Titan: A Romance Volume II Part 1

t.i.tan: A Romance.

by Jean Paul.

SEVENTEENTH JUBILEE.

77. CYCLE.

What a universal joy of the people could now ring and roar, for a s.p.a.ce of eight days, from one frontier of the land to the other! For so long was the public sorrow suspended; the bells sounded for something better than a march to the grave; music was again allowed to all musical clocks and people; all theatres would have been opened, had there been one there, or had the court been shut up, which was a continual play-house; and now one could walk and visit and promulgate decrees in high places, without the black border. By and by, when this refreshing interlude was over, during which one enjoyed orchestra, punch, and cakes, they were to go back again with the more zest to weeping and tragedies.

On the morning of the tedious procession of carriages going forth to form the escort, the Prince rode out beforehand over the limits, with Bouverot and Albano,--all three as being the only people in the land who were independent and uninterested in the festival. Poor Luigi! I have already very distinctly stated, in the first volume of "t.i.tan,"

that the princely bridegroom who to-day mounts the bridal bed can only be a father of his _country_, not father of a family. Under the heaven of his princely throne, as on the first row of the chess-field, all is to be made and regenerated,--officers, even the queen of chess, but not the Schach[2] himself. It were to be wished, since the circ.u.mstance makes the festival shade into the ridiculous, that the bridegroom could only, by way of shaming many _old_ families that laugh at him,--old so often, even in the heraldic and medical sense at once,--show them some dozen of the princes ranged around the nuptial altar, whom he has seated in Calabria, Wales, Asturia, in _Dauphiny_,--all Europe was a Dauphiny to him,--in short, in so many _active_[3] hereditary lands,--that is, the heirs, not heirlooms, of foreign princes. Could he do that, then would he look more contentedly into this day's congratulations, because some dozen fulfilments would be already standing by, and awaiting his nod. But as the Marchioness of Exeter can transform the bed of the Marquis in London, which costs three thousand pounds, into a throne, so must the Princess also do with hers, without being able, like her, to reverse the transformation.

I will therefore introduce and lead him out on the dancing-floor of to-day's joy, not at all as bridegroom, but, in every instance,--just as we speak of the crown without the crowned head,--merely as Bridegroom's-coat, so as not to make him ridiculous. Albano rode along with a breast full of indignation, scorn, and pity beside this victim of dark state policy, and simply could not comprehend how it was that Luigi did not send the German gentleman, that hired axe and uprooter of his family tree, with one kick far behind him howling. Good youth! a prince more easily sets himself free from men whom he loves, than from such as he has full long hated; for his fear is stronger than his love.

The great-hearted, never narrow-chested, always broad-breasted youth found to-day, in his solemn, painful frame of mind, everything tragical, n.o.ble and ign.o.ble, greater than it was. He showed, indeed, only a fiery eye and animated countenance, because he was too young and modest to make a display of personal grief; but beneath the eye, which was fixed on the spot of blue in the heavens where his dark clouds were this day to break away or fall upon him, stood the glistening tear-drop. The coming evening, into which he had so often looked as into a h.e.l.l, and full as often as into a heaven, stood now, as a confused medium between the two, so near,--ah, hard by him! A throng of kindred feelings attended him to the (in his opinion unhappy) bride of--his father and this prince.

A quarter of a mile the other side of Hohenfliess might already be seen jogging on her _Gibbon_, well known among all natural historians--not among the politicians--by the long arms which this owner of the Moluccas and Ape notoriously carries. "Where is my Gibbon?" the Princess usually asked (even supposing she had in her hand, at the moment, the English namesake,--the historian with long nails and short sentences against the Christians) when she wanted her Longima.n.u.s.

