"They please me not, one of them," he said, with severity: "I would give them all away for a single storm of Tempesta"s." Luigi smiled at his scholar-like eye and feeling. When they stepped into the second picture-chamber, Albano heard the Princess going away. As this apartment threatened him with still more rent veils of the _un_holiest, he took his leave without special ceremony, and went back without the Lector, who had to-day to give a reading.
Never did Schoppe grasp his throbbing hand more heartily than this time; the aspect of an abashed young man is almost fairer (especially rarer) than that of an abashed virgin; the former appears more tender and feminine, as the latter appears more strong and manly, by a mixture of the indignation of virtue. Schoppe, who, like Pope, Swift, Boileau, forced into combination a sacred reverence for the s.e.x with cynicism of dress and language, emptied the greatest vials of wrath upon all libertinage, and fell like a satirical Bellona upon the best free people; this time, however, he rather took them under his protection, and said, "The whole tribe love the blush of shame in others decidedly, and defend it more willingly than shamelessness, just as (and on the same kind of grounds) blind persons prefer the _scarlet_ color. One may liken them to _toads_, who set the costly toad-stone (their heart) on no other cloth as they do upon a _red_ one."
The Lector--who with all his purity and correctness would, nevertheless, without hesitation, have helped a Scarron write his ode on the seat of a d.u.c.h.ess--when he would treat the matter of the Count"s flight, was at a loss what to make of it, when the latter sprinkled him with some rose-vinegar, and said, "The bad man"s father is lying on the board, and one lies before his own iron brow: O, the bad man!" Certainly the physical and moral nearness of the two fair female hearts, and his love for them, had done most to excite the Count against Luigi"s artistic cynicism. The Lector merely replied, "He would hear the same at the Minister"s and everywhere; and his false delicacy would very soon surrender." "Do the saints," inquired Schoppe, "dwell only _upon_ the palaces and not _in_ them?" For Froulay"s bore upon its platform a whole row of stone apostles; and on one corner stood a statue of Mary, which was to be seen from Sphex"s house among nothing but roofs.
Youthful Zesara! how does this marble Madonna chase the blood-waves through thy face, as if she were the sister of thy fairer one, or her tutelar and household G.o.ddess! But he took care not to hasten his entrance into this _Lararium_ of his soul, namely, the delivery of his father"s letter of introduction, by a single whisper, for fear of suspicion; so many missteps does the good man make in the very gentile fore-court of love; how shall he stand in the fore-court of the women, or get a footing in the dim Holy of Holies?
32. CYCLE.
The Court now caused to be made known in writing (it could not speak for sorrow) that the dead Nestor had departed this life. I set aside here the lamentation of the city, together with the rejoicing of the same over the new perspective. The Land-physicus Sphex had to eviscerate the Regent like a mighty beast,--whereas we subjects are served up with all our viscera, like snipes and ground-sparrows, on the table of the worms.
At evening, there reposed the pale one on his bed of state,--the princely hat and the whole electrical apparatus of the throne-thunder lay quite as still and cold beside him on a Tabouret; he had the suitable torches and corpse-watchers around him. These Swiss-guards of the dead (the sound of the word rings through me, and I at this moment see Liberty lying on her bed of state in the Alps, and the Swiss guarding her) consist, as is well known, of two regency-counsellors, two counsellors of the exchequer, and so on. One of the exchequer-counsellors was Captain Roquairol. It can be only touched upon here, in the way of interpolation, how this youth, who of financial matters understood little more than a treasury-counsellor in ----h,[52]
arose, nevertheless, to be a counsellor in war-matters there,--namely, against his own will, through old Froulay, who (in himself no very sentimental gentleman) was always reviving and retouching the youthful remembrances of the old Prince, because, in this tender mood, one could get from him by begging what one would. How odious and low! so can a poor prince have not a smile, not a tear, not a happy thought, out of which some court-mendicant, who sees it, will not make a door-handle to open something for himself, or a dagger-handle to inflict a wound; not a sound can he utter which some forester and bugle-master of the chase shall not pervert to the purpose of a mouth-piece and tally-ho.
