Splendor and night and fragrance bestrewed the Jacob's-ladder of the terraces down which he passed. Lightly flew his boat through the snow of stars and blossoms, which drifted over the waves,—the nightingales of the two islands chimed together,—the seamen sang back to them glad songs,—a favorable wind bore the orange-perfumes after the little vessel,—but Albano, weeping, had his heart and face turned toward the sinking pyramid. His sister alone had looked after him from the eminence; then she, too, was lost to sight,—the nightingales still called faintly after him,—at last all was veiled. He turned himself round toward the pale-glimmering glaciers, as toward the light-houses of his voyage, and of the heaven of this day nothing was now left to him but the pilot, love, as the seaman follows the magnet, when the holy stars have concealed themselves and guide him no more.
119. CYCLE.
Albano and Dian flew joyfully over the German fields to meet so many a precious heart, and nothing was disappointed except their dread of the length of the countries through which they had to travel. Instead of the black lava-sand and the burnt soil behind them, a bright, fresh green now decked the plains and cooled the dazzled eye. The waves of green grain-fields swept and tossed about as merrily as the waves of the blue-green sea. In thicker, longer, higher woods floated new shadows, like lovely little evenings, creeping away from before the light of day. The dark green of the Italian trees was replaced by the bright, laughing green of the German gardens, and new feathered choirs cradled themselves in clouds and in woods, and greeted the heart of man, and sent down to him their light and guileless joy.
From spring to spring went the happy Albano, with his dreams of love; as fast as a southern blossom fell behind him, a northern unfolded itself before him; and his travelling-carriage stopped on the variegated avenue among the blossom-shadows of a long garden.
At length he stood before the house to which the garden conducted him, and before the linden-city; so stood he also in a former year on the heights before it, looking up at the cloud-procession of the future, without being able to divine to what the clouds were shaping themselves, whether into an aurora or into an evening tempest. How many old pangs darted now like shadows of clouds over the old landscape! He was going now, such was his reflection, to meet his father with the news of his fortune; to meet his apostate friend with the stolen beloved; to meet with old and new love his returning Schoppe, whose heart and fate were to him, now, at once so dark and so weighty; and to meet the singular time and hour, when the subterranean waters, whose rush and roar he had hitherto so often experienced, should lie at once uncovered, and with all their windings and springs laid open to the light of day; and to meet the sacred spot where he could take boldly to his heart the beloved, who now, on the German road and in the neighborhood of former trials, seemed to him still greater and more unattainable than on Epomeo, in the neighborhood of all that is sublime in heaven and on earth, and when he might enfold her in his arms forever without asking again, "Wilt thou love me?" Then he went back in thought to an image which Vesuvius[[110]] had furnished him, and said to Dian: "Behind man there works and travels onward a slow, fiery stream, which consumes and crushes if it overtakes him; but let man only stride boldly forward, and often look backward, and he comes off unscathed. My beloved teacher, so will I now do in my new and momentous relations; do thou, however, make me turn round toward the lava, if in pleasant scenes I should sometimes forget it!"
"Speak better and more propitious words," said Dian. "Hail to us; the gods are already favorable! Yonder comes your father up the palace hill, and looks more gay and happy than I ever before happened to find him!"
