Fortunately this nut-tree, which threw an unwholesome, frosty nut-shadow on the whole flowerage of love and poetry, soon transplanted itself back again among more congenial guests. The Minister's lady, after the first expressions of courtesy, directed herself more to the Lector, whose correct, civilian's measure accorded entirely with her religious one; especially as only he could ask and condole with her about Liana. She replied, that this room of Liana's had been left exactly as it was the evening the blindness came on, in order that, when she recovered, it might remain for her a pleasant remembrancer, or a mournful one for others, if she did not. O, deeply moved Albano, if every absence glorifies, how much more must it do so with so many traces of the beloved object's presence! I confess, except a loved one, I know of nothing lovelier than her sitting-room in her absence.
On Liana's work-table lay a sketched outline of a Christ's head near the open Messiah,—a folded walking-veil, together with the green walking-fan, with inscribed wishes of female friends,—some cut-out envelopes,—the gossiping letter of one of Froulay's tenants,—a whole lacquerwork sheep-fold, with wagon, stalls, and house, with whose Lilliputian Arcadia she had proposed to please Dian's children,[66]—a plucked leaf from the thinning album of a female friend, which she had trimmed with an India-ink flower border and then planted full of fair wishes, of which fate had robbed her own life. Ah, beautiful heart, how fondly would I sketch and hand round something like a tabular view of all the little mosaic of thy lightsome past, had the fee-provost entered more intimately into these matters! But what moves me and the Count more deeply is a framed embroidery, on which her needle, like an ingrafting-knife, had, on that dark day, ingrafted a rose with two buds, and which wanted nothing more but the thorns. O, these had destiny only too fully developed on thy roses of joy, and then pressed them so deeply through thy breast even to the heart!
At no hour of his life was Albano's love so tender and holy as at this, or his sympathy so fervent. Fortunately, the Minister's lady was all the time looking out of the window into the garden, and did not perceive his emotion. At last she went on to point out Liana's harmonica, which stood near; then was his heart too full and visible; he started with the hasty words, he had never yet heard one, and stepped before it. Ah, he was fain to touch something whereon her finger had so often rested. He laid his hand, as upon a sacred thing, on those prayer-bells which had so often trembled under hers for pious thoughts; but they gave him no answer, till the Lector, a connoisseur in the A B C as in the technology of all arts, gave him in three words the indispensable instructions. Now did he drink into his soul, full of sighs and struggles, the first tri-clang, the first plaintive syllables of that mother-tongue of the pining breast,—ah, of those mutes'-bells which the inner man shakes in his hand, because he has no tongue! and his veins beat wildly like wings which wafted him up from the ground, and bore him to a higher prospect than that which opens into the last joy or the last agony. For in strong men great pains and joys become overlooking heights of the whole road of life.
I know not whether many readers will believe the fault possible, which he now actually committed. The Minister's wife, in the course of conversation, had very naturally—apropos of Liana and Roquairol—fallen upon the proposition that no school is more necessary to children than that of patience, because, either the will must be broken in childhood or the heart in old age. Ah, she and her daughter themselves knelt, indeed, full of patience, before fate, whether loading or armed; although the mother's was a pious patience, which looked more to Heaven than to the wound, Liana's a loving patience, which resigns itself to new sorrows as to old sicknesses, as a queen does on coronation-day to the pains and friction of her heavy jewelry, and like a child that sweetly sleeps away and more sweetly dreams away his scars. But Zesara, who like a wolf fled the very clanking of a chain, and new, exasperated, against everything of the kind, from the light carcanets and chains of knighthood even to the heavy harbor-chains which obstruct the passage of youth out into the laboring sea, could not restrain himself, especially with that heart of his so full of emotions, from saying, in too great warmth: "Man must defend himself; sooner would I, in a free struggle, empty all my veins on the stirring battle-field than shed one drop from them bound to the rack."—"Patience," said the Minister's lady, who was full of it, "contends and conquers also, only in the heart."—"Dear Count," said Augusti, alluding not merely to Arria,[67] "the women must always say to the men, 'It does not hurt!'"
