Part 19
He is very prominent. Upon such a new-comer, people, in a residence-city, have already, before he has fairly given the driver his drinking-money, got all possible light of nature and revelation; nineteen of the company were fastened upon him as his moral odometers. The boldness of his nature and his rank made up with him for worldly tact, which was missed nowhere except in this, that he never took sides except in the very strongest manner, and always ran off into general and cosmopolitan observations. But see, I pray you!--O, I wish Liana could see it,--how the rosy glow and the fresh green of his healthiness shines among the yellow sicklings of the age, out of whom, as from ships on the African coast of youth, all the pitch that held them together had run out,--and how the cheek-redness of spiritual health, a tender, ever-returning suffusion (from anxiety about Liana) graces him, whereas most of the world's people at the table seem, like cotton wool, to take all colors more easily than _red_!
He looked and listened, against the salvation-laws of visiting, too much to Liana. She ate, under the heightened redness of a fear of mistaking, only sparingly, but without embarrassment; the Lector, with easy hand, barred up against her the smallest road to error. What astonished him was, that she covered such a sensitive and easily weeping heart with such an unembarrassed cheerfulness of countenance and conversation. Young man! _that_ is, with the most delicate maidens, free from pangs of love, no covering and disguise, but an enjoying of the moment and habitual courtesy! She retained so considerately (what she had probably learned beforehand) the relative rank of the familiar voices, that she never directed her answer to the wrong place. She, however, looked often to her mother with full eyes, and smiled then still more serenely, not, however, for the purpose of deceiving, but from real, hearty love.
Touching her salad, the best and most fit to be a prince's table-guest among my female readers, who had seen her mix it, would have taken several fork-loads thereof. Uncommonly charming was it, when, growing more earnest and red, she drew off her glove before the blue, celestial hemisphere of glass; with white hands and supple arms, without a silken fold, worked away in the green, between the blue of the glass and the black of the silk; considerately felt for the vinegar-and oil-castors, and poured out as much as her practice (and the deciphered advice of the Lector,--at least so it seems to me) directed. By heavens! the dressing is, in this case, the salad; and the vain Minister, who had no understanding of pictures, had a great eye for things that would make good pictures.
The mother seemed scarcely to look at the leaf-mixing. To the Count, the Minister's lady seemed to-day to have only good-breeding and no pious strictness; but he did not yet sufficiently know those polished women, who have refinement without wit, sensibility without fire, clearness without coldness; who borrow of the snail his feelers, his softness, his coolness, and his dumb gait, and who demand and deserve more confidence than they obtain.
At this moment came in Cephisio, like an angel among three men in the fiery furnace, but a dark angel. To the Count, his contiguity of seat, and every word he addressed to Liana, was already a crucifixion,--only to pass with a look from her to him was an agony, little different from that which I should have, if I had spent a day at Dresden in the antique Olympus of ancient gods, and then, on going out, should fall into a refectory full of swollen monks, or into a naturalist's cabinet full of stuffed malefactors' skins and bottled embryo-spiders. However he was pacified--in my opinion, only deceived--by one thing, that the German gentleman did not blaze away in lyrics beside her, was neither in heaven nor out of his head, but in his head, and quite composed and very polite. There are no pigeons, Count,--ask the farmers,--which the hawks oftener pounce upon than the _glossy white_ ones!
The German gentleman now produced a snuff-box, with a neat picture of Lilar, and asked Liana how it pleased her; he liked the sentimentality of it particularly.
