He hurried away; would not be held back; spoke of a weather-cooling; went out into the storm; and left Liana behind in the joy that she had spoken to-day merely out of pure love. From the last house in the village Rabette flew to meet him; the torrents of the restrained tears rolled down his cheeks. "What dost thou want? why weepest thou?" she cried. "Thou art dreaming!" cried he, and hurried, without further answer, out into the tempest, which had suddenly, like a mantle-fish, flung itself stiflingly over the whole heaven. There, under the rain-drops and lightning-flashes, he began, first of all, to reckon up for himself the best proofs that Liana had saintly charms, divine sense, all virtues, especially universal philanthropy, daughterly, sisterly, friendly affection, only not, however, the glowing love for one person,—at least, not for him. She is so entirely and exclusively—such is always his conclusion—possessed and absorbed with the present object, whether it be myself or a broken arm of the little Pollux, that it hides from her heaven and earth. Hence the setting of her life's day, with all the attendant partings, is no more to her than the setting of a star. Hence it was that I stood beside her so long, with a heart full of the pangs of love, and she saw not into my love, because she found none in her own bosom. And this is what makes it so bitter, when man, pining in poverty among the common hearts of earth, is rendered by the noblest only unhappy at last.
The rain pattered and trickled through the leaves, the fire darted through the woods, and the Wild Huntsman of the storm drove his crazy chase. This refreshed and rejoiced him like the cooling hand of a friend taking his to guide him. As he ascended, not through the cavern, but outside over the back of the mountain to his high thunder-house, he saw a thick, gray night of rain settle down heavily upon the green Lilar, and on the winding Tartarus rested under the flashes the illuminated storm. He shuddered, on entering his little house, at a cry which his Æolian-harp emitted under the snatches of the wind; for it had once, gilded by the evening sun, ethereally clothed his young love like starlight, and had followed it with ever-varying tones, as it went out over this suffering life.
70. CYCLE.
On the morning after both storms were dissolved into a still cloudiness.—And out of the great griefs came only errors. Weaklings that we are! when at our sham execution fate touches us with the rod, not with the sword, we sink impotently from the block, and feel the process of dying reach far into our life! All fevers, including spiritual ones, are cooled by the freshness of a new morning, just as sad evening stirs all their embers into a glow. Who of us has not at evening,—that proper witching hour of tormenting spectres, house-haunting ghosts and hobgoblins,—caught in the threads which he himself had spun, but which he took for a web spread by other hands, entangled himself more and more deeply the more he turned about and tried to extricate himself, till in the morning he saw his turnkey before him, namely, himself?
Albano saw on the whole theatre of yesterday's war nothing left standing but a pale, kindly figure in half-mourning, who looked round after him with innocent maidenly eyes, and toward which he could not help looking over, albeit she was now more a bride of God than of a mortal. He felt now, to be sure, more strongly how high his demands upon real friends rose, than he once did, when he could heighten at pleasure the highest which he made upon the beings of his dreams, whom he always cast exactly into the temporary mould of his heart; and how he was possessed by a spirit that spared no one, that would stretch the wings of every other according to its own, because it could bear no individuality except that which was copied.
He had hitherto experienced from all his loved ones too little opposition, as Liana had too much; both extremes injure one. The spiritual as well as the physical man, without the resistance of the outer atmosphere, is blown up and burst by the inner, and without the resistance of the inner is crushed by the outer; only the equilibrium between inner resistance and outer pressure keeps a fair play-room open for life and its culture. Besides, men—since only the best of them appreciate in the best of their own sex strong conviction—can hardly tolerate it in women, and would have them not merely the reflection, but even the echo, of themselves. They want, I mean, not merely the look, but also the word, that says yes.
Albano punished himself with several days of voluntary absence, till the unclean clouds should have cleared away from within him which had overshadowed the gnomon of the sundial of his inner man. "When I am quite cheerful and good-natured," said he, "I will go back to her, and err no more." He errs at this moment. Whenever a strange, uncomfortable semitone has repeatedly intruded itself between all the harmonies of two natures, it swells more and more fatally till it drowns the key-note, and ends all. The dividing tone was, in this case, the strength of the man's pitch in connection with the strength of the woman's. But the highest love is most easily wounded by the slightest difference. O, little avails it then for man to say to himself, I will be another man! Only in the finest, only in unimpaired enthusiasm, does he propose to himself such a thing; but it is just when the feeling is impaired, when he were hardly capable of the purpose, that he has to rise to the fulfilment of it, and then he can hardly make the achievement.
The Count went in the morning, as usual, to his lecture-rooms and parlors in the city. In the former it was hard for him to fix his instruments and his eyes upon the stars of the sciences, and to take sight, sailing as he was on such a sea of emotion. In the latter he found the Lector colder than ever, the Bibliothecary warmer, the household more inflated. He went to Roquairol, whom he to-day loved and treated still more cordially, as if by way of atonement to his offended sister. Charles said at once, with his sudden and tragical flinging up of the curtain of futurity, "All was discovered,—in the highest degree of probability!" As often as lovers see that their Calypso's island—which, to be sure, lies free on the open ocean—has at length come to the eyes of the seafaring world, and that they are making sail for it, they are astonished to an astonishing degree; for is there any one Paradise which has such a loose and low palisado, allowing every passer-by to see in, as theirs?
For a long time, he related, had the Doctor's children always had something to fetch from the Architect's wife at Lilar,—flowers, medicine-phials, &c.; certainly as spy-glasses and ear-tubes of Augusti, who again was the opera-glass of his mother. In short, his father had, at least, been at the Greek woman's yesterday, but had luckily found only an empty package[189] from Rabette to him (Charles), which, according to the liberties of the ministerial Church, he had opened and closed.
"Why luckily?" said Albano. "I will justify and honor my love before the world." "I referred to myself," he replied; "for never was my father more friendly to me than since he broke open my last letters. He is this afternoon in Blumenbühl, and it may well be more on my own account than my sister's."