Part 16

"Let me not profane this by speaking of it. But take here my softly spoken but firmly meant word, and lay it up in thy bosom, that so soon as the probable war of Gallic freedom breaks out, I take my part decidedly in it, for it. Nothing can hold me back, not even my father. This resolution belongs to my peace and existence. Not from ambition do I form it; though I do from an honorable self-love. Even in my earlier years I could never enjoy the flat praise of an eternal domestic felicity, which certainly beseems women rather than men. Of course hardly any one else has _thy_ strength or disposition to take everything great quietly, and silently to melt down the world into an internal dream. Thou gazest upon the coming clouds and along the milky-way, and sayest coldly, Cloudy! But dost thou not, prithee, allow thyself too deeply in this feeling, in this cold vault? It is true, the poison of this feeling will, in all parts of Rome particularly, that churchyard of such remote nations, such opposite centuries, consume one more sweetly than anywhere else; but couldst thou know the changeable, except by contrast with the unchangeable, standing side by side with it? and where does death dwell but in life? Let decay and dust reign! there are, after all, three immortalities; although in the first, the superterrestrial, thou dost not believe; then the subterranean, for the universe may decay, but not its dust; and the immortality which ever worketh therein, namely, this, that every action becomes more certainly an eternal mother than it is an eternal daughter. And this union with the universe and with eternity encourages the ephemera, in their flying-moment, to carry and sow still farther abroad the blossom-dust, which in the next thousand years will perhaps appear as a palm-grove.

"Whether I disclose myself to my father is to me still a matter of doubt, because I am still in doubt on the subject, whether I am to take his previous expressions against the modern French for sharp earnest, or only as another instance of the sportive coldness wherewith he was formerly wont to treat his very divinities,--Homer, Raphael, Cæsar, Shakespeare,--from disgust at the mimicking idolatry which the vulgar show to true elevation and to false. Greet my brave, manly Wehrfritz, and remind him of our union-festival on the day when the news comes of the demolition of the Bastille. Farewell, and stay by me!

"Albano."

On the evening of writing this letter he went with his father to a _Converzatione_ in the _Palazzo Colonna_; here they found the dark marble gallery, full of antiques and pictures, perverted from a chamber of art and a parlor into a fencing-school; all arms and tongues of Romans were in commotion and in conflict about the latest developments of the French Revolution, and most in its favor. It was at the time when almost all Europe forgot for some days, what it had been for centuries learning from the political and poetic history of France, that this same France could more easily become a magnified than a great nation. The Knight alone gave himself up rather to the works of art than to the sham-fight in his neighborhood. At length, however, he heard distant words which announced how Albano, like all the youth of that day, was marching exultingly after the _Queen of Heaven_, _Liberty_, following on in the train of eternal freemen and eternal slaves after the _equality_ of the times; then he drew nearer and remarked, in his manner, "That the Revolution was something very great; but that he found, however, in great works, e. g. in a Colosseum or obelisk, in the bloom of a science, in war, in the heights of astronomy, of physics, less to admire than others, for it was merely a mass in time or space that created it, a considerable multitude of _little_ forces. But only great ones a man should respect.[83] In revolution he saw more of the former than of the latter. Freedom was as little gained as lost in _one_ day; as weak individuals in a state of intoxication were exactly the opposite of themselves, so too there was a sort of intoxication of the multitude by multitude."

Hereupon Bouverot replied, "That is exactly my sentiment, too." Albano made answer, and very visibly only to his father, because he profoundly despised the German gentleman, and held him utterly unworthy of enjoying high works of art, for which he had brought with him an eminent _taste_, although no sense, and said: "Dear father, the twelve thousand Jews did not design the Colosseum which they built, but the idea was, after all, at some time or other, entirely in _one_ man, in Vespasian; and so universally must there preside over the concentric directions of little forces some great one, and though it were God himself." "To that source," said Gaspard, "to which everything godlike is referred, thou mayst transfer it if thou wilt." Bouverot smiled. "The Gallic intoxication," replied Albano, warmly, "is surely and verily no accidental one, but an enthusiasm grounded at once in humanity and in time, for whence otherwise the universal interest in it? They may perhaps sink, but only to soar higher. Through a red sea of blood and war humanity wades toward the promised land, and the wilderness is _long_; with gashed hands, gluing themselves in their own blood, they, like the chamois-hunters, climb upward." "The chamois-hunters themselves," said the Knight, "do the same still more, when they undertake to come _down from the Alps_; meanwhile such hopes are charming, and we will gladly wish their fulfilment." "_Signor Conte_," added Bouverot, "was very happy in naming the outbreak a fit of intoxication. One sleeps it out; but in the morning there is a great deal broken and to pay." "Intoxication?" said Albano; "what best thing has not occurred in a state of enthusiasm, and what worst thing has not been done in cold blood? Say, Herr von Bouverot? Yes, there is a grim, dreadful frost of the soul, as well as a similar physical frost, which, like the greatest heat, makes one black and blind and sore;[84] something like French tragedy, _cold_, and yet _barbarous_."

