Part 21
The Hermit appeared, and said, their meal, which was sent up, had long since arrived; he also took occasion to praise his situation. "Often," said he, and made Julienne laugh, "my mountain smokes like Vesuvius, and bathing-guests look up, and apprehend something, but it is only because I am baking my bread up here." They encamped themselves in the shady open air. They must needs be ever looking down again upon the lovely, diminished island, which with its gardens planted within gardens, with its springs intertwined with autumns, lay so whole and so near, a great family garden, where the people all dwell together, because there are no different lands to become entangled with each other, and the bees and the larks fly not far out over the garden of the sea. Like still, open flowers were the three souls beside each other; fragrantly flies the flower-dust to and fro, to generate new flowers. Linda sank away completely into her great deep heart; unused to love, she would fain gaze therein and find joy, while no word of Albano's escaped her, for it bespoke its birth of love in the heart. Overflowing with mildness, and deep in thought she sat there, with her great eye half under the downcast eyelid,--after her manner, always long silent as well as long speaking. As the diamond sparkles just like the dewdrop, but only with steady power and even without the sun, her heart resembled the softest in all feminine mildness and purity, and excelled it only in strength. With delight Julienne beheld, when, now and then, after a childlike forgetting of Albano, (because her stream of speech had borne her from one world to another,) suddenly and with unembarrassed joy, she replaced her finely formed hand in the youth's, to whom a pressure of her hand was nothing less than a tender embrace.
They took the nearest way down back to Albano's residence, which was ever looking up to them from its vine-shrubbery. They were ever so little with each other,--in the morning Albano was to travel. He must write from Portici, a messenger must come to take the letter,--"And he brings me one, too," said he. "Certainly not!" said Linda. Albano begged. "She will soon change and write," said Julienne. She said no. By degrees furrows of shade stole down the mountain along with the dark lava-streams, and in the poplars nightingales began already their melodious twilight. They drew near to Albano's house. Dian ran out with delight to meet the Princess. Albano begged him, without having asked either, to procure a bark, in order that they might enjoy the evening. Compulsory proposals of pleasure are precisely those to which maidens love best to say yes. Dian was immediately at hand with a boat; he always and quickly joined his pleasure to that of others.
They all embarked and moved along among the sunflowers, which every ray of the sun planted thicker and thicker upon the watery beds. Albano--in his present glow, accustomed to the manners of the warm land where the lover speaks before the mother and she speaks of him with the daughter, where Love wears no veil, but only hatred and the face, and where the _myrtle_, in every sense, is the setting of the fields--forgot himself a moment before Dian, and took Linda's hand; she quickly snatched it away from him, true to the manner of maidens, which is lavish of the arm and chary of the finger and the thimble. But she looked on him softly, when she had repelled him.
They passed along again, on their passage from east to north, before the rock with houses and before the streets of the suburb town on the shore. All was glad and friendly,--all sang that did not prattle,--the roofs were occupied with looms of silk ribbons, and the websters spoke and sang from roof to roof. Julienne could hardly keep her eye away from this southern sociableness and harmony. They put out farther into the sea, and the sun went down nearer to it. The waves and the breezes played with one another, the former breathing, the latter undulating,--sky and sea were arched into one blue concave, and in its centre floated, free as a spirit in the universe, the light skiff of love. The circle of the world became a golden, swollen harvest-wreath full of glowing coasts and islands,--gondolas flew singing into the distance, and had torches already prepared for the night, (sometimes a flying-fish traced his arc behind them in the air,) and Dian responded to their familiar songs as they glided along by. Yonder were seen great ships, proudly and slowly sailing along, fluttering like the sky, with red and blue plumes, and like conquerors bound to port. Everywhere was the must of life poured out, and it worked impetuously. So played a divine world around man! "O here in this great scene," said Albano, "where everything finds place, Paradises and dark Orcus-coasts of lava, and the yielding sea, and the gray Gorgon-head of Vesuvius, and the playing children of men, and the blossoms and all,--here where one must glow like a lava,--could not one, like the hot lava round about him, bury himself in the waves, in all his glow, if one knew that anything of this hour could pass away, even so much as a remembrance thereof, or a throbbing of the pulse for a loved heart? Were not that better?" "Perhaps," said Linda. Julienne was carried in thought by the softening pleasure to the distant sick-bed of her brother, and said, smiling: "Cannot one do like the fair sun over yonder, and go under the waves and yet come back again? And yet, after all, if you look upon his going down rightly, there is no such thing in reality."
