Only Liana—although so often deceived by these calms—was full of unutterable hope and joy at the domestic peace, and believed in its permanence, especially as the paternal birthday was so near, that Olympiad and normal period upon which and by which the house reckoned so largely. During the whole year the Minister had been looking out for this day, in order, in the morning, when the congratulations came, not to forget to make believe he had forgotten it, but to be astonished on the subject,—all owing to business, he said; and at evening, when the guests came,—on account of business he never dined, he said, to astonish them. He was alternately the worshipper and image-breaker of etiquette, ministerial and opposition party thereof, as his vanity dictated.
Liana importuned her brother, till he promised to do something to please his father; he composed, for the purpose, a family-piece, in which he introduced the whole confession-night between himself and Albano, only he converted Albano into a sister. Liana gladly studied this part also for the birthday, although she had to deliver the blooming vest.
The Minister, contrary to expectation, accepted the vest, the Captain and his hand-bill for the evening's performance, graciously; for he was wont, on former occasions, like some other fathers, to growl the louder the more his children stroked him. He danced away like a Polack right merrily with his family, and stuck the rod[139] behind the fur. Nothing worse at this moment revolved in his head than the question, where it would be best to open the amateur theatre, whether in the Salon de Lecture or in the Salon des bains domestiques; for the two halls were entirely distinguished from one another, and from the other chambers, by their names.
The day came. Albano, whose invitation Charles had to extort, because the Minister, out of pride, hated his pride, brought with him, unfortunately, in his soul, the tone which Liana had given him the last time to carry home with him. His hope had hitherto lived upon this tone. O blame him not for it! The airy nothing of a sigh bears often a pastoral world or an orcus on its ephemeron's-wing. Everything weighty may, like a rock, be placed on a point, whereupon a child's finger can set it in rotation.
But the tone had died away. Liana knew no other way than that, in the visiting congregation,—of whose moral pneumatophobia,[140] after all, she was not aware in its full extent,—one should hide every religious emotion behind the church fan. Boxes, pit, and farthing gallery were, almost at the usual play-hour, set off and filled out with Gratulantes, all fit to be canons. The German gentleman was made particularly prominent by the rich and insolent ostentation of his circumstances. Of the visiting-company-lane it can, in passing, only be observed, that in it, as in the antiphlogistic system, oxygen[141] played the chief part, which, however, was given out less by the lungs than by the heart.
When the curtain rose, and Roquairol made that night of forgiveness and ecstasy pass by again in a still more glowing form than it had actually had; when this dreamy imitation seemed the first appearance of the actual reality, how hotly and deeply did he burn himself thereby into his friend's soul! (Good Albano! This art of being his own revenant, his own ghost, his mock- and mimic-self, and of counterfeiting the splendid edition of his own life, should have left thee smaller hopes!) The Count must needs, in this most grave society that ever sate around him, break out into an unseemly weeping. And why did Charles put Albano's words, of that memorable night, into the mouth of Liana, so bewitchingly interesting in her emotion, and thus make his love, wrought upon by so many charms, grow even to anguish?
The German gentleman himself gave to Liana, that white swan, floating, tinged with rosy redness, through the evening glow of Phœbus, several loud, and to the Count annoying signs of approbation. The Minister was chiefly glad that all this happened in his honor, and that the point of the last act was still going to throw a very special epigrammatic laurel-wreath on his crown.
He got the wreath. The pair of children were very favorably criticised by the Erlangen literary gazette[142] of spectators, and by the belles-lettres review, and covered over with crowns,—with noble martyrs' crowns. The German gentleman had and used the public right of ushering in the Coronation, and the Coronation-car. Base man! why should thy beetle's-eyes be permitted to creep gnawingly over the holy roses which emotion and sisterly love plants on Liana's cheeks? But how much gayer still was the old gentleman,—so much so that he flirted with the oldest ladies,—when he saw the knight bring out magnificently into full daylight his interest in Liana, not fantastically or sentimentally, but by still and steady advances and marked attention, by jokes and glances and sly addresses, and at last by something decisive! That is to say, the German gentleman drew the old man into a cabinet, and both came back out of it vehemently animated.
The lovely Liana, withdrawn into her own heart, fled from the upas-tree of the laurel away to her comforting mother. Liana had preserved, in the midst of the stormy mill-races of daily assemblées, a low voice and a delicate ear, and the tumult had driven her inward, and left her almost shy.
The fair soul seldom guessed anything, except a fair soul: she so easily divined her like; with such difficulty her counterpart. Bouverot's advances seemed to her the usual forward and side steps of manly courtesy; and his knightly celibacy did not allow her entirely to understand him. Do not the lilies of innocence bloom earlier than the roses of shame, as the purple color, in the beginning, only dyes pale, and not till afterward puts on the red glow, when it lies before the sun? She kept herself this evening near her mother, because she perceived in her an unwonted seriousness. When Froulay had taken off from his head the birthday garland, wherein were planted more thorns and stalks than flowers,—when he had taken off the crown of thorns, and stood in his night-cap amidst his family,—he addressed himself to the business whereupon he had been thinking all the evening. "My little dove," said he to his daughter, borrowing a good expression from the Bastile,[143]—"my little dove, leave me and Guillemette alone." He now laid bare his upper teeth by a characteristic grin, and said he had, as he hoped, something agreeable to communicate to her. "You know," he continued, "what I owe to the German gentleman." He meant not thanks, but money and consideration.