After a long night, the fresh morning breathed when Albano was to find again the treasures of the most blessed dream, the flowers of fortune which the moon had opened, in broad sunlight. Life shouted to him exultingly, as he climbed again yesterday's heights, which shone overspread with the varnish of light; not to a rose-feast, but to all flower and harvest-festivals at once; to feasts of myrtles and lilies; to gleanings and blossom-gatherings. The sun went forth over the blessed region, and as a peacock with his trailing rainbow flies into a blossoming tree, so did the young day, heavy with colors and laden with gardens and full of reflections, mount the blue heights, and smile like a child upon the world. Albano looked now from his height down on the enchanted castle wherein yesterday the mighty enchantress had disappeared.
He went down to it. A singing maiden on the flowery roof, who seemed to have been waiting for him, pointed out, leaning over without interrupting her singing, a near apartment below her into which he was to enter. He stepped in; it was empty. Through the windows of oiled paper streamed a wondrous morning light; on the wooden ceiling figures from Herculaneum were painted; in a Campanian vase stood yellow butterfly flowers and myrtle-blossoms, which diffused around them a sweet perfumed atmosphere. The singular environs enclosed him more and more closely, for he found, in fact, some pictures and articles of furniture which seemed familiar to him. At last he saw, to his amazement, on the table a half ring. He took out his half which he had got from the pretended sister in the Gothic chamber on that ghostly night, and which, to be ready for the opportunity of a comparison, he always carried about with him. He pressed the semicircles into one another; suddenly they closed, clasping, and formed a fast ring. "God!" thought he, "what arm strikes again into my life?"
Just then the door was hastily opened, and the Princess Julienne entered hurriedly, smiling and weeping, and exclaimed, flying to him, "O my brother! my brother!" "Julienne," said he, seriously, and with deep emotion, "art thou really my sister at last?" "O, long enough has she been so!" replied she, and looked on him tenderly and blissfully, and smiled through her tears. Then she again embraced him, and again looked at him, and said: "Thou dear Albano-brother! So long have I, like a moon, been sailing around thee, and had, like her, to stay colder and farther off. Now will I love thee with exceeding fondness; my love shall run backward, and run forward too!" "Almighty!" Albano broke out, weeping, when he found himself so suddenly clasped by a beneficent arm out of the cloud, "all this dost thou now give me at once?" "Ah!" cried Julienne, with liveliness, "that I were only weeping for pure joy! But I must eat my bitter crust of sorrow with it too! Dear brother, Luigi writes me yesterday from Pestitz that I must hasten back, else he will hardly live to see my return. Did I think of this on my setting out? Thus what I receive with one hand I must give up with the other." Albano said nothing to this, because he could not possibly take the least interest in the Prince. So much the more did he refresh himself with fresh, clear joy in the open, breathing Orient of his earliest days of life, in the sight of this young, pure flower, which grew and played, as it were, in and out of the bright, fresh fountain of his childhood.
"But, heavens! explain to me," began Albano, "how all came to pass." "Now, I know, the questioning begins," she replied. "The ostensible sum and substance thou shalt shortly have; if thou askest for more, if thou wilt peep into the book of mysteries, then I shut it to, and repeat to thee some lies. Next October, it may be sooner, all comes to light. This for the present, and first of all,—my mother was, and remains, verily pure and holy in this relationship, by the Almighty God!"
"What a riddle!" said he. "Art thou the daughter of my father? Is Luigi my brother? Is my dead sister Severina thy sister?" asked he.
Julienne. "Ask October!"
Albano. "Ah, sister!"
Julienne. "O brother, trust the daughter of Melchisedec. Further,—I was indeed the sister in the apparition, whom the man with the bald head introduced to thee in Lilar. I could not, and yet I felt that I must, have thee ere thou hadst flown away into foreign parts. The old age which I then had in the mirror was, as thou seest, made only by an artificial mirror."[[100]]
Albano. "Truly, I thought then of no one but of thee. Only how comes there a man like the Baldhead and like the Father of Death, who so incomprehensibly predicted to me in Mola that I should find thee?"
Julienne. "That is impossible. Did he name my name?"