But as often as he looked at Liana, who to-day went in her long veil, as the only one without any thick, heavy gala-wrappage, as if she were a young, breathing, tender form among painted stone statues, so bashfully putting others to the blush, glistening and trembling like an egrette,—so often did masses of flame fly wildly to and fro within him. Passion, as the epilepsy often does with its victims, hurries us away, precisely at the dangerous crises of life, to shores and precipices. He leaned his head against a tree, slightly bowed down; then Charles came along out of his waltzes of joy, and asked him, with alarm, what provoked him so; for his bending down had cast gloomy, wild shadows upon his tense, muscular face; "Nothing," said he, and the face gleamed mildly when he lifted it up. At this moment, also, came the unreflecting Rabette, and would fain draw him into the general joy, and said, "Does anything ail thee?" "Thou!" he replied, and looked at her very indignantly.
"Go into the gloomy oak-grove to Gaspard's rock!" cried his heart. "Thy father never bowed; be his son!" Thereupon he strode away through the world of brilliancy; but when, far within, amidst the darkness, he leaned his head upon the rock, and the tones came toyingly and teasingly in after him, and he thought to himself, how he could have loved such a noble soul,—O how exceedingly!—then it was as if something said within him, "Now thou hast thy first sorrow on earth!"
As during an earthquake doors fly open and bells ring, so at the thought, "first sorrow," was his soul rent asunder, and hard tears dashed down. But he wondered at hearing himself weep, and indignantly wiped his face on the cool moss.
Weakened, not hardened, he stepped out into the enchanted land, besprinkled with glimmering jewels, and among the tones which came dancing more rapturously to meet him, and would fain snatch his soul away and lift it up and set it on high places, so that it might look down into far and wide spring-times of life! Here on this once blessed soil he saw lying the shattered, trampled pearl-string of his future days. "O how happy we might have been this evening!" thought he, and looked into the bright Feast of Tabernacles, into the gilded but living branchwork,—into the green, flitting reflection, rocked by the night-wind, and into the wild-fire of burning bushes in the flowing waters. On the arched triumphal gates stood lights like heaven-descended constellations of the wain, and behind him the dark cloister-wall of Tartarus, which showed sublimely in its summits only single small lights; and, over beyond, the silent mountains sleeping in night, and here the noisy life of men, playing with the night-butterflies about the lamps!
Thus does the fire within us of itself create in us the storm-wind which fans it still higher. The tones that floated by him spoke to him every thought which he would fain kill. As man sees himself, so does he often hear himself, in the presence of a sound of music.
At this moment Liana went off some distance from the crowd with Augusti. "I will speak with her, then it will be over," said he to himself, as he drew near her, battling and wrestling with himself: he saw plainly that she wanted to be back again among strange listeners. "Liana, what have I then done to thee?" said he, with the deep-souled tone of a tender heart, bitterly despising the Lector's presence and powers. "Only do not desire an answer to-day, dear Count," said she, turning back, and took in haste Augusti's arm; but he remarked not that she did it to avoid sinking. Upon this he cast at the Lector a fiery look, hoping to be offended and then avenged,—left her in haste and silence;—the sweetest wine of love a hot ray had sharpened into vinegar;—and he slipped away, without knowing it, into the temple of dream.
He went up and down therein, murmuring, "Je ne suis qu'un songe"; but was soon driven out into Tartarus by his disgust at so many copies of himself moving round with him, and by the eternal spring of tones flying after him, which just now beside the upturned flower-bed of life was so intolerable.
In Tartarus all the apparatus of horror seemed to him now very diminutive and ridiculous. Just then, not far from the Catacomb avenue, Roquairol and Rabette came to meet him. Roquairol's flaming face was extinguished and Rabette's turned backward, when Albano passionately strode forth to meet them, and, still more imbittered by the remembrance of the time when their heavens were contemporaneous, and flaming up under the wind which blew upon his glowing ruins, attacked the Captain with: "Art thou a friend? Art thou no devil? Thou hast referred me to this evening: never, never say a word more of it!" Both trembled, confused and colorless; Albano, without further reflection, ascribed the growing pale and turning away to their sympathy for his martyrdom. What a confounding, hostile night!
He roved onward and onward, the licking fire of the joy and music that pursued him tormented him unspeakably,—the tones were to him mocking tropical birds of fairer, warmer zones that came fluttering to meet him. "I will just go to my bed, so soon as it once becomes still within there!" He was half a mile off, when the music of Lilar still continued to sound after him; he sternly stopped his ears, but Lilar still sounded on within them,—then he perceived that he was only listening to himself. But all the time it seemed to him as if the merry ringing must, as in Don Juan, resolve itself into a cry of murder at the presence of ghosts.
The avenue of coming days ran to a frightful point before him, when he now snatched out from them the moon of his heaven, which had once gleamed upon his childish heart and upon the paths of Blumenbühl. The blooming, dancing genius of his past, all unseen, with only the wreath of joy in its hand, stole away behind him, while he struggled with the dark angel of futurity going before him, who dragged him along after him through sounding thickets,—through sleepy villages,—through moist, trickling valleys. At last Albano looked up to heaven, beneath the innumerable eternal stars, to the hanging blossom-garden of God. "I am not ashamed before you," said he, "because I weep on this ball, and am oppressed before your immensity. Up there ye stand, all of you, far asunder,—and on all great worlds every poor spirit has, after all, only one little spot beneath its feet where it is happy or miserable. When only this night has once gone by, and I am gone to my bed; to-morrow I shall certainly be a man and stand fast!"