At last she came prancing along--all plumed and in riding-habit--on the finest English steed,--a tall, majestic figure, who, indifferent to her court-retinue, although freighted with relatives, would much rather have looked a welcome to the blue morning sun behind a rearing horse's and swan's neck. She gave the Bridegroom's-coat with propriety greeting and kiss, but neither with emotion nor dissimulation nor embarra.s.sment, but freely and frankly and cordially, too far exalted above the ridiculousness of her genealogical disproportion to do otherwise; yes, even above every thought of that disproportion which necessity or tyranny created. In her otherwise fairly built--rather than finely drawn--face, her nose alone was not so, but angularly cut and presenting more bones than cartilage in contrast to the commonplace character of regents. With women, marked, irregular noses, e. g. with deep indenture of the bridge, or with concave or convex archings, or with _facettes_ at the k.n.o.b, &c., signify far more for talent than with men; and--except in the case of a few whom I myself have seen--beauty must always sacrifice something to genius, although not so much as afterward the genius of others sacrifices to beauty, as we men in general have, unfortunately perhaps, done.

The Count was presented to the Princess; she had not known him,--although she had heard of him and seen his father so long,--but had rather fancied him to resemble the Bridegroom's-coat. The coat could not--or should not--have failed to be flattered by this blooming likeness. The likeness entirely explains the beautiful interest which she now must needs take in both, because it always takes a couple of people to make a resemblance.

She spoke with the son without any embarra.s.sment about the Knight of the Fleece having been presented by her and her Court with a (flower-) basket,[4] and extolled his knowledge of art. "Art," said she, "makes in the end all lands alike and agreeable. When that is once had, one thinks of nothing further. At Dresden, in the inner gallery, I really believed I was in joyous Italy. Yes, if one should go to Italy itself, one would forget even Italy in the midst of all that one finds there."

Albano answered, "I know, I too shall one day intoxicate myself with the old wine of art, and glow under it; but for the present it is to me merely a beautiful, blooming vineyard, whose powers I certainly know beforehand, without as yet feeling them." The Princess won his esteem so exceedingly, that he put the question to her, when the Prince, a few steps onward, was surveying from the window the swelling flood of the Pest.i.tz escort, how the German ceremonies of her rank struck her artistic taste. "Tell me," said she, lightly, "what station among us has not full as many, and where, in the whole range of situations, do not priests and advocates play their part? Just look for once at the marriages of the imperial cities. The Germans are herein no better nor worse than any other nation, old or new, wild or polished. Think of Louis Fourteenth. Once for all, such is man; but I do not, of course, respect him for that."

The Prince reminded them now of the hour of march; and the Princess mustered together, by way of attiring herself for the grand _entree_, more, dressing-maids and toilet-boxes than Albano, according to her words, or we, according to the cartilages of her nose,--which seemed spiritual wing-bones,--should have expected. Her hurrying people followed her with more dread than reverence for her rank or character; and some, who occasionally ran by out of the dressing-chamber, had downcast faces.

At last she appeared again, but much fairer than before. There must surely belong to the manliest woman more charming womanliness than we think, since such a one gains by female finery, by which the most effeminate man would only lose. "Rank," said she to Albano, showing a great candor in opinions, which easily consists with a quite as great reserve in emotions, "oppresses and confines a great soul oftentimes less than s.e.x." Her calling herself a great soul could not but strike the Count, because he now saw before him the first example--another man knows innumerable examples--of the fact, that distinguished women praise themselves outright, and far more than distinguished men.

The grand movement began. On a boundary bridge, which, like the printer's hyphen, was at once sign of separation and of connection between the two princ.i.p.alities, half Hohenfliess already sat halting in carriages and on horseback, until an upset, shabby old vehicle, with village comedians, could be raised again on the fourth wheel, and the mythological household furniture which they had in hand packed in. But when the Princess made her way by main force on to the bridge, suddenly pa.s.sengers and packers converted themselves into muses, G.o.ds of music, G.o.ds of love, and a pretty little Hymen, and, in theatrical decoration and apparatus, flooded the encircled bride with their poetic effusions, representing the war of the other G.o.ds against the virgin-stealer Hymen. The son of the muses who had versified the matter acted a part himself, as father of the muses. I dare say that this original invention of the Minister was very favorably received, as well by Haarhaar as by Hohenfliess.

