When Albano came home, he found the following leaf on his table:--
"The P---- decoys thee; she loves thee. With _eclat_ she will send in the next place the M---- back, in order to give bold relief to her virtue, and produce an imposing effect upon thee. Shun her! I love thee, but differently and eternally.
"_Nous nous verrons un jour, mon frere_."
Who wrote it? Not even as to the admission-ticket of this cartel could the servant make any deposition. Who wrote it? Julienne; to this point, at least, all roads of probability converged; only in that case mysteries lay round about him. Significant was the French subscription, which stood in like manner exactly under the picture of his sister, which his father had given him on Isola Bella;[38] but that might be a coincidence. He investigated now these new silver-veins of his Diana-[39] and family-tree by the touchstone of his whole history. His mother and Julienne"s had gone to Italy with his father in one and the same year; both had been uncommon women and mutual friends, and his father the friend of both. There was the possibility of a false step on the part of his father, which had been concealed. Quite as easily might the traces of this error have been shown to Julienne. Then, further, the hypothesis of her sisterly love would throw light on her whole previous winding course; her affectionate interest in Albano; her love-race with the Princess; her correspondence with his father; her enlisting of the Count"s affection for Romeiro, which, as it seemed, heated her quite as much against the Princess as it chilled her toward Liana; above all, the singularity of her love for him, which never unfolded itself further and more openly;--all this gave ground to suspect that it might be only a sister"s kindred blood which blazed so often on her round cheeks, when she had unconsciously gazed at him too long. After this step he made forthwith the leap; he now suspected, also, that she alone had sought to dazzle and delude him into the love of her Linda with the magic mirror of spiritual existences.
As respects the relation of the Princess to the Minister, every word upon that subject was to him a lie. He was quite as reluctant to let himself part with a good opinion of others as a bad one. Ordinary men readily give the good opinion away and hold the bad one fast; weaker ones are easily reconciled, and hardly parted. He was unlike either.
Hitherto he had so easily ascribed in his own mind the Princess"s friendship for the Minister, her visitation journeys with him through the land, and the like, to her manly prudence and foresight, which would fain at once keep watch over the future hereditary land of her brother and hold the key to it; and to this probability, as the Minister accommodated himself equally well to the related parts of a cicerone and an overseer, he still adhered.
The following week brought along a circ.u.mstance, which seemed to throw a greater light into the dark billet.
91. CYCLE.
The promised circ.u.mstance has its root again in older circ.u.mstances which occurred between the Princess and the Minister; these I here premise.
The Minister had been very soon furnished by his friend Bouverot--whose clammy woodp.e.c.k.e.r"s tongue licked off unseen the vermin of all mysteries out of all musty cracks in the throne--with a description of all that the Princess concealed in herself in the shape of Phoenix ashes and rubbish: he had instructed him that she, cold as a piece of ice ground into a convex lens, never would melt herself, but only others; that she was one of those more rare coquettes who, like sweet wines, become sour through warmth, and only sweeter by cold; and that she therefore had about her one of the worst habits,--which made the most grievous jobs for every one. It was, namely, the following: She had a heart, and would never suffer it to lie in her bosom as dead capital; but it must pay interest, and circulate. So the lover became, in the beginning, more wide awake and gay from day to day, then from hour to hour; he knew all by-ways through wood and hollow, all thieves"
paths and shorter cuts in this love-garden regularly by heart, and would foretell the critical[40] quarter of an hour on his repeating watch when he should arrive at the summer-house. It was not by any means unknown to him (but comical) what it signified, that the said lover would pa.s.s with her from sentences to glances, from these to kissing of the hand, then to kissing of the mouth, whereupon he would find himself caught, entrapped, and imprisoned in the Whistonian comet"s-train of her ell-long (or mile-long) hair as in a bird-net (in which, however, the noose was also the berry-bait), and bent up in his prison to such a degree as to know what o"clock it had struck on his repeater. But just then, when all clouds seemed fallen from heaven, he himself would fall out of both into a basket from her;--that was the bad point. In fact, German princes of the oldest houses, who had made all other experiments, saw themselves made immoral, ay, ridiculous, and knew not at all what to think about it; for the Princess openly wondered at such monsters, gave all the world a copy of her challenge, showed all the world the redness and the loftiness of her turkey-hen"s-neck, and suffered such an old tempter of a Prince, or whoever it was, never more in her haughty presence.
