At the outermost lantern they stopped. Albano took out the medallion of the decrepit form, under which was inscribed, "Nous nous verrons un jour, mon frère"; he surveyed it through the eye-glass; behold, the old face was the young one of his Julienne. Confidently he held the age-imparting glass to the young image, under which was inscribed, "Nous ne nous verrons jamais, mon fils"; there appeared a friendly old face, smiling across out of a long life, whose original lay, as having been seen by him, in a deep, dark memory, but nameless; of Linda's mother it had, however, no feature.
All at once he heard a familiar voice: "Ecco, ecco![[144]] my nephew, sir!" It was Albano's uncle, who seemed to drag along the black-dressed, wailing Schoppe, and weepingly addressed his nephew: "Ah, neveu! O, I speak the truth, only truth pour jamais." He looked laughing, and thought he wept. The black coat stepped nearer, become a green coat, and said, "Sir Count, don't let yourself be deceived a minute; our acquaintance begins with a mutual loss." "My Schoppe," said Albano, agitated, "knowest thou me no more?" "O that I were he now! My name is Siebenkäs," replied the green coat, and threw up his hands into the air in token of lamentation. "He lies there, however, in the chapel," said the Spaniard; "I will relate all so truly that it is beautiful." Albano cast a glance into the chapel, and, with a cry of pain, fell headlong.
139. CYCLE.
Schoppe's history was, according to Wehrfritz's and the uncle's telling, this: He had started up glowing out of the constrained slumber; the snorting war-steed of vindictive fury against the Spaniard had hurried him away. In the hotel-yard of the latter the servant had directed him with a lie to the castle. Here, amidst the confused tumult about the suffering Prince, he had reached, unasked, unseen, the mirror-room where he had once begged of the Countess Linda Idoine's word of peace for his distracted friend. When the cylindrical mirror which graves the long years of age on the young face, and shakes thereon the moss and rubbish of time, threw out at him his image wasted with madness, said he, "Ho, ho! the old I lurks somewhere in the neighborhood," and looked grimly round. Out of the mirrors of the mirrors he saw a whole people of I's looking at him. He sprang upon a chair, to unhang a long mirror. While he was starting the nail of the same, a clock in the wall struck twelve times. Here the prediction of Gaspard came into his head, which his friend had confided to him, and all the rules which the latter had prescribed to him for the solution of the riddles. The prediction mentioned, indeed, a picture-gallery, but a mirror-room is itself one, only more vacillating, and deeper in behind the wall. He took down the mirror, according to the rules given by Gaspard, found and opened the arras-door corresponding to the size of the mirror; the wooden female form, with the open souvenir in her left hand and the crayon in her right, sat behind there. He pressed, according to the prescription, the ring on the left middle finger; the form stood up, with the rolling of an inward machinery, stepped out into the apartment, stopped at the opposite wall, drew a line down thereon with the crayon in its hand. He drew up the border of the wall-hanging; the perspective-glass and the waxen impression of the coffin-key lay in a compartment behind there. Now he pressed the ring-finger; the figure set the crayon upon the souvenir, and wrote, "Son, go into the princely vault in the Blumenbühl church, and open the coffin of the Princess Eleonore, and thou wilt find the black slab."
When that was done (the Knight had told Albano), if the marble slab, nevertheless, was not found in the coffin, then he must press the third ring on the little finger, whereupon something would appear which he himself did not foreknow. Schoppe tried the pressure of this finger before going into the Blumenbühl Church,—the figure remained standing,—but something began to roll inside,—the arms stretched themselves out and fell down,—wheels rolled out,—at last the whole form dismembered itself by a mechanical suicide, and there appeared an old head of wax.
Here Schoppe went off, to run to Blumenbühl and fetch out of the vault the light required for this night-piece. Though it was noonday, church and vault were left open,—perhaps because they were making room for the new cavern-guest who was just dying. Without stopping to transform the waxen key into an iron one, he violently broke open the coffin with an iron tool, and quickly snatched out the marble slab and Albano's portrait. He broke the slab behind a bush. When he read the superscription, he examined no farther; he hastened to Albano's house to deliver all. But the two were simultaneously seeking each other in vain. Meanwhile he lighted upon the honest Wehrfritz, through whom alone he could despatch such important booty; he himself was now on the scent after his deadly foe, the Spaniard, and no power could drive him off the hunting-ground of his wrath.
At sundown Schoppe espied the Spaniard, who, flying out of the Prince's Garden to escape the fac-simile, Siebenkäs, came running into his hands. He stiffened at the sight of the madman, cried, "Lord and God, are you behind me and before me, are you red and green?" and rushed sidewards into the old Chapel of the Cross, to fall on his knees and invoke the Holy Virgin. Schoppe stretched out his condor wings, shot off and dropped them together before the chapel. "Turn thyself round, Spaniard, I'll devour thee from top to toe," said he. "Holy mother of God, help me,—good, bad spirit, stand by me, O gloomy one!" prayed the Baldhead. "Step round, knave, without further trick," said Schoppe, describing from behind with his sword a horse-shoe in the air. He turned round piteously on his knees, and his head hung slackly down from his neck. Schoppe began: "Now I've got thee, villain! thou prayest to me to no purpose on thy knees; I hold the sword of judgment,—mad am I, too,—in a few minutes, when we have said our say, I stick this present cane-sword into thee,—for I am a madman, full of fixed ideas." "Ah, sir," replied the Baldhead, "you are certainly entirely rational and in your head and yourself; I beg to live; killing is so great a deadly sin." Schoppe replied: "As to my understanding, of that another time! I have already shot thee in effigy, now will I not carry round in vain the deadly sin and the sting of conscience, but set myself about it in naturâ, thou hangman of souls, thou trepan of hearts!"
"Schoppe, Schoppe!" cried at this moment, several times over, at great distances, a something with Albano's voice. He looked swiftly round; nothing was to be seen. "Good Schoppe," it continued, "let my uncle go!" Now Schoppe blazed up, and raised his dagger for a thrust. "Thou absolutely too abominably petrified ventriloquist! Should not one immediately stick the trumpery here as they do a wounded horse? Seest thou not, then, the hellish, cursed murder- and death-stroke before thy nose, thy pest-cart already tackled up, the stuffed-out skeleton of death cased in this flesh of mine, and just lifting the scythe? Confess, Spaniard, for Jesus' sake, confess! Fly, ere I stick, spit thee! Thou wilt thereby have some plea with the devils in hell; otherwise thou art, even down below there, an utterly ruined man."
"Where sits the Pater? I will confess, indeed," said the Spaniard.
"Here stands thy gallows-Pater; behold the shorn poll," said Schoppe, shaking off the hat from his bending, close-shaven head.