"Thou approachest the tragic, son," said Gaspard, interrupting him, and reinforcing the German gentleman; "we may expect of the French very much political sagacity, especially in distress; that is their forte. Therein they match women. They are, too, like women, either uncommonly tender, moral, and humane, when they are good, or, like them, quite as cruel and rough, when they are beside themselves. It may be predicted, that, in a liberation-war, if one should break out, they will, in valor, take precedence of all parties. That will dazzle exceedingly, since, after all, nothing is rarer than a cowardly people. One learns to estimate military courage very moderately, when one sees that the Roman Legions, precisely when they were mercenary, bad, slavish, and half freedmen, namely, under the Triumvirate, fought more courageously than ever. The citizens fought and died to the very last man for that insignificant incendiary, Catiline, and only slaves were made prisoners."

This speech set a hot seal upon Albano's mouth; it seemed exactly as if his father had found him out, and took his old pleasure in damping, like a fate, all enthusiasm, and giving all expectations, even gloomy ones, the lie. The offended, self-inflaming spirit remained now fast covered from Gaspard and Bouverot.

But to his Dian he showed all on the morning after. He knew how this friend, with the arm of an artist and a youth at once, bore and waved the banner of freedom, and therefore he broke before him the dark seal of his previous melancholy. He confessed to his most beloved teacher his full-grown purpose, so soon as the unholy war against Gallic liberty, which now hung out its pitchy torch in all streets of the city of God, burst into flames, to repair to the side of freedom, and to fall himself sooner than see her fall. "Truly, you are a brave man," said Dian. "Had I not child and profession hanging upon my neck, by Heaven, I myself would join you. An old fellow like that yonder sees much and hears badly. He shall not nose out anything, nor his beast of a _Barigello_ neither." He meant the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdörfer, whom he, with an artist's obstinacy, eternally abominated, because the Counsellor painted worse and criticised better than himself. "Dian, your word is finely said; yes, indeed, age makes one physically and morally _far-sighted_ for one's self, and _deaf_ to others," said Albano. "Have I spoken well, Albano? But truly such is the fact," said he, very much pleased, in his diffidence with respect to his language, at the praise of its beauty.

After some time, the Knight, just as if he saw away through the seal, uttered some words which took hold of the youth on all sides. "There are," said he, "some vigorous natures which stand exactly on the boundary-line of genius and talent, fitted out, half for active, half for ideal effort, and, withal, of burning ambition. They feel forcibly all that is beautiful and great, and would fain create it again out of themselves; but they succeed only very feebly in doing so. They have not, like genius, one direction toward the centre of gravity, but they stand themselves at the gravitating point, so that the directions destroy each other. They are now poets, now painters, now musicians; most of all do they love in youth bodily courage, because in that strength most easily and expeditiously expresses itself through the arm. Hence, in early life, everything great which they see enraptures them, because they think to create it anew, but later in life quite annoys them, because, after all, they have not the power. They should, however, perceive that it is just they, if they know early how to guide their ambition, who have drawn the finest lot of various and harmonizing powers. They seem to be rightly fitted for the enjoyment of all that is beautiful, as well as for moral development and for the care of their being, for _whole_ men,--something like what a prince must be, because in that office one must have for his all-sided destination all-sided directions of effort and kinds of knowledge."

They stood, as he said this, just on Mount Aventine; before them the Pyramid of Cestius, that epitaphium of the Heretics' Churchyard, wherein so many an undeveloped artist and youth sleeps, and, near by, the lofty potshard mountain[85] (_monte testaccio_), before which Albano always passed along with a miserable, sickly feeling of stale dreariness. The shock which his father's ideas gave his own, and the relationship of the potshard mountain to the strangers' churchyard, caused Albano to answer rather himself than his father, with a melted ice-drop of displeasure in his eye: "Such a nameless mountain of pots is, upon the whole, also the history of nations. But one would much rather kill one's self on the spot than, after a long life, to bury one's self so namelessly and ingloriously in the mass at last."

