When they came out into the festive world, how did the cool blue of heaven come floating, fanning down upon them instead of earthly airs! How sparkled the world and the day—and the future! How brightly foamed over in the goblet of life the draught of love made for each of the three beings out of two intoxicating ingredients!
They followed the path to the summit of Epomeo, but in an elastic, yielding freedom, and in a rapid variety of nature which is not to be matched anywhere upon the earth. They met valleys with laurels and cherries, with roses and primroses at once. There came cool defiles filled out with ripe oranges and apples, beside high rocks of aloes and pomegranates, and on the summits of the cherry and apple tree stirred overhead the vine and orange blossoms. In the blooming clefts warbled secure nightingales, and out of the crevices poisonless serpents' heads darted to the light,—sometimes appeared a cloister in a citron-grove, sometimes a white house attached to a vine-garden, now a cool grotto, now a kitchen garden near red clover, now a little meadow full of white rose-flowers and narcissi, and at every turn a man, who went by singing, dancing, and accosting them. Heights and gardens alternately hid and revealed the land and the water, and often for a long time the far-stretching sea and its cloud-coasts glimmered after them like a second heaven through the green twigs.
They drew nearer and nearer to the hermit's house on the summit, rocking themselves upon the gay, golden flag-feathers of life. They spoke to each other now and then a word of joy, not, however, by way of communicating each other, but because the heart could not help it, and a word was nothing but a sigh of happiness. They stood at last upon the throne of the earth, and looked down as from the sun. Round about them the sea lay camped, melting away into the blue of the horizon,—from Capua, far in the depths of the distance, stretched the white Apennines around Vesuvius and over on the long coast of Sorrento still onward,—and from Posilippo the lands pursued the sea even beyond Mola and Terracina,—on the opened world-surface appeared everything, the promontories, the yellow crater-margins on the coasts and the islands round about, which the terrible, veiled fire-god under the sea had driven up out of his fiery realm to the light of the sun,—and the lovely Ischia with its little cities on the shores and with its little gardens and craters, stood like a green blooming ship in the great sea, and rested on innumerable waves.
Then vanished the greatnesses of the earth from below, only the earth was great and the sun with his heavens. "O how happy we are!" said Albano. Yes, you were happy there; who will be so after you? Cradling himself upon the tree of life, at which his childish eye had already so early and longingly gazed upward, he gave utterance to all that exalted and possessed him. "Therein I recognize the all-powerful mother; angry and flaming, she comes up from the bottom of the sea, plants a burning land, and then does she again, smiling, distribute flowers among her children; so let man be, volcano—then flower." "What in comparison with this," said Julienne, "are all the winter amusements of the German May-moon! Is not that a smaller Switzerland only in a greater lake of Geneva?" The Countess, who through her Spain was more initiated in such charms, kept herself for the most part still. "Man," said she, "is the Oread and Hamadryad or some other divinity, and inspires wood and vale, and man himself, again, is inspired by man."
The Hermit appeared, and said, their meal, which was sent up, had long since arrived; he also took occasion to praise his situation. "Often," said he, and made Julienne laugh, "my mountain smokes like Vesuvius, and bathing-guests look up, and apprehend something, but it is only because I am baking my bread up here." They encamped themselves in the shady open air. They must needs be ever looking down again upon the lovely, diminished island, which with its gardens planted within gardens, with its springs intertwined with autumns, lay so whole and so near, a great family garden, where the people all dwell together, because there are no different lands to become entangled with each other, and the bees and the larks fly not far out over the garden of the sea. Like still, open flowers were the three souls beside each other; fragrantly flies the flower-dust to and fro, to generate new flowers. Linda sank away completely into her great deep heart; unused to love, she would fain gaze therein and find joy, while no word of Albano's escaped her, for it bespoke its birth of love in the heart. Overflowing with mildness, and deep in thought she sat there, with her great eye half under the downcast eyelid,—after her manner, always long silent as well as long speaking. As the diamond sparkles just like the dewdrop, but only with steady power and even without the sun, her heart resembled the softest in all feminine mildness and purity, and excelled it only in strength. With delight Julienne beheld, when, now and then, after a childlike forgetting of Albano, (because her stream of speech had borne her from one world to another,) suddenly and with unembarrassed joy, she replaced her finely formed hand in the youth's, to whom a pressure of her hand was nothing less than a tender embrace.
