"My heart grew cold as a dog"s nose, and my tongue full of stone.
"As _convictus_ and _confessus_," began thy father, "you can now prophesy your fate." "To be sure," murmured the uncle, pulling out and putting back his handkerchief, taking the picture up and laying it away,--"prophesy, prophesy!" "Meanwhile," thy father continued, "it is freely left with you whether you will, until a nearer investigation, choose, instead of the prison, which belongs to you in consideration of the murder and theft, a milder place, the madhouse, which befits you in consideration of your journey; if you do not choose, then I choose for you." "To the madhouse, to the madhouse!" cried I, "for the sake of true sociability, on my honor. But I make no questions about anything; on the washing-bill of my conscience stands no murder. Do you only burn yourselves white and clean. Your chariot of the sun and triumphal car goes up to the very hub in dung. Countess, let, I pray, everything be cleared up by you in the best manner, and think unceasingly of me, in order to get a father, like the students" father of his country, to be sure, who consists in a hole through the hat."[141] "Step farther back!" said thy father to thy uncle, "the madness is broken out." Upon that the hare made eighteen springs down over thresholds and steps. I executed my own orders of march and halt. Thy father still crawled after me with a licking, flamy look. I charged my eye with poison, and saw him, down below at the door, fall headlong at the stroke."
Albano shuddered, and inquired about the how. Then Schoppe was silent, buried in thought, for a long time, and said, in a troubled tone, "That, to be sure, was only a dream of mine; but so do I now confound dream with reality, and the reverse. I ought to be more moved about Schoppe; he is, after all, an old man, and old men weep like the jester, when it goes down hill." "I will comfort thee now, my friend,"
said Albano, with distracted breast; "I will remove an error from thy faithful heart, and then thou wilt certainly go with me. This Baldhead, our mocker and juggler, is, according to the holy word of my sister, one and the same person with my uncle, and is a ventriloquist."
Schoppe stood for a long time like one dead, as if he had not heard a word. Suddenly, with radiant face and sparkling eye, he threw himself on his knee, and stammered, "Heaven, Heaven! make me mad! The rest I will do." Here he made a wicked neck-wringing motion with his hands, and said, in a tone of restored strength, "I can follow thee." He really could now, but before he had hardly been able to stand. And so Albano led the unhappy, excited friend with heavy heart to his own lodgings.
136. CYCLE.
Albano now left no stone unturned which friendship could lift, for the sake of setting the n.o.ble patient to rights again, and renewing his youth, inwardly and outwardly. Especially did he seek to set up again the bridge over which all his strings were drawn, and which the Knight and his brother had overturned in the presence of Linda, namely, his pride of character, which had been brought so very low by this barbarous humiliation. As only pure brotherly respect and holy worship of a divine relic can softly warm and reanimate a wounded pride, the faithful Albano took this course. But without satisfaction from the Spaniard, the contriver of the mischief and the misleader of the Knight, his backbone, Schoppe said, would never run perpendicular again, and his spinal marrow would remain bent. Only Albano"s duel with the uncle was a fresh draught of cool water to him; he had to have it told over to him several times. His thirsty wish was to be as well as he needed to be in order to fight with the Spaniard, and then, as a madman, to extort from him on a death-bed, whereupon he thought to lay him, the confession of all his tricks and juggleries. "Then," he added, all the time smiling, "it can well be _egal_ to me whether the world is round or angular, and to France is my first step."
Albano had to let this Greek fire of wrath, which in the end worked as a strengthening cure to a body frozen by humiliation, burn deeper and deeper under itself, since every attempt to extinguish merely fed it; only he had to watch, that he did not get a free, solitary moment, to fly off in a blaze and seek out the Spaniard. Albano stirred not day nor night from his sofa-bed, and that for other reasons also. For if Schoppe should be left alone, and his Mordian fall asleep (whom he never woke, because the dog, he said, evidently dreamed, and then went flying and nosing about in ideal worlds, snuffing things whereof in the streets of the actual hardly a trace of a shadow was to be scented), if, then, he should be alone with the quiet animal (for when it was awake he had society enough), and his eye should accidentally fall upon his legs or hands, then would his cold fear creep over him that he might appear to himself as his own apparition, and see his own "I." The looking-gla.s.s had to be overhung, that he might not come across himself.
