He looked up from his road to the mountain where his father had found him at evening on Whitsuntide and Sacrament day, as to a Tabor of the past; and in his walk through the little birch wood he still recollected well the spot[[157]] where once two voices (his parents) had pronounced his name. Thus consecrated by the holy past, he arrived in the village of his childhood, and saw the church, as well as the house of Wehrfritz, filled with lights, the former, however, for a mournful object, and the latter for the glad one of welcoming of guests.
146. CYCLE.
Albano found in the glorification, wherein Heaven was to him only the magnifying mirror of a glimmering earth, and the past only the fatherland and mother-country of holy parents,—in this splendor of the soul he found the house of his boyhood, into which he entered, festal and like a temple, and everything common and clumsy refined or only represented as upon a stage. His mother Albina and his sister Rabette came with their glad looks as higher beings to his moved heart. They drew hastily back, Julienne flew down stairs and kissed her brother, for the first time openly, in a silent blending of pleasure and sadness. When she released him, the tolling began out of the gloom of the church-tower, as a signal that the dead brother was passing into the church; then she rushed back upon Albano, and wept infinitely. She went up with him, without saying whom he should find up there with his foster-father. An old flute-clock, whose laborious music was offered from time immemorial to rare guests, welled out to welcome him, as he opened the door, with the resonances of the days of his childhood.
A tall, black-dressed female form, with a veil falling down sidewise, who sat talking with his foster-father, turned round towards him as he entered. It was Idoine; but the old magic semblance passed again over his to-day so excited soul, as if it were Liana from heaven, arrayed in immortality, prouder and bolder in the possession of unearthly powers, retaining nothing more of her former earth than goodness and charms. Both met each other again here with mutual astonishment. Julienne—conscious to herself of her little concealments and arrangements—saw a little red cloud of displeasure flit across Idoine's mild face; it was, however, gone below the horizon, so soon as Idoine perceived that the sister during the tolling for her brother's funeral could not restrain her tears, and she went kindly to meet her, seeking her hand. Idoine, easily inclined by her severity to fits of vexation, that little skirmish of wrath, had freed herself by long, sharp exercise from this finest, but strongest poison of the soul's happiness, till she at last stood in her heaven as a pure, light moon, without a rainy and cloudy atmosphere of earth.
Albano, to whom the earth, filled with the past and the dead, had become an air-globe that soared into the ether, felt himself free amidst his stars, and without earthly anxiety. He approached Idoine,—although with the consciousness of the conflicting relations of his and her house, yet with holy courage. "Her last wish in the last garden," he said, "had been heard by Heaven." With maiden-like decision of perception she went through the wilderness wherein she had to bend aside, now flowers, now thorns, in order to be neither embarrassed nor injured. She answered him, "I rejoice from my heart that you have found your faithful sister forever." Wehrfritz was quite as much delighted as astonished at the frankness with which she honestly spoke the truth against all family relations. "So must one always lose much on the earth," Albano replied to her, "in order to gain much," and turned to his sister, as if he would thereby guard this word against a more ambiguous sense.
The funeral bell tolled on. The strange, happy and sad mingling of earthly lots gave all a solemn and free tone of spirit. Albina and Rabette came up, arrayed in festive dark dresses, for the procession to the burial church. Julienne divided herself between two brothers, and never did her heart, which stood at once in tears and flames, swell more romantically. She guessed how her friend Idoine thought respecting her brother Albano, for she knew her to have a steadier voice than to-day's was, and her sweet confusion was most easily evident to her from the short report which the open soul had made to her of meeting Albano again in Liana's garden; the slight maidenly recoil, too, of her pride to-day, when she was embarrassed to find herself taken everywhere for a risen Liana, that beloved of the youth, made Julienne not more doubtful, but more sure.
