The Princess Julienne was inaccessible. She had been compelled to see how the faithful playmate of her youth had been drawn by a harsh, hostile arm from the flowery shore into the flood of death, and how the poor girl had drifted away exhausted; this completely prostrated her, and gladly would she have plunged headlong after the victim. She had not been, the day before, in a condition to go with the two veiled ones to the castle.
Gaspard now hastened to one of these, the Countess Romeiro, with whom he found the other also, the Princess Idoine. The latter had not been able to read so much in every letter about the sister of her face and soul, without travelling from her Arcadia in person to see her and prove the fair relationship; but when she arrived in her veil at the house of mourning, her kinswoman had already drawn hers over her dying eye; and when it arose, she saw herself extinguished, and beheld, in the deep mirror of time, her own dying image. She kept silence within herself, as if before God, but her heart, her whole life, was stirred.
The resemblance was so striking that Julienne begged her never to appear before the afflicted mother. Idoine was, it is true, taller, more sharply cut and less rosy than Liana in her days of bloom; but the last pale hour, wherein the latter appeared beside her, made the whitened form taller and the face nobler, and withdrew the flowery veil of maidenhood from the sharp outline.
Idoine said little to the Knight, and only looked on and saw how her friend Linda overflowed with real childlike love in return for his almost paternal affection. Both maidens he treated with a respectful, warm, and tender morality, which must have appeared wonderful to an eye (for example, the Prince's) which had often witnessed the unmerciful irony wherewith he so loved to draw downward in a slow spiral of licentious discourses, rotten, worm-eaten hearts,—half installed in God's church and half in the Devil's chapel,—shy, soft, sensitive sinners, inwardly-bottomless Fantasts, the Roquairols, for instance, more and more deeply and with ever-increasing pleasure to the centre of infamy. The Prince thought, in such cases, "He thinks exactly as I do;" but Gaspard did with him just so.
Even the trembling, pale Julienne stole in, at last, to see him. They avoided, so far as they could, for her sake, the open grave of her friend; but she asked, herself, after the sick lover of that friend very urgently. The Knight, who for most answers of moment had provided himself with an original phrase-book of nothings, particularly with ice-flowers of speech, such as, "It is going on as well as can be expected under the circumstances," or, "Such things are to be looked for," or, "It will all come right," made use on this occasion of the last-named flower of rhetoric, and replied, "It will all come right."
When he reached home, nothing had come right, but the flood of the evil was at its highest. There lay the youth—dressed, in bed,—unable to walk any longer,—in a burning heat,—talking wildly,—and yet at every stroke of the clock uttering his old prayer to the high, shut-up heavens. Hitherto his firm, vigorous brain had been able to hold fast its reason, at least for all that did not touch Liana; but gradually the whole mass went over into the fermentation of the fever. In vain did his father, once, when he knelt and prayed for the apparition of the dead, arm himself with all the wrath and thunder of his personality. "Give me peace!" Albano continued to pray, softly, and, as he said it, looked him softly in the face.
Schoppe, at this point, with the look of one who has a weighty mystery, took the father aside, and said he knew an unfailing remedy. Gaspard evinced curiosity. "The Princess Idoine," said he, "must not concern herself at all about miserable childish trifles, but just when it strikes and he kneels, boldly present herself to him as the blessed spirit, and conclude the plaguy peace." Contrary to what might have been presumed, the Knight said, ill-humoredly, "It is improper." In vain Schoppe sought to preach him over to the sunny side,—he only went farther over to the wintry side at the appearance of another's intention; no one could bring him to a gentle warmth but himself. At last Gaspard, after his manner, let so much drift-ice of above-mentioned phrases drive over the permanent ground-ice of his character, that Schoppe proudly and indignantly held his peace. Besides, the preparations for the journey went on as if the father meant to snatch his son as a brand from the fever-burning, and tear him distractedly out of the old circles of love. Schoppe made known to him his intention of staying at home; he said he had nothing against it.
Now did Schoppe feel on his own scratched-up face the cutting North of this character, to which he had generally been partial: "'Trust no long, lank Spaniard,' was the just saying of Cardanus,"[[64]] said he.
Albano was sick, and therefore not inconsolable. He drew from the Lethe of madness the dark draught of oblivion of the present; only when he knelt did he see mirrored in the stream his lacerated form and a cloudy heaven. He heard nothing of this,—how the poor named their names, that they might weep gratefully around their sleeping benefactress, and how under their lamentations the once healing music of their countenances now lay deaf and dumb. He heard nothing of the raving of her brother, nor of the loud (acoustically arranged) grief of her father, nor of the stiff mother wrapped in dull anguish. He knew not beforehand that the pale Charis would appear one evening in her coronation-chamber in the midst of lights for the last time on earth, crowned, decked, and slumbering. To him, indeed, at every hour died an infinite hope, but each hour bore him also a new one.
"Poor brother," said Schoppe the next day, in noble indignation, "I swear to thee, thou shalt get thy peace to-day." The pale patient looked upon him imploringly. "Yes, by Heaven!" Schoppe swore, and almost wept.