Titan: A Romance Volume I Part 29

"Thus may we ever remain!" said Albano, and pressed her dear hand with both of his to his heart. "Here and hereafter!" said she. "Albano, how often have I wished thou wert at the same time my female friend, that I might speak with thee of thyself! Who on the earth knows how I esteem thee, except myself alone?" "Here and hereafter? Liana, I am happier than thou, for I alone believe in our _long_ life here," said he, all at once changed.

Whatever, now, may have been the reason,--whether that man is not at all accustomed to be happy in a pure present, severed from all future and past, because his inner heaven, like the natural one, directly over his head and close to him, always looks dark-blue, and only round about the distant horizon radiant; or that there is a bliss so tender and unearthly as, like the moonshine, to be made too dark by every pa.s.sing cloud, whereas a st.u.r.dy one, like daylight, can bear the broadest; or that Albano was too much like men who always in joy feel their powers so strongly that they would rather kick over the table of the G.o.ds than see a dish or a loaf of the heavenly bread less thereupon, rather be perfectly miserable than not perfectly happy;--suffice it, he could not and would not be guilty of longer fear and concealment.

So, when Liana, instead of answering, only embraced him, and was silent, because she meant to remain the whole day true to her promise not to dash the festal tapestry of fair days with a shade of mourning-cloth, then, as if urged on by a strange spirit, he spoke out: "Thou answerest nothing? Only joys, not sorrows, shall I share? Thou hast not thy veil?

Wilt thou spare _me_ as a weakling? and thee alone shall thy death-belief continue to oppress? Liana, I will have pangs, too, and all thine,--tell all!"

"Truly, I only meant to keep my promise," said she, "and no more. But what then shall I say to thee, dear?"

"Dost thou believe, then, that thou art certainly to die after a year, superst.i.tious one?--heavenly one!" said he.

"In so far as it is G.o.d's will, certainly," said she. "O my good Albano, how can I help my belief, much as it pains thee too?" And here she could no longer restrain her tears, and all the crucifixes of memory started up alive in the fair soul, and bled intensely.

"G.o.d's will?" asked he. "Quite as well might he at this moment precipitate a winter as an iceberg, into this happy summer. G.o.d?" he repeated, looked up, knelt down, and prayed, "O thou all-loving G.o.d--But thou shalt not die to me!" He turned, as if in anger, towards her, incapable of continuing his prayer, for the cry of his heart, and wiping hastily with both hands over his moist face. Now he prayed on, with a soft, trembling voice: "No, thou all-loving One! kill not this fair, young life! Leave us together long in purity and in peace."

She knelt involuntarily at his side;--to-day more exhausted with pleasures and unknown inner victories, even with long walking, so much the more intensely struck by a moving reality that she had been spoiled and softened by moving fancies, and inexpressibly afflicted at Albano's sorrow;--she could not speak; her head and neck bowed, as under a burden suddenly laid upon them; and thus, as one heavily overclouded by a whole life, she looked down upon the floor. The embracing death-flood sounded with one arm around her; then did she see, without looking up, her Caroline pa.s.s by somewhere in bridal dress, and with the white, gold-spangled veil trailing along far over life; and she saw clearly how the celestial shape, when Albano begged for her life, shook its head slowly to and fro. "Cease to pray!" she cried, inconsolably. "But listen to me, thou cold apparition, and only make _him_ happy!" she prayed, but she saw nothing more; and, with inexpressible love, she hid her face, marked all over with the lines of agony, upon his breast.

Here her brother called up, that the carriage was ready. She threw down a quick, thin-voiced "Yes." "Must we part?" asked Albano; the fiery rain of ecstasy had now fallen back into his open soul, in the shape of a darker rain of ashes; and so he went on without any bounds to his anguish. "Then have we seen each other for the last time?" and under the closed eyelid his n.o.ble eye wept.

"No! in the name of the All-gracious, no!" said she, and rose to go.

"Stay!" said he, and she staid, and embraced him again. "But do not accompany me!" she entreated. "Not!" said he, and held her for some time as she withdrew, by the tips of the fingers; it pained him so much, when he saw the sufferings which had been brought upon this still form, that these white wings of innocence had beaten themselves b.l.o.o.d.y against his cliffs and mountain-horns. He drew her again to himself, ere he let her and his salvation go from him. He looked after her as she slowly stole down along the sunny mountain, drying her eyes under the twigs, and went with bowed head along all the gay, blooming paths of the forenoon's walk. But he gazed not after, when her carriage rolled away across the joyous wood; he stood at the eastern window, and saw his childhood's mountains tremble, because he had forgotten to dry his eyes.

FOOTNOTES:

[180] The t.i.tan was originally divided into four volumes.--TR.

