"Ah, thou glorious one," said Charles, whose soul consisted of souls, "I will now bring thee to a more cheerful place." They had hardly gone eight steps, when it darkened behind them, and a sword, flung in overhead, came perpendicularly down, and struck with its point in the sand under the waves. "O thou infernal devil up there!" cried the infuriate Roquairol; but Albano was softened at the thought of the iron virgin[119] of the death-hour, who had folded her sharp arms together so near him. They clasped each other more warmly, and went silent and sad towards a low music and a grave-mound. They seated themselves upon it opposite an avenue which formed a right angle with the tormenting catacomb, lined with green moss, and of which crumbled sparks of rotten wood pointed out the extent. It lost itself in an open gate, and a prospect of Elysium, of which only the white summits of some silver-poplars were distinguishable, and in the distance was seen the spring redness of midnight blooming in the heavens, and two stars twinkling overhead. The gate, however, was grated, and guarded by a skeleton with an Æolian harp in his hand, which seemed to strike upon it the thin minor tones which the draught of wind just now wafted into the cavern.
"Here," said Charles, at the beautiful spot, and made more curious by the deadly fling of Albano's sword, "finish your narrative of to-day!" Albano reported to him candidly the word which the sister's voice had spoken: "I give thee Linda de Romeiro." In the tumult of his inner being he thought not of the anecdote, that she was the very one for whom Charles when a boy had proposed to die. "Romeiro?" he started up. "Be still! She? O thou mocking executioner, Fate! Why she, and to-day? Ah, Albano, for her I early braved death," he continued, weeping, and sank upon his breast, "and that is what has made my heart so bad, because I have lost her. Do thou only take her, for thou art a pure spirit; the glorious shape which appeared to thee on the sea, so she looks, or now still fairer. Ah, Albano!" This noble youth trembled at the complicated plot, and at the destiny, and said: "No, no, thou dear Charles, thou thinkest falsely about everything."
Suddenly it was as if all the constellations rang, and a melodious spirit-choir thronged in through the gate. Albano was startled. "Nothing; let be," said Charles. "It is not the skeleton; the pious father is walking in the flute-dell, and is just drawing out his flutes, because he prays. But how sayest thou, I think falsely of everything?" "How?" repeated Albano, and could not, in the magic circle of these echoes, which all-powerfully brought back to him that Sunday morning, either think or speak. For did not the silver-poplars wave to and fro against the stars, and rosy clouds lie couched about the heavens, and did not the whole Elysium pass openly by with the sounds which had floated through it, with the tears which had besprinkled it, and with the dreams which no heart forgets, and with the holy form which eternally abides in his breast? And now he held so fast the hand of her brother; so near was he to love and friendship, those two foci in the ellipse of life's pathway; impetuously he embraced the brother, with the words: "By Heaven, I say to thee, she whom thou hast just named concerns me not, and never will."
"But, Albano, thou dost not surely know her yet?" said Charles, pursuing his inquiries, perhaps, too hardly; for the noble youth beside him was too bashful and too steadfast to unlock the sanctuary of wishes to the kinsman of his loved one; to a stranger he could have done it much more easily. "O torment me not," he answered sensitively; but he added more softly, "Believe me, I pray you believe me, this first time, my good brother!" Charles yielded full as seldom as he; and although swallowing the inquisitive tone, and speaking in a right loving one, nevertheless said this: "By my bliss, I'll do it, and with joy; a heart must have been heartily loved and divinely blessed which can renounce such a one." Ah, does Albano, then, know that! He only leaned silently, with his fiery cheek full of roses, on Liana's brother, shunning scrutiny for shame; but when the expiring calls of the flute-dell gathered together like sighs in his breast, and reminded him too often how that Sunday morning closed, how Liana stole away, and how he looked after her with dim, wet eyes from the altar; then, although his heart did not break, his eye broke into tears, and he wept violently, but silently, on his first friend.
Then, with mute souls, they turned homeward, and looked thoughtfully toward the long, vanishing ways of the future; and when they parted, they well felt that they loved each other right heartily, that is, right bitterly.
On the morrow the pious father lay prostrate under a shock which was more blissful than mournful; for he said he had in the night seen his friend, the deceased Prince, walking, clad in white, through Tartarus.
FOOTNOTES:
[92] [Fauler Heinz.] Or Athanor, a chemical stove, which works on for a long time without poking. [Corresponding to our air-tight stove. Athanor, from the Greek, undying?—Tr.]
[93] The translator had to resort to the Scotch to help him get this pun into English.