The Lector was terrified, leaned forward toward the box-piece, and threw out a few opinions beforehand which should guide the half-blind one in forming her own; but after she had passed it two or three times obliquely against the lights and near before her eyes, she was able to express an original opinion herself, that the child illuminated by the half-sunken sun, who is drawn aloft by a flower-chain under the triumphal arch, was, to her feelings, "so very lovely." Here--and I have observed the same case in a half-blind lady of powerful fancy and receptive sense of art--the effort and the artistic sense, or the spiritual eye, came to meet the bodily half-way. The box, as well as its snuff, was presented farther on, and came down along to the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdörfer, upon whom the new Prince's love of the arts and the favorite's knowledge in them now placed new crowns; he found fault with nothing but the white of the blossoms. "Spring," said he, "is, by reason of its wearisome whiteness, a mere monochrome; I have visited Lilar only in autumn." "There is the nightingale's song, too, which we of course cannot paint, but yet we can hear it," said Liana, cheerfully; he was her teacher, and now, in the technology of painting, even her father's. Over all her acquisitions and inner fruits and blossoms the rose of silence had been painted; to that her tyrannical father had entirely accustomed her, and especially before men, in whom she always revered copied fathers.
When the landscape came to Albano, and he held before him in miniature that spring night when Lilar and the noble old man appeared to him so enchantingly,--and as he touched what the dear soul had handled,--and now in his own soul all accordant strings trembled,--just then the Devil struck again a dissonant chord of the seventh:--
"The Prince, gracious sir," said the Minister to the German gentleman, "was yesterday buried in private; only eight days hence we have the public interment. We are obliged to hasten, because the suspension of the court-mourning lasts until the inauguration, on _ascension-day_, is gone by." I am too much excited to express myself upon the eternal master of ceremonies, Froulay, who would have raised a lantern-tax in the sun, and bridge-toll before park-bridges and asses'-bridges; but Albano, dazzled by so many side-lights and glancing rays,--reminded of Liana's sorrow over the old man, of his birthday, of the heart without a breast, and of the madness of the world,--was not in a condition, however much he had intended appearing in gentleness and lambs' clothes before Froulay, to keep the latter on; but he must needs (and louder than he meant), in opposition to his next neighbor, the Church Counsellor, Schäpe, with too great youthful exasperation (not lessened by the eager listening of Liana for the brotherly voice) declare himself against many things,--against the everlasting dead sham-life of men,--against the ceremonial haughtiness of a soulless form,--against this starving on love merely from making false shows of it;--ah, his whole heart burned on his lip!
The honest Schäpe, whom I just now called a scoundrel, took, with several expressions of countenance, Albano's part. But I do not by any means, friend Albano!--thou hast yet to learn for the first time that men, in respect to ceremonies, modes, and laws, like a flock of sheep, will, in a body, provided the bell-wether can only be got to leap over a pole, continue to leap carefully over the same place when the pole has been taken away;--and the most and highest leaps, in the state, are those we make without the pole. But a youth would be an ordinary one who should love civil life very early, however certain it is that he and we all judge too bitterly the faults of every office which we do not ourselves hold.
The company listened in silence, and, out of politeness, only inwardly admired; on Liana fell a tender seriousness.
They rose,--the closeness vanished,--so did his zeal;--but, whether it came from the speaking, or the contemplation of the loved object, or from a youthful over-leaping of the hedges of visiting-propriety,--(it arose not, however, from want of manners),--the fact is not to be denied (and I do my best, too, to give it exactly) that the Count left the poor old lady who had been escorted in by him,--Hafenreffer himself knows not her name,--left her standing, and, I believe unconsciously, took Liana under his escort. Ah, her! What shall I say of the magic nearness of the dreamed-of soul,--of the light resting of her hand, felt only by the arm of the inner man, not of the outer,--of the shortness of the heavenly way, which should have been at least as long as Frederick Street? Verily, he himself said nothing,--he thought merely of the abominable Inhibitorial-room, where their separation must take place,--he trembled at every effort to speak. "You have, perhaps," said Liana, lightly and openly, who loved to hear the friendly voice, especially after the warm discourse, "already visited our Lilar?"--"Truly not; but have you?" he said, too much confused. "My mother and I have made it our favorite home every spring."
Now were they in the parting-chamber. Alas! there and thus he stood with her, who saw nothing, for some seconds immovable, and looked straight before him, wanting to say something, till he was aroused by her mother, who was eagerly seeking, for her affection, which the whole evening had been nourishing, a sequestered hour on her daughter's heart,--and so all was over, for both vanished like apparitions.