Julienne, at nine o"clock in the evening, visited the only heart which, in the whole court, beat like hers and for hers,--her good Liana. The latter gladly offered her forehead to her commencing sick-headache, and sought only to feel and to still another"s pain. The friends, who, before strangers" eyes, only displayed pleasantry, and before each other only a tender, enthusiastic seriousness, sank more and more deeply into this mood before the severe and religious lady of the Minister, who never found in Julienne so much soul as in the soft hour after weeping, as stock-gilliflowers begin to scent the air when they are sprinkled.
Not the struggle, but the flight of pain, beautifies the person; hence the countenance of the dead is transfigured, because the agonies have cooled away. The maidens stood enthusiastically together at the window, the waxing moonlight of their fancy was made full moonlight by that of the outer world; they formed the nun"s-plan to live together, and go in and out together for life. Often it seemed to them, in this still hour of emotion (and the thought made them shudder), as if the murmuring wings of departed souls swept by over them (it was only a couple of flies, who, with feet and wings, had caught a few tones on the harp of the Minister"s lady); and Julienne thought most bitterly of her dead father in Lilar.
At last she begged the sister of her soul to ride with her this night to Lilar, and to share and a.s.suage the last and deepest woe of an orphan.
She did it willingly; but the "yes" was hard to extort from the Minister"s lady. I see the gentle forms step, from their long embrace in the carriage, out into the mourning chamber at Lilar,--Julienne, the smaller of the two, with quivering eyes and changing color; Liana, more pale with megrim and mourning, and milder and taller than her companion, having completed her growth in her twelfth year.[53]
Like supernatural beings the two maidens beamed upon Roquairol"s soul, already burning in every corner. A single tear-drop had power to bring into this calcining oven boiling and desolation. Already this whole evening had he been glancing at the old man with fearful shudderings at the childish end of that faded spirit, which once had been as fiery as his own now was; and the longer he looked, so much the thicker smoke-clouds floated from the open crater of the grave over into his green-blooming life, and he heard therein a thundering, and he saw therein an iron hand glowing and threatening to grasp at human hearts.
Amidst these grim dreams, which illuminated every inner stain of his being, and which sternly threatened him that a day would come, when, in his volcano too, there would remain nothing fruitful but the--ashes, the mournful maidens entered, who, on their way, had wept only over the face that had grown _cold_, and now wept still more heavily over the form that had grown _beautiful_; for the hand of death had effaced from it the lines of the last years,--the prominent chin, the fire-mounds of the pa.s.sions, and so many pains underscored with wrinkles, and had, as it were, painted upon the earthly tabernacle the reflection of that fresh, still morning light which now invested the disrobed soul. But upon Julienne a black taffeta-plaster on the eyebrows, which had been left behind by a blow,--this sign of wounds made a more violent impression than all signs of healing: she observed only the tears, but not the words of Liana. "O, how beautifully he rests there!" "But why does he rest?" said her brother, with that voice, murmuring from his innermost being, which she recognized as coming from the amateur-stage; and grasped her hand with agitation, because he and she loved each other fervently, and his lava broke now through the thin crust: "for this reason,--because the heart is cut out of his breast, because the wheel is broken at the cistern, because the fire-wheel of rapture, the fountain-wheel of tears, moves therein no more!"
This cruel allusion to the opening of the body wrought terribly on the sick Liana. She must needs avert her eyes from the covered breast, because the anguish cramped the breath in her lungs; and yet the wild man, desolating others as well as himself, who had hitherto been silent by the side of the stiff corpse-guard, went on with redoubled crushing: "Feel"st thou how painfully this cricket-ball of fate, this Ixion"s wheel of the wishes, rolls within us? Only the breast without a heart is calm."