[181] A musical term, meaning the compensation made by transferring to imperfect concords part of the beauty of the perfect ones.--TR.

[182] Every partial development of course works well for the whole; but only for this reason, because its opposite partial one balances it in a higher equation and sum total, so that all individual men are only the limbs of a single giant, such as the Swedenborgian _man_ is. But in so far as, in one individual, a want arises which helps out an opposite one in another,--so that the road of humanity plagues and trips equally much by hills and by hollows,--it will be seen that every one-sided fulness is, only a cure of the times, not their health; and that the higher law is, after all, a culture slower in the individual, but still harmonious; less in amount, indeed, but impartial, and thereby, in the long run, even more rapid. We always forget that--as in mechanics power and time are mutual supplements--eternity is the infinite power.

[183] According to Borreux, the engineer, literally only every thousandth shot from small-arms. .h.i.ts. So is it in all cases; fear death, and then there stand flower-pots ready to fall from chamber-windows, lightnings from the blue sky, air-guns going off, polypuses in the heart, mad dogs, robbers, every gash in the finger, _aqua toffana_, proud flesh, &c., in short, all nature--that ever-going, crushing cochineal-mill--stands with innumerable open scissors of fate round about thee, and thou hast no consolation, save this, that--nevertheless people grow eighty years old. Fear impoverishment: then fire, flood, famine, and war, banditti and revolutions, set upon thee with greedy claws and fangs; and yet, thou rich man! the poor man--creeping along under the same birds of prey--becomes at last as rich as thou.

March, therefore, boldly through the slumbering lion-herd of dangers, lying on the right and left, and go up to the fountain, only do not wantonly wake them up; of course a h.e.l.l-G.o.d drags down individuals who feared nothing; but so, too, does a higher G.o.d draw up individuals who expected nothing; and fear and hope are swallowed in one common night.

[184] t.i.tan, 13. Cycle.

[185] At the court of King Olaus, the royal youth Olo, dressed as a peasant, offered himself as a champion of the daughter against robbers. Then did the fire of the eyes and n.o.bleness of form tell as proof of a high descent; thus did Suanhita, for example, recognize King Regner in a herdsman's guise by the beauty of his eye and face. The king's daughter looked searchingly into Olo's flaming eye, and came near swooning; she essayed a second look, and was senseless; and at the third, swooned. The divine youth therefore cast his eyelids down but uncovered his brow and his golden hair and the signs of his rank. See "The German and his Native Land," by Rosenthal and Karg, Vol. I. pp. 166, 167.

[186] For what we call light is only an intenser white. No one sees, by night, the luminous stream which rushes upward along by the earth, pouring from the sun upon the full moon.

[187] This warmer, tenderer, more timid, ever-praised s.e.x, living more in the opinion of others than in its own, is poisonously pierced by a reproach which only p.r.i.c.ks _us_ so as to draw a little blood, as noxious beasts, in warm countries and months, poison, and in cold ones only wound. Therefore let the girls'

schoolmaster consider that a dose which is satire upon the boy--who, besides, must withstand opinion--becomes a lampoon, when it lights upon his sister.

[188] Poetic name for May.--TR.

[189] In which were always enclosed letters from Liana to Albano.

Let every one see here, by two examples, how on the harmonica of love a brother must stand in front as key-bank for the sister, who would reach the bells. There should, therefore, always be a couple of couples, diametrically connected in sisterhood and affection.

[190] "Such a character," writes Hafenreffer in this connection, "were desirable for romancing Kotzebues, for they, as he always will, according to his nature, create and raise the dignity of the situation by the accidental place thereof, might, under the cloak of his personality, humor entirely their own and disguise the weakness of the poet under the weakness of the hero."

Methinks this is, so far as a biographer of romancers can decide, very striking.

[191] Tiring-women.--TR.

SIXTEENTH JUBILEE.

THE SORROWS OF A DAUGHTER.

73. CYCLE.

Clouds like these last consisted with Albano less of falling drops than of settling dust. His life was yet a hothouse, and stood therefore toward the sunny side. Every day brought a new apology for the absent sweetheart, till at last she needed one no longer. But still he gave to every day its letter of indulgence for her silence; by and by they grew into letters of respite (moratories); finally, when she never let anything at all be heard or read from her; then he began to re-examine the afore-said apologies, and strike out many things therein.

Quite as little could he find for himself, or for a note, a way of access to her. Even the Captain had been gone for some days on a journey to Haarhaar. With faint hands he held the heavy, drained cup of joy, which, when empty, weighs the heaviest. The wild hypotheses which man in such a case trots[192] through him--as in this, for instance, that of Liana's being sick, having caught cold, her imprisonment, absence on a journey--are, in their alternation and value, to be compared with nothing, except with the quite as great wildness and number of the plans which he enlists and dismisses,--that of abduction, of hate, of a duel, of despair.