The sun stood already big as a great golden shield held from heaven above the Pontian islands, and gilded their blue,--the white, rocky crown of thorns, Capri, lay in glowing light, and from Sorrento's coasts to Gaeta's glimmering gold had shot up along the walls of the world,--the earth rolled with her axis, as with a music-barrel, near the sun, and struck from the great luminary rays and tones,--sideward lay in ambush the giant messenger of night, camped on the sea, the immense shadow of Epomeo.
At this moment the sun touched the sea, and a golden lightning darted trembling round through the humid ether,--and he cradled himself on a thousand fiery wave-wings, and he quivered and hung, burning and glowing with love, on the sea, and the sea, burning, drank all his glow. Then it threw, as if he was about to pass away forever, the veil of an infinite splendor over the pale-growing god. Then it became still on the earth; a floating evening redness overflowed with rose-oil all the waves; the holy islands of sundown stood transfigured; the remotest coasts drew near and showed their redness of delight; on all heights hung rose-garlands; Epomeo glowed upward even to the ether, and on the eternal cloud-tree, which grows up out of the hollow Vesuvius, went out on the summit the last thin glimmering of splendor.
Speechless, the companions turned from the west toward the shore. The sailors began again to talk. "Make thy brother," Linda softly begged her friend, "keep himself always turned toward the west." She fulfilled the request without immediately guessing its motive. Linda looked continually into his beautifully irradiated face: "Ask him again," said she a second time, "the twilight is too deep, and my weak eyes see so poorly without light." It was not done, for they immediately went on shore. The earth trembled beneath and after them as they trod upon it, as a sounding-board of the blissful hour. Albano was fastened in speechless emotion upon the beloved face, which he must soon leave again. "I'll write to you," said she, unasked, with so touching a recall of her former threat, that, had he not been among strange eyes, he must have fallen, intoxicated with gratitude upon her hand, upon her noble heart. Hard was the parting, and the end of an harmonious day in which the tone of every single minute had been again a tri-clang. By this time Dian had already departed. "Not even the roses of evening," said Julienne, "are without thorns." "An abrupt leave-taking is always the best; we will go home," said Linda. Albano begged that he might be allowed to attend her. "Whither?" said Linda. Softly she added, for the sake of her eyes, "I can hardly see you any longer; however, only come, I can hear, nevertheless." "Beautiful inconstant one!" said Julienne. "I change myself," said she, "but no other does it; only as far as the chapel, Albano; you sail early in the morning." "Even earlier; perhaps this very night," said he.
While they thus more and more slowly descended the mountain, and the nightingales warbled, and the myrtle-blossoms breathed their perfume, and the tepid breezes fluttered, and overhead the whole second world, like a veiled nun, looked with a holy eye through the silver-grating of the constellations, every heart overflowed with faithful love, and the brother and the sister and the beloved took alternately each other's hand.
At once Linda stood upon the spot of yesterday's union and said, "Here he must go, Julienne!" and swiftly drew her hand out of his, and smoothed lightly his locks and cheek and then his eye, and asked, "How?" in the confusion of a dream. "Immediately," said Julienne; "one must, however, wait at least for the Italian winter, for the moon, before one can even go home." Then the brother fell upon the bosom of the tender sister, who would fain hereby procure for him a longer tarrying, and for her friend the privilege of seeing him again by a stronger illumination, and he exclaimed, with tears, "O sister! how much hast thou done for me, before I could do anything for thee, or even thank thee! Thou givest me, indeed, everything,--every joy, the highest felicity; O, what art thou like!" "There is the moon!" cried she; "now farewell, and a happy journey!"
Like a silvery day the moon had climbed the mountains, and the transfigured beloved one saw again the blooming face of her beloved. He took her hand and said, "Farewell, Linda!" Long looked they upon each other, their eyes full of soul, and they grew more strange and exalted in each other's eyes. Then did he, without knowing how, press to his heart the noble maiden, like a blessed spirit embracing a spring sun,--and he touched her holy countenance with his, and like the red mornings of two worlds their lips melted together. Linda closed her eyes, and kissed with trembling, and only a single life and bliss rolled and glowed between two hearts and lips. Julienne gently enfolded the embrace with her own, and desired no other bliss. Thereupon all parted, without speaking again, or looking round.