But Alban was as a man who is deserted by a glorious dream, and who all the morning is so inwardly blest, but remembers the dream no more. And yet, stands not Lilar open to him, and will he not surely see it, so soon as ever Liana can see it too?
Never was he more gentle. The attentive Lector, in this warm, fruitful seed-time, threw in some good seed. He said, as they looked out together into the moonlit night, Albano had this evening hardly brought forward anything but thorny and exaggerated truths, which only imbitter, but do not enlighten. At another time the Count would have asked him whether he should have carried himself like Froulay and Bouverot, who, with all possible tolerance, presented theses and antitheses to each other, like an academical respondent and opponent, who previously prepare in concert logical wounds and plasters of equal length;--but to-day he was very kindly disposed towards him. Augusti had so delicately and affectionately cared for mother and daughter,--he had, without blackening or whitewashing, said much good, but nothing hastily, and his expositions had been calmly listened to: he had neither flattered nor offended. Albano, therefore, replied, softly: "But it is surely better to imbitter, dear Augusti, than to put to sleep. And to whom shall I then say the truth but to those who have it not nor any faith in it? Surely not to others." "One can speak any truth," said he, "but one cannot reckon as truth every mode and mood in which he speaks it."
"Ah!" said Albano, and looked up; beneath the starry heaven stood the marble Madonna of the palace, like a patron saint, softly illuminated,--and he thought of her sister,[81]--and of Lilar,--and of spring,--and of many dreams,--and how full his heart was of eternal love, and that he had as yet no friend and no loved one.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Lit. "Let themselves be struck dead thereupon," i. e. lay their life that it was so. We have a vulgarism: "I'll be shot if it's not so."--TR.
[71] _Blase-löcher_, mouth-pieces.--TR.
[72] _Honnêteté_ entirely excludes, in the higher classes, murder; _dés honnêteté_, lying, &c., except in a _certain_ degree.
[73] This court is Catholic, but the country Lutheran; and to this latter confession that of Hohenfliess also subscribes.
[74] Or convocations every fifteen years.--TR.
[75] A departing graduate.--TR.
[76] See Count Lamberg's Day-book of a Man of the World.
[77] Whoever goes to the Academy of the Arcadians, takes an Arcadian name.
[78] One who watches the card and takes up the money at the bank.--TR.
[79] Give us our daily bread, and forgive us our debts.--[? TR.]
[80] Lanzknecht.--TR.
[81] Liana.--TR.
EIGHTH JUBILEE.
LE PETIT LEVER OF DR. SPHEX.--PATH TO LILAR.--WOODLAND-BRIDGE.--THE MORNING IN ARCADIA.--CHARITON.--LIANA'S LETTER AND PSALM OF GRATITUDE.--SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH A GARDEN.--THE FLUTE-DELL.--CONCERNING THE REALITY OF THE IDEAL.
41. CYCLE.
I Sat up all last night till towards morning,--for I cannot suffer any strange _déchiffreur_ in the case,--in order to cipher out the Jubilee to the very last word, so enchained was I by its charms; I hope, however, as the mere thin leaf-skeleton from Hafenreffer's hand has already done so much, that now, when I run through its veins with sap-colors and glossy green, the leaf will do absolute miracles.
With the Count it had been troubled weather since last evening. For the patient, modest form which he had seen shone, like the purpose of a great deed, before all the images of his soul; and in his dreams, and before he sank to slumber, her gentle voice became the Philomela of a spring-night. Withal, he heard them continually talking about her, especially the Doctor, who every morning announced further progress of the ocular cure, and at last placed Liana's setting out for Lilar nearer and nearer. To hear of a loved one, however, even the most indifferent thing, is far mightier than to think of her. He heard further, that her brother, since the murder of her eyes, had withdrawn entirely from the city, in which he would not again appear except on a so-called festive-steed at the Prince's funeral;--and around this Eden, or rather around its creatress, so high a garden-wall had been run, and he went round the wall and found no gate.
