Flying Spring! (I mean love, just as one calls the after summer a flying summer) thou hurriest away of thyself over our heads with arrowy speed; why do authors again hurry over thee? Thou art the German blossoming season; which is never a blossoming month long. We read all winter in almanacs and similes much about its magnificence, and we pine for it; at last it hangs thick on the dark boughs six days long, and beside that, under cold May showers, sweeping bliss-month[188] storms, and with a dumb-session of half-frozen nightingales,—and then, when one comes out at length into the garden, the footpath is already white with blossoms, and the tree at most full of green; then it is over, till in winter we again hear with exaltation of heart the beginning of a tale: "It was just in the lovely season of the blossoming." Even so do I see few authors, at the long session-and-scribbling-table of romance, working right and left for the benefit of the reading-desk, who, after the long preface to love, do not so soon as, like a war, it is declared, forthwith conclude it; and really, there are more steps to love than in it; all that is coming to be,—for instance, spring, youth, morning, learning,—opens out more widely and in a richer variety of hues than fixed being; but is not this latter in turn a progress, only a higher; and this, again, a state of being, only a quicker?
Albano would fain lead along more beautifully the fleeting, divine season, when the heart is our god; he would have it rather fly upward than fly away. He was angry the next day with nobody but himself. He tore his way through such petty and yet closely entangling troubles, through a condition like that of men during an earthquake, when an invisible vapor holds the heavy foot as a snare. "I would rather let myself be rained on upon mountains," said he, "than in valleys." Men of quick fancy more easily reconcile themselves to the loved one when she is absent, than when she is present.
After some days, he went again to Blumenbühl just before sundown. A burning red cut through the night-like gloom of the foliage. His darkening, woody road was made, by the flames which danced about therein, an enchanted one. He transferred his illuminated present deep into a future, shady past. O, after years, thought he, when thou returnest, when all is gone by and changed, the trees grown up, human beings passed away, and only the mountains and the brook left, then wilt thou congratulate thyself that thou couldst once in these walks so often journey to thy sweetest heart, and on either hand the music and the glory of Nature went along with thy joyful soul, as the moon seems to the child to run after him through all streets. An unwonted rapture flung through his whole being the long, broad streak of sunshine; the farthest flowers of his fancy opened; all tones came through a brighter ether, and sounded nearer. The flowers around him, too, exhaled a keener fragrance, and the peal of the bell sounded nearer; and both are signs of foul weather.
Thus inwardly happy, he made his appearance,—and, indeed, without Roquairol, who in fact came more and more seldom,—and found his beloved up in his childhood's study, her guest-chamber, which was now the usual scene of his visits. In a white dress, with dark trimming, as in a beautiful half-mourning, she sat at the drawing-table with her eyes sharper than usual, buried in a picture. She flew to his heart, but only to lead him back presently to the dear form upon which her heart hung as in a mother's arms. She related that her mother had been here to-day with the Princess, and had showed so much pleasure in her improving color, such infinite kindness toward her happy daughter. "She was obliged," continued she, "to let me take a slight sketch of her, in order that I might only look upon her so much the longer, and have something of her to keep by me. I am just finishing the outline of the face, but it is absolutely too poor a likeness." She could not tear her fancy away from the image, and still less from the original. To be sure, no more beautiful medallion can hang on a daughter's heart, or in fact in it, than that of a mother; but, nevertheless, Albano thought to-day the hanging-ring took up too broad a space.
She talked only of her mother. "I certainly sin," said she; "she asked me in such a friendly way whether thou camest often, but I said only yes, and nothing further. O good Albano, how gladly would I have given up to her frankly my whole soul!"
He answered, that the mother seemed not to be so frank; she perhaps knew already the whole through the Lector, and the pure draught of love would now be continually disturbed by foreign substances. Against Augusti he declared himself very strongly, but Liana quite as strongly upheld him. Through both that counterfeiter of the coin of truth, namely, suspicion,—the suspicion that she perhaps loved him as she loved everything, since she grew as by a living tie to everything good,—gained, under Albano's sensibilities, which besides had been to-day so warm and glad, more and more mint-stamps and currency.
