[TWENTY-SIXTH JUBILEE.][[69]]
The Journey.—The Fountain.—Rome.—The Forum.
101. CYCLE.
So long as the night lasted, the images of Albano's dream went on gleaming with the constellations, and not until the bright morning rose were they all extinguished. Gaspard told him, smilingly, he was on his way to Italy. He received the intelligence of his going abroad with an unexpected composure. He merely asked where his Schoppe was. When told that he had not been disposed to join them, then did he seem to see all at once in fancy's eye the Linden-city come following after him over the mountains and valleys, and his last friend standing in the middle of the market-place all alone, engaged in mock-play with himself, by way of quieting his true, strong heart, which would fain worry down its grief and hold fast its love. With this friend, whom he would not let go out of his soul, Albano drew after him, as by a Jupiter's-chain, the whole stage and world of his past, and every sad scene came close up to him. Cities and lands rolled along before him unseen. The waves which sorrow lashes up around us, stand high between us and the world, and make our ship solitary in the midst of a haven full of vessels. He turned away with a shudder from every beautiful virgin; she reminded him, like a dirge, of her who was pale in death; forever did Liana's white face, uncovered,—like a corpse in Italy,[[70]]—seem to be travelling along on the endless way to the grave, and only indistinguishable forms with masks followed after her alive. So is it with man and his grief; by a process the reverse of ship-drawing, in which the living drag the dead along with them, here the dead takes the living with him, and draws them after him far into his cold realm.
Time gradually unfolded his grief, instead of weakening it. His life had become a night, in which the moon is under the earth, and he could not believe that Luna would gradually return with an increasing bow of light. Not joys, but only actions,—those remote stars of night,—were now his aim. He held it unjust to keep back in the presence of his father the tears which often forced themselves from him in the midst of conversation, merely because his father took no interest in them; still he showed him, nevertheless, by the energy of his discourses and resolves, the vigorous youth. Only the reproach which he had cast upon himself for his guilt in Liana's death had suffered itself to be swallowed up in the peace which Idoine had given him, although he now held her apparition to have been only a feverish waking dream about Liana.
His father kept a profound silence about Idoine's appearance on the stage of action, as well as all disagreeable recollections. He spoke much, however, of Italy and of the spoils of art which Albano would acquire there, especially through the company of the Princess, the Counsellor of Arts, and the German gentleman, who had gone on before them, and whom one might soon overtake. The son turned to him at last with the bold inquiry whether he really had a sister still, and related the adventure with the Baldhead. "It might well be," said Gaspard, with a disagreeable jocosity, "that thou hadst still more sisters and brothers than I knew of. But what I know is, that thy twin-sister Severina died this year in her cloister. For what, then, dost thou take the night-adventure?" "I should almost think it a dream," he replied. Here, accidentally, his hand found its way to his pocket, and to his astonishment struck upon the half-ring which his sister had presented him. The strangeness of the whole thing sank deep among his sensations, and that night of horror passed swiftly and coldly through his noon. He and his father examined the ends of the divided ring, on each of which a broken-off signature ended abruptly. "There is nothing miraculous, however," said the Knight. "How do we know, then, that there is anything natural?" said Albano. "Mystery," replied Gaspard, "or the spirit-world, dwells only in the spirit." "We must," the son continued, "even in the case of the commonest optical tricks, derive our pleasure from something else than the resolving of the deception of fancy into a deception of the senses, because otherwise the magic would necessarily please us more after the solution than before. These are the points and poles of human nature, upon which the eternal polar clouds hang. Our maps of the kingdom of truth and spirits are the map-stones, which stand for ruins and villages; these are lies, but still they are likenesses. The spirit, forever an exile among bodies, desires spirits." "That is just about what I meant, too," said Gaspard.
Albano, however, insisted more distinctly upon his decision respecting the Baldhead and the sister. "Anything else," said the Knight, quite petulantly; "it is to me a very disagreeable conversation. Take the world in thy way and be quiet!" "Dear father," asked Albano, with surprise, "do you mean at some future time to definitely enlighten me on the subject?" "So soon as I can," said the Knight, abruptly, with such sharp and stinging glances at the son, that the latter, flinching from them, as from arrows, hastily bent away his head out of the carriage; when he for the first time observed that his father did not mean him at all; for he still continued to look as sharply in the same direction as if he were close upon the point of falling into his old torpor.
Gaspard's expression about the indwelling of the spiritual world within the spirit, and his look, and the thought of his palsy lent a romantic awfulness to the hour and the silence in Albano's eyes. Down below on the bank of the stream stood a concourse of people, and one came running like a fugitive or a spokesman out of the crowd. A boy at some distance threw himself down on a hill, and laid his ear to the earth, in order to hear somewhat accurately the rolling of their carriage-wheels. In the village where they made their noonday halt there was an incessant tolling. Their host was at the same time a miller; the din of waves and wheels filled the whole house; and canary-birds sent their additional jargoning through the jargon.
There are moments when the two worlds, the earthly and the spiritual, sweep by near to each other, and when earthly day and heavenly night touch each other in twilights. As the shadows of the shining clouds of heaven run along over the blossoms and harvests of earth, so does heaven universally cast upon the common surface of reality its light shadows and reflections. So did Albano find it now. The ring and the mystic word of his cold father had dazzled him like lightning. Below at the house-door he found a maiden, who carried along before her a box of citrons. Suddenly and unpleasantly the tolling stopped; he looked up to the belfry, and a white hawk sat upon the vane. Soon came the bell-ringer himself, to get something to drink, and began upon the chamberlain with strong and yet not ill-meant curses, for having kept him tolling there these three weeks, and said he only wished that such a one as that distinguished personage himself had been the previous year had only been obliged to toll regularly three days after the decease of the blessed daughter. He urged the miller to "buy some of the citrons, because they were good, juicy, and had a thin rind; and he and the 'parson's boy'[[71]] must recognize them as coming from the burial of the gracious Fräulein; and in fourteen days, at all events, he would need some for the assembled clergy, as bride-father!" "What are the customs here?" asked Albano.
"Why, you see, when any one dies," said the sexton, very respectful and friendly, "then the parson and my littleness get a citron, and so does the corpse too; but if any one is married, then the clergy get the same, and so also the bride. This is the fashion with us, my most gracious master."