Liana listened now, for the first time, after the word which had escaped her; then, in order to justify the past and her mother, she conceived the pleasant and ridiculous purpose, of moving and converting the old gentleman by her ghost-visions or dream-seeings. She begged of him a solitary interview, and afterward—when it was reluctantly granted—intreated him therein for his sacred promise to be silent towards her mother, because she feared to show to that loving one the clock-wheels of her death-bell rattling so near to the fatal stroke. The old gentleman could only, with a comic expression,—which made him look like one who with a bad cold wants to laugh,—vow that he would keep his word so far as was necessary, because never, so far as he could recollect, had his word been kept by him, only he had been often kept by his word. In such men, word and deed are like theatrical thunder and lightning, which, though generally occurring in close connection, and simultaneously in heaven, on the stage break forth out of separate corners, and by means of different operators. But Liana would not rest till he had put on a word-keeping, sincere face,—a painted window. Thereupon she began, after a kissing of the hand,[209] her ghostly history.
With unbroken seriousness, and firmly contracted muscles, he heard the extraordinary narration through; then, without saying a word, he took her by the hand and led her back into the presence of her mother, to whom he handed her over with a long psalm of praise and thanksgiving about her successful daughter's-school. "His boy's-school with Charles had not been blessed to him, at least in this degree," he added. As a proof, he frankly communicated to her—cold-bloodedly working up all Liana's pangs, as the coopers do cypress-branches into cask-hoops—the little which he had promised to bury in silence, because he always prostituted either himself or the other party, generally both. Liana sat there, deeply red, and growing hotter and hotter, with downcast eyes, and begged God to preserve her filial love towards her father.
No sympathizing eye shall be further pained with the opening of a new scene, when the ice of his irony broke, and became a raging stream, into which flowed tears of maternal indignation, also, at the thought of a precious being, and her feverish, fatal, dreaming of herself away into the last sleep. The object and the danger almost united the married couple for the second time; when there is a glazed frost, people go very much arm in arm. "Thou hast sent nothing to Lilar?" asked the father. "Without your permission I certainly should not do it," said she; but she meant her letters, not Albano's. He took advantage of the misunderstanding, and said, "Thou hast, however, surely." "I will gladly do, and let be done everything," said she, "but only on condition the Count consents, in order that I may not appear to him disingenuous; he has my sacred word for my truth!" At this mild firmness, at this Peter's rock overgrown with tender flowers, the father stumbled the hardest. In addition to this, the transition of a haughty lover from his own wishes to those of his enemies, supposing they had allowed Liana the question to the Count, was so impossible on the one hand, and the solicitation of this change, whether it were granted or refused, absolutely so degrading on the other, that the astounded Minister's lady felt her pride rise, and asked again, "Is this thy last word to us, Liana?" And when Liana, weeping, answered, "I cannot help it; God be gracious to me!" she turned away indignantly toward the Minister, and said: "Do now what you take to be convenable; I wash my hands in innocence!" "Not so entirely, ma chère; but very well!" said he, "thou wilt stay after to-morrow in thy chamber, till thou hast corrected thyself, and art more worthy of our presence!" he announced, as he went out, to Liana; firing at her meanwhile two eye-volleys, wherein, according to my estimate, far more reverberating fires, tormenting ghosts, eating, devouring medicaments, brain and heart-borers, were promised, than a man can generally hold to give or bear to receive.
Poor maiden! Thy last August is very hard, and no harvest-month day! Thou lookest out into the time, where thy little coffin stands, on which a cruel angel wipes away the still fresh flower-pieces of love running round it, in order that it may, all white, as rosy-white as thy soul or thy last form, be consigned to the grave!
This banishment by her mother into the desert of her cloister-chamber was quite as frightful to her, only not more frightful than her anger, which she had to-day, only for the third time, experienced, though not deserved. It was to her as if now, after the warm sun had gone down, the bright evening glow had also sunk below the horizon, and it grew dark and cold in the world. She remained this whole day, which was yet allowed her, with her mother; gave, however, only answers, looked friendly, did everything cheerfully and readily, and—as she quickly dashed away, with her tiny finger, every gathering dew-drop out of the corner of her eyes, as if it were dust, because she thought, at night I can weep enough,—she had very dry eyes; and all that, in order not to be an additional burden to her oppressed mother. But she, as mothers so easily do, confounded a timid, loving stillness with the dawning of obduracy; and when Liana, with the innocent design of consolation, wished to have Caroline's picture brought for her from Lilar, this innocence also passed for hardness, and was punished and reciprocated with a corresponding on the part of the parent, namely, with the permission to send. Only the Minister's lady demanded the French prayers of her again, as if she were not worthy to lay them under her present heart. Never are human beings smaller than when they want to plague and punish without knowing how.
As every one who rules, whether he sits on a chair of instruction or a princely one, or, like parents, on both, when the occupant of its footstool once leaves off his former obedience, imputes that obedience to him, not as a mitigation, but as an aggravation of his offence, so did the Minister's lady also toward her hitherto so uniformly docile child. She hated her pure love, which burned like ether, without ashes, smoke, or coal, so much the more, and held it to be either the author or the victim of an incendiary fire, particularly as her own married love hitherto had seldom been anything more than a showy chimney-piece.
Liana at last, too heavily constrained, since on the other side of the wall-tapestry the serene day, the loveliest sky was blooming, ascended to the Italian roof. She saw how people were travelling and riding back contentedly from their little places of pleasure, because the earth was one; on Lilar's bushy path the walkers were sauntering with a blissful slowness home,—in the streets there was a loud carpentering at the festive scaffoldings and Charles's-wains for the princely bride, and the finished wheels were rolled along for trial,—and everywhere were heard the drillings of the young music, which when grown up was to go before her. But when Liana looked upon herself, and saw her life alone standing here in dark raiment,—over yonder the empty house of her loved one, here her own, which to her had also become empty,—this very spot, which still reminded her of a lovelier, rarer blossoming than that of the Cereus serpens,—and oh! this cold solitude, in which her heart to-day, for the first time, lived without a heart; for her brother, the chorister of her short song of gladness, had been sent off, and Julienne had for some time been incomprehensibly invisible to her,—no, she could not see the fair sun go down, who, so serene and white, was sinking to slumber with his high evening star,—or listen to the happy evening chorus of the long day, but left the shining eminence. O how does joy die a stranger in the untenanted, dark bosom, when she finds no sister and becomes a spectre there! Thus does the beautiful green, that spring color, when a cloud paints it, betoken nothing but long moisture.
When she entered, soon, the asylum of day, the bedchamber, the heavens without flashed heat-lightning; O why just now, cruel fate?—But here, before the still-life of night, when life, covered with her veil, sounds more faintly,—here may all her tears, which a heavy day has been pressing,[210] gush forth freely. On the pillow, as if it bore the last, long sleep, rests this exhausted head more softly than on the bosom which reproachfully reckons up against it its tears; and it weeps softly, not upon, only for loved ones.
According to her custom, she was on the point of opening her mother's prayers, when she recollected, with a startled feeling, that they had been taken from her. Then she looked up with burning tears to God, and prepared alone out of her broken heart a prayer to him, and only angels counted the words and the tears.