She had the coach tackled, and drove off to the Court Chaplain, Spener's. She knew Liana's respect for him, and his omnipotence over her pious disposition. Even to herself he was still imposing. Down from that earlier theological age in which the Lutheran Father-confessor still reigned nearer to the Catholic, he had, through the power and magnanimity of his character, brought a shepherd's staff, which was distinguished from a bishop's staff only by being made of better wood. She must needs narrate to him twice over Liana's relations; the ardent, indignant old man could not at all comprehend or believe a love which must have been spun out right under his old eyes without his knowledge. "Your excellence," he at length answered, "has, indeed, committed a mistake in not communicating to me this important circumstance before to-day. How easily, with God's help, would I have conducted all to a blessed issue! However, there is nothing lost. Let your excellence send the maiden this very night to me, but alone, without you; that must be done; then I stand pledged for the rest!"
Objections and cautions would merely have inflamed the old man's ambition and anger,—both which still worked on beneath the ice of his hoary hair; she therefore confidently promised him all, with that submissiveness, which she had also transmitted as an inheritance to Liana.
Right hopefully did Liana receive the command of a night ride to the good, pious father. She started off with only her devoted maiden. With deeply agitated soul she appeared before her father-confessor. She opened herself to him as to a God; he decided just as if he were one. What a sight for another eye less proud than Spener's would have been this lowly, but composed saint, whose heart, like a sunbeam, always appeared loveliest in its breaking asunder.
But here the history moves in veils! The old man commanded her maiden to stay behind, and took her alone over into the silent Blumenbühl. He unlocked for her the church, lighted a torch at the altar, in order that the desolate darkness might not play any prelude to her timid eye, and completed what her parents could not.
How he extorted from her the promise to renounce her Albano forever is a mystery watched and hidden by the Great Sphinx of the oath which she swore to him,—only the far-off man, who lost the fair soul, had from the observatory of the suns gazed at the bright church-windows and discovered behind them disturbing apparitions, without knowing that they were true, and decided his life.
She went back again coldly across the meadows and mountains of old days, which had once been so bright, to the dwelling of the old man, who dismissed her with greater reverence than had marked his reception of her. On the night-journey she was mute, and wrapped up in herself, and exchanged not a word with her maiden. Her parents still awaited her; the mother looked anxiously out into the night and into the future. At length the living carriage rolled into the court. Great and mighty as one who, having been executed in innocence, starts up into life again before the dissector and, regarding him as the judge on high, speaks with unfettered freedom and gladness, so did she come into the presence of her parents: like the cold marble of a god's form, she stood there, pale, tearlessly cold and calm. She knew it not, and she willed it not, but she soared high over life, even beyond a child's love,—she could not kiss her mother so fervently as once,—she stood undismayed before her blustering father, and said, then, without a tear, without emotion, without a blush, and with soft voice, "I have this night renounced my love before God. The pious father has convinced me." "And had the man better reasons for it in petto than I?" said Froulay. "Yes," said she; "but I have sworn in the Temple to keep silence until time discloses all. Now I pray you by the All-just One only to allow me to give him back in person his letters, and tell him that I cease to be his, not, however, from fickleness, but from duty; I entreat this, dear parents. Then may God dispose of the rest, and I shall never be disobedient to you again." The wretched father, puffed up still more by this triumph, would fain have made this last prayer of the dying heart bitter to her, and even insinuated a flying suspicion of the motive of the interview; but the mother, smitten in her fair soul by the fairest, interceded warmly, and contemptuously and arbitrarily decided in the affirmative. Nor did Liana seem to take much notice of the paternal No. When he had gone, the mother, weeping for bliss, snatched the silent form to her embrace; but Liana wept not so easily upon her bosom as once out of love, whether it was that her heart was too much exalted, or that it came back just as slowly into the old condition as it went out of it. "Receive thanks, daughter," said the mother; "I shall now make thy life more happy." "It was happy enough. I was to die; therefore I must needs love," said she. So she went smiling into the arms of sleep, with hard-beating heart. But in dream it appeared to her as if she were sinking away in a swoon, losing her mother, and struggling up again fearfully out of the grasp of flying death, and then weeping for joy that she lived again. Thereupon she awoke, and the glad drops, softly released by the dream, still flowed from her open eyes, and softened like a thawing-wind the stiff soil of life.
Ye great or blessed spirits above us! When man here, under the poor clouds of life, throws away his fortune, because he prizes it less than his heart, then is he as blessed and as great as you. And we are all worthy of a holier earth, because the sight of the sacrifice exalts, and does not oppress us, and because we shed burning tears, not from pity, but from the deepest, holiest love and joy.
81. CYCLE.
Warmly and brilliantly did the sun, who today, like the unhappy one, was to be eclipsed, begin his morning race. Liana awoke on the burial-day of her love, not with yesterday's strength, but faint and languid, somewhat cheered, however, by the prospect of a return of her peaceful time. The mother, although herself sickly, pressed her, early in the morning, to her heart, in order to prove the pulse of the heart most precious to her. Liana looked affectionately and yearningly, with moist eye, into her moist eye a long time, and was silent. "What wilt thou?" asked her mother. "Mother, love me more now, as I am alone," said she. Then in her mother's presence she bound together all Albano's letters, without reading them, except the one in which he begs her brother for his love. She sported with her mother, as fate does with us and as poor parents do with their children, who at first give them bright, gay garments, because these are more easily dyed into dark ones.
Her mother sought gradually to take away from her her spiritual fantasies, the death-moss, as it were, which clung sucking to her green, young life. "Thou seest," said she, "how thy angel can err, since he approved thy love, which thou now condemnest." But she had an answer: "No, the pious father said, it had been right until the time when he told me the secret, and that the Bible says, one must forsake everything for love." Thus, then, does this poor creature, as they tell of the bird of Paradise, soar straight upward in heaven, until she drops down dead.