"P. S. His old teacher, Wehmeier, likewise greets his darling in strange lands; and we all rejoice in the prospect of his return.
A."
"P. S. Brother, I, too, must make a P. S. Schoppe has painted you know who, and scenes, even, have arisen out of the circumstance. But more of this when we meet. The Princesse Idoine has visited our Princess often this winter.
R."
As letters accommodate themselves more to the place, where they were born, than to that where they are delivered, it often happens that what went out as seed, arrives, after its long journey, already in a germinating state, and with roots, and inversely in the shape of blossoms rather than of dry seed; and every sheet is a double birth of two distant times, that of writing and that of reading. Thus was Albano, now under this serener sky, on this soil of a greater world of the past, and with a soul full of new springs, the less overtaken and darkened by Rabette's letter, through which the northern winter clouds had passed. The ingenuous Rabette, the mild Albina came after him in fancy but softly over the strange mountains and through the strange climes, and laid a cooling hand on his hot brow; his old Schoppe stood in his old worth before him, and Liana floated again through the lofty blue. Toward the weather-beaten Roquairol he felt not so much as compassion, but a hard contempt; and Linda's steadfast mind was exactly after his, like the proud look and gait of Roman women. He now thought over many things more cheerfully than ever, and even wished to look once in the magic-face of that Heroine.
In Fondi the Neapolitan world-garden began, and when they entered upon the road to Mola, they went deeper and deeper into blossoms and flowers. In flying sheets—addressed, perhaps, to his father, still more probably to his Schoppe—his bliss and his soul expressed themselves; it treasured up, as it were, some stray orange-blossoms dropped out of the Eden through which they had so rapidly flown. Here they are:—
"Shortly before sundown on Ascension-day we arrived in Mola; the native Dian was full as much overcome with the green majesty, which he had not seen for a long time, as I, and I do not yet believe him when he says that it blooms and smells more finely about Naples. I did not go at all into the city, for the sun hung already toward the sea. Around me streams the incense smoke of reeking flowers from citron-woods and meadows of jessamin and narcissus. On my left the blue Apennine flings his fountain-waters from mountain to mountain, and on my right the mighty sea presses upon the mighty earth, and the earth stretches out a firm arm and holds a shining city[[91]] hung with gardens, far out into the multitudinous waves,—and into the unfathomable sea lofty islands have been cast as unfathomable mountains;[[92]] low in the south and east a glimmering mist-land, the coast of Sorrento, grasps round the sea like a crooked-up Jupiter's-arm, and behind the distant Naples stands Vesuvius, with a cloud in heaven under the moon. 'Fall on thy knees, fortunate one,' said Dian, 'before the sumptuous prospect!' O God, why not do it in earnest? For who can behold in the glow of evening the monstrous realm of waters, how yonder busy and restless motion grows still in the distance, and only sparkles, and at last, blue and golden, blends with the sky, and how the earth here shuts in the delicate, floating fire with her long lands into a rosy, steady earth-shadow, who can behold the fire-rain of infinite life, the weaving magic circle of all forces in the water, in the sky, on the earth, without kneeling down before the infinite spirit of Nature and saying, 'How near to me thou art, O Ineffable!' O here he is both near and far, bliss and hope come glimmering from the misty coast, and also from the neighboring fountains, which the hills pour down into the sea, and in the white blossoms over my head. O does not, then, this sun, around which burning waves flutter, and the blue overhead and over yonder, and the kindling lands of men, worlds within the world,—does not this distance call out the heart and all its aspiring wishes? Will it not create and grasp into the distance and snatch its life blossoms from the highest peak of heaven? But when it looks around itself upon its own ground, there too again is the girdle of Venus thrown around the blooming circumference, brightly green grows the tall myrtle-tree near its little dark myrtle, the orange glimmers in the high, cold grass, and overhead hangs its fragrant blossom, the wheat waves with broad leaves between the enamels of the almond and the narcissus, and far off stands the cypress, and the palm towers proudly;[[93]] all is flower and fruit, spring and harvest. 'Shall I go this way? shall I go that way?' asks the heart in its bliss.
"Thus did I see the sun go down under the waves,—the reddening coasts fled away under their misty veils,—the world went out, land after land, from one island to another,—the last gold-dust was wafted away from the heights,—and the prayer-bells of the convents led up the heart above the stars. O how happy and how wistful was my heart, at once a wish and a flame, and in my innermost being a prayer of gratitude went forth for this, that I was and am upon this earth.
"Never shall I forget that! If we throw away life as too small for our wishes, still do they not belong to life itself, and did they not come from it? If the crowned earth rears around us such blossoming shores, such sunny mountains, would she fain enclose therewith unhappy beings? Why is our heart narrower than our eye? why does a cloud hardly a mile long oppress us, when that very cloud stands itself under the stars of immensity? Is not every morning and every hope a beginning of spring? What are the thickest prison-walls of life but vine-trellises built up for the ripening of the wine-glow? And as life always cuts itself up into quarters, why must it be merely the last, and not quite as often the first, upon which a full-beaming moon follows? 'O God,' said I, as I went back through the green world which next morning becomes a glowing one, 'never let me ascribe thy eternity to any one time, except the most blissful; joy is eternal, but not pain, for this last thou hast not created.'
"'Friend,' said Dian to me, on the way, when I could not well conceal from him my inner commotion, 'what may not your feelings be, then, when you look back upon Naples on the passage over to Ischia! For it is plain to perceive that you were born in a northern land.' 'Dear friend,' said I, 'every one is born with his north or south; whether in an outer one beside, that is of little consequence.'"