The terrible motionless time had no gnomon on its dial-plate. He stood as near his fate as man does to his dreams, without being able to recognize or prepare for its form, any more than one can for that which dreams will take. He went often into the city, through all whose streets there was riding, running, and driving, because they were about bringing and nailing together the beams for the grandest throne-scaffolding, on which the princely bride at her introductory compliment in the land, might look round the farthest; but he heard nothing there of his own bride, except that she quite often visited the picture-gallery with the Minister.

Hereby two distressing hypotheses, that of her sickness, and that of her being at war with her family, seemed to lose their stings. The best, though the hardest thing was, to go straight to the Minister, as to Vesuvius, in order there to have the fairest prospect. He visited the Vesuvius. In fact this volcano was never more still and green. He asked after everything, and expressed himself upon much which immediately concerned the marriage festival; nor did he seek to conceal his hopes and wishes that the Count would help welcome the admirable bride.

At last the latter, too, must venture to unfold _his_ hopes and wishes about the ladies. The Minister replied, with uncommon pleasantness, that the two had just carried back the "charming Mademoiselle von Wehrfritz"

to Blumenbuhl; and indulged himself forthwith in a eulogium of that "unsophisticated nature." Albano soon took his leave, but much happier than when he came. A few street-lamps[193] certainly were now burning on his path.

But in the morning he fell into a little obscure alley, where there was not a single one; in other words, Rabette, the little reindeer, came running to Lilar, as she yesterday had to Pest.i.tz,--for what is a race of a mile to a country-girl, else than a simple _Allemande_?[194]--and shook and shook her heart before him, even to its very ears, but nothing fell out of it except pleasant images, a few heavens, a complete wedding-day, a couple of parents-in-law, and a Captain's wife. "The Minister had been so courteous toward me, but--the mother afterward still more so toward my parents; and they have mentioned and praised the Captain so much,--in short, they of course know all, my glorious, heartily-loved brother!" said she,--but of Liana she had nothing to bring to her glorious brother, except a bill of her health; her joyous eye had not turned toward any dark region whatever. "We were not alone a minute, that is the reason of it," she added, and came again upon the subject of her Captain, whom the Minister had sent out on the Haarhaar road, as chief marshal of the escort of the Princess; yet she referred him to the illumination night in Lilar, when she and Liana, and the parents on both sides, had arranged to be there. Thou good creature! who is so cruel as to begrudge thee the glittering ring of joy, which thou contemplatest on thy brown and hard-boiled hand, and who does not fondly wish that its stones may never fall out?

Soon after, the brother of the past festivals flew to the heart of the deserted one,--Charles. He repeated almost exactly Rabette's deposition, although not her rapture; he said,--but without special emotion,--that his father actually threw him the brotherly hand kiss through several rooms, distinguished and designated him quite particularly, and kindly made use of him for business purposes; and all this merely since he had become acquainted with his love for Rabette, and the silent a.s.sent of the parents; for with his father, though the heart was of no account, yet Rabette's fief was, especially as one could not trust, with all the romantic stock-jobbing of his heart, that he would not himself one day realize the poorest result.

With a sighing breast, which would gladly have imparted more to an expecting one, Charles merely related that he had found Liana well and quiet, but not alone for one minute. The a.s.sociation of another's want with his own open, rich fortune was, so Albano believed, the fair, tender reason why Charles glided with such cool, fleeting pleasure over the parental benediction of his soul's bond. O, how he loved him at this moment! Could he have loved him ever so much more, he would have done it, though Liana had been actually lost to the sum of his happiness, merely to show himself and him that holy friendship wants no third heart in order to love a second.

This cloud of silence lay fixed for weeks, and grew more and more dark around his fairest heights; and the guiltless one went round and round through the darkness in a circle of contradictions. How must this youth have hara.s.sed himself when he thought, as he soon did, that the parents would, in all probability, reject an alliance with him, as he, indeed, thought himself obliged rather to forget than to reciprocate their advances, and that they might sacrifice two hearts to political heartlessness; or when he let fall upon the innocent Liana the suspicion of giving way before parental a.s.saults, which suspicion received reinforcement from the past through the conjecture that she had embraced him rather in poetical enthusiasm and from goodness, and more with wings than with arms, and that, in fact, accustomed to such long submissions, she could hardly distinguish sacrifices and inclinations, and might take one for the other; or when, as he soon and oftenest did, he turned the point of all these weapons against his own breast, and asked himself why he had such a firm confidence in friendship, and such a wavering one in love. Then this reproach led him to a second, upon every previous one, which he had cast upon the good soul merely for the sake, according to the proselyting system and reforming mania which men exercise more upon their wives than upon their friends, of melting her down for his own mould. This last he might rue; as Holberg[195] observes that men do not keep estates so well as women, because the former are always wanting to improve them more than the latter; on the same ground, also, lovers spoil women more than these do them.