At once Liana took a longer and more intense look at the corpse; an ice-cold edge, as if of death"s scythe, cut through her burning brain,--the funeral torches (it seemed to her) burned dimmer and dimmer,--then she saw in the corner of the chamber a dark cloud playing and growing up;--then the cloud began to fly, and, full of gushing night, rushed over her eyes,--then the thick night struck deep roots into her wounded eyes, and the affrighted soul could only say, "Ah, brother, I am blind!"
Only hard man, but no woman, will be able to conceive that an aesthetic pleasure at the murderous tragedy found its way into Roquairol"s frightful anguish. Julienne left the dead, and her old sorrow, and, with the new one, flung herself around her neck, and moaned: "O my Liana, my Liana! Seest thou not yet? Do look up at me!" The distracted and distracting brother led on the sister, upon whose pale cheeks only single drops fell like hard, cold water, with the sharp question: "Does no destroying angel, with red wings, whiz through thy night; hurls he no yellow vipers at thy heart, and no sword-fish into thy network of nerves, in order that they may be entangled therein, and whet their saw-teeth in the wounds? I am happy in my pain; such thistles scratch us up,[54] according to good moralists, and smooth us down too. Thou anguish-stricken blind one, what say"st thou,--have I made thee truly miserable again?" "Madman!" said Julienne, "let her alone: thou art destroying her." "O, he is not to blame for that," said Liana; "the headache long since made it misty to my eyes."
The friends took their departure in double darkness, and therein will I leave it with all its agonies. Then Liana begged her maiden to say nothing of it to her mother so little time before sleep, since it might, perhaps, go away in the night. But in vain; the Minister"s lady was accustomed to close her day on the bosom and lips of her daughter. The latter now came in, led along, and sought her mother"s heart with a groping, sidelong motion, and, in this beloved neighborhood, could no longer refrain from a softer weeping; then, indeed, all was betrayed and confessed. The mother first sent for the Doctor before she, with wet eyes and with her gentle arms around her, heard her afflicted daughter"s story. Sphex came, examined the eyes and pulse, and made no more of it than a nervous prostration.
The Minister, who had everywhere in the house leading-hounds with fine--ears, came in, upon being informed; and while Sphex stood by, he made, except long strides, nothing but this little note, "_Voyez, Madame, comme votre le Cain[55] joue son role a merveille_."
As soon as Sphex had gone out, Froulay let loose several billion-pounders and hand-grenades upon his lady. "Such," he observed, "are the consequences of your visionary scheme of education (to be sure his own, in respect to his son, had not turned out specially well). Why did you let the sick ninny go?" He would himself have still more gladly allowed it from courtly views; but men love to blame the faults which they have been saved the trouble of committing; in general, like head-cooks, they had rather apply the knife to the _white_- than to the _dark_-feathered fowl. "_Vous aimez, ce me semble, a anticiper le sort de cette reveuse un peu avant qu"il soit decide de notre._"[56] Her silence only made him the more bitter. "_O, ce sied si bien a votre art cosmetique que de rendre aveugle et de l"etre, le dieu de l"amour s"y prete de modele._" Wounded by this extreme severity,--especially as the Minister himself had chosen and commanded this very _cosmetic_ education of Liana, against the maternal wishes, to gratify his political ones,--the mother had to go and hide and dry her wet eyes in her daughter"s bosom. Married men and the latest literati regard themselves as flints, whose power of giving _light_ is reckoned according to their _sharp corners_. Our forefathers ascribed to a diamond belt the power to kindle love between spouses. I also still find in jewels this power; only this stone (which appertains to the flint species) leaves one, after the marriage-compact, as cold and hard as it is itself. Probably Froulay"s marriage-bond was one of such precious stone.
But the lady only said, "Dear Minister, leave we that! only spare you the sick one." "_Voila precis.e.m.e.nt ce qui fut votre affaire_," said he, laughing scornfully. In vain did Liana eloquently and touchingly pour out to him her mistaken yet moving convictions, (aimed at the wall, however,) and plead for her brother, which everlasting advocacy of all sorts of people (which proved too much) was her only failing;--all in vain, for his sympathy with an afflicted one consisted in nothing but fury against the tormentors, and his love toward Liana showed itself only in hatred of the same. "Peace, fool! But _Monsieur le Cain_ comes not into my house, madam, till further orders!" Out of forbearance, I say nothing further to the old conjugal bully than go--to the devil, or at least to bed.
