The reader can now learn the birthday of this section: it is just a day later than our good fortune--in short tomorrow we set out, I and Philippina, and to-day I write to him [the reader], Gustavus is simply borne away by a stream of friendly and medical representations, and to-morrow is carried by us to his destination. Fortuna has this time no vapors nor one-sided headaches; everything favors us; all is packed up; my dilatory pleas are written--no one can come from Maussenbach to disturb me--the heavens are heavenly-blue, and I need not believe my eyes, but the cyanometer[[90]] of M. von Saussure--I look as blooming as the spring and its fluttering butterflies--in short, nothing were wanting to my happiness excepting that to-day's section were happily written, which I have been playing out up to this very day in order to have the whole past behind me, and not to have to describe anything to-morrow except tomorrow....
And as that, now, is also done--now then, blue May! spread out thy loving arms, open thy heavenly-blue eyes, unveil thy virgin-face, and walk the earth that all creatures, intoxicated with bliss, may fall upon thy cheeks, into thy arms, at thy feet and the biographer too may lie down somewhere!
FORTY-NINTH SECTION, OR FIRST SECTION OF JOY.
The Fog.--Lilienbad.
Receive us with thy flowery Eden, veiled Lilienbad, me, Gustavus and my sister, give our dreams an earthly floor that they may play before us, and be thou as beautiful in thy twilight haze as a Past!
To-day we made our entry and our avant-courier was a sporting butterfly which we drove before us from one flowery station to another. And the path of my pen, also, shall lead over no less charming ground.
The morning of to-day had submerged the whole Auenthal landscape under a sea of fog. The cloudy heavens rested low down upon our flowers. We sallied forth and went into these fluid heavens, into which, generally, only the Alps carry us up. Overhead on this globe of mist the sun painted itself like a paling mock-sun; at last the white ocean ran off into long streams--on the woods lay hanging mountains, every low place was covered with gleaming clouds, overhead the blue celestial circle opened wider and wider, till at length the earth took off from the heavens its tremulous veil and gazed joyfully into the great, eternal face--the white raiment of heaven (as my sister said) laid together by itself still fluttered on the trees, and the fleeces of cloud still overhung blossoms and floated as blond-laces around flowers--at last the landscape was sprinkled with the glittering gold-grains of the dew, and the meadows were overlaid as with magnified wings of butterflies. A cleansed and exhilarating May air cooled as with ice the draught of the lungs, the sun looked down joyously upon our sparkling spring and gazed and glowed into all globules of dew, as God does into all souls.... Oh, if I, this morning, when all things seemed to embrace us and when we sought to embrace all, could not answer myself, when I asked myself: "Was ever thy virtue as pure as thy enjoyment and for what hours does this one come to reward thee?"--still less can I now answer, when I see that man can renew his joys, but not his deserts by remembrance, and that the fibres of our brains are the chords of an Æolian harp, which under the breath of a long-forgotten hour begin again to sound. The great Spirit of the Universe could not transform for us the whole stubborn chaotic mass with flowers; but he gave our spirits the power to make out of the second more ductile chaos, out of the globe of the brain, nothing but rose-fields and sunny shapes. Fortunate Rousseau--more fortunate than thou thyself knowest! The heaven which thou hast now won will differ in nothing from that which thy fancy here laid out, except in this, that thou inhabitest it not alone....
But just that makes the infinite difference; and where could I have felt it more sweetly, than by the side of my sister, whose glances have been the reflection of our sky, whose sighs the echo of our brotherly and sisterly harmony. Only be thou always so, precious darling! who hast suffered as much from the sick man as I from the sickness! Besides I know not which I oftener take back from thee, my blame or my praise!
Full of unuttered thoughts we arrived at Unter-Scheerau and found our pale traveling-companion all ready, my Gustavus. He was silent much of the time and his words lay under the pressure of his thoughts; the outer sunshine paled to inner moonlight, for no man is cheery when he is seeking or hoping to find the best that one can lose here below--Health and Love. As in such cases the chords of the soul do not fail to be put out of tune save under the lightest fingers, i. e., those of woman, accordingly I let mine rest and female fingers play, those of my sister.
When, at length, we had waded through many a stream of fragrance--for one often, out in the air, goes along by little flower-gales, without knowing whence they blow;--and when all the haze of the day's joy had condensed, before the eye, into an evening-dew and sunk with the sun; when that part of the sky over which the sun flamed began to glow white before glowing red, whereas the eastern quarter came forth in dark blue to meet the night; when we had followed with our eyes every bird and butterfly and traveler going in the direction of Lilienbad;--then at last did the lovely vale, into which we brought with us so many hopes as seeds of future joys, open to us its bosom. Our entry was at the eastern end; at the western the sun looked at us along the earth toward which he was going down, and as if from rapture over his well-spent day, melted into an evening-redness which floated through the whole valley and ascended even to the summits of the trees. I never saw the like; it lay, as if it had fallen in drops, in the bushes, on the grass and foliage and painted sky and earth to the likeness of one rosy cup. Single cottages, sometimes pairs of them, embowered themselves with trees; living lattices of twigs pressed themselves up on the prospects of the chambers and overspread the happy one who looked out at these pictures of bliss with shadows, perfumes, blossoms and fruits. The sun had gone down: the vale, like a widowed princess, put on a veil of white fragrant mist, and with its thousand throats sank into silence.