Froulay, all prinked and powdered, as if he were stretching himself out on the bed of state between funeral-gueridons,[5] marched out before her as spokesman of the country, which wished to testify its happy partic.i.p.ation in her marriage to the Bridegroom's-coat. The Princess abridged and clipped short all festal lying with a fine pair of ladies'

scissors.

Froulay had, among other carriages, brought with him also one containing several trumpeters and kettle-drummers, levied from all quarters, in which, for joke's sake, Schoppe stood, too, who did not often stay away from great processions of men, for this reason, because men never looked more ridiculous than when they did anything in ma.s.s and mult.i.tude. By way of bringing salt to the solemnities, he set up in his carriage the hypothesis that they were doing all this merely, with the best intention, for the sake of driving the bride back again to where she had come from, partly by way of sparing her the sham- and stage-marriage, partly by way of sparing the land the new court-state.

Her ear, he a.s.sumed, when the cannon drawn up on the surrounding hills mingled with the trumpeting of his thunder-car, and three postmasters, with fifteen postilions, who had not been posted there _for nothing_, with their best horns and lungs, blew their horns at the same moment,--her ear must be very much tortured, and she somewhat repelled, by such a welcome. Hence they even send empty state-coaches with the rest, just for the sake of the rattling, even as, in the province of Ans.p.a.ch, the farmer, merely by frightful screaming, without ammunition or dogs, drives the stags from his crops.[6] As ships do in the fog by lanterns and drums, so would states fain keep themselves apart by illumination and firing.

She still, however, I see, moves onward, said he, on the way,--sometimes taking into his hands with profit the diphthong of the kettle-drum,--and we must all accordingly follow after; but perhaps her ear is already dead, and she is now only to be come at through the eye.

In this hope he was exceedingly delighted with the dapple uniform of the a.s.sembled officers and feather scarecrows of the court-liveries.

Now there is still to come, he predicted, joyfully, the gold-spangled, triumphal arch, with vases and pipers, through which she must directly pa.s.s; and do not people scare away sparrows from the cherry trees, then, with gold leaf and Selzer pitchers?

O, thought he, when she was through, if that Gothic tyrant suffered himself to be led back from his plundering expedition into holy Rome by the suppliant procession of the Pope that came to meet him, then certainly it must prevail with her, when the orphan children in the suburbs come imploringly to meet her with their foster-father, then the schoolmasters with their pages, then the gymnasium and the university,--all which, however, to be sure, is only a skirmish with the outposts; for the gate is occupied with infantry, the whole market with citizens capable of bearing arms, the cathedral is guarded by the clergy, the council-house by the magistracy, all ready, if she does not turn back, to march after her at a certain distance, as police-patrol and choirs of observation; and are there not seven bridal couples stationed at the palace-gate, as seven prayers and penitential psalms?

and do they not bring to meet her--upon a pillory of satin, quite unconscious of the effect--a dismal Pereat-Carmen[7] composed by myself, a decree of the 19th June?

All right! said he, when the whole train, by way of affording an easier inspection to the powers and princ.i.p.alities cl.u.s.tered at the palace-windows, rode twice through the palace-yard; this double dose must take hold. Schoppe's hopes were farthest from falling when he found that, because it was gala, they kept themselves up-stairs long concealed and silent; and at length the Prince, as victor, but exhausted, was brought down by court-cavaliers into the chapel, in order publicly to give thanks for the retreat of the hostile forces.

Nay, when presently the bride, too, pressed after, held back, however, by the arms of chamberlains,--even drawn back by her court-dames holding her train,--then could the Librarian easily afford to dismiss all anxiety.

Albano's tossing soul imaged the confused court world as still more wild and misshapen than it was. He heard the princely cousins, even the future successor to chair and throne, wish their cousin Luigi health, a happy marriage, and sequel thereto, although they, through their friend,--a living succession-poison,[8]--had caused so much of these three things to be taken away from him that they could a.s.sign him precisely their cold-blooded kinswoman as crown-guard of their next succession. He heard the same marriage-songs from all court Pest.i.tzers, who, like a muscle, manifested a special effort to make themselves short. He saw how lightly, coldly, and with what malicious pleasure, the Prince, although with the feeling that he should soon drown in his dropsy, his water or fat in the limbs, carried off all the lies. O, must not princes themselves lie, because they are eternally cheated?

themselves learn to flatter, because they are forever flattered? He himself could not bring himself to cast so much as the smallest mite of a lying congratulation into the general treasury of lies.

