Part 12

Schoppe went for Doctor Sphex. Albano returned to his chamber, and walked slowly up and down there with bowed head and folded hands, and said to himself consolingly, "Only wait, however, till it strikes again." Sphex came and saw and--said, "It is simply an inflammatory fever." But no force could bring him to the point of undressing himself for bed, or even for a bleeding. "What!" said he, modestly; "she may surely appear to me at any moment and give me peace. No! no!" The physician prescribed a whole cooling snow-heaven for the purpose of snowing the crater full. These coolings and frost-conductors also the wild youth refused. But then the Knight assailed him with that thundering voice of his, and with that fury in his eye which revealed the ever-enduring but covered wrath-fire of the haughty breast: "Albano, take it!" Then the patient became considerate and compliant, and said: "O my father, I do indeed love thee!"

Through the whole night, of which the faithful Schoppe remained watcher and physician, the crazed body kept on playing its feverish part, driving the youth up and down, and at every stroke of the clocks constraining him to kneel down and pray: "Liana, do appear, and give me peace!" How often did Schoppe, otherwise so poor in expression, hold him fast with a long embrace, only to beguile the harassed one into a short repose. Incomprehensible to the physician the next morning were the energies of this iron and white-hot nature, which fever, pain, and walking had not yet bowed, and on which all prescribed ice-fields hissed and dried up,--and frightful appeared to him the consequences, as Albano continued to be his own incendiary, and, at every striking of the hour, fell on his knees and languished and looked for the heavenly apparition.

His father, however, left him, like a humanity, to his own energies; he said he was glad to see such a rare case of unenfeebled youthful vigor, and felt no fear at all; and he gave, too, with perfect calmness, his orders about packing up everything for the journey to Italy. He visited the court, i. e. everybody. Upon any one who knew what he was wont to demand of men and deny to them, this general complaisance towards all the world inflicted the pang of wounded honor, even if Gaspard addressed him too. He first visited the Prince, who, although the Knight, when in Italy, had quietly administered to him the poisoned Host of love, together with her poison-chalice, always hung upon him familiarly. The Knight inspected with him the new accessions to the works of art; the two sharply and freely compared their opinions in regard to them, and gave each other commissions for the approaching absence.

Thereupon he went to his travelling companion, the Princess, towards whom, indeed, his galling pride had not left behind one particle of flower-dust from his former love, who, however, in the smooth, cold mirror of his epic soul, in which all figures moved about freely and in clear conception, occupied, by virtue of her powerful individuality, the foreground, as a central figure. As he placed freedom, unity, even license of spirit, far above sickly pietism, hypocritical imitation of other people's talents and penitent warfare with one's self, he held the Princess, even with her cynicism of tongue, as "in her way dear and deserving." She inquired with much interest after his son's condition and prospect of travelling with them; he gave her, with his old calmness, the best hopes.

The Princess Julienne was inaccessible. She had been compelled to see how the faithful playmate of her youth had been drawn by a harsh, hostile arm from the flowery shore into the flood of death, and how the poor girl had drifted away exhausted; this completely prostrated her, and gladly would she have plunged headlong after the victim. She had not been, the day before, in a condition to go with the two veiled ones to the castle.

Gaspard now hastened to one of these, the Countess Romeiro, with whom he found the other also, the Princess Idoine. The latter had not been able to read so much in every letter about the sister of her face and soul, without travelling from her Arcadia in person to see her and prove the fair relationship; but when she arrived in her veil at the house of mourning, her kinswoman had already drawn hers over her dying eye; and when it arose, she saw herself extinguished, and beheld, in the deep mirror of time, her own dying image. She kept silence within herself, as if before God, but her heart, her whole life, was stirred.

The resemblance was so striking that Julienne begged her never to appear before the afflicted mother. Idoine was, it is true, taller, more sharply cut and less rosy than Liana in her days of bloom; but the last pale hour, wherein the latter appeared beside her, made the whitened form taller and the face nobler, and withdrew the flowery veil of maidenhood from the sharp outline.