33. CYCLE.
The German public may still remember the _obligato-sheets_ promised in the Introductory Programme, and ask me what has become of them. The foregoing Cycle was the first, most excellent Public; but see through the matter, how it is with obligato-sheets, and that perhaps as much history lies therein as in any one Cycle, however it may be called.
The Count had not yet learned anything of Liana"s misfortune, when he, with the others, went down to the dinner of the Doctor, who to-day was very hospitable. They found him seized with a most violent fit of laughter, his hands thrust into his sides, and his eyes bent over two little ointment vessels on the table. He stood up, and was quite serious. The fact was, he found in Reil"s Archives of Physiology, that, according to Fourcroy and Vauquelin, tears dye violet-juice green, and therefore contain alkali. In order to prove the proposition and the tears, he had thrown himself into a chair, and laughed in right hearty earnest, so as afterward to cry and get a drop or two for the brine-gauge of the proposition; he would gladly have wrought himself into another kind of emotion, but he understood his own nature, and knew that nothing could be got out of it so,--not a drop.
He left the guests alone a moment,--the lady was not yet to be seen,--Malt sat on an ottoman,--the children had satirical looks,--in short, Impudence dwelt in this house as in her temple. Ridicule had no effect upon the old man, and he only countermanded what displeased himself, not what displeased others.
At length the rosy-cheeked wife of the physician flourished into the apartment,--as preparatory course or preamble of the dinner,--with three or four _esprits_ or _feathers in her cap_,--with a dapple neck-ap.r.o.n,--in a red ball-dress, from which waltzing had taken out the color in which she had rouged,--and with a perforated fancy-fan. If I wished, I could be interested in her; for, touching these _esprits_ (since the _esprit_, like the brain in Embrya, often sets itself upon the brain-pan, and there suns itself), she thought women and partridges were best served up at table with feathers on their heads; touching the fan, she meant to have it understood she had just come from a morning call (whereby she very clearly implied that ladies could no more go through the streets without their fan-stick than joiners without their rule); touching the rest, she knew the guest was a Count. Accordingly, it appears that she belongs to the honorables, who (for the most part), like rattlesnakes, are never better to be enjoyed than when one has previously put the head out of the way; but that we have still time enough to believe, when we come to understand her better.
The beautiful Zesara was for her blind, deaf, dumb, dest.i.tute of smell, taste, feeling; but there are many women whom one cannot, with the greatest pains and tediousness, displease; Schoppe could do it more easily. Sphex, for his own personal predilections, made more out of a cell of fat in Malt than out of the whole cellular texture of a lady, even of his own; like all business people, he held women to be veritable _angels_, whom G.o.d had sent for the ministration of the saints (the business men).
The dinner course began. Augusti, a delicate eater, enjoyed much, and took not only to the fine service, but to the torn napkins; the like of which he had often had in his lap at court, because there, in morals and in linen, rents are preferred to plasters. Soon, as usual, came forth even the outposts and first skirmishes of miserable dishes, the common prophets and forerunners of the best t.i.t-bits, although at a hundred tables I have cursed them, that they did not, like good monthly magazines, give the best pieces first, and the most meagre last. The Doctor had already said to the three boys,--"Galen, Boerhave, Van Swieten, what is the polite way of sitting?" and the three physicians had already shoved three right hands between the waistcoat b.u.t.tons, and three left hands into the waistcoat pockets, and sat waiting, "bolt upright" when good chap-sager was brought in for the dessert Sphex partly expressed pleasure in cheese, partly a horror of it, just as he found it in the way of his shop-business. He remarked, on one hand, how joiners, in their glue-pot, had no better glue than what stood here before them,--it had just that binding quality in a man,--yet he would rather, for his own individual self, with Dr. Junker, apply it externally, like a.r.s.enic; but he also confessed, on the other hand, that the chap-sager for the Lector was poison. "I would pledge myself for it," said he, "that you, if one could examine you, would be found hectic! the long fingers and the long neck speak in my favor, and particularly are white teeth, according to Camper, a bad sign. Persons, on the contrary, who have a set of teeth like my lady there may feel safe."
