"Think on Almighty God!" said the pious father to her, in a loud voice. "I think of him," answered the veiled one, in a low tone. The aurora of the second world stands black before mortals. They all trembled. Albano and Roquairol grasped and pressed each other's hands, the latter from hatred, Albano from agony, as one gnashes at metal. The chamber was full of uncongenial, discordant people, whom death made equal. At one side Albano saw that a strange form, repulsive to him, had stolen in. It was his impenetrable father, whose great, dark eyes were fastened sharply and sternly on his son. Out of a second chamber two tall, veiled female forms gazed at the third, and saw no face, and no one saw theirs.
Liana played with her fingers at the veil. Evening stood in the chamber, and the silence between the lightning-flash and the thunder-clap. "Think upon Almighty God!" cried Spener. She answered not. He continued: "Of our source, and of our sea; he alone stands by thee now in the dark, when the earth, and its dwellers, and all lights of life, are sinking away beyond thy reach!" Suddenly she began, and said, with a low tone of gladness, and with words swiftly following each other, as when one talks in sleep, and with increasing rapture and rapidity, "Caroline! here, here, Caroline! This is my hand,—how beautiful thou art!" The invisible angel who had consecrated her first love, who had attended her whole life, gleamed again, like a new-risen moon, over the whole dark scene of death; and the splendor gently melted the little May night into the great spring morning of the second world.
Now the veiled nun of heaven leaned, quite still, on her mother. The death-angel stood invisible and wrathful among his victims. With great wings hung the screech-owl of anguish over mortal eyes, and pecked with black beak down into the breast, and nothing was heard in the stillness but the owl. More darkly rolled the Knight's melancholy eyes to and fro in their deep sockets between the still bride and the still son; and Gaspard and the destroying angel gazed upon each other gloomily.
At that moment Liana's harp sent out a clear, high, ringing tone far into the silence. The Fatal Sister who spun at her life knew the signal, checked herself, and stood up; and the sister with the scissors came. Liana's fingers ceased to play, and beneath the veil all became still and motionless.
"Thy head is heavy and cold, my daughter," said the disconsolate mother. "Tear the veil away!" cried the brother; and when he drew it down, there lay Liana, peaceful and smiling beneath it, but dead,—the blue eyes open toward heaven, the transfigured mouth still breathing love, the maidenly lily-brow encircled with the flower-wreath which had sunk down around it; and pale and glorified with the moonlight of the higher world was the strange form which passed majestically forth from the midst of the puny living among its lofty dead.
Then gushed the golden sun through the clouds and through all the tears, and circumfused with the blooming evening twilight, with the youthful rose-oil of his evening clouds, the faded sister of heaven; and the transfigured countenance wore again the bloom of youth. In heaven all the clouds, touched with her wings as she swept through them, burst out into long, red blossoms; and through the high, misty veil, fluttering up over the earth, glowed the thousand roses which had been strown about or sprung up on the cloud-path on which the virgin passed up over the earth to the Eternal.
But Albano, the forsaken Albano, stood without tears or eyes or words among the commonplaces of sorrow, in the crimson evening fire of the holy chamber of transfiguration, amidst the earthly bustle that went on round the still form. In the depths of the past, Sorrow showed him a Medusa's-head; and he still looked upon it when his heart was already petrified by it, and he heard continually the gloomy head murmur the words, "How bitterly did the dead one, when in Lilar, weep at the harsh Albano!" Her brother, upon his rack, said many barbarous words to him. He heard or heeded them not, because he was listening to the horrible Gorgon head.
"Son," cried Gaspard Cesara, earnestly,—"son, dost thou not know me?" Through the heavy, deathly heart a life-voice flashes upon him. He looks round, and sees his father, with terror arranges him into a shape, and falls upon his breast, and cries only, "Father!" and again and again, "Father!" He continued to cry out, grasping him violently like a foe, and said: "Father, that is Liana!" Still more passionate grew the embrace, not from love, only from agony. "Come to thyself, and to me, dear Albano," said the Knight. "O, I will do so; she is dead now, father!" said he, with a choked voice; and now his grief broke upon his father like a cloud upon a mountain, into one incessant tear,—it streamed forth as if the innermost soul would bleed itself to death out of all the open veins,—but the weeping only stirred up his sorrows, as a rain-storm does a battle-field: he became more inconsolable and impetuous, and sullenly repeated the previous exclamation.
"Albano!" said Gaspard, after some time, with stronger voice, "wilt thou accompany me?" "Gladly, my father!" said he, and followed him, as a bleeding child with its wound follows its mother. "To-morrow I will speak," said Albano, in the carriage, and took his father's hand. His wide-open eyes hung swollen and blind upon the warm evening-sun, which already rested on the mountains; he continued smiling and pale, and weeping softly; nor did he mark when the sun went down, and he arrived in the city.
"To-morrow, my father!" said he languidly and beseechingly to the Knight; and shut himself in. Nothing more was heard from him.