Never did Albano open a door with heavier heart than this to Schoppe's little chamber. "I am come to take thee away, my brother," he cried immediately, by way of sparing himself and him the redness of shame. But when he looked at the old lion more nearly, he found him in this trap quite altered,—not tame, creeping, wagging, but broken in two, and with shattered claws weighed down to the earth. The charge of murder, which he had honestly admitted, united to Gaspard's unmerciful sentence, had filled and eaten up his proud, free breast with poisonous shame. "I fare well here, only I feel symptoms of ill health," said Schoppe, with lustreless eye and toneless voice. Albano could not hide his tears; he clung around the sick man, and said, "Magnanimous man, thou gavest me once in my sickness, health and salvation again, and I knew it not, and thanked thee not. Go with me; I must nurse thee in this thy sickness, heal and comfort thee as I can; then we travel."
"Dost thou imagine, my Criton," he replied, strengthened by the balsam of his wounded pride, "that I am not a sort of Socrates, but will really go out of my torre del filosopho? A word of honor is a thick chain." "Tell me all, spare no one; but I will tell thee thereafter a piece of news, at which thy chain shall instantly melt down!" said Albano.
"Ha! Meanwhile, this place here, for its part, is well enough, as aforesaid, a torre del filosopho, quai de Voltaire, and Shakespeare's street, and whatever else one might, could, would, or should name. Moreover, I always hear by night one or another man speak close by me, and so I have no fear at all that the 'I' will come. I throw every day five little bread-balls: if they form a cross, then it signifies (think what thou wilt) that I do not yet appear to myself. But they always make one. I have been, in this Anticyra here, so quieted about so many a phantom, even by those books,—look at them, nothing but treatises on madness,—that I, although it touches my Mordian[[137]] quite as little as it does me, am glad to have been here. My intercourse is not the safest, I own, though I talk with the keeper and wife alone (a rhyme), both of whom cleverly understand the prison-fever that prevails here. The man has got the fixed idea into his head, and his wife thereby into hers, that he is our present overseer, and has to assist, oversee, and read excellent books which fall in with his office. Those treatises are by the fool. It is to be presumed he has let his overseeing idea peep out too broadly in the city, and the medical college clapped him in with his serviceable idea; because, in the end, to be sure, every overseer must have it in order to exercise his office, whether he is mad or not. Amongst all here in the house, we two please each other most. He sounded me to my advantage, and I can make great use of him for my liberty, only I must not attack his foul, fixed spot. Only I often improvisate for them an evening blessing,—because they have no prayer-book,—and weave in with the blessing hints which might be of medical service to the pair, if they chose. So we two wander round in the mazes of this labyrinth along before the patients,—behind him, the incurable hub of the whole wheel, I walk quite tolerant. In the club, universal polemics and scepticism reign as in no other university hall. 'It is a thing to make one become crazy,' he says to me, in a low tone. 'To make one be crazy,[[138]] they say in this palais d'égalité,' I reply. I cut him out the profiles of the patients for his manuscript. As children still have something which appears to them childish, so have madmen something which seems even to them madness. But I never become any more pointed with him, and keep sharper jokes to myself. Ah, what is man, especially a discreet one, and how thin are his sticks and staves! Is there anything about me that moves thee, Albano? My dull, pale face, perhaps?"
But Albano could not possibly confess to him, that this wreck of a noble man, with his delusions, and even with his style, whose wings had also wheels on them, brought the tears into his eyes, but he said merely, "Ah, I think of many things, but now, at last, I pray, to thy story, dear friend!" But Schoppe had already forgotten again what he was to tell. Albano named the issue of the portrait-affair with the Countess, and Schoppe began:—
"The Princess Julienne was just jumping into her carriage, when I led the blind maiden up the steps, to let it be said, the Librarian Schoppe was here from Spain. I was ushered into a darkened apartment, wherein I walked quietly up and down waiting or watching for people, until the Countess greeted me out of the gloom 'This darkness,' said I, 'is just what I like for the light which I have to give, only I would rather speak Irish or Lettonian[[139]] or Spanish, because I don't know who may be eavesdropping about here.' 'Spanish!' said she, seriously. I related to her how I had known thy mother, and painted her, and so forth, and inserted my name indelibly into the likeness; after a long time, had met her in the market-place of this city, and taken her for the looking-glass image of thy mother, so like was she to her own. 'I know not,' said she, breaking in here with heated pride upon the midst of my narrative, 'how far your secrets can become mine.' 'You may,' said I, seriously, 'by letting me ring for a light; for I hold here in my hand the portrait of the Frau von Cesara and von Romeiro, two names of one person.' She comprehended nothing of it, wanted to know nothing of it, and I must not ring. I acknowledged to her that I saw myself necessitated to adorn myself with the rhetorical chessman, generally called repetition of the narrative, and proceeded to move the piece. But as soon as in so doing I came upon thy name again, she said I had probably in my mind relations now entirely done away. 'No,' said I, 'I have an eternal and restored relation in my mind, and bring with me his greeting, full of the most profound regard.' The greeting seemed to touch her sensibilities, just as if one held her to be in need of such an assurance, and she begged me rather to leave thee out. 'Heavens! he is your brother, and here I have about me the portrait of your mother, stolen from Valencia, and only no light to show it by.'
