The two young men loved and exercised each other for a time in romantic freedom, without so much as asking each other's name. They fought, read, swam. The Corsican almost idolized Albano's form, strength, head, and soul, and poured his whole heart into one which he could not wholly comprehend; as many maidens do only when in love, so did he only when playing war show soul and sense. Albano's clear gold complacently reflected back the strange form, without, like glass, annihilating its own at the same time.
On one occasion the glow of the Corsican grew into a flame, which showed up the whole character of his life to his friend in a bright illumination, and his peculiar aim and thirst, namely, for Frenchmen's blood, "which," he said, "he hoped to quench in the approaching war." Had Albano been like him, then would they, like fighting stags, have mortally entangled themselves in each other's antlers; for the obstinate, inflexible courage of the Corsican—more a sensual courage as Albano's was more a spiritual—could not endure a contradiction. Like his class, he desired of Albano a right strong backing word to his speech; but Albano said: "This is the very greatness in war, that one can and dare do without exasperated passion, without personal enmity, all that which the weakling can do only by such means; verily it were nobler," said he, "to kill in battle a loved than a hated one." "Silly chimeras!" said the Corsican, angrily; "what? Thou wilt kill the French and yet love them?" Albano's magnanimity threw off at once every timid mask, and he said: "In one word, I shall some time fight for the French and with them." "Thou, false one?" said the Corsican, "impossible! Against me?" "No," replied Albano, "I pray God that we may never meet in that hour!" "And I will supplicate Him right earnestly," said the Corsican, "that we never may meet again at all except one day at the point of the bayonet. Adio!" So saying, he turned on his heel in a fury and never came back again.
106. CYCLE.
Unlike other fathers, Gaspard had been, since the first battle about war, the same as ever, yes, almost better than ever; with his old respect for every strong individuality, he took it quite agreeably that the sun of the youth entered so perceptibly into the signs of summer, and soared above the earth higher as well as warmer.
He gave him the nearest proof of his undiminished regard in the fact, that, amidst the gradual preparations for returning to Pestiz, he answered in the affirmative to a quite unexpected wish of his son's for—separation. That is to say, Albano, who now, like ivy, wandered with all his blossoms and twigs among the monuments of the heroic past, and twined himself faster and faster around them, would not part from Rome without having seen Naples. To reinforce his own longing came also Dian's inspiration for the daughter-land of his father-land, for the splendor of its sky and earth, for its Grecian ruins, which the Architect preferred to the Roman. "In Rome," Dian had said, "you have the past; in Naples, on the other hand, the bold present. I will accompany you to and fro, and we will go home together. For you are not, to be sure, as yet, properly speaking, versed in the beautiful, but in nature, in the heroic and in effect. Naples is the place, then." The Knight—although the whole object of the journey had been already gained by Albano's having regained his spirits—consented without hesitation to the appendix of a second, on the condition that he should not stay behind longer than a month.
But just at this time, when his inner world seemed at liberty to tune itself so harmoniously, came hostile discords nearer and nearer, which at a distance he still took for harmonies. The discord evolved itself slowly out of his indefinite connection with the Princess, because every such connection with women decided itself uncomfortably at last, seldomer ending in love than in hatred.
The Princess hitherto had done and suffered everything, in order to be dangerous to him, even before she became intelligible. She played Liana as well as she knew how, and took out of her theatrical wardrobe the nun's veil of a religious virginity, although women of genius are mostly sceptical, as men of genius are credulous. She made him the confidant of her past life, and gave the history of those who had died for her, or at least pined away, and she told all this, after the manner of women, with more satisfaction than remorse; only her connection with his father she indulgently let rise from its grave behind a touching nun's veil, and in fact imitated the son in his respect for the Knight, whom in her soul she bitterly hated. When Albano for hours forgot the present, and steadfastly gazed into the sacrificial fire of the past and of art, and showed her on the mountains of his world flames which burned not on her altar, then did she patiently accompany him on this road of art, and only stopped when she could, before spots where one had a view of the—present.
He became daily her warmer friend, without so much as dreaming of her intentions. Only a man—no woman—can wholly overlook another's love; the love which is long overlooked seldom, if ever, becomes a reciprocated love. Albano was too delicate to presuppose in the beloved of his father, and in the wife of another, and in a friend of his own beloved, this desire of an impropriety. Moreover, he always placed quite as small a reliance upon his desert as he did a great reliance on his right.
She doubted, but despaired not of a warmer feeling on his part. A woman hopes as long as a second does not hope with her. Albano's nocturnal visits to the Capitol and the Colosseum were always found by the eyes which followed him to be worthy of his noble character. Daily did the firm youth become dearer to her by his new bloom and by his manly development. Sometimes she strongly hoped, beguiled by his friendly sincerity and by that heroic melancholy which was not to be explained by her on any other principle, far or near. This to her so unusual rising and sinking on her waves shook her health and her character, and she became involuntarily more like Liana, with whose dove's plumage she had in the beginning been fain only to array herself in white; the sparkling sun-rainbow became a moon-rainbow; with her strong powers she flung half of her former self away,—her mania for decoration, art, and pleasing,—and she became intensely uneasy when a Roman fair one, with southern liveliness exclaimed, as often happened, behind the Count, as he walked before her, "How beautiful he is!" Sorely was she punished for her earlier malicious sportings with others' hearts and sorrows by her own; but such dark days are the very ones in which love more especially roots itself, as trees are best grafted in cloudy days.
Albano observed her change. The charming melancholy of her once vigorous countenance, this reflection of her silent cloud, moved him to a sympathizing inquiry into her health and happiness. She answered him so confusedly and confoundingly,—sometimes even imputing to Albano, with all his sharp-sightedness, dissimulation and wickedness,—that she led him into the strangest error.