His nights were sleepless, but dreams moved nakedly and boldly round him. Albano readily devoted to him his own well nights, yet could not drive away any of his friend"s dreams, those spectres which generally flee or sink before the living. They crept and peeped about in the shadows of the corners of the room. Once toward midnight Albano had gone out, and on returning found him just in the act of grasping one hand with the other, and exclaiming, "Whom have I here, man?" "O good, best Schoppe," cried Albano, half in anger, "such irrational plays!
Quite as well might one finger catch the other!" "Yes, to be sure,"
replied he. "But listen," said he softly, and squatted, ducked his head, and pointed with the right index-finger up over his nose into the air, "thou calledst me Schoppe; that is not my name: but I may not utter my real name; the "I" who has been so long seeking me would hear it, and come stalking along,--a long gravestone lies on the name.
Schoppe or _Scioppius_ I could very well call myself, because my many-named namesake and name-father (it is all found in Bayle) called himself, now so, now so, now Junipere d"Amone, now Denig Bargas, or Grosippe, or Krigsoder, Sotelo, and now Hay. I must appear to have wholly forgotten that the man was, after all, veritable t.i.tular Prince of Athens and Duke of Thebes by Ottoman chancery and grace, if I should choose to remain Maltese Librarian. In fact, I used to go from one hotel to another with many a name, which magnificently played with and played upon the "I," that forever hunted and haunted me; for example, Lowenskiould, Leibgeber, Graul, Schoppe, too, Mordian (which I afterward gave my dog), Sacramentierer, and once _huleu_,--many I may have entirely forgotten. The true one," said he, shyly whispering, "is a ss or S--s,[142]--give me a _third_ hand here. The name is cut out of grave-clothes, and I lie therein already buried in the ground. "I am I." Such were the last words of the fine old Swift, who otherwise said little in his long madness. I might not venture, however, to be so much myself as that. Well, courage! Infinite Wisdom has created all,--madness, too,--in the lump. Only G.o.d grant, that G.o.d may never say to himself, "I!" The universe would tremble to pieces, I believe; for G.o.d finds no third hand."
Albano shuddered at the sense of this nonsense. Schoppe seemed ice; then he threw himself suddenly on the brotherly bosom; neither said aught upon the subject, and Albano began sunny descriptions of the happy Hesperia.
Thus patiently and solitarily did he spend with his sick friend, in nursing, indulging, caressing, the days which he would gladly have made use of for his flight out of Germany; and loved him more and more pa.s.sionately, the more he did and endured in his behalf. He absolutely would not suffer it at the hand of fate, that such a world full of ideas should approach its conflagration, and so free a heart, full of honesty, its last beating. Schoppe had in the youth"s heart even a greater realm than Dian; for he took life more freely, deeply, greatly, bravely; and if the law of Dian"s life was beauty, his was freedom, and he tended, like our solar system, to the constellation Hercules.
Notwithstanding all entreaties, he took no medicines from Dr. Sphex; for he had already, he said, committed his case to an old, well-known pract.i.tioner and circuit-physician, Time. He readily allowed Sphex to draw up a recipe, to bring it; willingly looked it through, disputed about the contents, remarked it was easier to _be_ sanitary-counsel than to give it, and he saw, indeed, that he hit his case, because he pursued a weakening treatment, which was the first thing with crazy people; he added, however, that reason was not just the thing he desired, but only a couple of valiant shanks to walk with and stand upon, and a couple of arms well filled out to strike home withal; and for the rest, he told him he did not like him, because he cut up dogs.
Albano, too, at last, took the position, that, if Schoppe could only get muscular strength again for a social journey with him, then the frenzy-dream into which the unsocial one had thrown him would readily fly away of itself.
