves overhung with rainbows, for the lakes flung their waters high across over them, so that the wavering sun blazed through the lattice-work of drops, as through a s.h.i.+vered jewel-world. The children screamed with a terror of joy. The scared birds cruised through the shower; night b.u.t.terflies were cast down; the turtle-doves shook themselves on the ground, beaten down in the torrents; the banks and the beds held their blooming little ones beneath the heavens.

After five minutes the whole was over, and nothing remained, save that in all flowers and eyes the moist radiance trembled, and on the waves the stars continued to glisten. The children ran after the wonder-worker, Charles. "All is over outwardly," said Albano, "but not within us. I am to-day perfectly and peacefully happy; for thou lovest me, and the whole world, too, is friendly. Art thou, too, happy, Liana?"

She answered, "Still more happy, and I must needs weep for joy if I told how happy I am." But she was weeping already. "See! drops!" said she, naively, as he looked upon her, and wiped _his_, which were the sprinklings of the rainbow, softly from his cheeks. His lips touched her holy, tender eye, but the other remained open, and her love looked out from it at him, and never did her holy soul hover nearer to him.

After a few minutes this inverted heavenward shower was also over. They went across the middle of the free gardens to the eastern parts and gates. How brightly lay the coasts of the future before them, with thick, high green, and nightingales flying around the sh.o.r.es! Rapture makes the manly heart more womanly. The voice of his full bosom spoke but softly to Liana, on whose countenance, turned sidewise and heavenward, lay a still, pious grat.i.tude; his fiery glance moved but slowly, and rested on the beautiful world; and he went without hasty strides around the smallest points of land. The young nightingale whet her well-fed bill against the twig, and shook herself merrily; the old one sang a short lullaby, and skipped chanting after fresh food; and everywhere flew and screamed across each other's paths the children of spring and their parents. Little white peac.o.c.ks ran, without their pride, like little children in the gra.s.s. Blissfully floated the swan between her waves, with the white arch over the eyes that dipped under, and blissfully hovered the glistening music-fly, like a fixed star, undisturbed in the air, over a distant, flowery bell. The b.u.t.terflies, flying flowers, and the flowers, fettered b.u.t.terflies, sought and sheltered each other, and laid their variegated wings to wings; and the bees exchanged flowers only for blossoms, and the rose which has no thorns for them they exchanged only for the linden.

"Liana," said Albano, "how I love the whole world to-day, on thy account! I could give the flowers a kiss, and press myself into the very heart of the full trees; I could not tread in the way of the long chafer down there." "Should one," she replied, "ever feel otherwise? How can a human being, I have often thought, who has a mother, and knows her love, so afflict and rend the heart of a brute mother? But Spener says, we do not forgive beasts even their virtues." "Let us go to him," said he.

They came out through the eastern gate on the mountain-way behind the flute-dell, up to the house of old Spener, which lay in noonday brightness; but, as they heard loud reading and praying, they chose rather to walk by at a great distance, in order not to throw so much as their shadow into his holy heaven.

They gazed into the fair, still flute-dell, and would fain go directly in; at length it spoke up to them with one flute. Their friends seemed to be down below there. The flute continued long to complain, as if lonely and forsaken; no sisters and no fountains murmured in with it. At last there rose, panting, in company with the flute, a timid, trembling singer's voice, struggling forth. It was Rabette, behind the tall bushes. She stirred both to the depths of the soul, because the poor creature, with the labor of her helpless voice, was rendering her loved one the meek sacrifice of obedience. "O my Albano," said Liana, twining around him with ecstasy, "what sweetness to think that my brother is happy, and has found peace of soul, and _that_ through thy sister!" "He deserves all my peace," said he, with emotion; "but we will not disturb the two, but go back the old way." For Rabette's tones were often cut short, but it was uncertain whether by fear, or by kisses, or by emotion.

When they came in again through the eastern gate, the songstress and Charles came out of the green portal to meet them, both with wet eyes.

Charles, stepping impetuously over living beds, and with wandering eyes, grasped a hand of both with his, and said, "This is, for once in this rainy world, a day which does not look like a night. Brother, but when one is so deeply blest, and catches the music of the spheres, the tones are such as were once heard in token that from Mark Antony his patron deity, Hercules, was departing." Thus are joys, like other jewels, mechanical poisons, which only in the distance s.h.i.+ne, but, when touched and swallowed, eat into us. But Albano replied, smiling, "Since thou now fearest, dear friend, thou hast nothing to fear; for thou art not perfectly happy. I, however, alas! fear nothing." "Bravo!" said Charles; "now go into your kitchen, maiden!" He went into the so-called "Temple of Dreams," but soon hastened after her into the forbidden kitchen.

Albano visited Liana's spring chamber. Here he painted to himself from memory that bright Sunday when Liana led him through Lilar, and he let the past soothingly glimmer into the present; but the latter overpowered the former with its beams. Out in the garden stood and shone, so it seemed to him, the pure pillars of his heaven, the supporters of his temple, the trees; and all that he here saw near him belonged again to his happiness, Liana's books and pictures and flowers, and every little mark of her tender hand.

