Speechless, the companions turned from the west toward the shore. The sailors began again to talk. "Make thy brother," Linda softly begged her friend, "keep himself always turned toward the west." She fulfilled the request without immediately guessing its motive. Linda looked continually into his beautifully irradiated face: "Ask him again," said she a second time, "the twilight is too deep, and my weak eyes see so poorly without light." It was not done, for they immediately went on shore. The earth trembled beneath and after them as they trod upon it, as a sounding-board of the blissful hour. Albano was fastened in speechless emotion upon the beloved face, which he must soon leave again. "I'll write to you," said she, unasked, with so touching a recall of her former threat, that, had he not been among strange eyes, he must have fallen, intoxicated with gratitude upon her hand, upon her noble heart. Hard was the parting, and the end of an harmonious day in which the tone of every single minute had been again a tri-clang. By this time Dian had already departed. "Not even the roses of evening," said Julienne, "are without thorns." "An abrupt leave-taking is always the best; we will go home," said Linda. Albano begged that he might be allowed to attend her. "Whither?" said Linda. Softly she added, for the sake of her eyes, "I can hardly see you any longer; however, only come, I can hear, nevertheless." "Beautiful inconstant one!" said Julienne. "I change myself," said she, "but no other does it; only as far as the chapel, Albano; you sail early in the morning." "Even earlier; perhaps this very night," said he.
While they thus more and more slowly descended the mountain, and the nightingales warbled, and the myrtle-blossoms breathed their perfume, and the tepid breezes fluttered, and overhead the whole second world, like a veiled nun, looked with a holy eye through the silver-grating of the constellations, every heart overflowed with faithful love, and the brother and the sister and the beloved took alternately each other's hand.
At once Linda stood upon the spot of yesterday's union and said, "Here he must go, Julienne!" and swiftly drew her hand out of his, and smoothed lightly his locks and cheek and then his eye, and asked, "How?" in the confusion of a dream. "Immediately," said Julienne; "one must, however, wait at least for the Italian winter, for the moon, before one can even go home." Then the brother fell upon the bosom of the tender sister, who would fain hereby procure for him a longer tarrying, and for her friend the privilege of seeing him again by a stronger illumination, and he exclaimed, with tears, "O sister! how much hast thou done for me, before I could do anything for thee, or even thank thee! Thou givest me, indeed, everything,—every joy, the highest felicity; O, what art thou like!" "There is the moon!" cried she; "now farewell, and a happy journey!"
Like a silvery day the moon had climbed the mountains, and the transfigured beloved one saw again the blooming face of her beloved. He took her hand and said, "Farewell, Linda!" Long looked they upon each other, their eyes full of soul, and they grew more strange and exalted in each other's eyes. Then did he, without knowing how, press to his heart the noble maiden, like a blessed spirit embracing a spring sun,—and he touched her holy countenance with his, and like the red mornings of two worlds their lips melted together. Linda closed her eyes, and kissed with trembling, and only a single life and bliss rolled and glowed between two hearts and lips. Julienne gently enfolded the embrace with her own, and desired no other bliss. Thereupon all parted, without speaking again, or looking round.
113. CYCLE.
Albano, with the new haste which now reigned in his actions, was already, beneath the cool morning star, flying from the happy soil. He told the architect, Dian, all his whole blessedness, because he knew how very much of a youth the man still remained in matters of love. "Bravo!" answered Dian, "who can escape without love in Italy? At least none of us. It is to be hoped your magnificent Juno is not so haughty toward you as toward other people: then there may well be for you a life of the gods."
In the morning breezes, irradiated with sun and wave, he swept gliding along on the blue, liquid mirror between two heavens, and his eye was blest when it looked back at the Olympus of Epomeo, and blest when it looked back again on the coasts that gleamed up and down on the long, outspread market-place of the earth.
When they came through the midst of those glimmering palaces, the ships, to the stationary ones, they found the people in the ecstasy of a saint's festival. He was compelled to bury the blue day and the sea in temples, in picture-halls, in fourth stories, where, according to the custom, several of the grandees dwelt, to whom he delivered letters from his father, and more beautifully in the subterranean, gloomy street which arches itself through the blooming Posilippo.
Only the prospect that, in the very next solitude, he should converse with his distant heart quieted his spirit, which was always flying away from the present. At evening they ascended the finest of the heights above Naples, the cloister of Camaldole, where, among the pleasures of the prospect, he saw, standing in gray distance behind Posilippo, the lofty Epomeo. He could no longer contain himself, but began, in a spot more thickly hidden with blossoms than others, which he had sought out for the purpose, the following letter to Linda:—
"At last, noble soul, I can speak to thee, and behold again thy island, although only as a sunny-red evening cloud looming in the horizon. Linda, Linda, O that I have and have had thee! Does, then, the two days' divine dream last even over into the cold to-day? Thou art now so far off and dumb, and I hear no yes. When, in Rome, on the dome of St. Peter's, I looked into the blue morning heavens, and life swelled and sounded around me as the breezes swept by, then it seemed to me as if I must fling myself into a flying royal ship, and seek a shore which grows green under the farthest constellation; as if I must flutter down, like a cascade, through the heavens, and tear my way below there through this stony life, pressing onward, and destroying and bearing everything before me and with me. And so is it with me again at this moment, and still more emphatically. I could fly over to thee, and say, 'Thou art my glory, my laurel-wreath, my eternity, but I must deserve thee; I can do nothing for thee, except what I do for myself.' In the olden time, beloved youths were great, deeds were their graces, and the coat of mail their festal dress. Today, as I looked across on the Gulf of Baja, and on the ruins where the gardens and palaces of the great Romans still lie in ruins or names, and when I saw the old, defying giants stand in the midst of flowers and oranges, and in tepid, incense-breathing breezes, refreshed and quickened by them, but not softened and subdued,—lifting with the hand the heavy trident which moved three quarters of the globe, and with sinewy breast going forth to meet winter in the north, burning heat in Africa, and every wound,—then did my whole heart ask, 'Is it so with thee?' O Linda, can a man be otherwise? The lion roams over the earth, the eagle sweeps through the heavens, and the king of these kings should have his path on the earth and in the heavens at once. I have as yet been and done nothing; but when life is as yet an empty mist, canst thou overcome it, or seize it fast and dash it to pieces? Wilt thou one day, thou Uranide, love a man? then will I shrink back from no one. But words are to actions only the sawdust of the club of Hercules, as Schoppe says. So soon as war and freedom clash against each other, then will I deserve thee in the storm of the times, and bring with me to thee actions and immortal love.