They took the nearest way down back to Albano's residence, which was ever looking up to them from its vine-shrubbery. They were ever so little with each other,—in the morning Albano was to travel. He must write from Portici, a messenger must come to take the letter,—"And he brings me one, too," said he. "Certainly not!" said Linda. Albano begged. "She will soon change and write," said Julienne. She said no. By degrees furrows of shade stole down the mountain along with the dark lava-streams, and in the poplars nightingales began already their melodious twilight. They drew near to Albano's house. Dian ran out with delight to meet the Princess. Albano begged him, without having asked either, to procure a bark, in order that they might enjoy the evening. Compulsory proposals of pleasure are precisely those to which maidens love best to say yes. Dian was immediately at hand with a boat; he always and quickly joined his pleasure to that of others.
They all embarked and moved along among the sunflowers, which every ray of the sun planted thicker and thicker upon the watery beds. Albano—in his present glow, accustomed to the manners of the warm land where the lover speaks before the mother and she speaks of him with the daughter, where Love wears no veil, but only hatred and the face, and where the myrtle, in every sense, is the setting of the fields—forgot himself a moment before Dian, and took Linda's hand; she quickly snatched it away from him, true to the manner of maidens, which is lavish of the arm and chary of the finger and the thimble. But she looked on him softly, when she had repelled him.
They passed along again, on their passage from east to north, before the rock with houses and before the streets of the suburb town on the shore. All was glad and friendly,—all sang that did not prattle,—the roofs were occupied with looms of silk ribbons, and the websters spoke and sang from roof to roof. Julienne could hardly keep her eye away from this southern sociableness and harmony. They put out farther into the sea, and the sun went down nearer to it. The waves and the breezes played with one another, the former breathing, the latter undulating,—sky and sea were arched into one blue concave, and in its centre floated, free as a spirit in the universe, the light skiff of love. The circle of the world became a golden, swollen harvest-wreath full of glowing coasts and islands,—gondolas flew singing into the distance, and had torches already prepared for the night, (sometimes a flying-fish traced his arc behind them in the air,) and Dian responded to their familiar songs as they glided along by. Yonder were seen great ships, proudly and slowly sailing along, fluttering like the sky, with red and blue plumes, and like conquerors bound to port. Everywhere was the must of life poured out, and it worked impetuously. So played a divine world around man! "O here in this great scene," said Albano, "where everything finds place, Paradises and dark Orcus-coasts of lava, and the yielding sea, and the gray Gorgon-head of Vesuvius, and the playing children of men, and the blossoms and all,—here where one must glow like a lava,—could not one, like the hot lava round about him, bury himself in the waves, in all his glow, if one knew that anything of this hour could pass away, even so much as a remembrance thereof, or a throbbing of the pulse for a loved heart? Were not that better?" "Perhaps," said Linda. Julienne was carried in thought by the softening pleasure to the distant sick-bed of her brother, and said, smiling: "Cannot one do like the fair sun over yonder, and go under the waves and yet come back again? And yet, after all, if you look upon his going down rightly, there is no such thing in reality."
The sun stood already big as a great golden shield held from heaven above the Pontian islands, and gilded their blue,—the white, rocky crown of thorns, Capri, lay in glowing light, and from Sorrento's coasts to Gaeta's glimmering gold had shot up along the walls of the world,—the earth rolled with her axis, as with a music-barrel, near the sun, and struck from the great luminary rays and tones,—sideward lay in ambush the giant messenger of night, camped on the sea, the immense shadow of Epomeo.
At this moment the sun touched the sea, and a golden lightning darted trembling round through the humid ether,—and he cradled himself on a thousand fiery wave-wings, and he quivered and hung, burning and glowing with love, on the sea, and the sea, burning, drank all his glow. Then it threw, as if he was about to pass away forever, the veil of an infinite splendor over the pale-growing god. Then it became still on the earth; a floating evening redness overflowed with rose-oil all the waves; the holy islands of sundown stood transfigured; the remotest coasts drew near and showed their redness of delight; on all heights hung rose-garlands; Epomeo glowed upward even to the ether, and on the eternal cloud-tree, which grows up out of the hollow Vesuvius, went out on the summit the last thin glimmering of splendor.