Augusti smiled, and merely asked the Doctor"s lady, at what time one could best gain access to the Minister.
Such poisonous reflections, as well as cats"-dinners,[57] he gave out, not from satirical malice, but from mere indifference to others, whom, like an honest man, he never suffered in the least to sway him in his actions. With the liberty-cap of the doctor"s hat on his head, he received, from his medical indispensableness, so many academic freedoms, that he, between his four house-walls, ate and acted not more freely than between the showy, bristling pale-work of the court. Did he ever there--I ask that--let a drop of sweet wine pa.s.s his lips without previously drawing out an Ephraimite, which did not itself outlive the probation-day, and hanging it in the gla.s.s, merely to prove before the court whether the Ephraimite therein did not grow black? And if the silver did so, was there not as good as a demonstration of the wine being oversmoked, and could not the physician have _applied_ the whole right neatly, court, sweetness, blackening, poisoning, and oversmoking, if he had been the man to do it?
The Lector"s accidentally inquiring about the time of seeing the Minister was what Albano had to thank for saving him from first learning the painful misfortune in the house of the Minister, or in the presence of the blind girl herself. "You can," answered Sara, the Doctoress, "also despatch the servant; he will subscribe for you all; I, however, pity none as I do the daughter." Now broke loose a storm of questions about the unknown accident. "It is so," began the physician, sulkily; but soon (because he saw in some eyes water for his mill, and because he sought to roll off all medical blame from himself upon Captain Roquairol) he set himself as well as he could to pathetic detail, and lied almost like a sentimentalist. With an un.o.bserved hint to the _affected_ lady, he pushed an empty dish towards her as a lachrymatory, in order that nothing might be lost. From the eclipsed eyes of the vainly struggling youth, this first woe of his life s.n.a.t.c.hed some great drops. "May recovery be possible?" asked Augusti, exceedingly troubled, on account of his connection with the family.
"Certainly; it is a mere affection of the nerves," replied Schoppe, briskly, "and nothing more." Whytt relates, that a lady who had too much acid in her stomach (in the _heart_ it were still worse) saw everything in a _cloud_, as girls do at the approach of sick-headache. Sphex, who had lied only for the sake of pathos and alkali, and who was vexed that the Librarian should have been of his private opinion, answered just as if the latter had not spoken at all. "The highest degree of consumption, Mr. Lector, often winds up with blindness, and it were well, in this case, to prescribe for both. Meanwhile I am acquainted with a certain periodical nervous blindness. I had the case in a lady[58] whom I brought out of it merely by blood-letting, smoke of burnt coffee, and the evening fog from the water; this we are now trying again in the case of our nervous patient. A dutiful physician will, however, always wish the devil would take mother and brother."
In other words, the return of Liana"s periodical malady almost distracted him. Offences against his honor, his love, his sympathy, never wrought the Physicus into a heat; through all such he kept on his glazed frost surtout; but disturbances of his cures heated him even to the degree of flying to pieces; and so are we all a kind of Prince-Rupert"s-drops, which can bear the hammer and never break, till one just breaks off the little thread point, and they fly into a thousand splinters; with Achilles, it was the heel, with Sphex, the medical D."s ring-finger, with me, the writing-finger. The Doctor now shook out the contents of his heart, as some call their gall-bladder; he swore by all the devils he had done more for her than any and every physician,--he had, however, already foreseen that such a stupid education--merely to look well and pray and read and sing--would prove a cursed poor economy,--he had often longed to break the harmonica-bells and tambour-needles,[59]--he had often called the attention of the mother, with sufficient distinctness and without indulgence, to Liana"s so-called charms, and to her sensibility, her bright redness of cheeks, and velvet-soft skin; but had seemed to himself, by so doing, almost to gratify more than to distress her. The only thing that delighted him was, that the maiden had, some years before, caught a deadly sickness from the first holy sacrament, from which he had tried to keep her away, because he had already experienced, in the case of a fourth patient, the most melancholy consequences from this holy act.
