Since the extinction of the engagement, and since Gaspard's letters, Albano's eye had been directed toward the fairest ruins of time,—unless one excepts the earth itself,—to Italy; and his injured vision held fast to this new portal of his life, which was to usher him into the presence of the fairest and greatest which nature and man can create. How did the fire-mountains, and Rome's ruins, and her warm, golden-blue heavens, already unfold to him their splendor, when in fancy he led the suffering Liana before them, and her holy eyes refreshed themselves with measuring the heights! A man who travels with his beloved to Italy has in the very fact that he might do without one of the two, both double. And Albano hoped for this felicity, since all testimonies which he met with of Liana's restoration to health promised as much. As to Dr. Sphex,—the only one who opened a pit for her, and in it cast a death-bell, and swore to everybody, she would fall with the leaves of autumn,—him he saw no more. He wished, however,—he said to himself,—in this whole joint-tour, only her happiness, not at all her love. So did he see himself always in his self-mirror, namely, only veiled; so did he regard himself often as too stern, although he was so little of that; so did he take himself to be conqueror of his own heart, when his fair countenance already wore pale, sickly hues.
The present stood as yet dark above him, but its neighboring times, the future and the past, lay full of light. What a journey, in which a beloved, a father, a friend, a female friend, are of themselves, on the very road, the curiosities which others find only when they reach the end!
The Princess was the female friend. Since Gaspard's letters to her and to him, since the hope of a longer and nearer enjoyment of his society, she found more and more pleasure in subduing all clouds round about her, so as to smile and shine upon her friend only out of a blue heaven. She alone at court seemed to take mildly and rightly the blunt youth, whose proud frankness so often ran against the disguised pride of the Count, and particularly against the open pride of the Prince; she alone seemed—as nothing is seldomer guessed in and by circles than fair sensibility, especially by courtly ones and especially manly sensibility—softly to spy out his, and to increase its warmth by her sympathy. She alone honored him with that strict, significant attention which mankind so seldom give, as well as can so seldom appreciate, because they never have occasion but for love and passion, in order to—render justice, incapable, otherwise than by comet-light, by warm-flames and fires of joy, to read the best hand. All that he was, she simply presupposed in him; his pre-eminent qualities were only her demands and his passports; she made his individuality neither her model nor her reflection; both were painters, no pictures. He heard often, indeed, that she had a masculine severity, especially in her dictatorial capacity, but not, however, that she was womanishly inhuman. To the customary vermin of courtlings, which gives itself elevation on its worm-rings only by crawling, she was repulsive and torturing; although, as a new-comer, she should, it would seem, have been a new-born child, that brings with it raisins to the older children. On Sunday, when at courts, as on the stage in Berlin, spiritual popular pieces are always brought out, she was (among the Sunday-born-children, who see more spirits than they have) a Monday's child, which wishes to find for itself one, who, whether he has ever been dubbed noble or not, at all events knows how to distinguish an original from the copy, as well in his own self as in a picture-gallery. On that account many lords, and still more ladies, thanked God, if they had occasion to say nothing more to her than "God bless you!"
In this way she appeared to the Count every day more worthy of his father. As into a warm spring sunshine did he enter for the first time into the flattering magic circle of female friendship, which even here cast and moulded two wings for love out of the wax-cells of the enjoyed honey; it was, however, with him love for Liana, to whom the friend could most easily give wings for Italy. He felt that soon an hour of overflowing esteem would strike, when he could confidingly open the high-walled cloister-garden of his former love. For she made room for him to be near her as often as the narrow compass of a throne and the all-betraying height of its location would admit. But something disturbed, watched, beset both,—a rival neighbor, as it seemed. It was the singular Julienne, who always, when things were getting on, stepped out of her box on to the stage of the Princess, and confounded the play. Frequently she came after him; sometimes he had gotten invitations from her just the moment before others from the Princess followed, which hers, therefore, as it seemed, must have anticipated. What did she mean? Would she possibly win from a youth whom she had so often provoked by her contempt of men, and by the lightning-like dartings of her indignation, his love, merely, perhaps, because he had always so warmly reciprocated her friendly glances, as those of so dear a—friend of his beloved? Or did she want of him only hatred for the honored Princess, and that indeed out of envy and the usual resemblance of women to ivory, whose white hue so readily becomes yellow, and which only by a thorough warming gets the fair color again?
These questions were rather repeated than answered by an evening which he and Julienne spent at the Princess's. A good reading was to give the picture-exhibition of Goethe's Tasso. Fine art, and nothing but art, was with the Princess the art of Passau[[35]] against court- and life-wounds; and, in general, the world-system was to her only a complete picture-gallery and Pembroke cabinet and gallery of antiques. The reading parts were so distributed by the manager, the Princess, that she herself got the Princess, Julienne the confidente Leonore, Albano the Poet Tasso, a youthful-cheeked Chamberlain the Duke, and Froulay Alphonso. This latter, who had learned to prefer works of artifice to works of art, and the princely cabinet to any cabinet of art, in spite of his heart stood ready there for a journey to the mountain of the muses, arrayed for that purpose by the Princess in a mountain-habit. Thus forced more and more every day into the poetical fashion, he looked, of course, like any other abortion, which has come into the world with pantaloons, queue, and the like all born on him, on purpose to condemn the modish way of the world, just like a street-sweeper in Cassel.
Albano read with outward and inward glow, not toward the reading Princess, but toward the Princess she personated, from a habit of his heart which life always set a-glow; and the Princess read the rôle of her rôle very well, of course. Her artistic feeling told her, even without the prompting of tender sensibility, that in Goethe's Tasso,—which, for the most part, is related to the Italian Tasso, as the heavenly Jerusalem to the Jerusalem delivered,—the Princess is almost Princess of Princesses. Never did the god of the muses and of the sun pass more beautifully through the constellation Virgo than here. Never was veiled love more radiantly unveiled.
The Minister read off the powerful proser Alphonso, as he scolds at Tasso and Albano, as well as a trumpeter of cavalry reads the notes which are affixed to his sleeve; in fact, he found the man quite sensible.
The younger[[36]] Princess might, in the general poetic concert, have done her share of the talking some quarter of an hour, more or less, when she suddenly threw down, in a lively manner, the beautiful volume of Goethe's works, of which there were three copies there, and said, with her impetuosity, "A stupid part! I cannot abide it!" All the world was silent. The senior[[37]] Princess looked at her significantly; the junior Princess looked at her still more significantly, and went out, without coming back again. A court dame took up the reading, and went calmly on.
To most of those present this interlude was properly the most interesting; and they willingly continued to think of it during the reading of the latter part. The Princess, who had long believed the Princess loved the Count, was delighted with the inconsiderateness of her adversary. Albano, although her warm eye had struck him of old, explained to himself the absconding on the ground of chagrin at the subordinateness of her part in the reading, and the general incompatibility of the two women; for while Julienne, at her own expense, slighted the Princess, and took little pains to conceal her opinion, so also did that of the Princess appear involuntarily. So soon as one party manifests its hatred, the second can hardly conceal its from the third.
When Albano came home, he found the following leaf on his table:—