I know nothing more odious than this; but in what residence-city is it otherwise? If I ever wrote a Romance (of which there is no probability), one thing I affirm openly, there is nothing which I would so sedulously shun as a residence-city, and a heroine in it saintly enough for a canoness. For the conjunction of the upper planets is more easily brought about than that of the upper class of lovers. Does _he_ wish to speak alone with _her_ at Court or at tea or in her family, there stands the Court, the tea-party, the family close by;--will he meet her in the park, she rides, like the Chinese couriers, double, because we give a consciousness to maidens, as nature gives all important organs, duplicate, just as we give good wine double bottom;--will he meet her at least accidentally in the street, then there stalks along behind her (if the street lies in Dresden), a sour servant as her plague-vinegar, soul-keeper, _curator sexus_, _chevalier d'honneur_, genius of Socrates, contradictor, and Pestilentiary. In the country, on the other hand, the parson's daughter takes a run (that is all), because the evening is so heavenly, about the fields of the parsonage, and the candidate needs do nothing more than put on his boots. Really, among people of rank, the mantle of (erotic) love seems in the beginning to be a Dr. Faust's mantle, which swears to soar over everything, whereas it merely covers over everything; only, at last, there stands a Schreckhorn, a Mount Pilate, and a Jungfrau, before one's nose.
Blessed hero! On Friday came the Lector, and reported, that on Monday the illustrious deceased--namely, his empty coffin--is to be buried, and Roquairol rides the festive-steed,--and Liana is almost well, for she goes with the Minister's lady to-morrow to Lilar, in all probability to escape some sad black-bordered notes of condolence,--and, on the following ascension-day comes the consecration and masquerade....
Blessed hero! I repeat. For hitherto what hast thou possessed of the blooming vale of Tempe, except the barren heights whereon thou stood'st looking down into the enchantment?
42. CYCLE.
On the May-Saturday-evening, at 7 o'clock, every vapor disappeared from the sky, and the brightly departing sun went to meet a glorious Sunday. Albano, who then, at length, meant to visit the unseen Lilar, was, on the evening before, as sacredly happy as if he were celebrating confession eve before the first holy supper;--his sleep was one constant ecstasy and awaking, and in every dream a mimic Sunday morning rose, and the future became the dark prelude of the present.
Early on Sunday he was about to sally forth, when he had to pass by the half-glass door of the Doctor. "Sir Count, one moment!" cried he. When he entered, the Doctor said, "Directly, dear Sir Count!" and went on with what he was about. To the painters, who, in future centuries, will draw from me as they have hitherto from Homer, I present the following group of the Doctor as a treasure; he lay on his left side; Galen was smoothing down his father's back with a little scratch-brush, while Boerhave stood near him with a broad comb, and kept dragging that instrument perpendicularly (not obliquely) through the hair. He always said he knew nothing that cheered him up so, and was such a good aperient, as brush and comb. Before the bed stood Van Swieten in a thick fur, which the correctioner had to wear when the weather was warm and his behavior bad, in order that he might, thus arrayed, be laughed at, as well as half roasted.
Two girls stood waiting there in full Sunday gala, and were thinking of going out into the country to see a parson's daughter, and to the village church; these he first mauled, limb by limb, with the hammer of the law. He loved to make his children antipodes of Romish defendants, who appear in rags and tatters, and so he set them in the pillory, all ruffled and tasselled, especially before strangers. The Count had already this long time, on the red children's account, been standing with his face turned toward the open window; he could not, however, refrain from saying, in Latin, "Were he his child, he would long ago have made way with himself; he knew nothing more degrading than to be scolded in finery." "It takes so much the deeper hold," said Sphex, in German, and fired only these few farewell shots after the girls: "You are a pair of geese, and will do nothing in church but just cackle about your rags and tags; why don't you mind the parson? He is an ass, but he preaches well enough for you she-asses; in the evening do you tell me every word of the sermon."
