Hence I have so often wished that maidens might always dance exactly like the Graces and the Hours,—that is to say, only with one another, not with us gentlemen. The present union of the female wave-line with the masculine swallow-like zigzag, as well in dress as in motion, does not remarkably beautify the dance.
Liana assumed a new ethereal form, somewhat as an angel while flying back into heaven lays aside his graceful earthly one. The dancing-floor is to woman's beauty what the horse's back is to ours; on both the mutual enchantment unfolds itself, and only a rider can match a dancing maiden. Fortunate Albano! thou who hardly dar'st take the finger-points of Liana's offered hand in thine! thou gettest enough. And only look at this friendly maiden, whose eyes and lips Charis so smilingly brightens for the dance, and who yet, on the other hand, appears so touchingly, because she is a little pale! How different from those capricious or inflexible step-sisters, who, with half a Cato of Utica on the wrinkled or tightly stretched face, hop, fall back, and slip round. Julienne flies joyfully to and fro; and it is hard to say before whose eyes she loves to flutter best, Liana's or Albano's.
When it was done, Julienne wanted to begin over again. Liana looked at her mother, and immediately begged her friend rather for a cooling off. A mere pretext! A female friend loves to be alone with a female friend; the two loved each other before people only with a veil upon their hearts, and longed for the dark arbor where it might fall off. Liana had a real loving impatience, till she could, with her duplicate-soul, her twin-heart, snatch moments free from witnesses in the garden of evening and May. They came back changed and full of tender seriousness. The lovely beings were perhaps as like each other in their innermost souls and in stillness as in the dance, and more so than they seemed.
And thus passed with our youth a fair-starred evening! Pardon him, however, that he grasped and pressed this nosegay so close as to feel some of the thorns. His heart, whose love grew painfully near another, could not help finding this other, where there was no sign of response, at once higher and farther off. Her love was love of man,—her smile was meant for every kind eye,—she was so cheerful. In Lilar she easily passed into emotion and general contemplations; not so here,—of course she would look right sympathetically upon her wildly loving brother, who, since that confession-night, had twined himself as if with oak-roots around the darling; but her half-blind love for the brother might indeed be only, in the deceiving light of reflection, shining upon his friend. All this the modest one said to himself. But what he had enjoyed in full measure of ecstasy was the increasing, clear, tender, steadfast love of his soul's-brother.
57. CYCLE.
As to Liana's secret inclination and Zesara's prospects I shall never once institute any conjectures, although I might erase them again before printing. I remember what came of it, when I and others, on a former occasion, covered over with our hands Hafenreffer's official reports upon matters of consequence, and undertook to unfold at length, by pure fancy, how things might have gone on;—it was of no use! And naturally enough; for women and Spanish houses have, to begin with, many doors and few windows, and it is easier to get into their hearts than to look into them. Particularly maidens', I mean; since women, physiognomically and morally, are more strongly marked and boldly developed, I would rather undertake to guess at and so portray ten mothers than two daughters. The bodily portrait-painters make the same complaint.
Whoever observes the influence of night, will find that the doubts and anxieties which he had contracted the evening previous about the heroine of his life it has, for the most part, completely killed by the time it gets to be towards morning. Albano, in the spring morning, opened his eyes upon life as in a triumphal car, and the fresh steeds stamped before it, and he could only let them have the reins.
He alighted with his friend at Liana's after a few years, that is, days; the Minister had not yet come back. Heavens! how new and bloomingly young was her form, and yet how unchanged her demeanor! Why is it, thought he, that I can get only her motions, not all her features, by heart? Why can I not imprint this face, even to the least smile, like a holy antique, cleanly and deeply upon my brain, that so it may float before me in eternal presence? For this reason, my dear: young and beautiful forms are the very ones which are hard for the memory as for the pencil; and coarse, old, masculine ones easier for both. Again he filled himself with joys and sighs by looking at her,—and these were increased by the nearness of the garden, wherein June with his evening splendor lay encamped. O, if only one moment could come to him, in which his whole soul might speak its inspiration! Out of doors there lay the young, fiery spring, basking, like an Antinoüs, in the garden, and the moon, impatient for the fair June-night, stood already under the gate of the east, and found the living day and the lingering sun still in the field. But the mother refused to the asking look of Liana the sight of sunset,—"on account of the unwholesome Serein."[136] Albano, with his heart full of manly blood, thought this maternal barrier around a child's health very small.
The hour for shutting gates upon to-day's Eden would have struck for him the next minute, had it not been for the Captain and the Cereus serpens.