Idoine said little to the Knight, and only looked on and saw how her friend Linda overflowed with real childlike love in return for his almost paternal affection. Both maidens he treated with a respectful, warm, and tender morality, which must have appeared wonderful to an eye (for example, the Prince's) which had often witnessed the unmerciful irony wherewith he so loved to draw downward in a slow spiral of licentious discourses, rotten, worm-eaten hearts,--half installed in God's church and half in the Devil's chapel,--shy, soft, sensitive sinners, inwardly-bottomless Fantasts, the Roquairols, for instance, more and more deeply and with ever-increasing pleasure to the centre of infamy. The Prince thought, in such cases, "He thinks exactly as I do;" but Gaspard did with him just so.

Even the trembling, pale Julienne stole in, at last, to see him. They avoided, so far as they could, for her sake, the open grave of her friend; but she asked, herself, after the sick lover of that friend very urgently. The Knight, who for most answers of moment had provided himself with an original phrase-book of nothings, particularly with ice-flowers of speech, such as, "It is going on as well as can be expected under the circumstances," or, "Such things are to be looked for," or, "It will all come right," made use on this occasion of the last-named flower of rhetoric, and replied, "It will all come right."

When he reached home, nothing had come right, but the flood of the evil was at its highest. There lay the youth--dressed, in bed,--unable to walk any longer,--in a burning heat,--talking wildly,--and yet at every stroke of the clock uttering his old prayer to the high, shut-up heavens. Hitherto his firm, vigorous brain had been able to hold fast its reason, at least for all that did not touch Liana; but gradually the whole mass went over into the fermentation of the fever. In vain did his father, once, when he knelt and prayed for the apparition of the dead, arm himself with all the wrath and thunder of his personality. "Give me peace!" Albano continued to pray, softly, and, as he said it, looked him softly in the face.

Schoppe, at this point, with the look of one who has a weighty mystery, took the father aside, and said he knew an unfailing remedy. Gaspard evinced curiosity. "The Princess Idoine," said he, "must not concern herself at all about miserable childish trifles, but just when it strikes and he kneels, boldly present herself to him as the blessed spirit, and conclude the plaguy peace." Contrary to what might have been presumed, the Knight said, ill-humoredly, "It is improper." In vain Schoppe sought to preach him over to the sunny side,--he only went farther over to the wintry side at the appearance of another's intention; no one could bring him to a gentle warmth but himself. At last Gaspard, after his manner, let so much drift-ice of above-mentioned phrases drive over the permanent ground-ice of his character, that Schoppe proudly and indignantly held his peace. Besides, the preparations for the journey went on as if the father meant to snatch his son as a brand from the fever-burning, and tear him distractedly out of the old circles of love. Schoppe made known to him his intention of staying at home; he said he had nothing against it.

Now did Schoppe feel on his own scratched-up face the cutting North of this character, to which he had generally been partial: "'Trust no long, lank Spaniard,' was the just saying of Cardanus,"[64] said he.

Albano was sick, and therefore not inconsolable. He drew from the Lethe of madness the dark draught of oblivion of the present; only when he knelt did he see mirrored in the stream his lacerated form and a cloudy heaven. He heard nothing of this,--how the poor named their names, that they might weep gratefully around their sleeping benefactress, and how under their lamentations the once healing music of their countenances now lay deaf and dumb. He heard nothing of the raving of her brother, nor of the loud (acoustically arranged) grief of her father, nor of the stiff mother wrapped in dull anguish. He knew not beforehand that the pale Charis would appear one evening in her coronation-chamber in the midst of lights for the last time on earth, crowned, decked, and slumbering. To him, indeed, at every hour died an infinite hope, but each hour bore him also a new one.

