Titan: A Romance Volume I Part 14

Never was he more gentle. The attentive Lector, in this warm, fruitful seed-time, threw in some good seed. He said, as they looked out together into the moonlit night, Albano had this evening hardly brought forward anything but th.o.r.n.y and exaggerated truths, which only imbitter, but do not enlighten. At another time the Count would have asked him whether he should have carried himself like Froulay and Bouverot, who, with all possible tolerance, presented theses and ant.i.theses to each other, like an academical respondent and opponent, who previously prepare in concert logical wounds and plasters of equal length;--but to-day he was very kindly disposed towards him. Augusti had so delicately and affectionately cared for mother and daughter,--he had, without blackening or whitewashing, said much good, but nothing hastily, and his expositions had been calmly listened to: he had neither flattered nor offended. Albano, therefore, replied, softly: "But it is surely better to imbitter, dear Augusti, than to put to sleep. And to whom shall I then say the truth but to those who have it not nor any faith in it?

Surely not to others." "One can speak any truth," said he, "but one cannot reckon as truth every mode and mood in which he speaks it."

"Ah!" said Albano, and looked up; beneath the starry heaven stood the marble Madonna of the palace, like a patron saint, softly illuminated,--and he thought of her sister,[81]--and of Lilar,--and of spring,--and of many dreams,--and how full his heart was of eternal love, and that he had as yet no friend and no loved one.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] Lit. "Let themselves be struck dead thereupon," i. e. lay their life that it was so. We have a vulgarism: "I'll be shot if it's not so."--TR.

[71] _Blase-locher_, mouth-pieces.--TR.

[72] _Honnetete_ entirely excludes, in the higher cla.s.ses, murder; _des honnetete_, lying, &c., except in a _certain_ degree.

[73] This court is Catholic, but the country Lutheran; and to this latter confession that of Hohenfliess also subscribes.

[74] Or convocations every fifteen years.--TR.

[75] A departing graduate.--TR.

[76] See Count Lamberg's Day-book of a Man of the World.

[77] Whoever goes to the Academy of the Arcadians, takes an Arcadian name.

[78] One who watches the card and takes up the money at the bank.--TR.

[79] Give us our daily bread, and forgive us our debts.--[? TR.]

[80] Lanzknecht.--TR.

[81] Liana.--TR.

EIGHTH JUBILEE.

LE PEt.i.t LEVER OF DR. SPHEX.--PATH TO LILAR.--WOODLAND-BRIDGE.--THE MORNING IN ARCADIA.--CHARITON.--LIANA'S LETTER AND PSALM OF GRAt.i.tUDE.--SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH A GARDEN.--THE FLUTE-DELL.--CONCERNING THE REALITY OF THE IDEAL.

41. CYCLE.

I Sat up all last night till towards morning,--for I cannot suffer any strange _dechiffreur_ in the case,--in order to cipher out the Jubilee to the very last word, so enchained was I by its charms; I hope, however, as the mere thin leaf-skeleton from Hafenreffer's hand has already done so much, that now, when I run through its veins with sap-colors and glossy green, the leaf will do absolute miracles.

With the Count it had been troubled weather since last evening. For the patient, modest form which he had seen shone, like the purpose of a great deed, before all the images of his soul; and in his dreams, and before he sank to slumber, her gentle voice became the Philomela of a spring-night. Withal, he heard them continually talking about her, especially the Doctor, who every morning announced further progress of the ocular cure, and at last placed Liana's setting out for Lilar nearer and nearer. To hear of a loved one, however, even the most indifferent thing, is far mightier than to think of her. He heard further, that her brother, since the murder of her eyes, had withdrawn entirely from the city, in which he would not again appear except on a so-called festive-steed at the Prince's funeral;--and around this Eden, or rather around its creatress, so high a garden-wall had been run, and he went round the wall and found no gate.