Schoppe was always flying out at the Doctor particularly. Once the latter said: "Follow, if not me, at least your second self," and pointed to Albano. "To the Devil," he replied, "with my second self,--that may be you: I feel shy enough of you to make it probable,--but he, there, is certainly, I have every reason to hope, hardly my sixth, twentieth self, or the like."
Meanwhile Sphex stuck to his opinion, that his sthenic sleeplessness, which was alternately the daughter and the mother of his fever-visions, especially of the Baldhead, barred up the way to relief, and must be conquered by weakening processes. When one day Dian, who often visited his friend Albano, heard this, he asked, why one would not deceive and cure him directly with the tidings of the Spaniard having travelled off for fear of him, say to France. Albano replied: "Truly I should be glad to say it, but I cannot; I could as soon will to tell a lie to G.o.d or myself." "Whims!" said Dian; "I"ll tell him myself." "Just what I had expected of that Spaniard," replied Schoppe to the official recipe-falsehood. When Dian had gone out, he asked Albano: "Do I not sit now much cooler and more icy here? And, truly, since hearing that the Baldhead is in France, I have become almost a new man. Of course I am lying, but Dian lied first."
At last the physician resolved to mix at once a sleeping potion in his drink. Albano allowed it. Schoppe got it; glowed and phantasied for a s.p.a.ce of some minutes; at last the mist of sleep came up and soon covered the patient over.
Albano, then, after so long a time, visited again the green of the earth and the blue of heaven, and his Dian in Lilar. What a transformation had taken place in the interval; how had things been confounded, and changed places, with each other! How many leaves had become budgeons again! And many a foam of life which had once gladdened him with its whiteness and delicacy and lightsomeness, now chilled his bosom like gray, heavy water, and he had retained almost nothing except his courage to meet life. At Dian"s he heard of new changes, of the Prince"s approaching death, of Idoine"s approaching visit to her sister in antic.i.p.ation of the bereavement. In what a strange bewilderment did his soul open its eyes out of its winter-sleep into the warm sunshine which this image of Liana diffused over his life! In many a still night by Schoppe"s ghostly tent had he already, since Julienne for the first time let him see the apparition of this peace-angel without the veil, beheld the olden time and former love come up again like a heaven of distant stars, and in the clear-obscure of dreams disrobed of sleep he saw on the sea of time a far, far-off island,--whether behind him or before him, he knew not,--where a white, averted form, resembling or suggesting Liana"s, hovered and sang as an echo of the olden strain.
Now close upon the death-month of the brother followed the death-month of the sister Liana. Were it possible that the celestial one would step out again from the still mirror of the second world and out of its immeasurable distances, into this earthly atmosphere, and after her transfiguration again walk embodied here below?
But friendship demanded room for its sorrows, and these cloud-images were soon covered over or destroyed by it. He could not find courage in his heart, however much he wished it, to demand of Schoppe, or even to receive from him, a description of that healing-night, in which Idoine had been Liana; and yet this form was the only live-playing jewel in the death-ring on the skeleton of stern time, which stood before him.
What days! What the graves had not stolen from him and swallowed up, the earth had s.n.a.t.c.hed away, and Gaspard, once his exalted father on a serene throne of the heavens, had now appeared to his fancy with frightful h.e.l.l-powers and weapons down below, sitting on a throne of the abyss.
So much the more mildly did he feel, flowing around him, when he was in Dian"s house, the stiller presence, the thought of the reposing friend, the sight of the neighboring Dream-temple, where Liana had once been Idoine, and the annunciation that the living image of the loved one was drawing near. He portrayed to himself the sweet and bitter terror of her apparition before him; for as in the stream the bending flower sketches not only its _form_, but its _shadow_ also, so is she Liana"s beautiful form and shadow at once, and in the living one would a lost and a glorified appear to him at the same time.
