I would make more out of Albano's commemoration-dinner, which he, like a grown-up trencher-man, could carve in the little chamber, and distribute among the family circle, and at which he could fill for himself, were I not going to meet weightier incidents which befell during the carrying back of the table dinner-service.
Albano went out, with the whole sea of his inner being sparkling and phosphorescing under the influence of the wine and the forenoon, and the blue heaven fluttering in stronger breezes around him. He felt as if the morning had long since gone by; and he remembered it with a tender emotion, as we all in youth remember childhood, in age youth,—even as at evening we remember the morning,—and the forms of Nature drew nearer to him and moved their eyes like Catholic images. Thus does the present offer us only shapes for optical anamorphoses, and only our spirit is the sublime mirror which transposes them into fair human forms. With what a sweet dip into dreams did he, when he met the fanning of the eastern wind, close his eyes, and draw the hum of the landscape, the screaming of the cocks and birds, and a herdsman's flute, as if deeper and deeper into his shaded soul! And then when he opened his eyes again on the shore of the mountain, there lay peaceful down below in the valley the pastured white lambs by the side of the flutist, and overhead in heaven lay stretched out far away above them the shining, fleecy lamb-clouds!
Meanwhile, he was fain for once to take the liberty of shutting his eyes and groping too far into the garden,—besides, the blind girl did not see,—holding his arms open before him so as not to run against anything, when all at once his breast touched a second, and looking up, he found the trembling maiden so near to him, who bent aside, stammering, "Ah, no! ah, no!" "It is only I," said the innocent one, holding her fast; "truly, I will not harm thee!"—and as she, with a modest shyness, trusted him, he held her a little while, and gazed down on her bowed head with sweet emotion.
Heartily glad would he have been to give the terrified one dole-money and benefits in this comedy for the poor; he had, however, nothing by him, till, luckily, his sister Rabette, that bandagist,—from whose ribbon mania he erroneously concluded that many girls are diabolically possessed for ribbons, and swallow them like jugglers, but never give them back,—she, and his new hair-band, came into his mind. He wound off, joyfully, the long, silken swathing-band from his head on hers. But the lovely neighborhood, the tie-work of an inner, finer band, and the blessedness of giving, and the vivacity of his inborn exuberance, so overcame him, that he would gladly have emptied the Green Cellar of Dresden into her apron, when a Jew pedler, with his smaller, silken one on his stomach, and with a bagful of bought-up hair on his back, came trudging up the Pestitz road. The Jew suffered himself, very willingly, to be called, but nothing to be borrowed from him, despite all bills of exchange proposed to be drawn upon parents and pocket money. Ah, a magnificent red cap-ribbon would have been as becoming to Lea's blind eyes as a red bandage to a wound! For a blind lady loves to prink herself as much as one who can see, unless she is self-conceited, and would rather please herself in the glass than others out of it. The merchant was very glad to let her feel of the ribbon, and said he bought up hair in the villages, and yesterday the children of the inn, with a piece of burning punk, had crisped up his whole sackful of queues into short wool, and if the young gentleman would let him trim his brown hair down to the nape of the neck, he should, on the spot, have the ribbon, and a very serviceable leather queue of Würzburg fabric into the bargain. What was to be done? The ribbon was very red,—so was Lea with hope,—the Jew said he must pack up,—besides, the hair-queue which he had hitherto worn ran like a second backbone down over the whole of the first, and became to Alban, by reason of the tedious swathing, every morning, a check-rein and snaffle-bridle of his mettle. In brief, the poor, plucked hare resigned to the Jew the royal French Insigné, and buckled on the Würzburg sheath.
And now he shook her hand right soundly, and said, with a whole Paradise of loving joyousness in his face: "The ribbon is, no doubt, very pleasant to thee, thou poor, blind thing!" Then the everlasting rogue actually climbed the cherry-tree in order, up there, as a living scare-crow, to spoil the cherries for the sparrows, and, as a fruit-god, to throw down several of them to her as rosaries and festoons.
By Heaven! up there among the heart-cherries, it seemed as if real wolf-cherries must be working in the head of the boy: as the earth had her dark, middle ages, so have children often dark, middle days, full of pure monkery and mischief. On the high boughs, the growing landscape, and the sun declining towards the mountains, and particularly the spires of Pestitz, gleamed upon him with such heavenly light, that he could not now imagine to himself anything higher than the bird-pole near him, nor any more blessedly enthroned crown-eagle than one on the pole....
But now I beg every one of my fair readers either to step into the shooting-house, or make the best of her way out of it with the soldier's wife, who is running on to tell the naughty thing to her gracious lady,—for few of them can stand it out with me to see our hero, the male support of Titan, firmly planted by some farmers' boys—to whom, moreover, Albina has intrusted the remarche-règlement of hastening his return—on a cross-stick, which is fitted in just under the crotch of the bird-pole, and with his belly bound down to it, and so lying horizontal in the air, gradually lifted through the wide sweep of the arch, and held up in mid-heaven. It is too bad! but the servants could not possibly resist the supplications of his mighty eyes, his picturesque will and spirit, and the offered recompenses and coronation-coins, in comparison with which he verily weighed only half as much as the last bird.
I am, nevertheless, partial to thee, little one, despite that stiff dare-neck of thine built up between head and heart. Thy monstrous Baroque-pearls of energies will time soon, as the artists in the Green Cellar do with physical pearls, use up in the finishing of a fine figure!
The imperial history of our imperial eagle on his pedestal, covering at the same time the events that took place on the mountain, when the Band-box master and Provincial Director came accidentally to the manned bird-pole, shall be incontinently resumed, when we have the 14th Cycle.