They walked on a glorious earth, under a glorious heaven. Pure and white swam the sun like a swan through the blue flood,—meadows and villages crowded up close around the distant, low mountain-ridges; a soft wind swayed the green waves of the crop to and fro all over the plain; on the hills shadows lay fast asleep under the wings of white clouds; and behind the summits of the heights the mast-trees of the Rhine ships majestically sailed away.
As Albano went along so close by the side of his beloved, the purgatory burning under his Eden fell back deeper and deeper into the earth's core; full of uneasiness and hope, he cast his fiery eye now on the summer, now on the mild vesper-star, which glimmered so near to him out of the spring ether. The good maiden seemed to-day more still, serious, and restless than usual. As they went through a little wood, open on all sides, along the ridge of a hill that ran round the flute-dell, Liana suddenly said to the Count, she heard flutes. Scarcely could he say, he heard only far-off turtle-doves, when she at once collected herself as for something wonderful, fixed her eyes on heaven, smiled, and suddenly looked round toward Albano, and grew red. Then turning to him, she said: "I will be frank; I hear at this moment music within me.[174] Forgive me to-day my weakness and tenderness; it comes from yesterday." "I—you?" said he, passionately; for he, about whom in sicknesses only burning images stormed, was inspired with veneration for a being to whom, as if from her higher world, low tones like golden sunbeams reach down in her pains, and pass veiled through the rough deep.
But Liana, as if for the sake of turning aside his enthusiasm, came upon the subject of her friend Caroline, and told how she always hovered before her on such days, and especially on this walk. "In the beginning I sought her out," said Liana, "because she resembled my Linda. She was my instructress, although she was only a few weeks older than I. Her pure, severe, unflinching character, and her readiness to sacrifice herself cheerfully and in silence, made her even, if I may say so, worthy of veneration in the eyes of her mother. She was never seen to weep, tender as she was, for she wished to keep her mother always cheerful. We were going to take the veil in company, for the sake of being always together; I should not live to become old, she said, and I must spend my short life happily and without anxiety; but also in preparation for the next. Ah, she herself went up before me! Night-watching by the sick-bed of her mother, and sorrow for her death, took her away. She received the holy supper, for which we were preparing ourselves together, only on her death-bed. Then did the angel give me this veil, in which I am some time to follow her. O good, good Caroline!" She wept unconcealedly, and pressed, with emotion, Albano's hand. "O, I should not have begun about this! There comes already our friend; we will be right cheerful!"
They had now passed through a high wood of under-brush, which teasingly disclosed and hid by turns the landscapes that glided around them, and had come near to the spire which looks in upon the flute-dell, and near which lay a solitary church and Spener's dwelling, and in the plain below the open village. Spener came to meet his pupil—after the manner of old men—unconcerned about the others; and a young roe ran after him. A beautiful spot! Little white peacocks; turtle-doves at large; a city of bees in the midst of their bee-flora,—all bespoke the tranquil old man, whom the earth serves and honors, and who, indifferent towards it, lives only in God. He came—disappointing one's expectation of an ecclesiastical gravity—with a light playfulness upon the gay train, and laid his finger in benediction on the forehead of Liana, who seemed to be his granddaughter, as it were, a second tree-blossom in the late autumn of life. In a daughterly way, she placed the bunch of dwarf-roses in his bosom, and took very careful notice whether it pleased him. She smiled quite serenely, and all her tears seemed fanned away; but she resembled the rain-sprinkled tree, when the sun laughs out again,—the least agitation flings the old rain from the still leaves.
The old man was delighted with the sympathy of the young people, and remained with them upon the blooming and resounding eminence, which sat enthroned between a wide landscape and the richly laden mountain-ridge, running away into Elysium. Since, as with one who ascends in a balloon, the tones of earth did not reach him from so great a distance as its forms, they let him talk more than listen, as one spares old people.