"On a fine evening," said Albano to Idoine, "I once looked down into your lovely Arcadia, but I was not in Arcadia." "The name," replied she, and her clear eyes sank again to the earth, "is nothing more than play; properly it is an alp, and yet only with herdsmen's huts in a vale." She raised not again her large eyes, when Julienne silently took her hand and drew her away, because now the funeral bell sounded out with single, sad strokes, as a sign that the funeral ceremony was coming on, in which Julienne could not possibly deny her sisterly heart the comfort of participating. "We are going to the church," said Idoine to the company. "So are we all, indeed," replied Wehrfritz, quickly. As the two maidens passed by Albano, he observed for the first time on Idoine three little freckles, as it were traces of earth and life, which made her a mortal. He looked after the lofty, noble form, with the long floating veil, who, beside his sister, appeared like Linda, quite as majestically, only more delicately built, and whose holy gait announced a priestess, who had been wont to walk in temples before gods.
Hardly had the two disappeared, when Albano's old acquaintances, especially the women, to whom Julienne's presence had always held near in view Albano's family-tree, crowded on his heart with all signs of long-repressed cordiality, full of wishes, joys, and tears. "Be my parents still," said Albano. "Bravery is everything in this world," said the Director. "I did my part like a mother," said Albina, "but who could have known this!" Rabette said nothing; her joy and love were overpowering as her recollections. "My sister Rabette," said Albano, "gave me, when I first went to Italy, the words embroidered on a purse, 'Think of us.' This prayer I will fulfil for you all in every vicissitude of fortune";—and here, although too modest to say it, he thought of things which he might perhaps do, as Prince, for his foster-father, among which came first the restoration of his reverting male fee. "Thus, then, is many a former sorrow of the heart, for us—" began Albina. "O, what's to do with hearts? what's to do with sorrows?" said Wehrfritz; "to-day all is right and smooth." But Rabette understood her mother very well.
All betook themselves on their way to the temple of mourning. They heard as they approached the church the music of the hymn, "How softly they rest"; at a considerable distance bugles were essaying gladder tones. Rabette pressed Albano's hand and said, very softly, "It has been well with me, because I have learned all." She had, since hearing how Roquairol had murdered a manifold happiness and himself, cast all her love after the wretched man into his grave to moulder with him, without shedding a tear as she did it. Her heart leaped at the thought of Idoine's goodness, of her resemblance, with the mention of which her father had to-day made the angel blush, and of her beautiful comforting of Julienne, who had wept incessantly before Albano's arrival. Albina praised Julienne more on account of her sisterly affection. Rabette was silent about her; the two were sisterly rivals; moreover, Julienne had, according to her sharp, inexorable system, looked upon her very coldly as a victim of the Roquairol whom she so despised; whereas Idoine, who, by her greater knowledge of human nature, had learned to unite mildness toward female errors of the heart and moment with severity toward men, had only been gentle and just.
When they stepped into the church full of mourning lamps, Albano stole away into an unlighted corner, so as neither to disturb nor be disturbed. At the bright altar stood the serene and venerable Spener, with his uncovered head full of silver locks; the long coffin of the brother stood before the altar between rows of lights. In the arch of the church hung night, and forms were lost in the gloom; below rays and bright shadows and people crossed each other. Albano saw the iron-grated door of the hereditary sepulchre, through which his blessed parents had gone down, standing open like a gate of death; and it was to him as if once more Schoppe's tumultuous spirit stalked in, to break into the last house of man. The thought of his brother affected him but little, but the neighborhood of his still parents, who had so long watched for him, and whom he had never thanked, and the incessant tears of his sister, whom he saw in the gallery over the gate of death, took mighty hold of his heart, out of which the deep, eternal tones of lamentation drew tears, like the warm blood of sorrow and of love. He saw Idoine, with her half red, half white Lancaster rose on the black silk, standing beside his sister, drawing the veil over her eyes against many a comparing look. Here, near such altar-lights, had once the oppressed Liana knelt while swearing the renunciation of her love. The whole constellation of his shining past, of his lofty beings, had gone down below the horizon, and only one bright star of all the group stood glimmering still above the earth: Idoine.