An enchanted nightingale sits on a red coral bough in the silent sea, and sings a song of the love of my ancestors; the pearls gaze eagerly from their shells, the wonderful water-flowers tremble with sorrow, the cunning sea-snails, bearing on their backs many-coloured porcelain towers, come creeping onwards, the ocean-roses blush with shame, the yellow, sharp-pointed starfish, and the thousand-hued glassy jelly-fish quiver and stretch, and all swarm and listen.
Unfortunately, Madame, this nightingale song is far too long to be set down here; it is as long as the world itself, even its dedication to Anangas, the God of Love, is as long as all Scott's novels, and there is a passage referring to it in Aristophanes, which in German[5] reads thus:—
"Tiotio, tiotio, tiotinx,
Totototo totototo tototinx."
(Voss's Translation.)
No, I was not born in India. I first beheld the light of the world on the shores of that beautiful stream, in whose green hills folly grows and is plucked in Autumn, laid away in cellars, poured into barrels, and exported to foreign lands. In fact, only yesterday I heard some one speaking a piece of folly which, in the year 1811, was imprisoned in a bunch of grapes, which I myself then saw growing on the Johannisburg. But much folly is also consumed at home, and men are the same there as everywhere: they are born, eat, drink, sleep, laugh, cry, slander each other, are greatly troubled about the propagation of their race, try to seem what they are not and to do what they cannot, never shave until they have a beard, and often have beards before they get discretion, and when they at last have discretion, they drink it away in white and red folly.
Mon dieu! if I had faith, so that I could remove mountains—the Johannisburg would be just the mountain which I would carry with me everywhere. But as my faith is not strong enough, imagination must aid me, and she quickly sets me by the beautiful Rhine.
Oh, that is a fair land, full of loveliness and sunshine. In the blue stream are mirrored the mountain shores, with their ruined towers, and woods, and ancient towns. There, before the house-door, sit the good townspeople, of a summer evening, and drink out of great cans, and gossip confidentially about how the wine—the Lord be praised!—thrives, and how justice should be free from all secrecy, and how Marie Antoinette's being guillotined is none of our business, and how dear the tobacco tax makes tobacco, and how all mankind are equal, and what a glorious fellow Gœrres is.
I have never troubled myself about such conversation, and sat rather with the maidens in the arched window, and laughed at their laughter, and let them throw flowers in my face, and pretended to be ill-natured until they told me their secrets, or some other important stories. Fair Gertrude was half wild with delight when I sat by her. She was a girl like a flaming rose, and once, as she fell on my neck, I thought that she would burn away into perfume in my arms. Fair Katharine flamed into sweet music when she talked with me, and her eyes were of a pure, internal blue, which I have never seen in men or animals, and very seldom in flowers—one gazed so gladly into them, and could then think such sweet things. But the beautiful Hedwig loved me, for when I came to her she bowed her head till her black curls fell down over her blushing face, and her bright eyes shone like stars from the dark heaven. Her bashful lips spoke not a word, and I too could say nothing to her. I coughed and she trembled. She often begged me, through her sisters, not to climb the rocks so rashly, or to bathe in the Rhine when I was hot with running or drinking wine. Once I overheard her pious prayer before the Virgin Mary, which she had adorned with gold leaf and illuminated with a lamp, and which stood in a corner at the entrance. I plainly heard her pray to the Mother of God to keep him from climbing, drinking, and bathing. I should certainly have been desperately in love with her if she had been indifferent to me, and I was indifferent to her because I knew that she loved me.—Madame, to win my love, I must be treated en canaille.
Johanna was the cousin of the three sisters, and I was glad to be with her. She knew the most beautiful old legends, and when she pointed with her white hand through the window out to the mountains where all had happened which she narrated, I became enchanted; the old knights rose visibly from the ruined castles and hewed away at each other's iron clothes, the Lorely sat again on the mountain summit, singing a-down her sweet, seductive song, and the Rhine rippled so reasonably soothing—and yet so mockingly horrible—and the fair Johanna looked at me so strangely, with such enigmatic tenderness, that she seemed herself one with the legend that she told. She was a slender, pale girl, sickly and musing, her eyes were clear as truth itself, her lips piously arched, in her face lay a great story—was it a love legend? I know not, and I never had the courage to ask. When I looked at her long, I grew calm and cheerful—it seemed to me as though it was Sunday in my heart and the angels held service there.
In such happy hours I told her tales of my childhood, and she listened earnestly, and, strangely, when I could not think of the names she remembered them. When I then asked her with wonder how she knew the names, she would answer with a smile that she had learned it of the birds that had built a nest on the sill of her window—and she tried to make me believe that these were the same birds which I once bought with my pocket-money from a hard-hearted peasant boy, and then let fly away. But I believed that she knew everything because she was so pale, and really soon died. She knew, too, when she would die, and wished that I would leave Andernach the day before. When I bade her farewell she gave me both her hands—they were white, sweet hands, and pure as the Host—and she said, You are very good, and when you are not, think of the little dead Veronica.
Did the chattering birds also tell her this name? Often in hours of remembrance I had wearied my brain in trying to think of that dear name, but could not.