I have not till now had an opportunity to make known this fault of Albano, that he never spoke his opinion more freely and strongly than just then when he had reason to fear losing one or two heavens of his life by the stake; in cases of less danger he could be more yielding. Although, therefore, he observed that the Minister's lady was painfully reminded thereby of the muscular, but also hard-grasping, hand of her wild son,—or much rather for the very reason that he observed it, and because he proposed to be armor-bearer to this future friend,—he stuck to his opinion, threw all instruments for breaking in the young manly will out of the school-rooms into the street, and said, in his strongly relieved style: "The Goths preferred never to send their children to school, in order that they might remain lions. Even if maidens must be soaked in milk a day before planting them out in the civil world, boys, however, must be stuck, like apricots, with the stony shell in the earth, because they will soon enough throw off and forsake the stone by their rooting and growth."—The Lector, with his fine openness,—a crystal vase with golden edge,—remarked, with a gentle reprimand of Alban's impetuosity, that at least the way in which they had severally adduced their proofs was one of those very proofs themselves; and women needed and showed more patience with persons, and we more with things.
The Minister's wife, who imagined herself listening more to her son than to his friend, was silent, and stepped nearer to the window. Amid these war-troubles the evening had wheeled her resplendent moon up over the eastern mountains, and the streams of her light flowed in at this moment, from all quarters, through the whole garden that lay stretched out before the eastern room, and lay in its broad alleys and flower-circles, when all at once a little round house appeared through upshooting water-jets, kindled into triumphal arches by the moon-light, and stood, even to its Italian trellised roof, all in a blaze. With soft emotion, the Minister's lady said: "On that water-house stands my Liana; she is trying the evaporation of the fountain; the physician promises himself much therefrom. And Providence grant it!"
But the agitated Zesara, with all his sharp eyes, could not, however, in the full dazzling light of the level moon, and behind the quivering nunnery-grate of confined silver-or lymphatic-veins, individualize anything at this moment from the glimmering Eden, except an undistinguishable, still, white form. But it was enough for a weeping and burning heart. "Thou angel of my youthful dreams," thought he, "may it be thou! I greet thee with a thousand woes and joys. Ah! can there then be sorrows in thee, thou heavenly soul!" And it came over him, that if she were here in the room, with her afflicted and enchanting form, she would melt his whole being with sympathy, and he could now have cast off the embrace of the brother, by whose hand fate had closed her soft eyes in that long dream.
The stifling air of the most painful sympathy caused him to look away, and turn round, and fasten on the open Messiah those eyes whose drops he would not show; but the recollection that he was repeating her last reading-pleasure made them fall only hotter and thicker. Suddenly something darkening, which fluttered down before the window like a falling raven, directed his look again to Liana, over whom stood a fully illuminated little cloud, as if it were a risen or descending saintly halo. Immortals seemed to dwell thereupon as on Ossian's clouds, awaiting their sister; and when she at length moved and slowly sank down into the water-house, seemed it not then as if her garment of flesh were passing into the earth, and her peaceful spirit into the cloud?
Here Augusti, as the mother had to follow the returning invalid into the sick-chamber, gave him the hint for departure, which he took willingly; his love contented itself for the present with solitude, and with the hope of another meeting. Young love and young birds need, in the beginning, only to be warmed by covering, and not till later to be nourished.
But a paraclete or comforter whispered softly in the ear of the youth's heart as they departed: to-morrow thou wilt see her only a few steps from thee in the garden! And that is very easily brought about; he has only, at evening-twilight to-morrow, when the evening-walker makes use of her eye-medicine, to repair to the alley, and from among the leaves look freely up into the magic countenance, and then drink in the whole doctrine of felicity in one paragraph, one passage, breath, moment;—but what a prospect!