As princes (in such cases) know what they want, so of course they spread it about that she knew not what _she_ would have; and often not till long after an hereditary prince came the apanaged brother of the same court, and later the legitimated one. However, the thing remained the same; namely, she remained like the spherical concave mirror, which indeed images behind itself what stands close before it, as large and upright, but so soon as it comes into its focus, makes it invisible, and then out beyond that point hangs it quite diminished and topsy-turvy in the air. Her love was a fever of debility, in which Darwin, Weikard, and other Brownists, by _stimulating_ means--wine, for instance--produce a _slower_ pulse, and even promise therefrom a cure. So far Bouverot to the Minister!
But to the Minister came thereby an inexpressible favor. For princes"
sins jumped not at all with his professional studies and trade. When, therefore, she had decided upon having his understanding and powerful physiognomy near her, and had named him Minister of her most intimate relations in Haarhaar, then was it solemnly laid down and sworn to within him, never, though she were kindness itself, to be the robber of her honor to her straw-widower. In the beginning, like all his predecessors, he got on easily with mere pure feelings and discourses; as yet there was nothing desired of him, except that he should sometimes unexpectedly dart at her a sly look full of loving tenderness; and he must also have a longing. He darted the look; he also got up longings; and so he felt himself comfortably enough insured for such a successful love affair.
But it stopped not here. Hardly had her Albano appeared, when the thorn-girdle and hair-shirt of the pure Minister was made disproportionately more rough and th.o.r.n.y, and the strongest requirements, namely, gifts, redoubled, in order that the poor Joseph might the more speedily a.s.sail her honor and therefore run into his ruin, which should be bait for the Count. By this time he had been already brought along so far that he wove and knotted in her flying hair (to him poisonous snake-hair),--he must needs blow out soap-bubbles of sighs from his pipe,--he must needs quite often be beside himself; yes, he must even (if he would not see himself chased away as a hypocritical rascal) be half-sensual, although still decent enough. Meanwhile he was not to be tempted into a temptation by the Devil himself. Whenever he even thought of the subject, shuddering, how the least misstep might hurl him from his ministerial post, then he would as soon have let himself be impaled and quartered as bewitched.
For a third party, not for these two,--they were the sufferers,--it would perhaps have been a feast, to have seen how they (if I may use a too low comparison) resembled a pair of silk stockings drawn over each other, which for and by each other, when one keeps them distended[41]
at a certain distance, ethereally blow themselves and fill, but immediately collapse, flat and flabby, when they touch each other.
Of course, in the long run, it fell heavily upon the old statesman to have to leap along before the dancing pageantry of love-G.o.ds as their arch-master, tackled into the triumphal car of the Cyprian,--a flower-garland on his state-peruke, in his eyes two Vauclusa fountains, the cavity of his breast a choked-up Dido"s cave, wearing in his b.u.t.ton-hole an arrow in a heart, or a heart on an arrow, and faring toward the capitol, in order there, after the Roman fashion, not so much to sacrifice as to be sacrificed. Nothing except the tin boxes which the government officers and exchequer messengers stowed away for him at home could fan fresh and cool again the stalemated man, who would fain be a checkmated one.
He read with her Catullus, she with him the better pictures out of the Prince"s cabinet; it was allowed him to reward her by his Latinity for her artistic favors: but he remained, nevertheless, as he was.