"Poor brother," said Schoppe the next day, in noble indignation, "I swear to thee, thou shalt get thy peace to-day." The pale patient looked upon him imploringly. "Yes, by Heaven!" Schoppe swore, and almost wept.

98. CYCLE.

Schoppe had resolved not to trouble himself at all about the Knight,--who divided his evening between the Minister and Wehrfritz in Blumenbühl,--but to betake himself at once to the presence of the Princess Idoine with the great petition. First, however, he would get the Lector as porter or _billeteur_ of the locked court-doors, and as surety for his words. But Augusti was indescribably alarmed; he insisted the thing would not do,--a Princess and a sick young man, and an absolutely ridiculous ghost-scene, &c.; and his own father, indeed, already saw through it. Schoppe upon this became a spouting fire-engine, and left few curses or comparisons unused upon the man-murdering nonsense of courtly and female decorum,--said it was as beautifully shaped as a Greek fury,--it bound up the wound on a man's neck as the cook-women did on a goose's, not till after it had bled to death, so that the feathers might not be stained,--and he was as much of a _courtisan_, he concluded ambiguously, as Augusti, and knew what decency was. "May I not propose it to the Fürstinn, then, who certainly esteems him so highly?" Augusti said, "That does not alter the case." "Nor yet to Julienne?" "Nor yet to her," said he. "Nor yet to the most satanic Satan?" "There is surely a good angel between," replied Augusti, "whom you can at least with more propriety use as an intercessor, because she is under obligations to the Knight of the Fleece,--the Countess of Romeiro." "O, why not, indeed?" said Schoppe, struck with the idea.

The Lector--who was one of those men that never use their own hands, but love to do everything by a third, sixth, farthest possible one, after a system of _handing_ analogous to the fingering-system--urged upon the reflecting Schoppe his ready willingness to introduce him to Linda, and her ability to do something in this "_épineuse affaire_."

Schoppe went up and down in a state of unusual distraction between two opinions,--shook his head often and vehemently, and yet stopped suddenly,--fluttered and shook still more violently,--looked at the Lector with a glance of sharper inquiry,--at length he stood fast, struck down with both arms, and said: "Thunder and lightning seize the world! Done, then! So be it! I go right to her. Heavens, why am I then, so to speak, so ridiculous in your eyes--I mean just now?" The courtly Lector had, however, transformed the smile of the lips into a smile of the eyes only. On Schoppe's face stood the warmth and haste of the self-conqueror. As men can be at once hard of hearing amidst the common din of life, and yet open to the finest musical tones,[65] so were Schoppe's inner ears hardened against the vulgar noise of ordinary impulse, but drank in thirstily all soft, low melodies of holier souls.

The Lector--loving the Count far more heartily than he was loved by him--was for taking the Librarian by storm at once to the castle, because just now was the most favorable hour, of court-recess, from half past four to half past five. Schoppe said he was on hand. In the castle Augusti commanded a servant, who understood him, to usher Schoppe into the mirror-room. He did so; brought lights immediately after; and Schoppe went slowly up and down, with his annoying retinue of dumb, nimble orang-outangs-of-the-looking-glass, rehearsing his part and calculating the future. Singularly did he feel himself seized now with his young, fresh sense of that former freedom which he was just suspending. He recognized Liberty, held her fast, looked upon her, and said to her, "Go away, only for a little while; save him, and then come back again!"

The multiplication of himself in the mirrors disgusted him. "Must ye torment me, ye I's?" said he, and he now represented to himself how he was standing before the richest, brightest moment and finest gold-balance of his existence, how a grave and a great life lay in this balance, and how his "I" must vanish from him, like the copied glass I's round about him. Suddenly a joy darted through him, not beyond the worth of his resolve, but greater than its occasion.

