"My friend," inquired Schoppe of an official messenger who came behind them with tin-plate and knapsack, "what do you call this village?" "Arcadia," was the reply. "But to speak without any poetic white-heat or culminating of fancy, my poetic friend, how is that canton down below there properly named?" asked Schoppe again. Petulantly the official messenger answered, "Arcadia, I say, if you cannot retain it,—it is an old crown-domain; our Princess Idone (Idoine) keeps herself there year in and year out for constancy, and does everything there at her own pleasure; what will you have more?" "Are you, too, in Arcadia?"[[22]] "No, in Sowbow," answered the messenger, very loud, over his shoulders, for he was already five steps ahead.
The Librarian, who saw his friend in great commotion at the messenger's discourse, put to him joyfully the question, whether they could have found better night-quarters than these, except these very same in the moon of May. But how was he astounded at Albano's plunging back into the limbo which conscience and his love had kindled! Idoine's illusive resemblance to Liana had suddenly flashed across his thoughts. "Know'st thou," said he, continuing to tremble more violently in his agitation by reason of the magic of evening, "wherein Idoine is unlike her? She can see," he himself added, "for she has not seen me yet. O forgive, forgive, firm man! truly I am not always so. She is dying at this moment, or some calamity or other draws near to her; like a smoke before a conflagration, it mounts up duskily and in long clouds within my soul. I must absolutely go back."
"Believe me," said Schoppe, "I shall one day tell you all that I now think; for the present, however, I will spare you." Neither did this, however, produce any effect; he turned about; but through the whole of the next day's journey his cup of sorrow, which Schoppe had scoured so shiny, continued to be stained with moisture and blackness. They could not arrive till evening, when a magic mist of twilight, moonlight, smoke, vapor, and cloud-red made the city a somewhat strange place. Albano's eagle eye clove the smoke in twain, and it vanished. He saw only the blind Liana, on the high Italian roof, run against the statues, or headlong down over the edge. Wildly, and without uttering a sound, he ran through the deep streets,—lost sight of the Palace buried in buildings, and ran so much the more furiously; he imagined to find her crushed to atoms on the pavement,—he sees the white statues again, she holds one entwined within her arms, and the old gardener, he of the Cereus serpens, stands with his hat on his head before her. When, at length, he arrived directly under the walls of the Palace, there stood overhead a strange maiden beside her, and below women, running together, looked up, asking one another, "God, what is the matter now?" Liana looked (so it seemed) to the heavens, wherein only a few stars burned, and then for a long space into the moon, and then down upon the people; but directly she stepped back from the statues. The gardener came out of the court, and said, as he passed, to his inquiring wife, "She can see." "O my good man," said Albano, "what do you say?" "Only just go up there!" he replied, and strode busily away. At this moment came Bouverot on foot,—Albano, with a short bow and greeting, stepped across his path. Bouverot looked at him a moment: "I have not the honor of your acquaintance," said he, wildly, and hurried off.
84. CYCLE.
Take now a nearer look at the blind Liana! From the day when her mother bore her home, a ruined creature, there gradually began for her, under her solar eclipse, a cooler and a tranquil life. Earth had changed; her duties towards it seemed rolled off from her; the silver-glance of youth, like a human look, now blinded; her short joys, those little May-flowers, plucked off already under the morning-star; the object of her first love, alas! as her mother had predicted, not so tender as she had thought, but very masculine, rough, and wild, like her father, time and the future extinguished, and the coming days for her only a blind, painted show-gate, which men's hands do not open, and through which she can no longer force her way, except with her unencumbered soul, when it has thrown back on the earth the heavy trailing mantle of the flesh.
Her heart clung now—as Albano did to a man's—more than ever to a female heart, which beat more tenderly and without the fever of the passions; just as the compass-needle shows itself as a spiral lily, so did virtue show itself to her as female beauty.
Her mother never left her blind-chair; she read to her, even the French prayers, and kept her up by consolation; and she was easily consoled, for she saw not her mother's distressed face, and heard only the quiet tones of her voice. Julienne, since the burial of the first love, had thrown off an old crust, and a fresh flame for her friend sprang up in her heart. "I have dealt by thee honestly," said she, upon one occasion; then they secretly declared themselves to each other, and then their souls, like flower-leaves, linked themselves together to form one sweet cup. The Princess spoke seriously about studies and sciences, and gained even the mother, whom in men's society she had pleased less. At evening, before retiring, Caroline flew down, still, as from the heaven of joy, into her realm of shadows, and grew daily in brilliancy and beauty of complexion, but spoke no more; and Liana fell softly to sleep, while they looked upon each other.
At times a pang came to her when she thought that she should perhaps never see her precious parents, especially her mother, any more; then it seemed to her as if she were herself invisible and already making her pilgrimage alone down the deep, dark avenue to the next world and heard her friends and companions at the gate far behind calling after her. Then she tenderly sent her love over, as if out of death, and rejoiced in the great reunion. Spener visited his pupil daily; his manly voice, full of strengthening and solace, was, in her darkness, the evening-prayer-bell, which leads the traveller out of the dusky thicket back to the more cheerful lights. Thus was her holy heart drawn up to still greater heights of holiness, and the dark passion-flowers of her sorrows shut themselves up to sleep in the tepid night of blindness. How different are the sufferings of the sinner and those of the saint! The former are an eclipse of the moon, by which the dark night becomes still blacker and wilder; the latter are a solar eclipse, which cools off the hot day, and casts a romantic shade, and wherein the nightingales begin to warble.
In this way Liana maintained, in the midst of the sighs of others around her, and in the tempestuous weather that enveloped her, a tranquil, healing bosom. So does the tender white cloud often in the beginning hurry away, a torn and tattered fugitive through the heavens, but at last move along in rounded form and slow pace overhead there, when down below the storm still sweeps over the earth, and whirls and tears everything. But, good Liana, all the thirty-two winds, let them waft pleasant days to thee or blow them away, hold on longer than the dead calm of repose!