I answer every nation. The Froulays had, in the first place, nothing against the union except the—certainty of separation; since on the same ground, which the Knights of the Fleece and the Spaniards have opposed to me, old Gaspard de Zesara can in no wise suffer a bridge to be thrown over from his Gothard to the Jungfrau [virgin]. Secondly, on this very ground the Minister could oppose to this romantic love a much older, wiser, which he bore toward the German gentleman and his moneys and liaisons, as well as the old grudge of the Knight of the Fleece. Thirdly, the Minister's lady had, beside these same grounds,—and besides several in favor of the Lector, perhaps,—one quite decisive one, and that was, she could not endure the Count; not merely and solely for the reason that she discovered a painful similarity between him and her son, and even husband, in pride, in excitability, in the characteristic fierceness of genius against poor married women, in want of religious humility and devoutness; but the principal reason why she could not well endure him was this: that she could not bear him. As the system of Predestination sentences some men to hell, whether they afterward deserve heaven or not, so a woman never takes back an enmity to which she has once doomed any one, all that country and city, God, time, and the individual's virtues may say to the contrary, notwithstanding.
In the treaty of peace, concluding the usual chamber-war, the following private articles were adjusted between the married couple: The Count must be, on the Father's and Director's account, treated with the most courtly consideration, and shoved aside,—and Liana gently and gradually drawn away from Wehrfritz's house,—the whole dissolution of the engagement must seem to happen of itself without parental interference, merely through the breaking off of the daughter,—and the whole affair remain a mystery. Froulay hoped to keep the whole interlude or episode concealed from Liana's earlier-intended, the German gentleman, particularly as he, just now, in August, was more at the card-tables of the baths than at home.
So it stood; and into this cold, awful pass the friendly Liana moved on, when on that warm living Sunday she left the blessed, open Lilar. Refined and sanctified by joy,—for every Paradise was to her a purifying Purgatory,—she came nobly to her mother's bosom, without remarking the strange seriousness of the reception by reason of the earnest warmth of her own. Her easy confession of the garden-company opened the trying scene,—almost in the coulisse. For the mother, who would fain have begun otherwise, had to mount the thunder-car at once, in order to thunder and lighten against such incomprehensible forgetfulness of female propriety; and yet she held in the thunder-steeds in mid-career, in order to enjoin upon Liana immediately, as the Minister might come any moment, a perfect silence on the subject of to-day's garden-party. Now she cast the deepest strengthening shade upon her previous mute falsehood towards a mother; for she arbitrarily transposed in her story the sowing and blossoming time of this love, even into the days preceding the journey to the country. How did the warm soul shudder at the possibility of such an unkindness! She led her mother as far as she could up along the pure, light pearl-brook of her history and love, and told all that we know, but without giving much satisfaction, because she left out precisely the main point; for, out of forbearance toward her mother, she felt obliged to let the apparition of Caroline, who in the beginning had been the image-stormer of her love and then its inspiring muse and bride's-maid, together with the death-certificate of the future, remain out of sight in the narration.
She held, with fervent pressure, her mother's hand amidst more and more cheerful assurances, how she had always been disposed to tell her everything; she thought hopingly, she needed to save nothing but her open heart. O thou hast more to save, thy warm, thy whole and living heart! Her mother now, from old habit, half believing her, found fault with nothing more than the whole affair, its impropriety, impossibility, folly. "O good mother," said Liana, simply remaining tender under the harsh picturing of the future Albano; "O he is not such, assuredly not!" Quite as tenderly did she far overlook the darkly-sketched future refusal of Don Gaspard, because to her faith the earth was only a blooming grave-mound hanging in the ether. "Ah!" said she, meaning how little time she was for this world, "our love is not so important!" Her mother took this word and the whole gentleness of her resistance, as preludes of an easy victory.
At this moment Albano's father-in-law came in with a kettle-drum, alarm-bell, fire-drum, and rattlesnake, in his girdle, in order therewith to make himself audible. First he inquired,—for he had been listening in vain,—in a very exasperated manner, of the Minister's lady, where she had stowed away his ear (it was the tin duplicate ear, wherein, as in a Venetian lion's-head, all mysteries and accusations of the whole service and family met); he said, he had a little occasion for it just now, particularly since the newest "adventures of his worthy daughter there." The Siamese physicians begin the healing of a patient with treading upon him, which they call softening. In a similar manner Froulay loved to soften, by way of moral pre-cure; and accordingly began, with the above-mentioned speaking-machines in his girdle, to declare his sentiments explicitly on the subject of degenerate children; upon their arts and artifices; and upon intrigues behind fathers' backs (so that no father can accompany a volume of love-poems with a prose preface); backed up many points with the strongest political grounds, which all had reference to himself and his interest, and wound up with a little cursing.
Liana heard him calmly, as one already accustomed to such daily returning equinoctial storm-bursts, without any other emotion, except that she often raised her downcast eye pityingly upon him, out of tender sympathy for the paternal dissatisfaction. In a calm he became loudest. "You will see to it, madam," said he, "that to-morrow forenoon she sends the Count what she has of his, together with a farewell, and notifies him of her new office, as an easy excuse; thou art to be court-dame to the reigning Princess, although thou didst not deserve that I should labor for thee!"
"That is hard!" cried Liana, with breaking heart, falling upon her mother. He supposed she meant the separation from Albano, not from her mother, and asked, angrily: "Why?" "Father, I would so gladly," said she, and turned only her face away from the embrace, "die near my mother!" He laughed; but the Minister's lady herself shut to the hell-gates upon the flames which he still would fain have vomited forth, and assured him it was enough, Liana would certainly obey her parents, and she herself would be surety for it. The preacher of the law came down his pulpit-stairs with an audible ejaculation about a better security, calling back, as he went, that his ear must be produced to-morrow, and though he should have to search for it in all chests and cupboards.
The mother kept silence now, and let her daughter softly weep on her neck; to both, after this drought of the soul, the draught of love was refreshment and medicine. They came out of each other's arms with cheered spirits, but both with entirely delusive hopes.
75. CYCLE.
A hard, black morning; only the outward atmospheric morning was dark-blue; there was nothing loud and stormy, except perchance the swarms of bees in the linden-thicket; the heaven's ether seemed to flutter away high over the stony streets, so as to settle down low in the bright open Lilar upon all hill-tops and tree-tops, and, blue as peacock's plumage, to play its hues over the twigs.