At last, near doors flew open, and then the nearest. Then entered a tall form, with head still half turned back, all enveloped in long, black silk. Like an enraptured moon on high tops of foliage, there stood before him, on the dark, silken cloud, a luxuriantly blooming, unadorned head, full of life, with black eyes full of lightnings, with dark roses on the dazzling face, and with an enthroning, snowy brow under the brown, overhanging locks. It seemed to Schoppe, when she looked upon him, as if his life lay in full sunshine; and he felt, with embarrassment, that he stood very near the queen of souls. "Herr von Augusti," she began, earnestly, "has told me that you wished to put into my hands a petition for your sick friend. Name it to me clearly and freely. I will give you, with pleasure, a frank and decided answer."

All recollections of his part were sunk to the bottom, and dissolved within him; but the great guardian-genius, who flew along invisible beside his life, plunged with fiery wings into his heart, and he answered, with inspiration, "So, too, will I answer you. My Albano is mortally sick; he has been in a fever since last evening. He loved the departed Fraülein Liana. He lies bound to the condor's-wing of fever, and is swept to and fro. He falls upon his knees at every knell of the clock, and, lying close to the sunny side of fancy, prays more and more fervently, 'Appear to me, and give me peace!' He stands upright and dressed on the high pyre of the fantastic flame-circle, and pants and bakes with thirst, and dries and shrivels up dreadfully, as I can plainly see ..."

"_O, finissez donc?_" said the Countess, who had bent back with a shudder, and slowly shaken her Venus head. "Frightful! Your petition?"

"Only the Princess Idoine," said he, coming to himself, "can fulfil it, and rescue him, by appearing to him, and whispering him peace, since she is said to be such a near ass-[66], cos-[67], copy, and mock-sun of the deceased." "Is that your petition?" said the Countess. "My greatest," said Schoppe. "Has his father sent you hither?" said she. "No, I," said he; "his father, to be clear and free and explicit with you, disapproves of it."

"Are you not the painter of the sneezing self-portrait?" she asked. He bowed, and said, "Most certainly." Having replied that in an hour he should hear the decision, she made him a short, respectful, leave-taking obeisance, and the simple, noble form left him gazing after her in rapture; and he was provoked that the childish mirrors round about should dare to send after the rare goddess so many shadows of herself.

At home he found, indeed, the crazed young man, whose ears alone lived any longer among realities, again on his knees at the sixth stroke of the clock; but his hope bloomed now under a warmer heaven. After an hour, the Lector appeared, and said, with a significant smile, the thing was going on right well; he was to get an opinion from the physician, and then the decision would be accordingly.

Herr von Augusti gave him, with courtier-like explicitness, the more definite intelligence, that the Countess had flown to the Princess, whose regard for her future travelling companion she knew, and told her she would, in Idoine's case, do it without hesitation. The Princess considered with herself a little, and said this was a thing which only her sister could decide. Both hastened to her, pictured to her the whole case, and Idoine asked, with alarm, how she could help her resemblance and her well-meant journey hither, that they should wish to draw her so deeply into such fantastic entanglements. At this moment Julienne came in, pale, and said she had only since morning received intelligence of this, and it was the duty of such a good soul to grant the apparition. Then Idoine, considering herself and everything, answered, with dignity, it was not at all the unusualness and impropriety of the thing which she dreaded, but the untruthfulness and unworthiness, as she would have to play false with the holy name of a departed soul, and cheat a sick man with a superficial similarity. The Countess said she knew of no answer to that, and yet her feelings were not against the thing. All were silent and perplexed. The conscientious Idoine was moved in the tenderest heart that ever hung trembling under the weight of such a decision upon a life. At last Linda said, with her sharp-sightedness, "Properly speaking, however, after all, there is no moral man to be deceived in the case, but a sleeper, a dreamer; and imagination and delusion are not, in fact, going to be strengthened in him, but to be subdued." Julienne drew Idoine aside, probably to portray to her more nearly the youth, whom she had not seen any more than Linda. Soon after, Idoine came back with her decision.

"If the physician will give a certificate that a human life hangs upon this, then I must conquer my feeling. God knows," she added, with emotion, "that I am quite as willing to do as to forbear, if I only know first what is right. It is my first untruth."