The Princess flung the Count--as often as it would do, and almost oftener--two or three looks or words; for this blooming one, among the throne-coasters, from whom one more easily hears an echo than an answer, was reminded only of his powerful father. The Captain--who, like all enthusiasts, and like moths and crickets, loved _warmth_ and shunned _light_, and because all people of mere understanding were tedious to him--complained several times to Albano, that the Princess displeased him with her cold, witty understanding; but the Count--out of regard for the beloved of his father, and out of hatred toward her sacrificial priests and butchers--could only pity a being, who perhaps must hate now, because her greatest love had set. How many n.o.ble women, who would otherwise have held it a higher thing to admire than to be admired, have become powerful, rich in knowledge, almost great, but unhappy and coquettish and cold, because they found only a pair of arms, but no heart between them, and because their ardently devoted souls met with no likeness of themselves, by which a woman means an unlike image, namely one higher than her own! Then the tree with its frozen blossoms stands there in autumn high, broad, green, and fresh, and dark with foliage, but with empty, fruitless twigs.

At last they came out of the sweltry dining-halls into the fresh evening of Lilar, into the open air and freedom. Half indignant, half bewildered with love, Albano went to meet a veiled hour, in which so many a riddle and his dearest one were to be solved. What does man see before him, when with the thread in his hand he steps out of the subterranean labyrinth? Nothing but the open entrances into other labyrinths, and the choice among them is his only wish.

78. CYCLE.

On the loveliest evening, when the heavens were transparent to the very bottom of all the stars, the Prince let the weary a.s.sembly drive to Lilar, in order to make a better illusion with his two invisibilities, with the Illumination and with Liana's _tableau vivant_. With what growing anxiety and tenderness did the honest Albano's susceptible heart beat, as, during the rolling down from the woodland bridge into the expectant throng of the tumultuous populace, he thought to himself,--_She_, too, went this way into the Lilar which used to be so dear to her. His whole realm of ideas became an evening rain before the sun, of which one half trembles glistening before the sun and the other vanishes in a gray mist. Ah, before Liana it had rained without sunshine, when she to-day secretly went over merely into the Temple of _Dream_, in order only to personate a beloved being, but not to be one.

Not a lamp was yet burning. Albano looked into every green depth after his angel of light. Even the Prince himself, who kept the sudden kindling up of the St. Peter's dome still awaiting his nod and beck, antic.i.p.ated the pleasure, so rare at courts, of giving a twofold surprise. The Princess had spared the Minister the dilemma of a lie or an answer, for she had not inquired at all after her future court-dame Liana, like the whole of that strong cla.s.s of women, indifferent to her s.e.x, but attaching herself so much the more fixedly to a select one.

Albano espied, in the dark, driving whirl, his foster-parents and Rabette; but in this reeling of the ground and of the soul he could only, like others, direct his eyes toward the veil (itself veiled) behind which he had more than all others to find and to lose. In the years of youth, however, no black veil, only a motley one, hangs down, and in all its sorrows are still hopes!

The people awaited the splendor and the music. The Prince at last led his bride toward the Temple of Dream; Charles, to-day blind to his Rabette, not _for_ her, took with him the glowing Count. In the outer temple nothing could be detected corresponding to its magic name; only the windows went from the roof of this Pavilion down to the very ground; and, instead of frames and window-sills, were set in twigs and leaves. But when the Princess had gone in through a gla.s.s door, the Pavilion seemed to her to have vanished away; one seemed to stand on a solitary, open spot, guarded with some tree-stems, which all vistas of the garden met and crossed. Wondrously, as if by sportive dreams, were the regions of Lilar intermingled, and opposites drawn together; beside the mountain with the thunder-house stood the one with the altar, and hard by the enchanted wood the high, dark Tartarus reared itself.