At last the saint of the Rotunda herself--suffused with a virgin blush at this nearness and at his blus.h.i.+ng--stepped in, to take him away into the cool dining-room. It was small and dusky, but the heart needs not for its heaven much s.p.a.ce nor many stars therein, if only the star of love has arisen. To the table-talk,--whereby alone an eating becomes a human one,--and to the jokes,--the finest _entremets_, the powdered sugar of conversation,--the children contributed their share, especially as they, unqualified to ascend from the forbidden _thou_ to _you_, always used thou-you at once. The deeply-red Chariton made extracts from Dian's letters and from the history of her life, and from the surgeon's bulletins in relation to Pollux's broken arm; she sought to extol the snow-b.a.l.l.s, listened with a half-credulous, half-cunning look to the Captain, who spun out the sportive marriage-thou toward Rabette into five acts, and smiled with pleasure just where it was required.

Especially did that music-barrel of all souls, Charles, spin joyously round; that Jupiter, around whom the eclipses of so many satellites were always flying, could show a great, serene splendor, when he and others wished. As often as Albano, according to the old way, would not come to his tragedy, he drew up the curtain of a comedy. To the good Rabette a word was as good as a look from him, although she only returned the latter, so as neither to fall into the _Thou_ nor into the _You_.

Albano, knit with ears and eyes to one soul, could not produce with his lips much more than a smile of bliss; he could more easily have made a hymn than a _bon-mot_, a grace at meat than a dinner speech. For his Liana was to-day too affectionate, so contentedly and exhilaratingly did the sweet maiden look round with such hearty play, acting the chatty, bantering hostess, that a man who saw it and thought of her firm death-belief, would only have been so much the more deeply affected by this dance around the grave with flowers on the head, though he should remark--or rather for the very reason of his remarking--that she was here merely carrying on a joke with jocoseness itself for the sake--according to her new moral funeral arrangement--of sweetening for her beloved every parting-hour, as well the next as the last of all. But this was hard to perceive, because in female souls every show easily becomes reality, whether it be a sad or a gay one.

How happy was her friend and every good being to think that the saint p.r.o.nounced herself blest! And then she became, in turn, still more so.

Thus does the radiance of joy dart to and fro between sympathizing hearts, as between two mirrors, in growing multiplication, and grows without end.

72. CYCLE.

The hour of departure came rolling on with swifter and swifter wheels; more constellations of joy went down than came up. Thus do the blooming vineyards of life always grow green on the ups and downs of a mountainous way, never on a smooth plain. The two lovers needed quiet now, not walks. They took the nearest, the path to the thunder-house.

They stepped into the glimmering vesper-grounds as into a new land; at mid-day man is awakened from one dream after another, and has always forgotten and sees things always new. In Albano the golden splendor of the strings of joy still lingered under the declining sun; he told her gladly, how often he would visit her at her parents', and how he certainly hoped to find them friendly. Liana, as a daughter and a lover, retouched all his hopes with her own. But now she let her hitherto light heart, which had been rocking itself on the flowers of sport, sink back upon the solid ground of earnest.

When there is peace and fulness in a man, he wishes not to enjoy anything else but himself; every motion, even of the body, jostles the full nectar-cup. They hastened out of the loud, lively garden into the still, dark thunder-house. But when, as if parted from the world, which lay out around the windows, brightly glistening and far receding, they stood alone together in the little twilight, and looked upon each other,--and when Albano's soul became like a sun-drunken mountain at evening, light, warm, firm, and fair, and Liana's soul like an up-gus.h.i.+ng spring on the mountain, which glides away purely bright and cool and hidden, and only under the touch of the evening-beam glows in rosy redness,--and now that these souls had just found each other in the wide, unharmonious world,--then did a mighty joy thrill through them like a prayer, and they cast themselves upon each other's hearts, and glowed and wept and looked upon each other exaltedly in the embrace;--and, on the aeolian-harp, suddenly the folding doors of an inspired concert-hall flew open, and outswelling harmonies floated by, and suddenly again the gates shut to.

They seated themselves at the breezy eastern window, before which the mountains of Blumenbuhl and Lilar's hills and paths lay in the sunlight.

Around them was evening shade, and all was still, and the aeolian-harp breathed low. They only looked at each other, and felt joy to their innermost being that they loved and possessed each other. How ecstatically did they look, from the protection of this citadel, down into the sounding, stirring world! Down below the wind blew the blaze of poppies and tulips far and wide, and in among the heavy, yellow harvest.

The silver-poplars, wearing eternal May-snow, fluttered with uptossing splendor; a flock of pigeons went rustling away, and dipped into the blue; and overhead, amid flying clouds, stood those round temples of G.o.d, the mountains, in rows, beside each other, bearing alternate nights and days; and the pious father stood alone on his hill, and handed his roe tender branches.