The happy youth was silent, and returned for answer a hand-pressure of love;—he only dreamed of the present, and signified he could wait and deny himself. With the heart of a child from whom the curtains and the after-midnight hide the approaching Christmas present of the morrow, he was borne along in the pleasure-boat, with tightly bandaged eyes, toward the approaching, heavenly kingdom. Dian drew, as well as the double light of the moonshine and the aurora permitted, a sketch of the veiled dreamer in his scrap-book. I wish I had it here, and could see in it how my darling, with the optic nerves tied up, strains at once the eye of dream directed toward the inner world, and the ear of attention so sharply set toward the outer. How beautiful is such a thing, painted,—how much more beautiful realized in life!
The mantle of night grew thinner and cooler,—the morning air fanned livingly against the breast,—the larks mingled with the nightingales and with the singing boatmen,—and he heard, beneath his bandage, which was growing lighter and lighter, the joyful discoveries of his friends, who saw in the open cities along the shore the reviving stir of human life, and on the waterfalls of the mountains the alternate reflections of clouds and ruddy sky. At last the breaking splendors of morn hung like a festoon of Hesperides-apples around the distant tops of the chestnut-trees; and now they disembarked upon Isola Bella.
The veiled dreamer heard, as they ascended with him the ten terraces of the garden, the deep-drawn sigh and shudder of joy close beside him, and all the quick entreaties of astonishment; but he held the bandage fast, and went blindfold from terrace to terrace, thrilled with orange-fragrance, refreshed by higher, freer breezes, fanned by laurel-foliage,—and when they had gained at last the highest terrace, and looked down upon the lake, heaving its green waters sixty ells below, then Schoppe cried, "Now! now!" But Cesara said, "No! the sun first!" and at that moment the morning wind flung up the sunlight gleaming through the dark twigs, and it flamed free on the summits,—and Dian snatched off the bandage, and said, "Look round!" "O God!" cried he with a shriek of ecstasy, as all the gates of the new heaven flew open, and the Olympus of nature, with its thousand reposing gods, stood around him. What a world! There stood the Alps, like brother giants of the Old World, linked together, far away in the past, holding high up over against the sun the shining shields of the glaciers. The giants wore blue girdles of forest, and at their feet lay hills and vineyards, and through the aisles and arches of grape-clusters the morning winds played with cascades as with watered-silk ribbons, and the liquid brimming mirror of the lake hung down by the ribbons from the mountains, and they fluttered down into the mirror, and a carved work of chestnut woods formed its frame.... Albano turned slowly round and round, looked into the heights, into the depths, into the sun, into the blossoms; and on all summits burned the alarm-fires of mighty Nature, and in all depths their reflections,—a creative earthquake beat like a heart under the earth and sent forth mountains and seas.... O then, when he saw on the bosom of the infinite mother the little swarming children, as they darted by under every wave and under every cloud,—and when the morning breeze drove distant ships in between the Alps,—and when Isola Madre towered up opposite to him, with her seven gardens, and tempted him to lean upon the air and be wafted over on level sweep from his summit to her own,—and when he saw the pheasants darting down from the Madre into the waves,—then did he seem to stand like a storm-bird with ruffled plumage on his blooming nest, his arms were lifted like wings by the morning wind, and he longed to cast himself over the terrace after the pheasants, and cool his heart in the tide of Nature.
Ashamed, he took, without looking round him, the hands of his friends and pressed them in mute fervor, that he might not be obliged to speak. The magnificent universe had painfully expanded, and then blissfully overflowed his great breast; and now, when he opened his eyes, like an eagle, wide and full upon the sun, and when the blinding brightness hid the earth, and he began to be lonely, and the earth became smoke and the sun a soft, white world, which gleamed only around the margin,—then did his whole, full soul, like a thunder-cloud, burst asunder and burn and weep, and from the pure, white sun his mother looked upon him, and in the fire and smoke of the earth his father and his life stood veiled.
Silently he went down the terraces, often passing his hand across his moist eyes to wipe away the dazzling shadow which danced on all the summits and all the steps.
Exalted Nature! when we see and love thee, we love our fellow-men more warmly; and when we must pity or forget them, thou still remainest with us, reposing before the moist eye like a verdant chain of mountains in the evening red. Ah, before the soul in whose sight the morning dew of its ideals has faded to a cold, gray drizzle,—and before the heart, which, in the subterranean passages of this life, meets no longer men, but only dry, crooked-up mummies on crutches in catacombs,—and before the eye which is impoverished and forsaken, and which no human creature will any longer gladden,—and before the proud son of the gods whom his unbelief and his lonely bosom, emptied of humanity, rivet down to an eternal, unchangeable anguish,—before all these thou remainest, quickening Nature, with thy flowers and mountains and cataracts, a faithful comforter; and the bleeding son of the gods, cold and speechless, dashes the drop of anguish from his eyes, that they may rest, far and clear, on thy volcanoes, and on thy Springs, and on thy suns!
2. CYCLE.
I could wish nothing finer for one whom I held dear, than a mother,—a sister,—three years of living together on Isola Bella,—and then in the twentieth, a morning hour when he should land on the Eden-island, and, enjoying all this with the eye and memory at once, clasp and strain it to his open soul. O thou all too happy Albano, on the rose-parterre of childhood,—under the deep, blue sky of Italy,—in the midst of luxuriant, blossom-laden citron-foliage,—in the bosom of beautiful nature, who caresses and holds thee like a mother, and in the presence of sublime nature, which stands like a father in the distance, and with a heart which expects its own father to-day!
The three now roamed with slow, unsteady steps through the swimming paradise. Although both of the others had often trodden it before, still their silver age became a golden age, by sympathy with Albano's ecstasy; the sight of another's rapture wakes the old impression of our own. As people who live near breakers and cataracts speak louder than others, so did the majestic sounding of the swollen sea of life impart to them all, even Schoppe, a stronger language; only he never could hit upon such imposing words, at least gestures, as another man.
Schoppe, who must needs fling a farewell kiss back to dear Italy, would gladly still have conserved the last scattered drops that hung around the cup of joy, which were sweet as Italian wines, full of German fire without the German acid. By acid he meant leave-taking and emotion. "If fate," said he, "fires a single retreating shot, by Heaven, I quietly turn my nag and ride whistling back. The deuce must be in the beast (or on him) if a clever jockey could not so break his mourning steed that the creature should carry himself very well as a companion-horse to the festive steed.[6] I school my sun-horse as well as my sumpter-horse far otherwise."