In this dreamy chiaroscuro and evening twilight, made up of past and future flowing together, he came back to his house. A sharp lightning-flash darted white across the dreamy redness. His Schoppe had, after a few minutes of forced sleep, wildly started up and madly sprung out, n.o.body knew whither. The doctor came, and said decisively, either he had thrown himself overboard or everybody else; he had run wildly away, and had taken his sword-cane with him, too.
THIRTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
Schoppe"s Discoveries.--Liana.--The Chapel of the Cross.--Schoppe and the "I" and the Uncle.
137. CYCLE.
As Schoppe had taken with him his great sword-cane, Albano presumed he had gone after the Spaniard, as destroying-angel. He hurried to his uncle"s hotel. A servant told him a red cloak with a thick cane had been there, and desired to be admitted to the gentleman, but that they had despatched him, according to the directions of the latter, to the palace, and meanwhile the gentleman had posted off to the Prince"s garden to meet his strong brother. Albano asked, "Who is the strong brother?" "His Excellency your father," replied the servant. Albano hastened to the palace. Here all was haste and confusion about the sickbed of the Prince, who threatened soon to exchange it for the bed of state. Hurrying servants met him. One could tell him he had seen a red mantle go into the great mirror-room. Albano stepped in; it was empty, but full of strange traces. A great mirror lay on the floor, an arras door behind stood open, an open souvenir, wheels, and articles of female apparel, were scattered about an old waxen head. It seemed to him he saw something he had seen before, and yet could not name to himself. Suddenly he beheld in a corner-mirror a second reflection of himself far in behind the image of his youthful face, but covered with age, and similar to the waxen head. He looked round him, a relieved cylindrical mirror unlocked to him, as it were, time itself, and he saw in its depths his gray old age.
Shuddering, he left the singular apartment. A gentlewoman of Julienne came across his way. She could tell him that she had seen the "Profile-cutter," in a red mantle, with a pocket spy-gla.s.s in his hand, go out across the castle yard. He hastened after, when Augusti came to meet him below the gate, with the request of the Prince, that he would visit him once more. "Cannot possibly now; I must first have my crazy Schoppe again," replied he. In his bosom no one lived but his friend; moreover, he took the Prince, in this case, to be only the mask of his talkative sister. "I saw him on the way to Blumenbuhl," said the Lector. He darted off. At the gate, Augusti"s intelligence was confirmed by the guard.
On the road to Blumenbuhl he was met by the carriage of the court chaplain, Spener, who was on his way to the Prince. Albano asked after Schoppe. Spener informed him he had talked with him for some time before a solitary house, where he had stopped an hour for the sake of a sick old penitent daughter; had found him well, uncommonly sensible, only older and more reserved than usual. To the question as to his route, the court chaplain replied he had gone toward the city. This appeared to him impossible, but Spener"s people confirmed the story, and spoke of the man as wearing a green coat. Albano spoke of a red cloak; Spener and all the rest stuck to the green coat.
He turned back to his own house, where, perhaps, he thought, Schoppe might be seeking and awaiting him. The bondman of the Doctor, the lank Malt, ran to meet him with the intelligence that Herr von Augusti had just been looking for him, and that the sick gentleman had gone out at the old gate in a new green coat. It was the street to the Prince"s garden, which, according to Albano"s presumption, he had certainly taken, so soon as he had been informed of the Spaniard"s having taken the same. Out of doors it was confirmed by Falterle, who related how he had, in his way out, overtaken him, and immediately inquired: "Whither so fast, Mr. Librarian?" whereupon he had stood still, looked at him seriously, and given the answer, "Who are you? You are mad," and then hastened on. Albano inquired about the dress. "In green," replied Falterle. Now his way was decided. The loitering rider could even avouch that the uncle had previously taken the same.