"Here is a laxative drink, Sir Count, which, as you are going to Lilar, I beg you to give the Architect's lady for her little toads; but don't take it ill!" By the deuse! that is what precisely those people most frequently say, who, themselves, never take anything ill. The Count,--who at another time would have contemptuously turned his back upon him,--now blushing and silent before the preserver of his Liana, put it into his pocket, because, too, it was for the children of his beloved Dian, to whose spouse he wished to bear greetings and news.
43. CYCLE.
Lilar is not, like so many princely gardens, a torn-out leaf of a Hirschfeld,--a dead landscape-figurant and mimic- and miniature-park,--one of those show-dishes which are now served up and sketched at every court, of ruins, wildernesses, and woodland-cottages, but Lilar is the _lusus naturæ_ and bucolic poem of the romantic and sometimes juggling fancy of the old Prince. We shall soon enter in a body behind our hero, but only into _Elysium_. _Tartarus_ is something entirely different, and the second part of Lilar. This separation of the contrasts I praise even more than all. I have long wanted to go into a better garden than the common chameleonic ones are, where one hands you China and Italy, summer-house and charnel-house, hermitage and palace, poverty and riches (as in the cities and hearts of the proprietors), all on one dish, and where day and night, without an aurora, without a mezzotinto, are placed side by side. Lilar, on the contrary,--where the Elysium justifies its happy name by connected pleasure-tents and pleasure-groves, as the Tartarus does its gloomy one, by lonesome, veiled horrors,--_that_ is drawn right out of my heart.
But where is our youth now going with his dreams? He is yet on the romantic road that leads into Lilar, properly the first garden-walk of the same. He strolled along an embowered road, which gently rose over hills, with open orchards, and into yellow-blooming grounds, and which, like the Rhine, now forced its way through green, ivy-clad rocks, and now opened its flying, smiling shores behind the twigs. Now the white benches under jessamine bushes and the white country-seats became more frequent; he drew nearer, and the nightingales and canary-birds[82] of Lilar came roving along, like birds announcing land. The morning blew fresh through the spring, and the indented foliage yet held fast its light, ethereal drops. A carrier lay sleeping on his rack-wagon, which the beasts, browsing right and left, safely drew along the smooth road. Albano heard, in the Sunday stillness, not the war-cry of oppressive labor, but the peace-bells of the towers: in the morning chime the future speaks, as in evening chimes the past; and at this golden age of the day there stood, also, a golden age in his fresh bosom.
Now the fork-tailed chimney-swallows began to quiver with their purple breasts over the heavenly blue of the wild germanders, announcing the approach of our dwellings as well as their own; when his road seemed about to pass through an old, open, ruined castle, overhung with rich, thick leaves, like scales, at whose entrance, or egress, a red arm, pointing aside with the white inscription, "Way out of Tartarus into Elysium," stretched out toward a neighboring thicket.
His heart rose within him at this double nearness of such opposite days. With long steps he pressed on toward the Elysian wood, which seemed to be cut off from him by a broad ditch. But he soon came out of the bush-work before a green bridge, which flung its arch like a giant serpent across the ditch, not, however, on the earth, but among the summits of the trees. It bore him in through a blooming wilderness of oaks, firs, silver-poplars, fruit-trees, and lindens. Then it brought him out into the open country, and now Lilar, from the east, flung, over the wide-extending spikes of grain, the splendor of a high golden ball to meet him. The bridge sank gently with him again into fragrant, glimmering broom, and beneath and beside him sang and fluttered canary-birds, thrushes, finches, and nightingales, while the well-fed brood slept under the covert of the bridge. At last, after passing an arched avenue, it came up again to the light, and now he saw the blooming mountain cupola with the white altar, whereon he had knelt on a night of his youth; and farther to the south behind him, the veil and dividing-wall of Tartarus, a high-reared wood; and as he stepped onward, Elysium opened upon him more broadly,--a lane of small houses with Italian roofs full of little trees, smiled joyfully and familiarly upon the sight out of the green world-map of dells, groves, paths, lakes; and in the east five triumphal gates opened passages into a wide-extending plain, waving on like a green-glistening sea, and in the west five others stood opposite to them with opened lands and mountains.