No word can express Albano's veneration for such a sanctified heart, which dreamed into such distinctness glorified beings; whose golden flowers only grew the higher over the thought of death, as earthly ones do in churchyards over the reality; which, simultaneously with his own, invisible hands had drawn into two similar dreams;[177] to which one was ashamed to give common truths for its holy errors. "Thou art from heaven," he said, inspired, and his joy became the pearl melted in the eye which quenches the thirst of the human heart; "therefore thou wouldst go back thither!" "O, I consecrate to thee, my friend," said she, smilingly weeping, and pressed his hand to her pure heart, "the whole little life which I have, every hour to the last, and I will, meanwhile, prepare thee for everything which God sends."
Before they entered the cottage of the pious father, Albano seized his friend's hand, and the sisters joined each other. The friends went forward for a time in silence; Charles looked upon Albano, and found the peace of blessedness upon his face. When the latter saw how Liana pressed her overfraught heart to her sister's, then were sincerity and joy too strong in him, and he fell without a word upon the heart of the dear brother of the eternal bride, and let him silently guess all from his tears of bliss. O, he might have guessed it, to be sure, from the bridal look of love which his sister more seldom removed from his friend, and from the heartiness wherewith she drew Rabette to her heart; just as if they two would soon be related to each other, as if her brother himself would soon speak more sweetly, since he for some time had no longer called her the little Linda; and consecrated her thereon for the heart of her brother. Not before the pious father did the enraptured look hold itself much in abeyance, which Albano, standing as if under the gate of eternity, cast into the heavens, gleaming like worlds one behind another; he was still and tender, and in his heart dwelt all hearts. O love one heart purely and warmly, then thou lovest all hearts after it, and the heart in its heaven sees like the journeying sun, from the dew-drop even to the ocean, nothing but mirrors which it warms and fills.
But in Roquairol started up immediately, when he saw the heavenly bliss so near, the mutinous spirit of his past, and struck with a bloody epilepsy the limbs of the inner man: those immortal sighings after an ever-flying peace again tormented him; his transgressions and errors, and even the hours when he innocently suffered, were painfully reckoned up before him; and then he spoke, (and stirred every heart, but most of all poor Rabette's, which he pressed against his own to warm himself, as, according to the tradition, the eagle does with the dove, after which he does not tear her to pieces,)—nobly he spoke then of life's wilderness, and of fate, which burns out man, like Vesuvius, into a crater, and then again sows cool meadows therein, and fills it again with fire; and of the only blessedness of this hollow life, love, and of the injury inflicted, when fate with its winds sways and rubs a flower[178] to and fro, and thereby cuts through the green skin against the earth.
But while he thus spoke, he looked on the glowing Rabette, and would fain by these warmings burst open, as it were by force, the fast-closed flower-bud of his love, and spread its leaves out under the sun. O the bewildered and yearning one was surely not yet quite happy even to-day, and he wished not so much to affect others as himself.
With what blissful presentiments did they step out again before the sphinx of night, who lay smiling before them with soft, starry glances! Did they not go through a still, glimmering, subterranean world, light and free, without the heavy clogging earth on their feet, while in the wide Elysium the warm ether only flutters because invisible Psyches fan it with their wings? And out of the flute-dell the old man sends after them his tones as sweet arrows of love, in order that the swelling heart may blissfully bleed of their woundings. Albano and Liana came out upon a prospect where the broad eastern landscape, with its light-streaks of blooming poppy-fields, and its dark villages, ascended the soft mountains, where the moon awoke, and the splendor of her garment already swept like that of a spirit through heaven: here they remained standing and waiting for Luna. Albano held her hand. All the mountain-ridges of his life stood in a glowing dawn. "Liana," said he, "what innumerable springs are there at this moment up yonder on the worlds which hang in the heavens; but this is the fairest!" "Ah, life is lovely, and to-day it is too dear to me! Albano," she added, in a low voice, and her whole face became an exalted, tearless love, and the stars wove and embroidered its bridal dress, "if God calls me, then may he let me always appear to thee as Caroline does to me. O, if I could only attend thee thus through thy whole dear life, and console and warn thee, I would willingly wish for no other heaven."
But as he was about to express the fulness of his love, and the anger of his pain about the death-delusion, just then came his wild friend, who, like a Vesuvius, pouring out at once lava- and rain-streams over the credulous Rabette, had made both her heart and his own only fuller, not lighter; then Charles beheld the glorified beings and the blue horizon, where already the moon was flinging forth her glimmering light between the bristling mast-peaks and summits, and looked again into the splendor of holy love. Then could he no longer contain himself; his heart, full of agony, mounted to an eternal purpose, as if to God, and he embraced Albano and Rabette, and said: "Beloved man! beloved maiden! keep my unhappy heart!"
Rabette clung around him compassionately, as a mother around her child, and gave up to him, in hot, gushing tears, her whole soul. Albano, astonished, enfolded in his arms the love-bond; Liana was drawn to the beloved hearts by the whirlpool of bliss. Unheard the flutes sounded on, unseen waved the white banners of the stars overhead. Charles spoke frantic words of love, and wild wishes of dying for joy. Albano touched trembling Liana's flower-lip, as John kissed Christ, and the heavy milky-way bent down like a magic wand toward his golden bliss. Liana sighed: O mother, how happy are thy children! The moon had already flown up into the blue, like a white angel of peace, and glorified the great embrace; but the blest ones marked it not. Like a sounding waterfall, their rich life covered them, and they knew not that the flutes had ceased, and all the hills were shining.[179]
FOOTNOTES:
[172] Museum (home of the muses) is the beautiful German name for it.—Tr.
[173] Kopf-und Ohr-hängerei. Hanging down of head (hypocrisy) and ears.—Tr.