Late in the evening Albano arrived at the Prince"s garden. He saw some carriages at the yard of the little garden castle. At last people of his father"s met him, who could tell him Schoppe had walked about, tranquil and cheerful, for some time in the garden, with a Mr. von Hafenreffer of Haarhaar, and had gone with him to the city. "With a man he has, to be sure, a guardian genius and keeper again," thought Albano, and the cold rain which had hitherto annoyed him pa.s.sed away, although the heavens still remained dull. With his agitated heart, surrounded as it was in this landscape only by a dark horizon, he shunned all society, and therefore now the pleasure-castle. Pa.s.sing by at a distance, he ventured to cast mournful glance at the island of slumber, where Roquairol"s grave-hill, like a burnt-out volcano, was to be seen near the white Sphinx. "There, at last, lies the ungovernable balance-wheel, broken and still, lifted out of the stream of time; only with the grave closed the Ja.n.u.s-temple of thy life, thou tormented and tormenting spirit," thought Albano, full of pity, for he had once loved the dead one so much. Over on the garden-mountain, with the linden-tree, reposed the gentle sister, the friendly, lovely angel of peace, amidst the war-din of life,--she, eternal peace, as he, eternal war. He determined to go up thither, and to be alone with the bride of heaven, and to seek out, on the soil consecrated to flowers, the bed beneath which her flower-ashes lay covered up from storms. At the mere thought of such a purpose, streams of tears, like sorrows, burst from his eyes; for he had been dissolved into dreaminess by his previous night-vigils and anxieties, and by so many a misfortune, too, which in so short a time had pierced through his fair, firm life, from one end to the other, with poisonous sting and tooth.
As he went up the hill in the yet moonless, but richly starred twilight, wherein the evening star was the only moon, as it were a smaller mirror of the sun, he saw a couple of gray-clad persons make earnest signs out of the Prince"s garden, as if they would forbid his proceeding. He went on unconcerned; indeed, he did not even know whether his brain, glowing from its vigils and agitated by the shocks of life, did not cause these forms to flutter before him, as out of a concave mirror.
As if he were entering a roofless, Grecian temple, so did he step into the holy cloister-garden of the still nun, wherein the linden-tree spoke loud, and the silent flowers, like children, played above the reposing one, and nodded and rocked. High and far stretched the starry arches, like glimmering triumphal arches, over the little spot of earth, over the hallowed spot, where Liana"s mortal veil, the little luminous and rosy cloud, had sunk down, when it had no longer to bear the angel, who had gone up into the ether, and needed no cloud any more. Suddenly the shuddering Albano beheld the white form of Liana leaning against the linden, and turned toward the evening star and the ruddy evening glow. Long did he contemplate, in the averted form, the heavenly descending facial line with which Liana had so often unconsciously stood as a saint beside him. He still believed some dream, the Proteus of man"s past, had drawn down the airy image from heaven, and made it play before him, and he expected to see it pa.s.s away. It lingered, though quiet and mute. Kneeling down, as before the open gate of the wide, long heaven full of transfiguration and divinity, and as if he had been caught up out of these earthly vales, he exclaimed, "Apparition, comest thou from G.o.d? art thou Liana?" and it seemed to him as if he were dying.
Quickly the white form looked round, and saw the youth. She rose slowly, and said, "My name is Idoine; I am innocent of the cruel deception, most unhappy youth." Then he covered his eyes, from a sudden, sharp pang at the return of the cold, heavy reality. Thereupon he looked at the fair maiden again, and his whole being trembled at her glorified resemblance to the departed. So smiled once Liana"s delicate mouth in love and sorrow; so opened her mild eye; so fell her fine hair around a dazzling-white, sweet face; so was her whole beautiful soul and life painted upon her countenance. Only Idoine stood there greater, like a risen one, prouder and taller her stature, paler her complexion, more thoughtful the maidenly brow. She could not, when he looked upon her so silently and comparingly, repress her sympathy for the deceived and unhappy one, and she wept, and he too.
"Do I, too, distress you?" said he, in the highest emotion. With the tone of the virgin who lay beneath the flowers, Idoine innocently said, "I only weep that I am not Liana." Quickly she added, "Ah, this place is so holy, and yet the human heart is not enough so." He understood not her self-reproach. Reverence and openheartedness and inspiration mastered him; life stood up and stood out shining from the narrow bounds of troublous reality, as out of a coffin; heaven came down nearer with its lofty stars, and the two stood in the midst of them.