The near and the far swallowed each other up; a fresh rainbow of garden-hues and a faded mock-rainbow ran on beside each other, as, when one wakes, the shadow of the dream-image glides away, still visible, before the glittering present. While the Princess was still sinking away into the dreamy illusion,[9] Liana--as if gliding out of the air through a gla.s.s side-door, in Idoine's favorite attire,--in a white dress with silver flowers, and in unadorned hair, with a veil, which, fastened only on the left side, flowed down at full length--came tremulously forth, and when the deceived Princess cried out, "Idoine!"

she whispered, with a trembling and scarcely audible voice: "_Je ne suis qu'un songe_."[10] She was to say more and offer a flower; but when the Princess, with emotion, went on to exclaim: "_S[oe]ur cherie!_"[11] and folded her pa.s.sionately in her arms, then she forgot all, and only wept out her heart upon another heart, because to her another's vain languishing after a sister was so touching. Albano stood near to the sublime scene; the bandage was torn off from all his wounds, and their blood flowed down warmly out of them all. O, never had she, or any other form, been so ethereally beautiful, so heavenly-blooming, and so meek and lowly!

When she raised her eyes out of the embrace, they fell upon Albano's pale countenance. It was pale, not with sickness, but with emotion. She started back, quivering, and embraced the Princess again; the pale youth had wrung from her agitated heart one tear after another; but the two did not greet each other,--and thus began their evening.

During the illusion and the embrace, at a nod from the Prince, all twigs and gates of the garden were involved in a glistening conflagration; all water-works of the enchanted wood started up, and fluttered aloft with golden wings; in the inverted rain played a white, green, golden, and gloomy world, and the jets of water and of flame flew up mischievously against each other, like silver and gold pheasants. And the splendor of the burning Eden embraced the Temple of Dream, and the reflection fell on its inner green foliage-work, and turned it to gold.

Liana, holding the hand of the admiring Princess, stepped out, with downcast, bashful eyes, into the bright, busy city of the sun, into the din of the music and of the exultant spectators. Upon Albano the stormy scene came shooting like a torrent; such opposite and strangely intermingled parts played before such opposite persons, the splendor of the evening's gladness, and the nightly bewilderment in his bosom, made it hard for him to walk through this evening with a firm step.

The Princess soon drew him onward in her wake and vortex; Liana she let not go from her side. The Minister daubed and starched up with old gallantries the erotic slave; but to every one he appeared, as the Princess settles with creditors after the death of the Prince, to imitate only the manner of ministers, whose spirit loves to proceed from Father and Dauphin--_filioque_[12]--at once, in order to seat itself, not between, but upon two princely chairs. She seemed, however, since his man[oe]uvring with Liana, to receive him more haughtily. He was sufficiently blessed in the good fortune of his daughter, as his step-son Bouverot was by her nearness, and this pair of knaves lay deeply buried and revelling in nothing but flowers. Albano could divine nothing more than that even a cold dragon, an orang-outang of souls, was darkly spying out the charms of this angel.

The Minister's lady and the Lector took turns, with an easy alternation, in guarding Liana from every word--of Albano. The Princess let herself be conducted through the sparkling pleasure-avenues, through the enchanted wood which was standing in moist lightnings, and finally to the thunder-house, by way of taking the burning garden from all points into her picturesque eye; Liana and Albano attended her through all the walks of her withered, stale Arcadia, and held their shattered hearts mutely and steadfastly together. True to her word with her parents, she gave him no warmer look or tone than any other, but no colder one neither; for her soul would not torment, but only suffer and obey. He made--he thought--all his looks and tones gentle, nor did the n.o.ble man avenge himself by a single manifestation of coldness, or in fact of any insincere making-of-friends with the princely female-recruiting-officer of crowns and hearts.

The Princess began to be unintelligible to him. They pa.s.sed from the romantic to romance, then to the question, why it did not portray marriage. "Because," she replied, "it [romance] cannot be without love." "And marriage?" asked Albano, uncourteously. "Cannot exist without a friend," said she; "but Love is a G.o.d, _nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit_,"[13] she added, for she had learned Latin for the sake of the poets.