I know nothing more odious than this; but in what residence-city is it otherwise? If I ever wrote a Romance (of which there is no probability), one thing I affirm openly, there is nothing which I would so sedulously shun as a residence-city, and a heroine in it saintly enough for a canoness. For the conjunction of the upper planets is more easily brought about than that of the upper cla.s.s of lovers. Does _he_ wish to speak alone with _her_ at Court or at tea or in her family, there stands the Court, the tea-party, the family close by;--will he meet her in the park, she rides, like the Chinese couriers, double, because we give a consciousness to maidens, as nature gives all important organs, duplicate, just as we give good wine double bottom;--will he meet her at least accidentally in the street, then there stalks along behind her (if the street lies in Dresden), a sour servant as her plague-vinegar, soul-keeper, _curator s.e.xus_, _chevalier d'honneur_, genius of Socrates, contradictor, and Pestilentiary. In the country, on the other hand, the parson's daughter takes a run (that is all), because the evening is so heavenly, about the fields of the parsonage, and the candidate needs do nothing more than put on his boots. Really, among people of rank, the mantle of (erotic) love seems in the beginning to be a Dr. Faust's mantle, which swears to soar over everything, whereas it merely covers over everything; only, at last, there stands a Schreckhorn, a Mount Pilate, and a Jungfrau, before one's nose.

Blessed hero! On Friday came the Lector, and reported, that on Monday the ill.u.s.trious deceased--namely, his empty coffin--is to be buried, and Roquairol rides the festive-steed,--and Liana is almost well, for she goes with the Minister's lady to-morrow to Lilar, in all probability to escape some sad black-bordered notes of condolence,--and, on the following ascension-day comes the consecration and masquerade....

Blessed hero! I repeat. For hitherto what hast thou possessed of the blooming vale of Tempe, except the barren heights whereon thou stood'st looking down into the enchantment?

42. CYCLE.

On the May-Sat.u.r.day-evening, at 7 o'clock, every vapor disappeared from the sky, and the brightly departing sun went to meet a glorious Sunday.

Albano, who then, at length, meant to visit the unseen Lilar, was, on the evening before, as sacredly happy as if he were celebrating confession eve before the first holy supper;--his sleep was one constant ecstasy and awaking, and in every dream a mimic Sunday morning rose, and the future became the dark prelude of the present.

Early on Sunday he was about to sally forth, when he had to pa.s.s by the half-gla.s.s door of the Doctor. "Sir Count, one moment!" cried he. When he entered, the Doctor said, "Directly, dear Sir Count!" and went on with what he was about. To the painters, who, in future centuries, will draw from me as they have hitherto from Homer, I present the following group of the Doctor as a treasure; he lay on his left side; Galen was smoothing down his father's back with a little scratch-brush, while Boerhave stood near him with a broad comb, and kept dragging that instrument perpendicularly (not obliquely) through the hair. He always said he knew nothing that cheered him up so, and was such a good aperient, as brush and comb. Before the bed stood Van Swieten in a thick fur, which the correctioner had to wear when the weather was warm and his behavior bad, in order that he might, thus arrayed, be laughed at, as well as half roasted.

Two girls stood waiting there in full Sunday gala, and were thinking of going out into the country to see a parson's daughter, and to the village church; these he first mauled, limb by limb, with the hammer of the law. He loved to make his children antipodes of Romish defendants, who appear in rags and tatters, and so he set them in the pillory, all ruffled and ta.s.selled, especially before strangers. The Count had already this long time, on the red children's account, been standing with his face turned toward the open window; he could not, however, refrain from saying, in Latin, "Were he his child, he would long ago have made way with himself; he knew nothing more degrading than to be scolded in finery." "It takes so much the deeper hold," said Sphex, in German, and fired only these few farewell shots after the girls: "You are a pair of geese, and will do nothing in church but just cackle about your rags and tags; why don't you mind the parson? He is an a.s.s, but he preaches well enough for you she-a.s.ses; in the evening do you tell me every word of the sermon."

"Here is a laxative drink, Sir Count, which, as you are going to Lilar, I beg you to give the Architect's lady for her little toads; but don't take it ill!" By the deuse! that is what precisely those people most frequently say, who, themselves, never take anything ill. The Count,--who at another time would have contemptuously turned his back upon him,--now blushing and silent before the preserver of his Liana, put it into his pocket, because, too, it was for the children of his beloved Dian, to whose spouse he wished to bear greetings and news.