"Light was then ordered. As the flame set the tall, imposing form in gold, I said right out to myself, she was fully as deserving as her brother that one should make that long pilgrimage to the family tree of both, for she is not without her charms. Albano, were I her brother, as thou hast the honor to be, and had she a gondola, but no river of paradise for it, my blood would have to be made navigable for her; I would bear her up not only in my hands, but, like an æquilibrist, on my nose and mouth, the unfortunate one! She no sooner saw the portrait than she cried, 'Mother, mother!' and kept passing her hand over her eyes, complaining that they were now still worse than ever. I resumed my scraping, and at last dug out before her eyes my whole name, Loewenskiould, even with the addition, which had escaped me, 'Loves much.'
"'Was that the painter's name?' she asked. 'Are you he? You loved her too?' 'Beauty is a cliff,' replied I, seriously, 'on which one and another man seeks to shipwreck himself, because it lies full of pearls and oysters.' She begged of me, in a friendly manner, the most distinct repetition of the repetition; she wished to attend better; hearing and thinking were as hard and heavy for her now as living. Albano, you should have despatched me to her with more preparatory information. As it was, I was half confused and cloudy, and when, during my picture of the Long Lake Isle,[[140]] something moist sprang from her eyes, I sank in the drops, and almost drowned therein, and not till after some time could I rub myself to life. At the end of my discourse, she stood up, folded her hands, and prayed, with weeping, as if she gave thanks: 'O God, O God! thou hast spared me!'—which I, after all, do not wholly understand."
Albano understood it well,—namely, that she thanked fate for the accidental delay of Schoppe's arrival, which had spared her the short but fearful transformation of Roquairol into a brother.
"Thereupon she broke out into too many thanks to the painter, robbers and purveyors of the painted birth-certificate. He whose heart has gone to sleep like an arm, and is feelingless and hard to move, finds a something very droll run through and over the awaking member when he stirs it. 'I could not do less,' said I, 'for your holy brother; the sunny side is, then, the moon-side.' She turned suddenly to the subject of thy father, and asked, as he was immediately coming, whether she or I should propose to him these riddles. 'Or rather both!' I had hardly replied, when he stepped wildly in.
"Now, Gaspard is, to be sure and decidedly, thy own and thy sister's natural father, and filial love toward him is never to be set down against thee as a fault; but if I chose to tell thee he was no bear, no rhinoceros, no werewolf or other kind of wolf, I should do it more from singular politeness than from any other cause. He snorted to me a good evening; so did I to him. Many men resemble glass,—smooth and slippery and flat so long as one does not break them, but then cursedly cutting, and every splinter stings. The matter was laid before him with the accompanying frontispiece of the portrait. Wert thou more distantly related to him, I would let myself out on this subject; for his face was overspread with the northern light of grim fury; out of his eyes yellow wasps flew at me; straight lines shot up on his tempestuous brow like electrical lances, particularly two perpendicular lines of discomfort. But, as was said, thou art, to my knowledge, his son. 'My friend,' he thundered away, 'with what right do you steal pictures, then?' 'That ought to be a hard question for me to answer,' replied I, gently; 'but I have an inability to look at an unrighteous deception; I march right in.' 'Countess,' said he, gasping, 'in three minutes you shall know this gentleman well enough.' O no, no! he used another word than gentleman, but I will one day clasp him to my breast for it, and though we stood on the highest steps of God's throne, and wrestled in the glory." "Schoppe!" said Albano. "Don't excite me!" replied Schoppe, and went on.