"At midnight, my Linda, when the moon stood high over the Apennine, and looked from heaven with a long, enraptured, silvery look, and I thought of thee, I arose and went softly out, in order to see again where thou dwellest, my Linda. Out of doors it was all still everywhere; I seemed to hear the earth thunder along its path in the heavens; the shadows of the linden-trees around me lay fast asleep on the green turf; the smoke of Vesuvius streamed up into the pure air; the moon gleamed out wondrously over the smoking sea, and with difficulty I sought and found at last the solitary mountain of thy island soaring into the blue, blooming silvery among the surrounding stars,—a glimmering temple-pinnacle for my heart. 'Yonder she dwells, and slumbers upon her Tabor, a glorified one of Elysium!' I said to myself. Around me was the ashes of centuries, stillness as of a coffin, and only now and then a rattling, as if they were throwing upon it the earth of the grave-mound. I was neither in the land of death nor of immortality; the countries became clouds; Naples and Portici lay hidden; the broad blue of heaven encompassed me; a high night-wind bent the smoke-column of Vesuvius downward, and swept it on in long clouds, tinged with ever-varying hues, through the pure ether. Then I looked after Ischia, and looked toward heaven. O Linda, I am sincere, hear it; I prayed the holy Liana, who loved thee so infinitely, now to hover round thee and prepare for thee the fortune which she once so earnestly wished thee. All at once the thunders of the mountain became entirely still, the stars sparkled more brightly. Then did the silence and life send a shudder through me, and I went back into the hut; but long did I continue to weep for rapture at the mere thought that thou wast happy.
"The morning rose, and in the midst of its wintry darkness we entered upon our journey to the fire-flue and smoke-gate. As in a burnt-up, smoking city, I went along by hollows, around hollows, mountains around mountains, and over the trembling floor of an everlastingly active powder-mill up to the powder-house. At last I found the throat of this land of fire,—a great glowing smoke-valley, containing another mountain within it,—a landscape of craters, a workshop of the last day, full of fragments of worlds, of frozen, burst hell-floods,—an enormous potsherd of time, but inexhaustible, immortal as an evil spirit, and under the cold, pure heaven bringing forth to itself twelve thunder-months.
"All at once the broad smoke ascends more darkly red, the thunders roll more wildly into one another, the heavy hell-cloud smokes more hotly. Suddenly morning air rushes in, and drags the flaming curtain down the mountain. There stood the clear, benignant sun on the Apennine, and Somma and Ottayano and Vesuvius bloomed in peaceful splendor, and the world came slowly up after the sun with its mountains, islands, and coasts. The ring of creation lay gilded upon the sea before me, and as the magic wands of the rays touched the lands, they started up into life. And the old royal brother of Vesuvius, Ætna, sat on his golden throne, and looked out over his land and sea. And the light day rolled like snow from the mountains down into the sea, melting away in splendors, and flowed over the broad, happy Campania[[102]] and into the dark chestnut-vales. And the earth became boundless, and the sun drew, in the wide net of rays, the sweetly imprisoned world onward in the fairest ether.
"O Linda, there sparkled thy outspread island, proudly encamped in the sea, with the morning redness streaming down over it, a high-masted war-ship; and an eagle, the bird of the thunder-god, flew into the blessed distance, as if he bore my heart in his breast away to thy Epomeo. 'O that I could follow him,' said my spirit. The hot earth gave claps of thunder, and the smoke enveloped me. I could have died, that so I might follow the eagle in his flight and be at this moment in Ischia."
Here the intensely excited soul held itself in. He went or glided down the declivity towards Portici. In a house which had been mutually fixed upon beforehand he thought to find again his friend. But he found neither Dian nor the expected letter from Linda. Enervated by walking, watching, and glowing, he fell, in the cool, still chamber into a dreamy sleep. When he awoke, the midnight of the Italian day, the siesta, embosomed him. All rested under the hot, still light; there was not a lark in heaven; the green parasols near his window, the pines, stood unmoved in the earth, and only the poplars rocked gently the new-born blossoms of the vine which lay in their arms; and the ivy, which hung from summits, swayed a little. Such shadowy twigs played once in Lilar in Chariton's chamber, when he was expecting Liana, and then thought of Italy. The great, level, simple garden from Portici to Naples—a garden web of villages, groves, and country-houses, washed by waves—carried his eye over blossoms to his paradise in the sea. This lonely, still time, full of longing, softened infinitely his fair heart. He ended the interrupted letter thus:—
"In Portici.
"O my Linda! I am nearer to thee again, but the distance between us seems to me here in the stillness so vast! O Linda, I love thee with pangs, both when near and when far,—O with what yet unfelt pangs should I lose thee? Why am I, then, so certain of thy love? Or so uncertain? Softly does thy heart speak to me. Soft music or love is like a distant,—and the distant again is like the soft. Has the sublime pedestal of the thunder-god beside me agitated me so much, or do I think too vividly of the hollow, dead Herculaneum under me, where one city is one coffin? Weeping and oppressed, I look over the sea to the still island whereon thou dwellest. O that it is so long before we see each other again; that thou dost not draw every thought immediately out of my heart and I out of thine! Why does the delay of thy letter prefigure at once greater pains, ah, the greatest, before my soul? Why do I think; the deepest lines of pain upon our brow, the wrinkles of life, are only little lines out of the monstrous building-plan which the world-spirit draws, unconcerned what brows and joys his line of bliss painfully cuts through? If this line should one day go through our love—O forgive this premature pang! in this life, this alternation of transient showers and sunbeams, it may well be permitted."
Here he was interrupted by joy and Dian, attended by an Ischian, who brought a letter from Linda, and came to take his back with him. He read it passionately, and added to his own these few more words as a tear of joy: "Day after to-morrow I come upon the island. What is the earth in comparison with a heart? Thou art mighty; thou holdest my whole blooming existence high into the heavens, and it falls upon thee, if it falls. Farewell! I fear verily neither the hot oil nor the flame of Psyche."
Here is Linda's letter:—
"We have both been living very quietly since our agreeable runaway has been revelling about on mountains and in palaces. We have talked almost too much about him, besides sending for the prattling Agata to tell us something about his journey. Your Julia is full of blessings and helps for Linda. Never did I see before such a clear, determined, sharply discerning and yet cold nature, which only loves in giving, rather than gives in loving. She will never, it is true, feel the pangs which Venus Urania sends her chosen ones; but she is a born mother, and a born sister; and I ask her sometimes, why hast thou not all brothers and all orphans?