But gaze down, fiery man, with thy fresh heart, full of youth, on the magnificent, immeasurable, enchanted Lilar! A second twilight-world, such as tender tones picture to us, an open morning-dream spreads out before thee, with high triumphal arches, with whispering labyrinthine walks, with islands of the blest; the pure snow of the sunken moon lingers now only on the groves and triumphal gates, and on the silver-dust of the fountain-water, and the night, flowing off from all waters and vales, swims over the Elysian fields of the heavenly realm of shadows, in which, to earthly memory, the unknown forms appear like Otaheite-shores, pastoral countries, Daphnian groves, and poplar-islands of our present world,—wondrous lights glide through the dark foliage, and all is one lovely, magic confusion. What mean those high, open doors or arches, and the pierced groves and the ruddy splendor behind them, and a white child sleeping among orange-lilies and gold-flowers, from whose cups delicate flames trickle,[43] as if angels had flown too near over them? The lightnings reveal swans, sleeping on the waves under clouds drunk with light, and their flaming trains blaze like gold after them in among the thick trees,[44] as goldfishes turn their burning backs out of the water,—and even around thy summit, Albano, the great eyes of the sunflowers turn on thee their fiery looks, as if kindled by the sparks of the glowworms.
"And in this kingdom of light," thought Albano, trembling, "the still angel of my future hides himself and glorifies it, when he appears. O where dwellest thou, good Liana? In that white temple? or in the arbor between the rose-fields? or up there in the green Arcadian summer-house?" If love makes even pangs to be pleasures, and exalts the shadowy sphere of the earth into a starry sphere, O what an enchantment will it lend to delight! Albano could not possibly, in this outer and inner splendor, think of Liana as sick; he represented to himself just now only the blissful future, and with a yearning embrace knelt down at the altar; he looked toward the glittering garden, and pictured to himself how it would be when he should one day tread with her every island of this Eden,—when holy Nature should lay his and her hands in one another upon these altar-steps,—when he should sketch to her on the way the Hesperia of life, the pastoral land of first love, and then its holy exultation and its sweet tears, and how he should not then be able to look round into the eyes of that most tender heart, because he should already know that they were overflowing with bliss. Just then he saw, in the moonshine above the triumphal arches, two illuminated forms move like spirits; but his glowing soul went on with its painting, and he imagined to himself how, when the nightingales trilled in this Eden, he should look up to her and say, in a delirium of love, "O Liana, I bore thee long ago in my heart,—once upon that mountain, when thou wast sick."...
This startled him, and he came to himself; he was indeed on the mountain,—but he had forgotten the sickness. Now, kneeling, he threw his arms around the cold stone, and prayed for her whom he so loved, and who, also, surely had prayed here; and his head sank, weeping and darkened, upon the altar. He heard human steps approaching down below on the winding hill, and, with trembling joy, he thought it might be his father; but he boldly remained on his knees. At last there stepped in across the flowery border a tall, bent old man, like the noble bishop of Spangenberg; his calm countenance smiled full of eternal love, and no pains appeared upon it, and it seemed to fear none. The old man, in mute gladness, pressed the youth's hands together as a sign that he should pray on, knelt down beside him, and that ecstasy to which frequent prayer transfigures one spread its saintly radiance over that form full of years. Singular was this union and this silence. The fragment of the moon, which was all that yet jutted above the earth, burned darklier, and at last went down; then the old man rose, and, with that easiness of transition which comes from being habituated to devotion, put questions about Albano's name and residence; after the answer, he merely said, "Pray on thy way to God, the all-gracious,—and go to sleep before the storm comes, my son!"
Never can that voice and form pass away out of Albano's heart; the soul of the old man peered, like the sun in an annular eclipse, shining, full circle, out over the dark body, which strove to hide it with its earth-mould. Deeply struck, to the very roots of his nerves, Albano rose, and the broadening flashes of the lightning showed him now, down below near the enchanted garden, a second dark, entangled, horrible one, a sort of Tartarus to the Elysium. He departed with singular and conflicting emotions,—the future, and the beings therein, appeared to him, on his way, to stand very near, and already to run to and fro like theatre lights behind the transparent curtain,—and he longed for some weighty enterprise as a refreshment for his inflamed heart; but he had to rest his head, full of this heath-fire, on the pillow, and the high thunder, like a god of the night, mingled with its first claps in his dreams.
24. CYCLE.
THE unknown old man lingered many days in Albano's soul, and would not stir. In fact, the channel of his life now needed a bend, to break the stress of the stream. Fate can educate men like him only by a change of circumstances, just as it can weak ones only by a continuance of the same. For if it went on much longer in this way, and the chandelier in his temple should, by inner earthquakes, be thrown into ever increasing vibrations, the consequence would be, at last, that no candle could any longer burn therein. What Imperial-Diet-grievances did not Wehrfritz and Hafenreffer already jointly present on the subject, when the shipmaster Blanchard, in Blumenbühl, went up with his aerostatic soap-bubbles, and Zesara could hardly, by almost the absolute despotism of the Director, be kept back from embarking! And how divine a thing does he not imagine it would be, not only to hurl down to the earth its iron rings and arrest warrants, and soar away, perpendicularly, above all its market-rubbish and boundary-trees and Hercules'-pillars, and sweep around it as a constellation, but also to hover above the magic Lilar and the hermetically-sealed Linden-city with devouring eyes, and to lift a whole, full, heavy world to his thirsty heart, by the handle of a single look!
But fate broke the fall of this swift stream. Namely, as good luck would have it, the Blumenbühl church had this long time been daily threatening to tumble down,—and I was wishing the Whitsuntide lightning had gone in there, and had made ears and legs for the building committee,—when by still greater good luck the old Prince was taken sick. Now in the church was the hereditary sepulchre of the Prince, which could not conveniently serve, on the other hand, as the hereditary sepulchre of the church.
About this time it must needs happen that the old Princess, with the Minister Froulay, passed through the village. The two had long since commissioned themselves as Imperial vicars, business-agents, and sceptre bearers of the State, because the feeble old gentleman had been glad to give up the amusements and burdens, the glitter and weight of the crown, and admit those two feudal guardians into the hereditary office of the sceptre. In short, the age of the church, together with that of the princely couple, decided the building of a new roofing and covering for the vault.
The Provincial-Director was one of the inspecting committee, and invited the distinguished company to his house; among whom, the Provincial architect, Dian, and the Counsellor of Art, Fraischdörfer, as artists, and the little princess as naturalist, are particularly to be noticed.
The poor dancing-master got wind of the procession through a telescope, just as he was stretching his feet, full of pas, into a warm foot-bath. It will not gratify anybody, that the Vienna gentleman had but one thing in common with the old Magister,—what the Devil shares with the horse, namely, the foot, which measured its good foot and a half, Paris measure, and that, therefore, his double root, in the narrow forcing-pots of shoes, shot out into a fruit-bearing, knotty-stock, full of inoculating eyes, i. e. corns. To-day he would have cut these gordian knots in a foot-bath; but, as it was, he must, on occasion of such a visit,—although he had never stretched them,—put on his tightest children's shoes, for effect. Thus are men often caught with too tight shoes, as monkeys are with too heavy ones.