For the sake merely of getting more expeditiously from the tedious tribunal of the future his sentence of death, or a more agreeable doc.u.ment, he went again to the ministerial house. He was again smilingly received by the Minister, and seriously by the mother; and, in reply to his question, Liana was not quite well. He laid before old Schoppe (who now pressed his friendship upon him more warmly, and who, for some time near the dissecting-knife of the Doctor, had not studied any other heart than that which was to be spattered to pieces and prepared) a short question about the Doctor's visits at the Minister's. How was he astonished when he heard that no one out of the house any longer made any visits to it, (while Liana, quite blooming, went into all circles,) except merely the Lector, who made very frequent ones!

He well comprehended that only the Medusa's-heads of the parents could turn the softest heart into stone against him; but even this he found not right. He boldly demanded that she should love him more than her parents, "not from egotism," said he to himself, "not on my account, but on her own." A lover wishes a great, indescribable love, of which he thinks himself always only the accidental and unworthy object, merely for the sake of tendering the highest himself.

Even the silent Lector, who generally placed all newly rising lights behind light-shades and fire-screens, communicated unbidden to the Count the novel tidings that Liana would be, under the administration of the coming Princess, something--[196]maid of honor. His old jealous suspicion of Augusti's wishes or relations allowed him no answer to that.

Now his spirit manned itself, and he wrote straight to the soul that belonged to him, and sent the letter to her brother for delivery. The latter came the next day, but seemed to him not to have any answer yet, because he would otherwise have given it with the first greeting.

Charles introduced him to the Haarhaar court, where he had lately been; said every nerve there had on jack-boots, and every heart a hoop-petticoat; then went on to eulogize the youngest, but most unpopular Princess, _Idoine_; declared she possessed, in addition to all her other advantages,--for instance, purity, kindness, decision of character, which even on the throne selects for itself its own lot and life,--the further grace of amiableness, since even the princely bride, who loved no one else, hung upon her heart, and--last, not least--the advantage of a very deceptive similarity to Liana.

"Has Liana received my letter yet?" asked Albano. Charles handed it back to him. "By Heaven!" said he, ardently, and yet ambiguously, "I could not get it to her just now. But, brother, canst thou believe, only for one minute, that she does not remain forever most thine?" "I do not believe anything at all!" said Albano, offended, and tore his leaf on the spot into little bits no bigger than the letters. "Only _we_ will,"

he continued, with a tone of emotion, "remain, as we are, firm as iron, and flexible as iron when it comes out of the furnace." The deeply touched friend sought to console him with the following: "Only wait, I pray, the illumination evening;[197] then she will speak with thee. She must certainly appear, and thou wilt wonder in what character, and for whom." He nodded silently; he easily gathered her part from her resemblance to Idoine, and from her expected office at court. But what help was it to his fortune?

With the return of his note, which he despatched against his pride, that same pride came back in renewed strength. Now was a hot seal stamped on Albano's bleeding lip; he had now nothing for and before him, except time, which was now his poison, and would by and by, as he hoped, be his antidote. Nothing was ever master over his sense of honor, when it was once roused. He could look forward to a scaffold on which blood spurted out, but he could not look upon a pillory where, under the heavy, poisonous, murderous pain of scorn and self-contempt, a downcast, distracted face hung on the sinful breast.

Charles sometimes approached with a few lights the long night-like riddle; but Albano, however much he wished them, staggered him by opposition, and sought not even to hear him, much less to ask him questions. So he lay on hard, youthful, th.o.r.n.y rose-buds, which a single hour can open into tender roses. Victories beget victories, as defeats do defeats; he found now, if not a complete relief from the emotions which besieged him, nevertheless a mountain-fortification against them, provisioned for a little eternity, in the shape of an astronomical observatory. With an entire and firmly collected soul he threw himself upon theoretical astronomy, in order not to see daylight, and upon practical astronomy in order not to see night. The watch-tower stood indeed upon a mountain intermediate between the city and Blumenbuhl, and commanded a view of both; but he cast his eyes only upon the constellations, not upon those rosy-red spots of the earth, where they now could have sucked out of the cold flower-cups only water instead of honey. Thus amid the festive preparations in Lilar did he go armed to meet the long delaying evening when the presence of the fairest soul should either bless or destroy him, vainly looking from time to time at the distant telegraph of his destiny, which was constantly moving, uncertain whether with peaceful or hostile significance.

74. CYCLE.