When women wish to carry a point, and find hindrances constantly recurring, they grow at last blind and wild, and dare anything and everything. The tour to Italy approached so fast; still the Minister was no nearer to letting go his high consideration for his beloved,--although from just her own motive, that of the tour, with the nearness of which he animated himself to a cheerful endurance of so short a flame. Her pa.s.sion for the Count increased with the Count"s tranquillity, because coldness strengthens strong love, just as physical coldness makes strong people more vigorous and weak ones more puny. Froulay, as an old man, was, as it seemed, capable of creeping along so for a whole age to his object, without making one unnecessary leap, since old people, like ships, always move slower the longer they have been going, and on similar grounds, namely, that both, by the adhesion of filth, weeds, barnacles, and the like, have become unwieldy. In short, the Princess at last ceased to ask for anything, but matters went thus:--
The Prince had gone a journey, the Princess had been invited as G.o.d-mother out into the country. The castellain on one of her country castles, who had already the year before invited the Minister, had not been restrained by bashfulness from making his way still farther up on this rope-ladder, with his descendant under his arm, and up there on the throne laying his child of the land in the arms of her, the Princess herself. Princes love to let themselves down--on thin silk-worm threads--(as well as up); they value the good-natured, stupid people, and would fain in this way raise somewhat the poor creeping dwarf-beans,--for they well know how little it matters,--and, so to speak, pole them and boot them by means of the leg of the princely chair. Beside this, the Minister had been invited as grand-G.o.d-father (so called). The autumn day was only a brighter, more perfect spring, and the autumnal night stood under a brilliant full moon. Courts always long so exceedingly to be away in the country, among the idyls of murmuring rivulets, sighing branches, and tree-tops, and bleating Swisseries, and farmers; Courts--that is, courtiers, court-dames and official chamberlains"-staves, and others--yearn so for the society of human beings; as beasts are driven by the December hunger, so does a n.o.ble hunger drive them down from the throne-mountains into the flat plains; not that they would fly from _ennui_, but they desire only a different kind, as their very pastime consists in the abbreviation and alternation of their _ennui_.
Hardly had the Court appeased its first longing for the people with whom it stood for half a quarter of an hour on a confidential, conversational footing, when it came to itself again, and dispersed itself through the princely garden, in order to consume full as long a time in satisfying its longing after nature. A sponsoress of the sponsoress promised Christianity in the stead of Princess and child.
The Princess herself attached the Minister to her as a chamberlain. The grand-G.o.d-father looked out into the prospect of a d--d long evening, in which he should be obliged to parade round her procession-banner.
For the enjoyment of the evening there was a concert, and for the enjoyment of the concert card playing had been arranged; and for the enjoyment of the latter, the Princess had seated herself alone with Froulay, in order, during the general playing of cards and instruments, to have some inaudible conversation with him. Suddenly the two pounds which were hung up in his breast--for no heart, according to the anatomists, weighs more than that--became two hundred-weight heavier, when she asked him whether he was steadfast and could confide in her and dare for her. He swore that, if only as Princess, she might expect of his two-pounder any and every sacrifice and mark of veneration. She went on: she had some weighty things to intrust him with to-day about herself and the Prince; she wished, when the _Foule_ was gone, to speak with him alone; he need only go up the little stairway from the side of the garden to the door of the library-chamber; this was open; in the poetical bookcase on the left side was a spring in the wall, the pressure of which would open to him the tapestry door of the apartment, where he was to await her.
Immediately she rose, presuming upon an affirmative. How it fared now with the two pounds of his sixty-four-ounce-heart can gratify none but his deadly enemy to realize. So much lay written before him with long, thick, stony letters, as on an epitaphium, namely, that after a few hours, when the other lords, in other respects still greater sinners than he, could snore away quietly in the pleasant ministerial houses which formed the court of the Palace, that then for him, innocent knave, the wolf-hour, that is to say, the shepherd"s hour,[42] would so soon strike, when he on the most flowery meadow must kneel beneath the butcher"s knife. But he--angry that his faith in female and princely impudence should prove a soothsayer--made silently all kinds of oaths to himself, that, even if as much were imposed upon him as on the greatest saints and universal philosophers, he would nevertheless behave like both, for instance, like old Zeno and Franz.
