Albano had no fear that the city could drill mining-galleries under his childhood's land, so as to blow up in one conflagration the blessed isle,—could he not trust his character and courage and Liana's own?—but it pained him now that he had so needlessly robbed the childlike Liana of the joy and merit of a childlike open-heartedness. How he longed now for the atoning and recompensing moment of the first meeting again, after the next morning!
He stayed by his friend as by a consolation, and did not go back till the evening redness floated about in the rain-clouds. When he came, he found already awaiting him a letter from Liana, written to-day.
"O good Albano, why camest thou not? How much I had to say to thee! How I trembled for thy sake on Friday, when the frowning cloud pursued thee with its thunder! Thou hast weaned me too much from sorrow, so strange and heavy has it become to me now. I was inconsolable the whole evening; at last, when night fell, the thought sank into my mind that thou hadst been oppressed as with presentiments, and that the lightning loved to strike the thunder-house. Why, indeed, art thou there? I hurried up, and knelt by my bed, and prayed to God, although the storm had long been dispersed, that he would have preserved thee. Smile at my tardy prayer; but I said to him, 'Thou knewest indeed, all-gracious One, that I would pray.' I was consoled, too, when I looked up to the stars, and the broken ray of joy trembled within me.
"But in the morning Rabette made me sad again. She had seen thee weeping on the road. A thousand times have I asked myself, whether I am to blame for that. Can it have come from this,—for she says so,—that I afflict thee too much with my death thoughts? Never more shalt thou hear them; the veil, too, is laid away; but I calculated upon thee according to my brother, to whom, as he himself says, the dusk of death is an evening-twilight, in which forms seem to him more lovely. Truly, I am quite blest; for thou art even so, and yet hast so little in having me,—only a small flower for thy heart, but I have thyself. Leave me my grave-mound; therefrom, as from a mountain, comes better, more fruitful soil into my valley. O how one loves, Albano, when all around us crumbles and sinks and melts away in smoke, and when, still, the bond and splendor of love stand firm and inviolate on the fleeting ground of life, as I have often seen with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a rainbow hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting, impetuous floods! O, would that the nightingales were yet singing; now I could sing with them! Thy Æolian-harp, my harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my hand! My father was with us, and more cheerful and friendly toward all than ever. Lo, even he is kindly disposed! My parents surely send no tempest into our feast of roses. I readily did him the pleasure, therefore,—forgive it!—of promising him, that I would receive no visits from strangers in a strange house—because, he said, it was improper. I must go home for some days on account of the Prince's marriage; but I shall see thee soon. O forgive! When my father speaks softly, my soul cannot possibly say, No. Farewell, my noble one!
L.
"P. S. Soon a little leaf will come fluttering again over to thy mountain. Only continue in perpetual joy! O God! why am I not stronger? What beings shouldst thou then take to thy heart!—Thou dear one!"
How was he shamed by this full-blooming love, which never rightly knows when it is misunderstood, and which presupposes no other fault than its own! How sadly did the thought of the commanded separation affect him now, after the voluntary one! He could now love her as a guarding angel before Paradise, how much more as a giving angel in it! But it is hard for a man, as the youth felt, clearly to distinguish in the female heart, especially in this one, intention from instinct, ideas from feelings, and in this dark, full heaven to count and arrange all the stars. Everything like hardness, every unpromising bud, arose at last as a flower; and her worth unfolded itself piece-wise like spring; whereas, generally, from other maidens, a traveller who visits them carries away with him directly at his first evening's departure a little complete flower-catalogue of all their charms and arts, as a Brocken-passenger gets at the tavern a neat nosegay of the various kinds of mosses which are found on the mountain.
He supposed she was now with her parents; and he followed, not as a pouting schoolboy, but as a harmonious man, the giant of destiny. In the garden rainy weather held sway, the crop of every heavy tempest, which, like a war, always devastates the scene of conflict.
The promised leaflet appeared: "Only be happy. We shall see each other very, very soon, and then most blissfully. Forgive me! Ah, I long exceedingly!"
Now he experienced what days they were which had once—that is, only a few days ago—passed before him as divine apparitions, and which now again were to come up in the East as returning stars! Why does a blessing, not till it is lost, cut its way like a sharp diamond so deeply into the heart? Why must we first have lamented a thing, before we ardently and painfully love it? Albano threw both past and future away from him, that he might dwell wholly and purely in that present which Liana had promised him.