43. CYCLE.

Lilar is not, like so many princely gardens, a torn-out leaf of a Hirschfeld,--a dead landscape-figurant and mimic- and miniature-park,--one of those show-dishes which are now served up and sketched at every court, of ruins, wildernesses, and woodland-cottages, but Lilar is the _lusus naturae_ and bucolic poem of the romantic and sometimes juggling fancy of the old Prince. We shall soon enter in a body behind our hero, but only into _Elysium_. _Tartarus_ is something entirely different, and the second part of Lilar. This separation of the contrasts I praise even more than all. I have long wanted to go into a better garden than the common chameleonic ones are, where one hands you China and Italy, summer-house and charnel-house, hermitage and palace, poverty and riches (as in the cities and hearts of the proprietors), all on one dish, and where day and night, without an aurora, without a mezzotinto, are placed side by side. Lilar, on the contrary,--where the Elysium justifies its happy name by connected pleasure-tents and pleasure-groves, as the Tartarus does its gloomy one, by lonesome, veiled horrors,--_that_ is drawn right out of my heart.

But where is our youth now going with his dreams? He is yet on the romantic road that leads into Lilar, properly the first garden-walk of the same. He strolled along an embowered road, which gently rose over hills, with open orchards, and into yellow-blooming grounds, and which, like the Rhine, now forced its way through green, ivy-clad rocks, and now opened its flying, smiling sh.o.r.es behind the twigs. Now the white benches under jessamine bushes and the white country-seats became more frequent; he drew nearer, and the nightingales and canary-birds[82] of Lilar came roving along, like birds announcing land. The morning blew fresh through the spring, and the indented foliage yet held fast its light, ethereal drops. A carrier lay sleeping on his rack-wagon, which the beasts, browsing right and left, safely drew along the smooth road.

Albano heard, in the Sunday stillness, not the war-cry of oppressive labor, but the peace-bells of the towers: in the morning chime the future speaks, as in evening chimes the past; and at this golden age of the day there stood, also, a golden age in his fresh bosom.

Now the fork-tailed chimney-swallows began to quiver with their purple b.r.e.a.s.t.s over the heavenly blue of the wild germanders, announcing the approach of our dwellings as well as their own; when his road seemed about to pa.s.s through an old, open, ruined castle, overhung with rich, thick leaves, like scales, at whose entrance, or egress, a red arm, pointing aside with the white inscription, "Way out of Tartarus into Elysium," stretched out toward a neighboring thicket.

His heart rose within him at this double nearness of such opposite days.

With long steps he pressed on toward the Elysian wood, which seemed to be cut off from him by a broad ditch. But he soon came out of the bush-work before a green bridge, which flung its arch like a giant serpent across the ditch, not, however, on the earth, but among the summits of the trees. It bore him in through a blooming wilderness of oaks, firs, silver-poplars, fruit-trees, and lindens. Then it brought him out into the open country, and now Lilar, from the east, flung, over the wide-extending spikes of grain, the splendor of a high golden ball to meet him. The bridge sank gently with him again into fragrant, glimmering broom, and beneath and beside him sang and fluttered canary-birds, thrushes, finches, and nightingales, while the well-fed brood slept under the covert of the bridge. At last, after pa.s.sing an arched avenue, it came up again to the light, and now he saw the blooming mountain cupola with the white altar, whereon he had knelt on a night of his youth; and farther to the south behind him, the veil and dividing-wall of Tartarus, a high-reared wood; and as he stepped onward, Elysium opened upon him more broadly,--a lane of small houses with Italian roofs full of little trees, smiled joyfully and familiarly upon the sight out of the green world-map of dells, groves, paths, lakes; and in the east five triumphal gates opened pa.s.sages into a wide-extending plain, waving on like a green-glistening sea, and in the west five others stood opposite to them with opened lands and mountains.

As Albano pa.s.sed down along the slowly-descending sweep of the bridge, there came forth into view, now blazing fountains, now red beds, now new gardens enfolded in the great one, and every step created the Eden anew.

Full of awe he stepped out, as upon a hallowed soil, on the consecrated earth of the old Prince and the _pious father_[83] and Dian and Liana; his wild course was arrested, and entangled, as if by an earthquake; the pure paradise seemed made merely for Liana's pure soul; and now for the first time a timid question about the propriety of his hasty journey, and the loving fear of meeting for the first time her healed eye, made his happy bosom grow uneasy.

But how festal, how living, is all around him! On the waters which gleam through the groves swans are gliding; the pheasant stalks away into the bushes, deer peep curiously behind him out of the wood through which he has come, and white and black pigeons run busily under the gates, and on the western hills hang bleating sheep by the side of reposing lambs; even the breast of the turtle-dove in some hidden valley trembles with the _languido_ of love. He strode through a long, high-bushed rose-field, that seemed a settlement and plantation of hedge-sparrows and nightingales, which hopped out of the bushes on the growing gra.s.s-banks, and ran out in vain after little worms; and the lark sailed away on high over this second world, made for the more innocent of G.o.d's creatures, and sank behind the gates into the grain-fields.