To the astonishment of every one my Count took part against all with Roquairol. Ah, thy first spring-storms were even now whirling round imprisoned in thy bosom, without a friendly hand to give them an outlet, and thou wouldst cover thy b.l.o.o.d.y grief! And wast thou not seeking a spirit full of flames, and eyes full of flames for thine own, and wouldst thou not rather have entered into brotherhood with a thundering h.e.l.l-G.o.d than with an insipid pietistical saint, forever gnawing like a moth? Sharply he asks the Doctor, "What have you done with the Prince"s heart?" "I have it not," said Sphex, startled; "it lies in _Tartarus_,[60] although it would have been more profitable to science had one been permitted to put it among one"s preparations; it was large and very singular." He was thinking how often--when he could--he had, as an augur, during the dissection, secretly slipped aside one or another important member--as a princely or a cavalier-robber, _a la minutta_--for his study,--a honey-bag which he gladly cut out for himself with his anatomical honey-knife.
"Has the young lady, then, an unhappy pa.s.sion, or anything of the sort?"
inquired Schoppe. "More than one," said Sphex; "cripples, idiots, young orphans, blind Methusalems,--all these pa.s.sions she has. Sports and young gentlemen, I often say to the old lady, would be better for her health."
But on this point, in the requirement of cheerfulness, I give in to him.
Joy is the only universal tincture which I would prepare; it works uniformly as _antispasmodic.u.m_, as _glutinans_ and _astringens_. The oil of gladness serves as ointment for _burns_ and _chills_ at once. Spring, for example, is a spring-medicine; a country-party, an oyster-medicine; a recreation at the watering-places is, in itself, a gla.s.s of _bitters_; a ball is a _motion_; a carnival, a _course_[61] of medicine;--and hence the seat of the _blest_ is at the same time the seat of the _immortals_.
"Yes, he had finally," the Doctor concluded,--"as they were people of rank,--prescribed a dose of _pride_ (of the meadows), which manifests all the officinal healing powers of joy; taken in a stronger dose, it works fully as well as enjoyment itself, enlivens the pulse, steels the fibres, opens the pores, and chases the blood through the long venous labyrinth.[62] In the case of his weakly lady, such as they saw her there, he had used, he said, this medicament long ago by dresses and a doctor"s rank, and had helped her to her legs thereby. But he would rather cure sixty common women than one distinguished one,--and he should regret, as family physician, merely his receipts and medical opinions, in case, as he certainly believed, the fair Liana should go hence."
The first question which Albano, who never missed anything that was said, put to Augusti on the way back from the Doctor"s, was, What the Doctor"s wife meant by the subscribing servant? He explained it. There is, namely, in Pest.i.tz, as in Leipsic, an observance, that when a man dies or falls into any other misfortune, his family place a blank sheet of paper, with pen and ink, in the entrance-hall, in order that persons, who take and show a nearer interest, may send a lackey thither, to set their names on the paper as well as he knows how; this merchant-like indors.e.m.e.nt of the nearer interest, this descending representative system by means of servants, who are generally, now-a-days, the telegraphs of our hearts, sweetens and alleviates for both cities great sorrow and sympathy through pen and ink.
"What! is that it? O G.o.d!" said Alban, and grew unusually indignant, as if people were forcing servants upon him as chrysographs and business-agents of his feelings. "O ye egotistical jugglers! through the pen of scribbling lackeys do ye pour yourselves out? Lector, I would condole with Satan himself more warmly than thus!"
Why is this veiled spirit so lively and loud? Ah, everything had moved him. Not merely lamentation over poor Liana, persecuted by all the nightly arrows of destiny, entered like iron into his open heart, but also amazement at the gloomy intermingling of fate with his young life.