He spoke soon of that in which his heart lived and breathed, but in a singular, half-theological, half-French, Wolfian, and poetic speech. One ought, of many a mystic's poetry and philosophy to give, instead of verbal, real translations, in order that it may be seen how the pure gold of truth glows under all wrappages. Spener says, in my translation: "He had formerly, before he found the right way, tormented himself in every human friendship and love. He had, when he was fervently loved, said to himself, that he could surely never so regard or love himself; and even so the beloved being could not truly so think of itself, as the loving one did, and though it were ever so perfect or so full of self-love. If every one looked upon others as upon himself, there could be no ardent love. But all love demands an object of infinite worth, and dies of every inexplicable and clearly recognized failure; it projects its objects out of all and above all, and requires a reciprocal love without limits, without any selfishness, without division, without pause, without end. Such an object is verily the divine being, but not fleeting, sinful, changeable man. Therefore must the lovesick heart sink into the Giver himself of this and of all love, into the fulness of all that is good and beautiful, into the disinterested, unlimited, universal Love, and dissolve and revive therein, blest in the alternation of contraction and expansion. Then it looks back upon the world and finds everywhere God and his reflection: the worlds are his deeds; every pious man is a word, a look, of the All-loving; for love to God is the Divine thing, and the heart yearns for him in every heart."
"But," said Albano, whose fresh, energetic life rebelled against all mystical annihilation, "how, then, does God love us?" "As a father loves his child, not because it is the best child, but because it needs him."[175] "And whence," he further inquired, "comes, then, the evil in man, and whence sorrow?" "From the Devil," said the old man, and pictured out uninterruptedly, with transfigured joy, the heaven of his heart,—how it was always surrounded with the all-beloved, all-loving One, how it never desired any good fortune or any gifts from him at all (which one did not wish even in earthly love), but only a higher and higher love towards himself, and how, while the evening mists of old age were gathering thicker and thicker around his senses, his heart felt itself, in the darkness of life, embraced more and more closely by the invisible arms. "I shall soon be with God!" said he, with a radiance of love on that countenance of his, chilled with life, and breaking in under the weight of years. One could have borne to see him die. So stands Mont Blanc before the rising moon; night veils his feet and his breast, but the light summit hangs high in the dark heaven as a star among the stars.
Liana, like a daughter, had not let her eye nor her hand go from him, and had languishingly drunk in every sound; her brother had heard him with more pleasure than Albano, but merely for the sake of remodelling more clearly and fully the mystic Hero into the mimic Mount Athos of his representation, and Rabette had contemplated him as in a church among believing by-thoughts.
He withdrew now without ceremony to take care of his animals, which he loved, as he did everything involuntary, for instance, children, as coming at first hand from God. "Everything is divine," he said, "and nothing earthly but what is immoral." He could not bear to smoke bees with brimstone, let flowers dry up with thirst in the pot-cage, or see an overdriven wounded horse, and he passed by a butcher's stall not without shuddering limbs.
"Shall we," said friend Charles, "take in the glorious evening on the magnificent mountain road, and see thy thunder-house, and cast down every cup of sorrow into the vales below?" Through what a magic neighborhood did they now pass along the sloping ridge of the thunder-house! On the right, as it were, the occident of nature; on the left, the orient; before them Lilar, glittering in the faerie of evening,—lying in the arms of the glancing Rosana,—golden grain behind silver-poplars, and overhead a heaven filled with a life-intoxicated, tumultuous creation,—and the sun-god stalking away over his evening-world, and stooping a little under the midnight to raise his golden head in the east. Albano went forth, holding Liana's holy hand. "O how beautiful is all!" said he. "How the fluttering world-map rustles and murmurs with long streams and woods,—how the eastern mountains bask in steadfast repose,—how the groves climb the hills, with glowing stems! One could plunge down into the smoking vales and into the cold, glistening waves. Ah, Liana, how beautiful is all!" "And God is on the earth," said she. "And in thee!" said he, and thought of the word of the old man, that love seeks God, and that he dwells in the heart which we esteem.