The Princess sought him all the evening less than usual. At last he took his respectful leave of the whole court, but with the prospect of creeping, not, like them, under silk quilts, but under cold bowers. He even marched--sure of himself--up the stairway, opened the library-chamber, found the spring, touched it, and stepped through the tapestry door into the princely--bedchamber. "It is certain, then,"
said he, and cursed about him inwardly to his heart"s content, lying prostrate and crushed quite flat beneath the love-letter weight. In the side chamber on the left hand he already heard her and a chambermaid, who was undressing her. On the right the door of a second but lighted chamber stood ajar. He stood long in doubt whether he should step into that, or stay where he was under the light-screen of a dark corner. At last he laid hold of the protection of night. During his suspense and her disrobing, he had time to rehea.r.s.e or read over his part; now he came to an agreement with himself, in case of necessity,--and if he should find himself pushed too hard--and all the more, as the place would speak more against _her_ than against _him_, inasmuch as every one must needs ask, whether he could otherwise have possibly gained admission,--in such a case of necessity, where only the choice between a satire and a satyr was left him, he determined to transform himself on the spot into a respectful--Faun.
Directly the Princess strode in, but in the direction of the illuminated chamber. "I have no further occasion for thee," she called back to the chambermaid. "_Diable!_" screamed she, in the bedchamber, spying out the tall Minister; "who stands there? Hanna, a light!
_Ciel!_" she continued, recognizing him, but continuing to speak French, because Hanna understood nothing of that. "_Mais, Monsieur! Me voila donc compromise! Quelle meprise! Vous vous etes trompe de chambres! Pardonnez, Monsieur, que je sauve les dehors de mon s.e.xe et de mon rang. Comment avez-vous-pu_--" She uttered all this, perhaps, by way of blinding the German witness, with an angry accent. The grand-G.o.dfather--who, after all previous gratifications, felt like a c.o.c.k, who has gulped down many live chafers, and is now threatened with his life by their sticking in his distressed crop--kept not silence, but replied in German, opening the tapestry door, meanwhile, that he had, even as she commanded, laid the books out of the library in the lighted chamber, and had been caught _in transitu_. He went immediately through the tapestry; but she could hardly contain herself for terror, had the physician called in the morning, and sent back her retinue.
Froulay--however much like the Spanish he found his romances, among which, according to Fisher"s a.s.sertion, the thieves" literature is the best--at last did not know, himself, what to make of it.
The chambermaid had to make profession with the vow of silence, which she kept as strictly as she could, but not more so. Next morning very few alighted before their own doors, most before the doors of others, in order to land the news together with the injunction of the Princess not to make the thing _eclatant_, because in that case the Prince would hear of it.
If ever the n.o.bility of Pest.i.tz was happy _en ma.s.se_, it was this very morning. Nothing was wanting to universal joy but a chambermaid who should have only understood as much French as a hunting-dog.
92. CYCLE.
Albano heard the report; the Minister had long appeared to him contaminating, like a cold corpse of a soul; now he hated him still more as a tormenting, blood-sucking dead man. For the Princess his heart had hitherto stood security to him. She was to him a blue day-sky, wherein to others only a hot sun blazes, wherein he, however, through the mysterious depths of the soul and of friendship, had found soft constellations beaming. But now since the rumor, which, like the magicians in the presence of Moses, threw soot into her heaven, she stood, to his eyes, shining under new lights. The hatred which he by his very nature, i. e. from pride, had of all rumor, because it controls and is not to be controlled, worked in him with fresh fire; he resolved, even because Liana must be the daughter either of her hereditary foe or of her lover, and the Princess _her_ rival, to venture freely on the strength of his heart and what it knew, and at this very juncture to communicate openly to the Princess his prayer for her mediation in favor of Liana"s company upon the journey,--in other words, of his heaven.
On the morning after, the Prince came back,--the Princess immediately had her carriage tackled,--toward evening she came with one carriage more into town. The report ran through all card-tables that the Spanish Countess Romeiro had arrived at the Palace. Reports are polypuses; wounding and mutilating only multiplies them; only sticking them into each other makes one out of two: the report of Linda"s arrival swallowed up the report of Froulay"s disgraceful attempt.