Roquairol"s ever-recurring expression, "_Breast without a heart_,"
sounded to him as if it must be familiar; at last the converse of the expression came to his thoughts, the word of the Sphinx on the island, "_Heart without a breast_." So, then, even this riddle was solved, and the place fixed, when he was to hear, contrary to every expectation, the prophecy of the loved one; but how incomprehensible,--incomprehensible!
"O yes! Liana she is called, and no G.o.d shall change the name," said his innermost soul. For in earlier years even the most vigorous youth prefers, in maidens, interesting delicacy of health and a tender fulness of feeling and a moisture of the eye,--just as, in general, at Albano"s age, one values the flood (later the ebb) of the eyes too highly, although, too often, like an over-rich inundation, they wash away the seed-corns of the best resolutions;--whereas, at a later period, (because he proposes to himself marriage and housekeeping,) he looks out rather for bright and sharp than after moist eyes, and for cold and healthy blood.
As Albano, for the most part, drew down the fire from his internal clouds on the discharging chains of the harpsichord strings,--seldomer into the Hippocrene of poetry,--so did he now unconsciously make out of his inner _charivari_ a pa.s.sage on the harpsichord. I transpose his fantasy into my fancy in the following manner. On the softest minor-tones the blindness, with its long pains, pa.s.sed by, and in the whispering-gallery of music he heard all the soft sighs of Liana repeated aloud. Then harder minor-tones led him down into Tartarus, to the grave and heart of the friendly old man who had once prayed with him, and then, in this spirit-hour, fell softly, like a dew-drop from heaven, the sound, Liana! With a thunder-clap of ecstasy he fell into the major-key, and asked himself, "This delicate, pure soul could fate promise to thy imperfect heart?" And when he answered himself, that she would perhaps love him, because she could not see him,--for first love is not vain; and when he saw her led by her gigantic brother, and when he thought of the high friendship which he would give and require of _him_; then did his fingers run over the keys in an exalting war-music, and the heavenly hours sounded before him, which he should enjoy, when his two eternal dreams should pa.s.s over livingly out of night into day, and when brother and sister should furnish at once, to his so youthful heart, a loved one and a friend. Here his inner and outer storms softly died away, and the evenly-balanced _temperament_ of the instrument became that of the player....
But a soul like his is more easily appeased with sorrow than with joy.
As if the reality had already arrived, he pressed on still further; indescribably fair and unearthly, he saw Liana"s image trembling in her cup of sorrow; for the crown of thorns easily enn.o.bles a head to a Christ"s head, and the blood of an undeserved wound is a redness on the cheek of the inner man, and the soul which has suffered too much is easily loved too much. The tender Liana appeared to him as already spun into the funeral veil for the Flora of the second world, as the tender limbs of the bee-nymph lie transparently folded over the little breast,--the white form of snow, which had once, in his dream, melted away on his heart, opened the bright little cloud again, and looked, blind and weeping, upon the earth, and said, "Albano, I shall die before I have seen thee."--"And even if thou shouldst never see me," said the dying heart in his breast, "yet will I still love thee. And even if thou shouldst soon pa.s.s away, Liana, still I gladly choose sorrow, and walk faithfully with thee till thou art in heaven."... Heaven and h.e.l.l had both at once drawn aside their curtains before him,--only a few notes, and those the same as before, and only the highest, and that only interruptedly and faintly, could he any longer strike; and at last his hands sank down, and he began to weep, but without too severe pangs,--as the storm which has unburdened itself of its lightnings and thunders stands now over the earth only as a soft, diffused rain.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] One who dedicated a new house (somewhat as we name a ship).
The _gla.s.s fire-bucket_ which _quenched the inner conflagration_ was probably the wine-gla.s.s or beer-tumbler.--TR.
[46] Collegians.--TR.
[47] Provincial Physician.--TR.
[48] According to Camper, hectic patients have very white and fair teeth.