Bouverot finished the verse, in order to make the sense ambiguous,--"_Nec quarta loqui persona laboret_."[14] No one understood this last but the Lector and the Princess.

"Why are there no lamps in that house?" she inquired. "Who lives there?" She meant Spener's house. Liana answered only the latter question, and concluded her glowing picture with the words, "He lives for immortality." "What does he write?" inquired the Princess, misunderstanding her; and Liana must needs give a Christian explanation of the matter, whereupon the unbelieving woman smiled. There arose forthwith a dispute for and against the eternal sleep, which took up not much less time than they needed for making the circle of the thunder-house. The Princess began: "We should have quite as much to say against our every-day sleep, if it were not a fact, as against the eternal one." "More, too, however, against our ever waking out of it,"

said Albano, striking in, and cut short the religious disturbances.

The Princess came back again with her inquiries after Spener, who had interested her by his long mourning for her deceased father-in-law; and Liana, sure of her mother's concurrence, poured herself out into a stream of speech and emotion,--her eyes were forbidden to shed one,--on which was borne along a sublime image of her teacher. How the exaltation of this so delicate, tender soul thrilled her friend! So in the pale, small moon and evening star do higher mountains rear themselves than on our larger earth! "She was once inspired for thee, too, but now no more," said Albano to himself, and stayed behind after all the rest had gone on, because his soul had been long since full of pains, and because now the Princess began to displease him.

He posted himself alone, and looked at the ringing, gleaming war-dance of joy. The children ran illuminated through the uproar and in the bright green foliage. The tones hovered and hung twining together into one wreath, high in their ether above the noisy swarm of men, and sang down to them their heavenly songs. Only in me, said he to himself, do the tones and the lights toss a sea of agony to and fro, in no one else, in her not at all; she has brought with her for all others her old gladdening heart of love, not for me; she has not thus far suffered, she blooms in health. He considered not, however, that in fact his struggles also had shed not a drop of water into the dark red glow of his youth; in Liana well might wounds from such conflicts, like those of the scratched Aphrodite, only dye the white roses red.

But he determined to remain a man before so many eyes, and to await the crisis and Liana's solitude. He therefore exchanged several rational words with his foster relatives from Blumenbuhl;--he said to Rabette: "It pleases you, does it not?" He startled, unintentionally, the Captain, who was hovering about some new faces from Haarhaar, with the unmeaning question, "Why dost thou leave my sister so alone?"

But as often as he looked at Liana, who to-day went in her long veil, as the only one without any thick, heavy gala-wrappage, as if she were a young, breathing, tender form among painted stone statues, so bashfully putting others to the blush, glistening and trembling like an egrette,--so often did ma.s.ses of flame fly wildly to and fro within him. Pa.s.sion, as the epilepsy often does with its victims, hurries us away, precisely at the dangerous crises of life, to sh.o.r.es and precipices. He leaned his head against a tree, slightly bowed down; then Charles came along out of his waltzes of joy, and asked him, with alarm, what provoked him so; for his bending down had cast gloomy, wild shadows upon his tense, muscular face; "Nothing," said he, and the face gleamed mildly when he lifted it up. At this moment, also, came the unreflecting Rabette, and would fain draw him into the general joy, and said, "Does anything ail thee?" "Thou!" he replied, and looked at her very indignantly.

"Go into the gloomy oak-grove to Gaspard's rock!" cried his heart. "Thy father never bowed; be his son!" Thereupon he strode away through the world of brilliancy; but when, far within, amidst the darkness, he leaned his head upon the rock, and the tones came toyingly and teasingly in after him, and he thought to himself, how he could have loved such a n.o.ble soul,--O how exceedingly!--then it was as if something said within him, "Now thou hast thy _first_ sorrow on earth!"

As during an earthquake doors fly open and bells ring, so at the thought, "first sorrow," was his soul rent asunder, and hard tears dashed down. But he wondered at hearing himself weep, and indignantly wiped his face on the cool moss.