All the philosophy and stoicism that he now had in him—for he held that which the arm out of the clouds gave him as booty gained by his own—Albano applied to the purpose of taking from his ecstasy the moderation which they impart. Moderation, he said, was only for patients and pigmies; and all those anxious, evenly balanced sticklers for temperament[181] and time-keepers had, whether in the cultivation of a pleasure or of a talent, profited themselves more than the world; on the contrary, their antipodes had benefited the world more than themselves.[182]
He kept in view very good fundamental principles. Man, said he, is free and without limits,—not in respect to what he will do or enjoy, but in respect to what he will do without; he can, if he will, will to dispense with everything. In fact, he continued, one has simply the choice, either always or never to fear; for thy life-tent stands over a loaded mine, and, round about, the hours aim at thee naked weapons. Only one in a thousand[183] hits; and, in any case, I am sure I would sooner fall standing than bending like a coward. But, he concluded, in order to justify himself on the subject, is then steadfastness made for nothing better than for a surgeon and serving-maid, and not much rather for our muse and goddess? for it is not surely a good, merely because it helps do without something which we have lost, but it is intrinsically one, and a greater than the one whose place it supplies; even the happiest must acquire it, even without outward occasion or bestowal; yes, it is so much the better, if it is possessed earlier than applied.
These deceptions or justifications were partly weapons of self-defence against the tragic Roquairol, who would fain heighten every pleasure, and even those of his friend, by sombre contrasts; and partly they were such as a noble man, who hitherto has plunged into sorrow without measuring its depth, and who would always feel his power of swimming through life, must necessarily fall upon, when he is inwardly aware that the centre of gravity of his bliss and of his hell has shifted and fallen out of himself into another being. "O, what if she should die?" he asked himself. He had not been wont to shudder so at the thought of any death as of this. Therefore he squeezed these thorns of fancy right sharply in his hand in order to crush them. At last, when the pure country air of love and the shepherd-dance in this Arcadia had brought more and more roses to Liana's cheek, then his thorns ceased to grow.
To all other vipers of life, so long as they could find no entrance through Liana's heart, he was inaccessible. At whatever price,—and though he should have to forsake, give up, provoke, undertake all,—he would buy Liana. The phantoms of terror which came threateningly to meet him out of two houses,—Froulay's and Gaspard's,—he let come on, and dispelled them: let the foe once show himself, thought he, so am I his foe too. Often he stood in Tartarus, and found, in this still life of death in rilievo, peace of soul. The actual world takes more quickly our image than we its; even here he gained soft, broad, life-illumining hopes and sweet tears, which flowed from him at the thought of Liana's faith in her death, not because he believed in the probability, but in the improbability thereof, which, through love and joy and recovery, would daily grow greater.
Only one misfortune was there for him, against which every weapon snapped in pieces, whose possibility, however, he held to be a sinful thought,—namely, that he and Liana, by some fault or time or the world's influence, might cease to love each other. Here, relying on two hearts, he boldly defied the future. O, who has not said, when, in reliance upon a warm eternity, he has expressed his rapture, The Fatal Sister may clip the thread of our life, but shall she come and open the scissors against the bond of our love? The very next day the Fatal Sister has stood before him, and snapped the scissors to.
68. CYCLE.
Once Roquairol came quite late to take Albano with him to the "Evening-Star Party" at the herdsman's hut, which he had arranged with Rabette. The Captain loved to build around the warm springs of his love and joy the well-curb of wholly select days and circumstances; if he could contrive it, for instance, he made his declarations of love, say on a birthday, during a total eclipse of the sun, on a valentine's day, in a blooming hot-house in winter, in a skating chair on the ice, or in a charnel-house; so, too, he loved to quarrel with others in significant days and places, in the church-pew, in the beginning of spring or winter, in the green-room of the amateur theatre, at a great fire, or not far from Tartarus or in the flute-dell. Albano, however, was too young, as others are too old, to have to season his fresh feeling with artificial hours and situations; he preferred to beautify the latter through the former.
With impetuous joy Albano flew along the road to the unexpected pleasure. Last evening had been so rich,—the four rivers of Paradise had, in one cataract, poured down from heaven into his heart,—and this evening he would leap into its sprayey whirlpool. The evening heaven itself was so fair and pure, and Hesperus went with growing splendor down his brightly glimmering path.
Rabette waited at the foot of the mountain on which stood the herdsman's hut (the little shooting-house), in order to lead him unsuspecting to the unprepared female friend, who at the window, with her gleaming eye on Hesperus, lay musing, and thought of the full, glowing autumn flowers, which, at this late time of her life, and so shortly before the longest night, were springing up. She was troubled to-day about many things. She had, in fact, sought hitherto more to deserve and to justify than to enjoy and increase her love, and more to bless with it another's heart than her own. How indescribably she longed to do deeds for him,—only sacrifices were to her deeds,—and she really envied her friend who had, every time, at least to prepare Charles a beverage. As she knew no other way, she expressed her devoted zeal by greater daughterly love and attention to Albano's parents and sister; and learned even to cook a little, which other ministers' daughters, who make nothing but salad and tea, must pardon her, especially when they reflect that, in Liana's case, they themselves would not have done otherwise, but rather have made one dish more. Yes, she accounted Rabette as more virtuous, because she could be more broadly and extensively active; Rabette, on the other hand, held Liana to be the better of the two, because she prayed so much the more. A similar error they repeated twofold in respect to the brothers; Rabette thought Charles the gentler, and Liana, Albano; both, according to inferences from their mutual reports.