If ever the nobility of Pestitz was happy en masse, it was this very morning. Nothing was wanting to universal joy but a chambermaid who should have only understood as much French as a hunting-dog.
92. CYCLE.
Albano heard the report; the Minister had long appeared to him contaminating, like a cold corpse of a soul; now he hated him still more as a tormenting, blood-sucking dead man. For the Princess his heart had hitherto stood security to him. She was to him a blue day-sky, wherein to others only a hot sun blazes, wherein he, however, through the mysterious depths of the soul and of friendship, had found soft constellations beaming. But now since the rumor, which, like the magicians in the presence of Moses, threw soot into her heaven, she stood, to his eyes, shining under new lights. The hatred which he by his very nature, i. e. from pride, had of all rumor, because it controls and is not to be controlled, worked in him with fresh fire; he resolved, even because Liana must be the daughter either of her hereditary foe or of her lover, and the Princess her rival, to venture freely on the strength of his heart and what it knew, and at this very juncture to communicate openly to the Princess his prayer for her mediation in favor of Liana's company upon the journey,—in other words, of his heaven.
On the morning after, the Prince came back,—the Princess immediately had her carriage tackled,—toward evening she came with one carriage more into town. The report ran through all card-tables that the Spanish Countess Romeiro had arrived at the Palace. Reports are polypuses; wounding and mutilating only multiplies them; only sticking them into each other makes one out of two: the report of Linda's arrival swallowed up the report of Froulay's disgraceful attempt.
But Albano! Like the discovery of a new world, this turned his old one topsy-turvy. Linda, that foreign tropical bird, came flying in advance of his approaching father, who rose before him like a rich land out of the distance,—the soil where he had found so many thorns and flowers soon sank behind him, with all its treasures and days, below the horizon. Only Liana could not vanish with it; that muse of his youth must he lead with him into the land of youth. By those usual magic arts of the heart had Linda's nearness awakened in him an insuperable longing for Liana.
He was now decided to remind the Princess of her earlier promise to pour the life-balsam of a southern tour upon Liana's sick nerves, and through her now, betimes, before the confusion of the last pressing moments should prostrate anything, to put the Minister's lady in tune, and gain her over, who, like all court people, would certainly hardly resist a princely wish and a happy prospect.
If, however, Liana, from any fault of her own or of others, stayed behind, then was it his sworn determination, for no power, not even his father's, to stir from the native land of his eternal bride; but to root himself before her sick-cloister, until she either passed out therefrom free and cheerful again into open life, or buried herself, darkly veiled, in the gloomy nun-choir of the dead. O, to come back to seek her in the romantic grounds of olden time, and to find her nowhere but behind the speech-grating of the hereditary vault,—this was a thought his heart could not endure!
The Princess herself furnished him an opportunity of making his request; she sent him an invitation to an astronomical party at the observatory, through her faithful court-dame Haltermann: "I have to write to you, verbally, merely the following," wrote she. "Come this evening to the observatory; I and my good Haltermann are going thither." This Haltermann, a Fraülein of few charms of spiritual flag-feathers, but of many dogmas and premature wrinkles, had already for years hung indissolubly upon the Princess, keeping everything secret, and favoring all her "make-your-appearances" (rendez-vous) by merely saying, "My princess is as pure as gold, and only few know her as I do."
Nothing could happen more propitious to Albano's wishes. He stood earliest of all on the noble observatory, in the midst of the lovely night. It was some days after the full moon; that shining world was as yet hidden behind the earth, but the let-on jets of its rays shot up by fits and starts. On all mountain-peaks glimmered even now a pale light, as if the distant morning of super-terrestrial worlds were falling upon them. Through the valleys the light-shunning, black, earthly beast, Night, still stretched himself out, and reared himself up against the mountains. The mountain-castle of Liana was invisible, and showed, like a fixed star, only a light. Suddenly the autumnal purple upon all summits around the castle was bedewed with silver by the moon, and a shower of light came down on the white walls and along the white avenues of the garden; at last, a strange, pale morning, glimmering through all bowers, lay in the garden, as it were the tender gleaming of a high, perfectly pure spirit, who only in the holy, silent night trod the low earth, and then and there sought nothing but the pure, still Liana.
As Albano looked and dreamed and longed, the Princess came up, with her Haltermann. The Professor almost broke himself in two with his salam before them, and allowed the fixed suns no astrological influence upon his erect posture. Albano and the Princess met each other again with an increase of reciprocal warmth. But the first question of the Princess was, whether he had seen the Spanish countess. Indifferently he said, he had been invited by the Princesse since her arrival, but had not gone. "Ma belle sœur admires her most," continued the Princess; "but she deserves it somewhat. She is majestically built, taller than I, and fair, especially her head, her eye, and her hair. She is, however, more plastically than picturesquely beautiful, rather resembling a Juno or Minerva than a Madonna. But she has her peculiarities. She cannot endure any women, except such as are simple, straightforward, and blindly good; hence her chamber-women live and die for her. Men she holds to be poor creatures, and says she should despise herself if she should ever become the wife or slave of a man; but she seeks them for the sake of information. To the Prince she has unnecessarily, though she was in the right as to the matter of fact, said bitter things. He laughs at it, and says there is nothing she does love, not even children and lap-dogs. You must see her. She reads much; she lives only with the Princesse, and seems, if one may judge by her dress, to count little upon any conquests, at least at our court."