SIXTEENTH JUBILEE.
The Sorrows of a Daughter.
73. CYCLE.
Clouds like these last consisted with Albano less of falling drops than of settling dust. His life was yet a hothouse, and stood therefore toward the sunny side. Every day brought a new apology for the absent sweetheart, till at last she needed one no longer. But still he gave to every day its letter of indulgence for her silence; by and by they grew into letters of respite (moratories); finally, when she never let anything at all be heard or read from her; then he began to re-examine the afore-said apologies, and strike out many things therein.
Quite as little could he find for himself, or for a note, a way of access to her. Even the Captain had been gone for some days on a journey to Haarhaar. With faint hands he held the heavy, drained cup of joy, which, when empty, weighs the heaviest. The wild hypotheses which man in such a case trots[192] through him—as in this, for instance, that of Liana's being sick, having caught cold, her imprisonment, absence on a journey—are, in their alternation and value, to be compared with nothing, except with the quite as great wildness and number of the plans which he enlists and dismisses,—that of abduction, of hate, of a duel, of despair.
The terrible motionless time had no gnomon on its dial-plate. He stood as near his fate as man does to his dreams, without being able to recognize or prepare for its form, any more than one can for that which dreams will take. He went often into the city, through all whose streets there was riding, running, and driving, because they were about bringing and nailing together the beams for the grandest throne-scaffolding, on which the princely bride at her introductory compliment in the land, might look round the farthest; but he heard nothing there of his own bride, except that she quite often visited the picture-gallery with the Minister.