113. CYCLE.
Albano, with the new haste which now reigned in his actions, was already, beneath the cool morning star, flying from the happy soil. He told the architect, Dian, all his whole blessedness, because he knew how very much of a youth the man still remained in matters of love. "Bravo!" answered Dian, "who can escape without love in Italy? At least none of us. It is to be hoped your magnificent Juno is not so haughty toward you as toward other people: then there may well be for you a life of the gods."
In the morning breezes, irradiated with sun and wave, he swept gliding along on the blue, liquid mirror between two heavens, and his eye was blest when it looked back at the Olympus of Epomeo, and blest when it looked back again on the coasts that gleamed up and down on the long, outspread market-place of the earth.
When they came through the midst of those glimmering palaces, the ships, to the stationary ones, they found the people in the ecstasy of a saint's festival. He was compelled to bury the blue day and the sea in temples, in picture-halls, in fourth stories, where, according to the custom, several of the grandees dwelt, to whom he delivered letters from his father, and more beautifully in the subterranean, gloomy street which arches itself through the blooming Posilippo.
Only the prospect that, in the very next solitude, he should converse with his distant heart quieted his spirit, which was always flying away from the present. At evening they ascended the finest of the heights above Naples, the cloister of Camaldole, where, among the pleasures of the prospect, he saw, standing in gray distance behind Posilippo, the lofty Epomeo. He could no longer contain himself, but began, in a spot more thickly hidden with blossoms than others, which he had sought out for the purpose, the following letter to Linda:--
"At last, noble soul, I can speak to thee, and behold again thy island, although only as a sunny-red evening cloud looming in the horizon. Linda, Linda, O that I have and have had thee! Does, then, the two days' divine dream last even over into the cold to-day? Thou art now so far off and dumb, and I hear no yes. When, in Rome, on the dome of St. Peter's, I looked into the blue morning heavens, and life swelled and sounded around me as the breezes swept by, then it seemed to me as if I must fling myself into a flying royal ship, and seek a shore which grows green under the farthest constellation; as if I must flutter down, like a cascade, through the heavens, and tear my way below there through this stony life, pressing onward, and destroying and bearing everything before me and with me. And so is it with me again at this moment, and still more emphatically. I could fly over to thee, and say, 'Thou art my glory, my laurel-wreath, my eternity, but I must deserve thee; I can do nothing for thee, except what I do for myself.' In the olden time, beloved youths were great, deeds were their graces, and the coat of mail their festal dress. Today, as I looked across on the Gulf of Baja, and on the ruins where the gardens and palaces of the great Romans still lie in ruins or names, and when I saw the old, defying giants stand in the midst of flowers and oranges, and in tepid, incense-breathing breezes, refreshed and quickened by them, but not softened and subdued,--lifting with the hand the heavy trident which moved three quarters of the globe, and with sinewy breast going forth to meet winter in the north, burning heat in Africa, and every wound,--then did my whole heart ask, 'Is it so with thee?' O Linda, can a man be otherwise? The lion roams over the earth, the eagle sweeps through the heavens, and the king of these kings should have his path on the earth and in the heavens at once. I have as yet been and done nothing; but when life is as yet an empty mist, canst thou overcome it, or seize it fast and dash it to pieces? Wilt thou one day, thou Uranide, love a man? then will I shrink back from no one. But words are to actions only the sawdust of the club of Hercules, as Schoppe says. So soon as war and freedom clash against each other, then will I deserve thee in the storm of the times, and bring with me to thee
## actions and immortal love.
"Here I stand on the divine heights of the cloister-garden, and look down into a green, heavenly realm which knows no equal. The sun is already away over the gulf, and flings his rose-fire among the ships, and a whole shore full of palaces and full of men burns red. Through the long, wide-extending streets below me rolls up already the din of the festival, and the roofs are full of decorated men and women, and full of music. Balconies and gondolas wait to welcome the divine night with songs. And here am I alone, and am nevertheless so happy, and yearn without pain. But had I been standing here four days ago, Linda, when, as yet, I knew thee not and had thee not, and had I been looking upon such an evening as this,--upon the golden sea,--the gay Portici, upon which sun and sea are rippling with flames,--the majestic Vesuvius, wound round with gold-green myrtles, and with his gray, ashen head full of the glow of the sun,--and, behind me, the green plain full of clouds of flower-dust, which rise out of gardens and rain down in gardens again,--and the whole busy, magic circle of glad energies,--a world swimming in light and life,--then, Linda, without thee, would a cold pang have darted through the warm bliss, and remembrances with mourning masks would have gone about in the golden light of evening.