Intoxicate thyself more and more, good youth, and link thy flowers into a chain as closely as the boy toward whom thou art hastening. For, overhead, on the Italian roof, before whose bal.u.s.trade-breastwork silver-poplars, girdled about with broad vine-leaves, played, and which, in the spring-night, he had taken for a bower in roses, stood a blooming boy bent forward, who was letting down a chain of marigolds, and kept fastening on new rings to the too short green cable. "My name is Pollux," he answered briskly to Alban's soft question, "but my sister is named Helena,[84] but my little brother is named Echion." "And thy father?" "He is not here now, he is away off there in Rome; just go in to mother Chariton, I am coming immediately." On what fairer day, in what fairer place, with what fairer hearts could he come into the holy family of the beloved Dian, than on this morning, and with this mood?

He went into the bright, laughing house, which was full of windows and green Venetian blinds. When he entered into the spring-room he found Chariton, a young, slender woman, looking almost like a girl of seventeen,[85] with the little Echion at her breast, defending herself against the sickly and excitable Helena, who, standing in a chair under the window, kept swinging in a many-leaved sling of a vine-branch, and trying to girdle and blind therewith the eyes of her mother. With charming confusion, wishing at once to rise, with her left hand to remove the leafy fetters without tearing, and to cover up the suckling more closely, she stepped forward, inclining her head, to meet the beautiful youth, with childlike friendliness and warmth, but with infinite shyness, not on account of the rank indicated by his dress, but because he was a man, and looked so n.o.ble, even like her Greek. He told her, with an enchanting love, which, perhaps, she had never seen so magnificently pictured, on his strong countenance, his name, and the grat.i.tude which his heart kept in store for her husband, and the news and greetings which he had brought from him. How the innocent fire blazed out of the dark eyes of the timid creature! "Was then my lord,"

so she called her husband, "very well and happy?" And so she began now, unembarra.s.sed as a child, a long examination all about her husband.

Pollux came dancing in with his long chain. Alban playfully took out the Doctor's medicine from his pocket, and said, "This is what you are to take." "Must I drink it right down, mother?" said the hero. Here she inquired quite as naively after the detailed prescriptions of the Doctor, until the little suckling at her breast rebelled, and drove her into a by-room to sit over the cradle. She excused herself, and said the little one must go to sleep, because she was going to walk with Liana, for whom she was looking every minute.

Children love powerful faces. Alban was at once the favorite of children and dogs, only he could never act with the little jumping troop, on the childish playground, when grown spectators were in the boxes.

"I can do a good many things!" said Pollux. "And I can read, sir!"

rejoined Helena to her brother. "But then only in German; but I can read Latin letters splendidly, you!" replied the little man to her, and ran round through the room after readings and specimens; but in vain. "Man, wait a little!" said he, and ran up-stairs into Liana's chamber, and brought one of Liana's letters.

43a. CYCLE.

Albano knew not that Liana had the upper--so bloomingly shaded--chamber reserved for her own private use, wherein she frequently--especially when her mother remained behind in the city--drew, wrote, and read. The childlike Chariton, inspired with the love-draught of friendship, did not know at all how she could possibly so much as show her warmth of kindness to the fair, affectionate friend: ah, what was a chamber? Now into this always open room came the children, whom Liana sometimes heard read; and thus was Pollux able on the present occasion to fetch out of the solitary room the sheet which she had written this morning.

While Albano, during the errand, sat so alone in the keeping-room of the far-off friend of his youth, near _his_ still, pale daughter, who looked now at him and now at a toy sheep-fold, as well known to him as Liana's eastern chamber, when the morning breeze swept in the glorious hum through the cool window, especially when, in the light cut-work of the floor the Chinese shadows of the vine and poplar foliage crinkled into each other, and when, at length, Chariton began to sing the suckling to sleep with a quicker, louder lullaby, which sounded to him like her echoing sigh after the fair land of her youth; then was his full heart, which had been already so stirred by all the events of the morning, wondrously moved, and--especially by the flickering sham-fight of the shadows--almost to tears; and the child looked up more and more meaningly into his face.