After his union with himself, he grew more happy. Already he began with zeal to set himself to work, agreeably to his nature, which, as in the seed-corn, put forth out of one seed-point stem and root, thoughts and

## actions.

He threw all other pursuits away, and studied the art of war, ancient and modern, for which Dian borrowed and supplied him the books and the study-chamber. With unspeakable delight and exaltation, he ran over again the sun-charts of the Roman history, here on the very body of the burnt-out sun itself, and often, when he read descriptions of its volcanic eruptions, he stood in the very craters where they had occurred.

Dian gave, into the bargain, his knowledge of the small service, and gladly gave himself for bodily exercises, when he had previously ushered him up to divine service under the heaven of Raphael's art, where graces, like constellations, walk in the lofty ether; for with Dian body and soul were _one_ casting; the most delicate ocular nerve and the hardest brachial muscle were _one_ band. At last, as a word was much more disagreeable to him than an action, and as he had much rather bestir the whole body than the tongue, he introduced to the Count an oratorical brother-in-arms, a young Corsican, all alive, as if formed out of the clear marrow of life.

The two young men loved and exercised each other for a time in romantic freedom, without so much as asking each other's name. They fought, read, swam. The Corsican almost idolized Albano's form, strength, head, and soul, and poured his whole heart into one which he could not wholly comprehend; as many maidens do only when in love, so did he only when playing war show soul and sense. Albano's clear gold complacently reflected back the strange form, without, like glass, annihilating its own at the same time.

On one occasion the glow of the Corsican grew into a flame, which showed up the whole character of his life to his friend in a bright illumination, and his peculiar aim and thirst, namely, for Frenchmen's blood, "which," he said, "he hoped to quench in the approaching war." Had Albano been like him, then would they, like fighting stags, have mortally entangled themselves in each other's antlers; for the obstinate, inflexible courage of the Corsican--more a sensual courage as Albano's was more a spiritual--could not endure a contradiction. Like his class, he desired of Albano a right strong backing word to his speech; but Albano said: "This is the very greatness in war, that one can and dare do without exasperated passion, without personal enmity, all that which the weakling can do only by such means; verily it were nobler," said he, "to kill in battle a loved than a hated one." "Silly chimeras!" said the Corsican, angrily; "what? Thou wilt kill the French and yet love them?" Albano's magnanimity threw off at once every timid mask, and he said: "In one word, I shall some time fight _for_ the French and with them." "Thou, false one?" said the Corsican, "impossible! Against me?" "No," replied Albano, "I pray God that we may never meet in that hour!" "And I will supplicate Him right earnestly," said the Corsican, "that we never may meet again at all except one day at the point of the bayonet. Adio!" So saying, he turned on his heel in a fury and never came back again.

106. CYCLE.

Unlike other fathers, Gaspard had been, since the first battle about war, the same as ever, yes, almost better than ever; with his old respect for every strong individuality, he took it quite agreeably that the sun of the youth entered so perceptibly into the signs of summer, and soared above the earth higher as well as warmer.

He gave him the nearest proof of his undiminished regard in the fact, that, amidst the gradual preparations for returning to Pestiz, he answered in the affirmative to a quite unexpected wish of his son's for--separation. That is to say, Albano, who now, like ivy, wandered with all his blossoms and twigs among the monuments of the heroic past, and twined himself faster and faster around them, would not part from Rome without having seen Naples. To reinforce his own longing came also Dian's inspiration for the daughter-land of his father-land, for the splendor of its sky and earth, for its Grecian ruins, which the Architect preferred to the Roman. "In Rome," Dian had said, "you have the past; in Naples, on the other hand, the bold present. I will accompany you to and fro, and we will go home together. For you are not, to be sure, as yet, properly speaking, versed in the beautiful, but in nature, in the heroic and in effect. Naples is the place, then." The Knight--although the whole object of the journey had been already gained by Albano's having regained his spirits--consented without hesitation to the appendix of a second, on the condition that he should not stay behind longer than a month.

But just at this time, when his inner world seemed at liberty to tune itself so harmoniously, came hostile discords nearer and nearer, which at a distance he still took for harmonies. The discord evolved itself slowly out of his indefinite connection with the Princess, because every such connection with women decided itself uncomfortably at last, seldomer ending in love than in hatred.

