At this moment there stood, all at once, Luna, played about with the sacrificial fire of Vesuvius, over in the sky, as the proud goddess of the sun-god, not pale, but fiery, as it were a thunder-goddess over the thunder of the mountain, and Albano cried, involuntarily, "God! the great moon!" The stranger quickly threw back her veil, and looked round significantly after the voice as after a familiar one; when she had looked upon the strange youth for a long time, she turned toward the moon over Vesuvius.
But Albano was agitated by a god, and dazzled by a wonder; he saw here Linda de Romeiro. When she raised the veil, beauty and brightness streamed out of a rising sun; delicate, maidenly colors, lovely lines and sweet fulness of youth played like a flower-garland about the brow of a goddess, with soft blossoms around the holy seriousness and mighty will on brow and lip, and around the dark glow of the large eye. How had the pictures lied about her,—how feebly had they expressed this spirit and this life!
As if the hour would fain worthily invest the shining apparition, so beautifully did heaven and earth with all rays of life play into each other,—love-thirsty stars flew like heaven-butterflies into the sea,—the moon had soared away over the impetuous earth-flame of Vesuvius, and spread her tender light over the happy world, the sea and the shores,—Epomeo hovered with his silvered woods, and with the hermitage of his summit high in the night blue,—near by stirred the life of the singing, dancing ones, with their prayers and their festal rockets which they were sending aloft. When Linda had long looked across the sea toward Vesuvius, she spoke, of herself, to the silent Albano, by way of answering his exclamation, and making up for her sudden turning round and staring at him. "I come from Vesuvius," said she; "but he is quite as sublime near at hand as afar off, which is so singular." Altogether strange and spirit-like did it sound to him, that he really heard this voice. With one that indicated deep emotion he replied: "In this land, however, everything is great indeed, even the little is made great by the large,—this little human pleasure here between the burnt-out volcano[[98]] and the burning one,—all is at one, and therefore right and so godlike." At once attracted and distracted, not knowing him, although previously struck with the resemblance of his voice to that of Roquairol, gladly reflecting on his simple words, she looked longer than she was aware at the ingenuous, but daring and warm eye of the youth, made no reply, turned slowly away, and again looked silently at the sports.
Dian, who had already for a long time been looking at the fair stranger, found at last in his memory her name, and came to her with the half-proud, half-embarrassed look of artists toward rank. She did not recognize him. "The Greek, Dian," said Albano, "noble Countess!" Surprised at the Count's recognition of her, she said to him: "I do not know you." "You know my father," said Albano, "the Knight Cesara." "O Dio!" cried the Spanish maiden, startled, became a lily, a rose, a flame, sought to collect herself, and said, "How singular! A friend of yours, the Princess Julienne, is also here."
The conversation flowed now more smoothly. She spoke of his father, and expressed her gratitude as his ward. "That is a mighty nature of his, which guards itself against everything common," said she, at once, against the fashion of the quality, speaking even partially of persons. The son was made happy by this praise of a father; he enhanced it, and asked in pleased expectation how she took his coldness.
"Coldness?" said she, with liveliness, "I hate the word cordially. If ever a rare man has a whole will and no half of one, and rests upon his power, and does not, like a crustaceous animal, cleave to every other, then he is called cold. Is not the sun, when he approaches us, cold too?" "Death is cold," cried Albano, very much moved, because he often imagined that he himself had more force than love; "but there may well be a sublime coldness, a sublime pain, which with eagle's talon snatches the heart away on high, but tears it in pieces in mid-heaven and before the sun."
She looked upon him with a look of greatness. "Truly you speak like a woman," said she; "they alone have nothing to will or to do without the might of love; but it was prettily said." Dian, good for nothing as to general observations, and apt only at individual ones, interrupted her with questions about particular works of art in Naples; she very frankly communicated her characteristic views, although with tolerable decision. Albano thought at first of his artistic friend, the draughtsman Schoppe, and asked about him. "At my departure," said she, "he was still in Pestitz, though I cannot comprehend what such an extraordinary being would fain do there; that is a powerful man, but quite jumbled up and not clear. He is very much your friend." "How does," asked Dian, half joking, "my old patron, the Lector Augusti?" She answered concisely, and almost with a certain sensitiveness at the familiarity of his question: "It goes well with him at court. Few natures," she continued, turning to Albano, on the subject of Augusti, "are doomed to meet so much injustice of judgment as such simple, cool, consistent ones as his." Albano could not entirely say yes, but he recognized with satisfaction in her respect for the strangest individuality of character the pupil of his father, who prized a plant, not according to the smoothness or roughness of its skin, but according to its bloom. Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another's. But Linda's lofty candor on the subject, which is as often wanting in finely cultivated females as refinement and reserve are in powerful men, took the strongest hold of the youth, and he thought he should be sinning if he did not exercise his great natural frankness towards her in a twofold degree.
She called her maidens to depart with her. Dian went off. "These are more necessary to me," said she to Albano, "than they seem." She had, namely, she related, something of the ocular malady[[99]] of many Spanish women, of being infinitely short-sighted in the night. He begged to be permitted to accompany her, and it was granted; he would have guided her, after what she had said, but she forbade it.
During the walk she often stood still, to look at the beautiful flame of Vesuvius. "He stands there," said Albano, "in this pastoral poem of Nature, like a tragic muse, and exalts everything, as a war does the age." "Do you believe that of war," said she. "A man must have," he replied, "either great men or great objects before him, otherwise his powers degenerate, as the magnet's do, when it has lain for a long time without being turned toward the right corners of the world." "How true," said she: "what say you to a Gallic war?" He owned his wish that it might break out, and his own disposition to take part in it. He could not help, even at the expense of his future liberty, being open-hearted towards her. "Blessed are you men," said she; "you dig your way down through the snow of life, and find at last the green harvest underneath. That can no woman do. A woman is surely a stupid thing in nature. I respect one and another head of the Revolution, particularly that political monster of energy, Mirabeau, although I cannot like him."
During these discoursings they came upon the ascent of Epomeo. Agata accompanied the two playmates of her earlier days with full tongue and hungry ear for so many mutual news-tellings. As he now went along beside the beautiful virgin, and occasionally looked in her face, which was made still more beautiful by mental energy, and became at once flower, blossom, and fruit (whereas generally the converse holds, and the head gains by the face): then did he pass a severe judgment upon his previous deportment toward this noble being, although he as well as she, out of delicacy, remained silent about the former juggling play with her name, as well as about the wonderfulness of to-day's meeting. Silently they went on in the rare night and region. All at once she stopped on an eminence, around which the dowry of Nature was heaped up on all sides in mountains. They looked round in the splendor; the Swan of Heaven, the moon, floated high over Vesuvius in the ether,—the giant serpent of the world, the sea, lay fast asleep in his bed that stretches from pole to pole,—the coasts and promontories glimmered only, like midnight dreams,—clefts full of tree-blossoms overflowed with ethereal dew made of light, and in the vales below stood dark smoke-columns upon hot fountains, and overhead they floated away in splendor,—all around lay, high up, illuminated chapels, and low around the shore dark cities,—the winds stood still, the rose-perfumes and the myrtle-perfumes stole forth alone,—soft and bland floated the blue night around the ravished earth; from around the warm moon the ether retired, and she sank down love-intoxicated out of mid-heaven larger and larger into the sweet earth-spring. Vesuvius stood now, without flame or thunder, white with sand or snow, in the east,—in the darkening blue the gold grains of the fiery stars were sowed far abroad.