She suspected nothing, but she came back to the subject of her secrecy. "But why, then, does it make me unhappy," said she, "if it is right? Beloved one, my Caroline too appears to me no longer, and truly that is no good sign." This spectral-machinery always came on as oppressively and gloomily to him as a thunder-cloud in the outer world. His old exasperation against the teasings practised in his own case by apes of the air, whom he could not lay hold of, passed over into a similar feeling against Liana's optical self-deception. That veil presented her by Caroline, wherewith, in the beginning, she had so sublimely arrayed herself for the cloister of the tomb,—that travelling veil for the next world,—had long been to this Hercules a burning garment, drenched in the poisonous blood of a Nessus; therefore she no longer dared to wear it before him. The conclusion that the fancy of being destined to death laid the seed of the reality, and that in the deep overhanging cloud an accident might easily attract the striking-spark of death, fell like a mourning into his love festival. So are all strange sea-wonders of fancy (like this death-delusion) desired only in fancy (in romance), but not in life, except once on fantastic heights; but then must such comets, like others, soon recede again from our heaven.
He spoke now very seriously,—of suicidal fancies, of life's duties, of wilful blindness to the fairest signs of her recovery, among which he reckoned as well the disappearance of the optical Caroline as the blooming of her color. She heard him patiently; but through the Princess, who, notwithstanding her love, seldom left behind with him pleasant impressions, her fancy had to-day taken quite another road, far beyond herself and her grave. She stood only before Linda's image, of which Julienne had this afternoon communicated to her sharper outlines than maidens are wont to give of maidens. "She is a very good girl," they say of each other. Linda's manly spirit, her warm attachment to Gaspard in connection with her contempt of the mass of men, her inflexibility, her bold strides in manly knowledge, her masterly and often severe letters, more pithy than flowery, and, most of all, her probably approaching arrival, took a powerful hold of Liana's tender heart. "My Albano must have her," was the constant thought of this disinterested soul; and if the Princess had had the intention of humiliating comparisons, she remarked it not, but fulfilled it. The good creature found, too, so much of a higher providence here,—for example, that her brother need now no longer be the rival of her lover and of his friend,—that she herself could portray beforehand her vigorous Albano to the proud Romeiro, and that certainly, despite all opposition, all the ghostly prophecies strikingly connected and coincided with each other. All this she now said (because she concealed only her sorrows, not her hopes) right to the Count's face.
What a gnashing bite did an evil genius at this moment make into his tenderest life! That glowing love which neither divides nor is divided possessed his heart, he thought, not hers. He came very near to showing up his inner being just as it was, all kindled at once, as if by a lightning stroke, into a lofty blaze. Only the innocent white brow, with festive roses in its little ringlets; the childishly bright looking-up of the pure blue pair of eyes, and the soft face, which even at a musical fortissimo, and at every vehemence in movement or laughter on the part of another, caught a sickly redness from the beating heart; and his indignant shame at the levity with which a man can abuse his omnipotence and his sex, to the terror of the tenderer, restrained him, like guardian spirits; and he said merely, in that noble anger which sounded like a tender emotion, "O Liana, thou art hard to-day!"
"And yet I am indeed so tender!" said the innocent one. The two had hitherto been standing at the window, before the dark tempest which came rolling on out of Lilar. She turned suddenly round; for since the day of her blindness, when a dark cloud had seemed to fly towards her, she had never been able to look at one long; and Albano's tall form, with his whole live-glowing face and his soul-speaking eyes, stood illumined by the evening light before her. With the hand which he left free she softly and playfully swept aside the dark hair from his defiant forehead, smoothed the contracted eyebrow, and said, as his look stung like a sun, and his mouth shut with determination, "O, joyfully, joyfully, shall this fair face one day smile!" He smiled, but sadly. "And then shall I be still more blest than to-day!" said she, and started, for a lightning-flash darted across his earnest face, as over a jagged mountain, and showed it, like that of the god of war, illuminated with war-flames.