The Princess hitherto had done and suffered everything, in order to be dangerous to him, even before she became intelligible. She played Liana as well as she knew how, and took out of her theatrical wardrobe the nun's veil of a religious virginity, although women of genius are mostly sceptical, as men of genius are credulous. She made him the confidant of her past life, and gave the history of those who had died for her, or at least pined away, and she told all this, after the manner of women, with more satisfaction than remorse; only her connection with his father she indulgently let rise from its grave behind a touching nun's veil, and in fact imitated the son in his respect for the Knight, whom in her soul she bitterly hated. When Albano for hours forgot the present, and steadfastly gazed into the sacrificial fire of the past and of art, and showed her on the mountains of his world flames which burned not on her altar, then did she patiently accompany him on this road of art, and only stopped when she could, before spots where one had a view of the--present.

He became daily her warmer friend, without so much as dreaming of her intentions. Only a man--no woman--can wholly overlook another's love; the love which is long overlooked seldom, if ever, becomes a reciprocated love. Albano was too delicate to presuppose in the beloved of his father, and in the wife of another, and in a friend of his own beloved, this desire of an impropriety. Moreover, he always placed quite as small a reliance upon his desert as he did a great reliance on his right.

She doubted, but despaired not of a warmer feeling on his part. A woman hopes as long as a second does not hope with her. Albano's nocturnal visits to the Capitol and the Colosseum were always found by the eyes which followed him to be worthy of his noble character. Daily did the firm youth become dearer to her by his new bloom and by his manly development. Sometimes she strongly hoped, beguiled by his friendly sincerity and by that heroic melancholy which was not to be explained by her on any other principle, far or near. This to her so unusual rising and sinking on her waves shook her health and her character, and she became involuntarily more like Liana, with whose dove's plumage she had in the beginning been fain only to array herself in white; the sparkling sun-rainbow became a moon-rainbow; with her strong powers she flung half of her former self away,--her mania for decoration, art, and pleasing,--and she became intensely uneasy when a Roman fair one, with southern liveliness exclaimed, as often happened, behind the Count, as he walked before her, "How beautiful he is!" Sorely was she punished for her earlier malicious sportings with others' hearts and sorrows by her own; but such dark days are the very ones in which love more especially roots itself, as trees are best grafted in cloudy days.

Albano observed her change. The charming melancholy of her once vigorous countenance, this reflection of her silent cloud, moved him to a sympathizing inquiry into her health and happiness. She answered him so confusedly and confoundingly,--sometimes even imputing to Albano, with all his sharp-sightedness, dissimulation and wickedness,--that she led him into the strangest error.

Namely, under so great a certainty that some earth-shadow had passed across her whole life, and would not stir, he must needs seek the body which cast it,--which was, in his mind, Gaspard, whom she, as he imagined, still loved. He carried this presumption back very reasonably through all her earlier conversations and looks. It was so natural that they who were at an earlier period separated by a throne should now, in this lovely land of free connections, long for each other again. Beside all this, the Knight had, according to his inexorable irony, received her show of courting him with show on his part,--that is to say, with seriousness,--and therefore always served himself up as a side-dish to her enjoyment of his son, and carried over an after-winter into the spring. This double show Albano recalled to himself as double truth.

Then, too, fate stepped in suddenly among his new conclusions. His father was taken dangerously sick of an unnerving spring-fever, caught from the sirocco-wind. "Take no special interest," said Gaspard to him, "either in my sufferings or expressions. I have, in such situations, a weakness which I am afterwards ashamed of, and yet cannot avoid." Albano was moved, by many an unexpected outbreak of the sick man's heart, even to the warmest love. If the ruins of a temple inspire melancholy, thought he, why shall not the ruins of a great soul affect me so still more? There are men full of colossal relics, like the earth itself. In their deep heart, already grown cold, lie fossil flowers of a fairer period; they resemble northern rocks, on which are found the impress of Indian flowers.

The sickness undermined itself. Gaspard remained without sympathy for himself; only his affairs, not his end, troubled him. He held private interviews with his step-father Lauria, by way of impressing the finishing black seal of justice on his life. An express must stand in readiness to fly, the moment after his death, with a letter to Linda; his son must himself break one open, and deliver a sealed one to the Princess. Very harshly and imperiously did he demean himself toward the son, when he demanded of him an oath, immediately after his death, to travel off to Pestitz; for when Albano, who so longed to see Naples, and upon whom all these conditions, presupposing his father's death, fell hard, hesitatingly declined, Gaspard said, "That is so really human and common, to bewail the pains of others immoderately, and sympathize with them sincerely, and yet ungraciously to sharpen them so soon as the smallest thing must be done." Albano gave his word and oath, and never let himself be seen by his father again, when he wept out of a child's love.