The Lector hastened from Schoppe to the Doctor, in order to bring back with him from the latter, among many turns of expression, just the most convenient certificate.

Schoppe waited long and anxiously. After seven o'clock came a note from Augusti: "Hold yourself in readiness; punctually at eight o'clock comes the privy person." Forthwith, by way of sparing the patient's feverish eyes, he put out the wax-candles, and lighted the magic hanging-lamp of isinglass in the chamber.

He kindled the sick youth to new fever with stories of people who had come back from the tomb, and advised him to kneel with long, ardent prayers before the fast gate of death, in order that her mild, merciful spirit might open it, and healingly touch him on the threshold.

Just before eight, the Princess and her sister came in their sedans. Schoppe was himself seized with a shudder at the sight of this risen Liana. With sparkling eye and firmly shut mouth, he led the fair sisters into the _coulisse_, whence they already heard, out on the adjoining stage, the youth praying. But Idoine's tender limbs trembled at the unpractised part in which her truthful spirit must belie itself. She wept upon it, and her fair, holy mouth was full of mute sighs. Her sister had to embrace her often in order to encourage her heart.

The clock struck. With a frightful fervor the frantic one within prayed for peace. The tongue of the hour was imperative. Idoine sent up a look as a prayer to God. Schoppe slowly opened the door.

Within, blooming in the magic dusk, with arms and eyes uplifted to heaven, knelt a beautiful son of the gods in the enchanted circle of madness, whose only and continual cry was, "O peace! peace!" Then, with inspiration, as if sent by God, the virgin stepped in, clothed in white, like the deceased in the dream-temple and on the bier, with the long veil at her side, but taller in stature, less rosy, and with a sharper, brighter starlight in the blue ether of the eye, and more resembling Liana among the blest, and sublimely, as if, like a renovated spring, she had come back again from the stars, so she appeared before him. His enchaining, fiery look terrified her. In a low and faltering tone, she stammered, "Albano, have peace!" "Liana?" groaned his whole breast, and, sinking down, he covered his weeping eyes. "Peace!" cried she, more strongly and courageously, because his eye no longer smote and staggered her; and she disappeared as a superhuman spirit vanishes from men.

The sisters departed silently, and full of high remembrance and satisfaction. Schoppe found him still kneeling, but looking away enraptured, like a storm-sick mariner on tropical seas, who, after long sleep, opens his eyes on a still, rosy-red evening, just before the going down of the blazing sun; and the dashing wake travels on, like a bed of roses and flames, into the sun, and the flashing cloud flies asunder in mute fire-balls, and the distant ships float high in the evening-red, and swim far away over the waves. So was it with the youth.

"I have my peace now, good Schoppe," he said, softly, "and now I will sleep in quiet." Transfigured, but pale, he rose, laid himself on the bed, and in a few minutes a heart wearied with so long a wading in the hot fever-sands sank down on the fresh, green oasis of slumber.

TWENTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.

The Dream.--The Journey.

99. CYCLE.

It was late when the Knight of the Fleece arrived. Schoppe showed him joyfully the sleeping countenance, whose rose-buds seemed to burst as in a moist, warm night. The Knight manifested great exhilaration at this, and still more did Doctor Sphex, who looked in quite late. The latter found the pulse not only full, but even slow, and on the way to a still greater repose. He appealed, at the same time, to _Chaudeson_, and several other professional examples, that great mental sufferings had often been relieved and removed very successfully by the internal opium of lethargy.

At last Schoppe acquainted the father with Idoine's whole method of cure. Gaspard haughtily replied, "You still, however, knew my opinion, Mr. Librarian?" "Certainly, but my own too," said, with bitterness, the disturbed Schoppe. The Knight, however, entered no further into anything,--quite after his manner of never giving the least light upon his real self, however much it might gain thereby,--but gave the friend a very cold signal of retreat.