But Albano! Like the discovery of a new world, this turned his old one topsy-turvy. Linda, that foreign tropical bird, came flying in advance of his approaching father, who rose before him like a rich land out of the distance,--the soil where he had found so many thorns and flowers soon sank behind him, with all its treasures and days, below the horizon. Only Liana could not vanish with it; that muse of his youth must he lead with him into the land of youth. By those usual magic arts of the heart had Linda"s nearness awakened in him an insuperable longing for Liana.
He was now decided to remind the Princess of her earlier promise to pour the life-balsam of a southern tour upon Liana"s sick nerves, and through her now, betimes, before the confusion of the last pressing moments should prostrate anything, to put the Minister"s lady in tune, and gain her over, who, like all court people, would certainly hardly resist a princely wish and a happy prospect.
If, however, Liana, from any fault of her own or of others, stayed behind, then was it his sworn determination, for no power, not even his father"s, to stir from the native land of his eternal bride; but to root himself before her sick-cloister, until she either pa.s.sed out therefrom free and cheerful again into open life, or buried herself, darkly veiled, in the gloomy nun-choir of the dead. O, to come back to seek her in the romantic grounds of olden time, and to find her nowhere but behind the speech-grating of the hereditary vault,--this was a thought his heart could not endure!
The Princess herself furnished him an opportunity of making his request; she sent him an invitation to an astronomical party at the observatory, through her faithful court-dame Haltermann: "I have to write to you, verbally, merely the following," wrote she. "Come this evening to the observatory; I and my good Haltermann are going thither." This Haltermann, a Fraulein of few charms of spiritual flag-feathers, but of many dogmas and premature wrinkles, had already for years hung indissolubly upon the Princess, keeping everything secret, and favoring all her "make-your-appearances" (_rendez-vous_) by merely saying, "My princess is as pure as gold, and only few know her as I do."
Nothing could happen more propitious to Albano"s wishes. He stood earliest of all on the n.o.ble observatory, in the midst of the lovely night. It was some days after the full moon; that shining world was as yet hidden behind the earth, but the let-on jets of its rays shot up by fits and starts. On all mountain-peaks glimmered even now a pale light, as if the distant morning of super-terrestrial worlds were falling upon them. Through the valleys the light-shunning, black, earthly beast, Night, still stretched himself out, and reared himself up against the mountains. The mountain-castle of Liana was invisible, and showed, like a fixed star, only a light. Suddenly the autumnal purple upon all summits around the castle was bedewed with silver by the moon, and a shower of light came down on the white walls and along the white avenues of the garden; at last, a strange, pale morning, glimmering through all bowers, lay in the garden, as it were the tender gleaming of a high, perfectly pure spirit, who only in the holy, silent night trod the low earth, and then and there sought nothing but the pure, still Liana.
As Albano looked and dreamed and longed, the Princess came up, with her Haltermann. The Professor almost broke himself in two with his salam before them, and allowed the fixed suns no astrological influence upon his erect posture. Albano and the Princess met each other again with an increase of reciprocal warmth. But the first question of the Princess was, whether he had seen the Spanish countess. Indifferently he said, he had been invited by the Princesse since her arrival, but had not gone. "_Ma belle s[oe]ur_ admires her most," continued the Princess; "but she deserves it somewhat. She is majestically built, taller than I, and fair, especially her head, her eye, and her hair. She is, however, more plastically than picturesquely beautiful, rather resembling a Juno or Minerva than a Madonna. But she has her peculiarities. She cannot endure any women, except such as are simple, straightforward, and blindly good; hence her chamber-women live and die for her. Men she holds to be poor creatures, and says she should despise herself if she should ever become the wife or slave of a man; but she seeks them for the sake of information. To the Prince she has unnecessarily, though she was in the right as to the matter of fact, said bitter things. He laughs at it, and says there is nothing she does love, not even children and lap-dogs. You must see her. She reads much; she lives only with the Princesse, and seems, if one may judge by her dress, to count little upon any conquests, at least at our court."