"O Linda, how hast thou cleansed and widened my world, and I am now happy everywhere! Thou hast transformed the heavy, sharp ploughshare of life, which painfully toils at the harvest, into a light brush and pencil, which plays about till it has wrought out a god's form. Have I not seen to-day every temple and every hill more glad, as if gilded by thee, and every beauty, whether it bloomed on a statue, on canvas, on the singing lip, or on the summits, wear a richer lustre, and felt it breathe a richer fragrance? and then did I not fly up from the little flower to the blooming Linda?
"How the dark Power holds sway behind the cloud! It gives us sealed orders, that we may break them open at a later time, upon a distant spot. O God! upon Ischia's Epomeo it was for me first to open mine. Then rose a moment over life, and bore eternity; the butterfly brought the goddess!
"Evening goes down, and I must be silent. Might I only know how thy evening is! My life consists now of two hours, thine and mine, and I can no longer live with myself alone. May this day have stolen away from thee richly and mildly, and thy evening have been like mine! Only Vesuvius now reddens in the lingering sun. The islands slowly fade away in the dark sea. I behold now, without speaking to thee, the great evening, but, O God, so otherwise than in Rome! Blissfully shall I fix my eye only on thy island as it is about to be extinguished in the glittering din of the evening twilight, and yet long shall I look thitherward, when already the summit of Epomeo is dissolved in night; and then shall I look cheerfully down into the grave of colors encircled with lights below me. Happy songs will steal through the twilight; the stars will glimmer affectionately; and I shall say, 'I am alone and still, but inexpressibly happy, for Linda has my heart, and I weep only out of love, because I think of her heart'; and then I shall go down in blissful rapture through the blossom-smoke of the mountain."
He came slowly back to Naples to his friend Dian; all the festive merriment which met him, the whole odeum of joy, in which the ringing wheel of the hurdy-gurdy dizzily rolled round, seemed to him to be merely his echo; whereas, in general, not till the external, sensitive chords of man are struck, do the inner ones sound after them. All he wanted was to be ever hurrying onward, and--if it might be--to proceed this very night on his way to Vesuvius. For him there was now only one season of the day. The warmer climate, together with love and May, seemed to awaken all the spring winds of his powers; they blew with an impetuosity which made him conscious of them himself. Only before his beloved was he--still sore from the wounds of the past--merely a zephyr, which spares the dusting blossoms.
On the next day he proposed to ascend Vesuvius, and on the morning after await his Dian in Portici, when he had first seen from the top of the volcano the spectacle of sunrise.
114. CYCLE.
He describes his journey to his beloved.
"In the Hermit's Hut on Vesuvius.
"Why does not man fall on his knees and adore the world, the mountains, the sea, the all? How it exalts the spirit to think that it is, and that it is conscious of the immense world and of itself! O Linda, I am still full of the morning; I still sojourn even on the sublime hell. Yesterday I rode in the morning with my _Bartolomeo_ through the rich, full garden avenue to the gay Portici, which links itself to the giant like Catana to Ætna. Ever the same great epic Greek feature running through this sublime land,--the same blending of the monstrous with the beautiful, of nature with men, of eternity with the moment; country-houses and a laughing plain opposite to the eternal death-torch; between old, holy temple-columns goes a merry dance, the common monk and the fisherman; the glowing blocks of the mountain tower up as a bulwark around vineyards, and beneath the living Portici dwells the hollow, dead Herculaneum; lava cliffs have grown out into the sea, and dark battering-rams lie cast among the flowers. The ascent was in the beginning refreshment to my soul; the long mountain was a conductor to the full cloud. Late at night, after an eternal ascent, without having enjoyed the evening sun, through whose red glow upon the ashes we were obliged to wade rapidly, we arrived here at the hermit's. The moon was not yet up; thy island was still invisible. Often it thundered under the floor of the apartment. Then was I all at once pleasantly reminded by the hermit of my old Schoppe, when he told me that a limping traveller with a wolf-dog had once said up here, 'In Vesuvius was the stall of the incessantly stamping thunder-steeds.' That could certainly after all have been no one but Schoppe.