Julienne, so happy about her brother's recovery, began all manner of jokes,—said she regretted having sent to her Lewis, from Naples, a vain specific against his malady, and at length asked Albano, "Dost thou know a youth named Cardito? He wants to know thee." He said, "No," but related how a little stout man had seemed to know him hereabouts, and showed him the way to the cascade. Julienne started, and said it was decidedly the Haarhaar Prince, who so maliciously built his hopes upon Luigi's death and throne. He lived in Tivoli, in the house of the Duke of Modena, and was certainly going about as a spy upon them all. In order to tune herself again after this hated discord, she continued her question about Cardito, and said, "It is a very beautiful, sound Corsican (that living deformity is surely the Prince), and he declares very seriously war against thee."
"That shall he verily have," said Albano, who now comprehended all, and—related all. Cardito was that Corsican with whom he had formerly split on the subject of the Gallic war. "Brother, that is still thy serious meaning?" said Julienne, with protracted accent. "Now especially," said he, with decision, in order immediately to exclude all strife. Linda with intensity pressed his hand to her eyes, as if she would cover them with it. "Well, argue thy case with me, as reasonably as thou canst, and let's hear thy grounds of justification; but first let us ascend the hill, that one may have something to see at the same time," said the sister.
On the hill, before the green of the flashing vale, where the stream, like a wounded eagle, has beat its wings all about on the earth, before the three lesser cascades that leap down with their lightnings upon the flowers, Albano began, with emotion and inspiration: "I have only one reason, dear sister; I am not yet anything,—I am no poet, no artist, no philosopher,—but nothing, namely, a Count. I have, however, powers for much; why shall I not say so? Verily, if a Da Vinci is all things, or a Crichton, or if a Richelieu, though he asserts the political throne, will yet mount the poetic, also, shall not another be justified in lesser wishes? And, by Heaven! properly speaking, a man will, after all, be everything, for he cannot help it; he longs and aspires after that, and the inner, stifled heart weeps drops of blood, which no human hand can wipe away,—only the high iron barriers of necessity hold him back. Sister, Linda, what have I, after all, yet done upon the earth?"
"Thou hast made this question, and this is enough in the sight of God," said Julienne, moved by the proud, wounded modesty of the youth, and by his beautiful voice, which, when indignant, sounded as if he were tenderly touched. "Words! what are words?" said he. "O one surely may well be ashamed that one has even to think and speak of anything before he does it, although poor, imperfect man cannot otherwise, but every action, like a statue, must first be modelled in the miserable wax of words. Ah, Linda, do not here deeds lie everywhere around us, instead of words and wishes? Have not I, also, an arm, a heart, a beloved, and powers, as well as others, and shall I go out of the world with a musty, mouldy Spanish or German Count's life? O my Linda, do thou contend for me!"
"I am not," said she, looking sharply toward the principal little cascade, which stormed down from among the trees overhead,—"I am not of many or eloquent words; and, moreover, I do not quite understand you. I must always translate words for myself into ideas and truths, and I cannot always do it. In the case of your words, Count, I cannot form any idea at all. He whom love alone does not satisfy, cannot have been filled with it. Of course, so all-forgetting with their hearts as we, so concentrated upon one idea of life, men never are. Ah, and so little is man to man, an image of man is more to him, and every little future!"
"Thou, too, Brutus!" said Albano, astonished. "Would you," he continued, collecting himself, "lay out an eternity of that elysium-life in Ischia as adequate to a man? Would you send him as a youth into the cloister of the most blissful repose? Certainly only as an old man. The former would be like planting the tree top downward in the dark earth."
"There spoke the German again," said she; "for ever and ever real, indefatigable industry. The tranquil Neapolitans, the people on the Apennines or the Pyrenees, on the Ganges, in Otaheite, full of enjoyment and contemplativeness, are to this Spaniard an abomination. I should think, if a man were only somewhat for himself, not for others, that would be all-sufficient. What great actions are I do not know at all; all I know is a great life; for something like them every sinner can do."
"Verily, that is true," said he; "there is nothing more pitiable than a man who will show himself by this or that, which appears to himself great, rare, and without relation to his being, and therefore does not belong to him at all. Every nature puts forth its own fruit, and cannot do otherwise; but its child can never seem great to it, but always only small, or just as it should be. If it be otherwise, then it must be that an entirely foreign fruit has been hung upon its branches."
"Albano, how true! But you had once never more than half a will; how is it?" said Linda. "Neither have I now," said he, without severity. "One is gentlest when one is strongest in a resolution." He endeavored now carefully to spare and avoid his own words,—which were the oil and wind to his fire,—and he did it the more because words, after all, are of no help against anything, but much rather blow up instead of blowing out the feelings of another. He was also mindful, in this connection, of the frequent cases in which he had, by a single word, with all innocence, excited Linda to a flame. They stopped, and he looked out over the divine land, when Linda, after a silent look into his face, in spite of her apparently calm philosophizing, at once passionately grasped his hand and cried, "No, thou canst not!—by my happiness, by all saints, by the holy Virgin, by the Almighty,—thou canst, thou must not!" There is a robbery against which man always protests with an irrepressible fire, and though a goddess committed it out of love, and offered him in compensation a world of paradises; it is the robbery of his freedom and free development. Yes, its being love,—despotic, however, at once exercising and robbing freedom,—only exasperates him the more, and out of the cloud of error grows by and by the tempest of passion. Linda repeated, "Thou canst not." He looked upon her excited, brilliant countenance, whose Southern intensity resembled more, however, an enthusiasm than indignation, and said, firmly, "O Linda, I shall indeed both dare and do!" "No! I say no!" cried she.
"Brother!" the sister began. "O sister," cried he, "speak softly; I am a man, and have violent faults." The sublime war of the water with the earth and with rocks, the intermingling storms of the flashing rain-constellations around him, drew him as on wings into the whirl,—the great cascade flung its shower out of high trees, and out of heaven sprinkled incessantly a glimmering world,—and in the east the sea showed itself afar in dark sleep, and the setting sun sank gleaming into the general splendor.