O, thought he, when she was through, if that Gothic tyrant suffered himself to be led back from his plundering expedition into holy Rome by the suppliant procession of the Pope that came to meet him, then certainly it must prevail with her, when the orphan children in the suburbs come imploringly to meet her with their foster-father, then the schoolmasters with their pages, then the gymnasium and the university,—all which, however, to be sure, is only a skirmish with the outposts; for the gate is occupied with infantry, the whole market with citizens capable of bearing arms, the cathedral is guarded by the clergy, the council-house by the magistracy, all ready, if she does not turn back, to march after her at a certain distance, as police-patrol and choirs of observation; and are there not seven bridal couples stationed at the palace-gate, as seven prayers and penitential psalms? and do they not bring to meet her—upon a pillory of satin, quite unconscious of the effect—a dismal Pereat-Carmen[[7]] composed by myself, a decree of the 19th June?
All right! said he, when the whole train, by way of affording an easier inspection to the powers and principalities clustered at the palace-windows, rode twice through the palace-yard; this double dose must take hold. Schoppe's hopes were farthest from falling when he found that, because it was gala, they kept themselves up-stairs long concealed and silent; and at length the Prince, as victor, but exhausted, was brought down by court-cavaliers into the chapel, in order publicly to give thanks for the retreat of the hostile forces. Nay, when presently the bride, too, pressed after, held back, however, by the arms of chamberlains,—even drawn back by her court-dames holding her train,—then could the Librarian easily afford to dismiss all anxiety.
Albano's tossing soul imaged the confused court world as still more wild and misshapen than it was. He heard the princely cousins, even the future successor to chair and throne, wish their cousin Luigi health, a happy marriage, and sequel thereto, although they, through their friend,—a living succession-poison,[[8]]—had caused so much of these three things to be taken away from him that they could assign him precisely their cold-blooded kinswoman as crown-guard of their next succession. He heard the same marriage-songs from all court Pestitzers, who, like a muscle, manifested a special effort to make themselves short. He saw how lightly, coldly, and with what malicious pleasure, the Prince, although with the feeling that he should soon drown in his dropsy, his water or fat in the limbs, carried off all the lies. O, must not princes themselves lie, because they are eternally cheated? themselves learn to flatter, because they are forever flattered? He himself could not bring himself to cast so much as the smallest mite of a lying congratulation into the general treasury of lies.
The Princess flung the Count—as often as it would do, and almost oftener—two or three looks or words; for this blooming one, among the throne-coasters, from whom one more easily hears an echo than an answer, was reminded only of his powerful father. The Captain—who, like all enthusiasts, and like moths and crickets, loved warmth and shunned light, and because all people of mere understanding were tedious to him—complained several times to Albano, that the Princess displeased him with her cold, witty understanding; but the Count—out of regard for the beloved of his father, and out of hatred toward her sacrificial priests and butchers—could only pity a being, who perhaps must hate now, because her greatest love had set. How many noble women, who would otherwise have held it a higher thing to admire than to be admired, have become powerful, rich in knowledge, almost great, but unhappy and coquettish and cold, because they found only a pair of arms, but no heart between them, and because their ardently devoted souls met with no likeness of themselves, by which a woman means an unlike image, namely one higher than her own! Then the tree with its frozen blossoms stands there in autumn high, broad, green, and fresh, and dark with foliage, but with empty, fruitless twigs.
At last they came out of the sweltry dining-halls into the fresh evening of Lilar, into the open air and freedom. Half indignant, half bewildered with love, Albano went to meet a veiled hour, in which so many a riddle and his dearest one were to be solved. What does man see before him, when with the thread in his hand he steps out of the subterranean labyrinth? Nothing but the open entrances into other labyrinths, and the choice among them is his only wish.
78. CYCLE.
On the loveliest evening, when the heavens were transparent to the very bottom of all the stars, the Prince let the weary assembly drive to Lilar, in order to make a better illusion with his two invisibilities, with the Illumination and with Liana's tableau vivant. With what growing anxiety and tenderness did the honest Albano's susceptible heart beat, as, during the rolling down from the woodland bridge into the expectant throng of the tumultuous populace, he thought to himself,—She, too, went this way into the Lilar which used to be so dear to her. His whole realm of ideas became an evening rain before the sun, of which one half trembles glistening before the sun and the other vanishes in a gray mist. Ah, before Liana it had rained without sunshine, when she to-day secretly went over merely into the Temple of Dream, in order only to personate a beloved being, but not to be one.
Not a lamp was yet burning. Albano looked into every green depth after his angel of light. Even the Prince himself, who kept the sudden kindling up of the St. Peter's dome still awaiting his nod and beck, anticipated the pleasure, so rare at courts, of giving a twofold surprise. The Princess had spared the Minister the dilemma of a lie or an answer, for she had not inquired at all after her future court-dame Liana, like the whole of that strong class of women, indifferent to her sex, but attaching herself so much the more fixedly to a select one. Albano espied, in the dark, driving whirl, his foster-parents and Rabette; but in this reeling of the ground and of the soul he could only, like others, direct his eyes toward the veil (itself veiled) behind which he had more than all others to find and to lose. In the years of youth, however, no black veil, only a motley one, hangs down, and in all its sorrows are still hopes!
The people awaited the splendor and the music. The Prince at last led his bride toward the Temple of Dream; Charles, to-day blind to his Rabette, not for her, took with him the glowing Count. In the outer temple nothing could be detected corresponding to its magic name; only the windows went from the roof of this Pavilion down to the very ground; and, instead of frames and window-sills, were set in twigs and leaves. But when the Princess had gone in through a glass door, the Pavilion seemed to her to have vanished away; one seemed to stand on a solitary, open spot, guarded with some tree-stems, which all vistas of the garden met and crossed. Wondrously, as if by sportive dreams, were the regions of Lilar intermingled, and opposites drawn together; beside the mountain with the thunder-house stood the one with the altar, and hard by the enchanted wood the high, dark Tartarus reared itself. The near and the far swallowed each other up; a fresh rainbow of garden-hues and a faded mock-rainbow ran on beside each other, as, when one wakes, the shadow of the dream-image glides away, still visible, before the glittering present. While the Princess was still sinking away into the dreamy illusion,[[9]] Liana—as if gliding out of the air through a glass side-door, in Idoine's favorite attire,—in a white dress with silver flowers, and in unadorned hair, with a veil, which, fastened only on the left side, flowed down at full length—came tremulously forth, and when the deceived Princess cried out, "Idoine!" she whispered, with a trembling and scarcely audible voice: "Je ne suis qu'un songe."[[10]] She was to say more and offer a flower; but when the Princess, with emotion, went on to exclaim: "Sœur chérie!"[[11]] and folded her passionately in her arms, then she forgot all, and only wept out her heart upon another heart, because to her another's vain languishing after a sister was so touching. Albano stood near to the sublime scene; the bandage was torn off from all his wounds, and their blood flowed down warmly out of them all. O, never had she, or any other form, been so ethereally beautiful, so heavenly-blooming, and so meek and lowly!
When she raised her eyes out of the embrace, they fell upon Albano's pale countenance. It was pale, not with sickness, but with emotion. She started back, quivering, and embraced the Princess again; the pale youth had wrung from her agitated heart one tear after another; but the two did not greet each other,—and thus began their evening.