"n.o.ble Princess," said he, "we have neither of us any apology to make here; the holy spot, like a second world, takes away all sense of mutual strangeness. Idoine, I know that you once gave me peace; and, before the hidden tabernacle of the spirit in whose sense you spoke, I here thank you."
Idoine answered, "I did it without knowing you, and therefore I could allow myself the short use or abuse of a fleeting resemblance. Had it depended upon me, I certainly never would have so painfully awakened your recollections with so insignificant a resemblance as an external one is. But her heart deserves your remembrance and your sorrow. They wrote me you were no longer in the linden city." She sought now to hasten her departure. "In a few days," he answered, "I, too, shall travel. I seek comfort in war from the peace of the grave, and the solitude which makes my life still." "Earnest activity, believe me, always reconciles one with life at last," said Idoine; but the tranquil words were borne by a trembling voice, for, by help of her sister, she had got a sight of the whole gray, rainy land of his present existence, and her heart was full of deep sympathy for her kind.
Here he looked at her sharply; her nun-like eyelids, which always, during her speaking, drooped over the whole of her large eyes, made her so like a slumbering saint. He was reminded by her last words of her beneficent life in Arcadia, where the gay flower-dust of her ideas and dreams, unlike the heavy, dead gold-dust of mere riches, lightly fluttering round in cheerful life, enlivening all with un.o.bserved influence, at length displayed its fruit in firm woods and gardens on the earth. Everything within him loved her, and cried, "She only could be thy last as well as thy first love"; and his whole heart, opened by wounds, was unfolded to the still soul. But a serious, severe spirit closed it again: "Unhappy one, love no one again; for a dark, destroying angel goes behind thy love with a sword, and whatever rosy lip thou pressest to thine he touches with the sharp edge or poisoned point, and it withers or bleeds to death!"
He saw already the glitter of this sword glide through the long darkness; for Idoine had made a vow never to stretch out her hand in the covenant of love below her princely rank. So stood the two beside each other, separate in one heaven, a sun and a moon, divided by an earth. She hastened her departure. Albano thought it not right to accompany her, as he now divined that the gray-clad persons who had beckoned him back were her servants, placed there to guard her solitude. She offered him her hand at the garden-gate, and said, "May you live to be more happy, dear Count; one day I hope to find you again as happy as you ought to make yourself." The touch of the hand, like that of a heavenly one offering itself out of the clouds, streamed through him with a glorified fire from that world where risen ones hover, light and luminous, and the lofty, awe-awakening form inspired his heart. He could not say what he subdued and buried within him, but neither could he say any other cold, disguised word. He knelt down, pressed her hand to his bosom, looked with tears to the starry heaven, and only said, "Peace, all-gracious one!" Idoine turned hastily away, and, after a few swift steps, pa.s.sed slowly down the little hill into the Prince"s garden.
A few minutes after, he saw the torches of her carriage fly through the night, in which she loved to brave the danger of travelling. Around the hill it was dark; the evening redness and the evening star had gone down; the earth was a smoke and rubbish-heap of night; a mausoleum of clouds reared itself on the horizon. But in Albano there was a certain incomprehensible gladness, a luminous point in the darkness of the heart; and, as he looked upon the gleaming atom, it spread itself out, became a splendor, a world, a boundless and endless sun. Now he recognized it; it was the real infinite and divine love, which can be still and suffer, because it knows only _one_ good, but not its own.
He was rejoiced at having veiled his breast, and at his resolve not to see her again in the city. "So silently," he said, half praying, half aloud, "will I love her forever. Her peace, her bliss, her fair aspiration, shall be ever holy to me, and her form hidden from me, and remote as that of her heavenly sister; but when the battle for right begins, and the tones of music flutter with the banners in the air, and the heart beats more eagerly, to bleed more profusely, then let thy form, O Idoine, hover before me in the heavens, and I will fight for thee; and if, in the tumult, an unknown destroying angel draws the poisoned edge across my breast, then will I hold thee fast in my fainting heart till the earth is to me no more.".