Albano said, many of these traits were truly grand, and broke short off. During the conversation the Professor had diligently arranged and screwed up everything, and was now ready to commence. He remarked upon the bright, bland, summer-like night,--proceeded, after some introductory observations, into the moon, in order to lead the six eyes to the most considerable lunar spots,--foreshadowed, in a preliminary way, several shadows overhead there,--introduced them to the Crater of Bernoulli ("I make use of s.c.r.o.t.er"s nomenclature," said he),--the highest mountain range Dorfel ("it consists, of course, of three summits," said he),--the Landgrave of Hesse-Ca.s.sel ("Hevel, however, calls it Mount h.o.r.eb," said he),--then Mont Blanc, and the ring-mountains in general; and concluded with the sly a.s.surance, that the observatory was, to be sure, still very deficient in instruments.
The Haltermann longed indescribably after the Landgrave of Hesse-Ca.s.sel in the moon, and endeavored to get at the telescope. "It is only a spot in the planet, my child!" said the Princess. "And is the Mont Blanc overhead, then, nothing but a spot, too?" asked she, disappointed. The Princess nodded, and looked into the telescope; the magic moon hung like a piece of day-world close to the gla.s.s. "How its fair, pale light and all its magic pa.s.ses away when it is brought near! as when the future becomes present!" said she, to the astonishment of the Professor, who could never make anything out of the planet excepting precisely when it _was_ near. She interrogated him about Saturn"s ring.
"There are properly two, your Highness; but the observatory just at this time wants an instrument to see it," said he, and aimed again in the direction of the former shot.
Albano saw his life-gardens sparkling round about him with the warm glimmer of an after-spring; and his inner being trembled sweetly and sadly. He took a comet-seeker, and flew round among the stars, towards Blumenbuhl, into the city, up the mountains, only not to the white castle with the illuminated corner-chamber and the little garden. His whole heart turned backward for shame and love before the gate of Paradise.
At this moment, the Haltermann, at a hint to retire, led the way down with the astronomer, in order to favor the Princess with a moment free from witnesses. Albano stood before her, n.o.ble in the moonlight; his eye was radiant; his features showed emotion. She grasped his hand, and said, "We certainly do not misunderstand each other, Count?" He pressed her hand, and his eyes gushed full. "No, Princess!" said he, softly.
"You give me your friendship. I do not deserve it, if I do not trust it entirely. I give you now the proof of my open confidence. You know, perhaps, the history of my fortunes and my loss; you know the Minister." "Alas, alas!" said she; "even your hard history, n.o.ble man, has become familiar to me."
"No!" replied he, pa.s.sionately; "I was more cruel than my fate. I tormented an innocent heart; I made an obedient daughter miserable, sick, and blind. But I have lost her," he continued, with rising emotion, and turned sidewise, in order not to see the glimmering heights of Liana"s residence, "and bear it as I can, but without any secret way to repossession. Only the victim cannot be permitted to bleed to death over yonder, with her stern, narrow-hearted mother. O, the honey-drops of the pleasures, they and Italy"s heaven, might well heal _her_. She dies if she stays, and I stay to look on. Friend, O how great is the favor I ask!"
"Gladly shall it be granted you! Day after to-morrow I visit the mother and daughter, and certainly will decide the latter for the journey, in so far as it depends upon me. I do it, however,--to be frank,--merely out of genuine friendship for you; for the girl does not please me entirely with her mysticism, and certainly does not love as you do. She does everything for people merely from love to G.o.d; and that I do not like."
"Ah, so thought I, too, once; but whom should the pious love, except G.o.d?" said he, absorbed in himself and the night, and in too hyberbolical a style for the taste of the Princess. His glimmering eye hung fast on the white mountain-palace, and spring-times floated down from the moon, and glided to and fro on the illuminated track of his vision; and the beautiful youth wept and pressed ardently the hand of the Princess, without being conscious of either. She respected his heart, and disturbed it not.
At last, they both came down the high stairway, where the astronomer joyfully awaited them, and confessed to both how very much, to speak freely, their attachment and devotion to astronomy not only gladdened, but even animated and inspired him.
"Day after to-morrow, certainly!" With these words, the Princess departed, in order to grant the pensive, full-hearted youth consolation and dreams.
TWENTY-SECOND JUBILEE.