He looked round serenely, after this prayer, at the churchyard of the virgin heart; he felt that Liana alone might be permitted to know, and that she would bless it.
138. CYCLE.
Albano could not spend a night in a region where the single columns and arches of the ruined sun-temple of his youth lay scattered round; but he betook himself, in a mournfully dreamy mood, toward the city. On the road he found the Provincial Director Wehrfritz on horseback, who was in quest of him. "Respected son," said he, "there have come to my hands the weightest things from thy intimate friend Mr. Schoppe, which I, in turn, have to deliver only into thine own, which I accordingly hereby make haste to do; for, by Heaven, I have little spare time. The Prince has dropped off this evening, from fright, because somebody said his old father, who had promised to appear to him a second time as a sign of his death, was to be seen in the mirror-room, which, however, I hear, turned out to be only something of wax. The articles which I have to deliver up are, first, a perspective-gla.s.s, wherewith thou wilt see thy mother and sister painted (I use carefully Mr. Schoppe"s own expressions); secondly, a written packet addressed to "Albano, foster-son of Wehrfritz," half of which is still enclosed in a black, broken marble slab; and, thirdly, thy portrait." The portrait resembled Albano at his present age, it was discovered,--so far as the stars permitted one to see,--though, in fact, he had never let himself be painted. The black marble slab and the perspective-gla.s.s brought before his soul his father"s prophecy on Isola Bella,[143]--that a female form would step toward him out of the wall of a picture-gallery, and describe to him a place where he was to find the black slab, having previously shown him one where he should find the telescope, of which the eye-gla.s.s would make for him, out of the old image of his sister, a young recognizable one, and the object-gla.s.s, out of the young image of his mother, an old recognizable one.
Albano put anxious questions about Schoppe and the history of the finding of the rare freight. "With Herr Schoppe it fares well enough,"
said Wehrfritz; "he must be somewhere in the neighborhood with a strange gentleman." Albano inquired after his dress; this, to his astonishment, had grown out of a green into a red again. Hardly had Wehrfritz begun giving the wonderful history how Schoppe came by those wonderful things, when Albano, who gathered therefrom the solution of the paternal prophecy, in the eagerness of his expectation interrupted the intelligence with the request that he would accompany him to the neighboring Chapel of the Cross, around which several lanterns stood.
He had both medallions always with him, and was now so curious to see the face of his mother through the object-gla.s.s, as well as to read the paper.
At the outermost lantern they stopped. Albano took out the medallion of the decrepit form, under which was inscribed, "_Nous nous verrons un jour, mon frere_"; he surveyed it through the eye-gla.s.s; behold, the old face was the young one of his Julienne. Confidently he held the age-imparting gla.s.s to the young image, under which was inscribed, "_Nous ne nous verrons jamais, mon fils_"; there appeared a friendly old face, smiling across out of a long life, whose original lay, as having been seen by him, in a deep, dark memory, but nameless; of Linda"s mother it had, however, no feature.
All at once he heard a familiar voice: "_Ecco, ecco!_[144] my nephew, sir!" It was Albano"s uncle, who seemed to drag along the black-dressed, wailing Schoppe, and weepingly addressed his nephew: "Ah, _neveu!_ O, I speak the truth, only truth _pour jamais_." He looked laughing, and thought he wept. The black coat stepped nearer, become a green coat, and said, "Sir Count, don"t let yourself be deceived a minute; our acquaintance begins with a mutual loss." "My Schoppe," said Albano, agitated, "knowest thou me no more?" "O that I were he now! My name is Siebenkas," replied the green coat, and threw up his hands into the air in token of lamentation. "He lies there, however, in the chapel," said the Spaniard; "I will relate all so truly that it is beautiful." Albano cast a glance into the chapel, and, with a cry of pain, fell headlong.
139. CYCLE.