He took up his residence again, at the request of his father, at the house of Doctor Sphex, situated, unmeaningly to him, down in the valley; and Gaspard resumed his abode in the palace, near his sick friend. The Knight speedily presented him to the court, which soon observed and remarked the brown of travel, the sharper lightning of the eye, and the whole latest development of his great form. The Princess received him with the lightest, finest coldness, a sort of aqua toffana, which seems only pure, tasteless water. The Prince sat upright in his sick-bed, with peevish face, before drawings of Herculaneum, and was letting himself be informed on the subject by Bouverot. As a face upon which, in the late, gray years of life, fair joyousness can still picture itself, announces a fair life and fair heart, so the saint never wears a more heavenly smile than on his sick-bed, nor the reprobate a more hard and painful one. Albano turned his eye away from the sickly, withered brother of his sister.
Languishing, he looked back toward the past Hesperia, and forward to the gate of paradise which was finally to open, and show Linda and his sister in Eden. "It will certainly meet your approval," Gaspard had said, "that, under the pretext of Luigi's sickness, I have had them both quartered in the old palace at Lilar, where thou canst see them more unobserved." He met the Minister Froulay, and the Lector came to meet him; with both came a dark, manifold shadowy retinue of hard, old recollections. He had not yet seen Captain Roquairol, who was now to him the evening cloud of a sunken spring day.
He carried as speedily as he could his dumb heart—which was an Æolian-harp in a dead calm—to his childhood's Blumenbühl, to greet the parental beings, and to read the papers of his soul's nearest neighbor, Schoppe, for whose promised return he now longed more than ever.
121. CYCLE.
It was a fresh, blue, summer day when Albano went to his old Blumenbühl, without knowing that he did so precisely on the St. James's day, or paternal birthday, which he had once, in childhood, spent in such singular preludes of his life. In the old gardens and on the old heights round about, even over to Lilar's wood, lay everywhere, even now, the young, glistening dew of childhood, not yet dried up by the western sun; many tear-drops, too, stood among the drops of dew on the flowers; but his fresh, healing spirit was on its guard against effeminately floating away into soft transport, that Lethe of the present. In the village he was struck with the sight of a horse whom they were shoeing, for, by the caparison and all, he recognized it as Roquairol's festive steed. He introduced a festival into a festival, when he entered the noisy paternal apartment, full of birthday electors, blooming, fully developed, erect, a confirmed man, with determined look and gait. Rabette screamed out; Roquairol cried, "Aha!" and the old teacher Wehmeier, "God and my master!" and his childhood's angels, the parents, embraced him just as ever, and out of Albina's blue eyes ran the bright drops.
But a change had come over the youth of the others, compared with his. Rabette's countenance, the once full cheeks and blooming lips, had fallen in, and were overlaid and overgrown with the white veil, and she had two gray tears instead of eyes ; yet she smiled a great deal. Like his own Gorgon-head, Roquairol's face appeared pale and hard, as if chiselled on his gravestone; only naked piers stood in the water,—the light arches of the beautiful bridge were gone. Albina and Rabette looked up with a steady gaze at Albano's blooming figure; he seemed to be an Italian growth, a Neapolitan nerved by daily bathing in the gulf. Roquairol had his part immediately at command more easily than Albano his truth; he demeaned himself with the highest courteousness toward one who had broken in two for him the magic wand of life and thrown it away as a pair of beggar's sticks,—kissed him on the cheek, kept up the lightest, often a French tone of conversation, requested the latest intelligence about Italy, and retailed in turn the most edifying news from the country, as well, he said, as he could muster it up for a man with a Hesperian standard of measurement. He related, also, "that the Knight's brother had been there,—a man full of talent, especially the mimetic and that sort, and of the most singularly intense fancy with the highest coldness of character, though perhaps not always sufficiently true. For my tragedy," added he, "he would be worth his weight in gold. Dear brother, hold yourself forthwith as invited on the occasion. The play is called The Tragedian; I give it soon. Rabette is acquainted with it." She nodded. Albano glowed, but was silent. Among all parts, the Captain succeeded most perfectly in that of a world's-man; the show of coldness is more easy and true, also, than the show of warmth. Albano kept a proud distance. Roquairol could not gain in any respect by being opposite to the afflicted, faded Rabette, not even by the intercession of that form of his, full of the ruins of life. Albano found there something forever confused, and the wax wings crushed down into a lump; and it was as close and confining to him as to one who from the bright world creeps down at once into a low, damp cavern of a cellar.
The Captain rose, reminded him once more of his invitation to the "Tragedian," and springing on his festive horse rode away.
Behind his back every one was silent about him, as if embarrassed. The women, a little shy of Albano's brilliant presence, found some difficulty in venturing forth upon the subject of the old familiar past, while the foster-father, Wehrfritz, who having steadily grown on in his opinions and manners, and being still encased in the old cry of dogs and canary-birds, knew nothing at all about time, expressed his hearty thanks to his foster-son for the obliging recollection and choice of his birthday festival, which Albano necessarily and vainly declined, continued in his old thouing and patronizing, wrought himself into ecstasies on the subject of the French and their future victories, and bestowed more premiums of praise now on the older foster-son than he ever had on the younger, in order thereby, as he hoped, to give him as great pleasure as ever. The Magister backed the praise from a distance, although he could not let slip the opportunity, so soon as his pupil had pronounced Napel, Baia, Cuma, to pronounce Neapel, Baiæ, Cumæ. Albano was pure, true, human, frank, and hearty toward all; there was no vanity in his self-forgetting pride.
Rabette found at last a lifting-screw to wind her polished and yet familiar brother out of the receiving-room up into her or his former apartment, so as to be alone on his breast. As they stepped in, she immediately began, as she said, "Dost thou still know the chamber, Albano?" to weep infinitely, with the tears which had been so long gathering; and Albano showed her in his own, his long-cherished sympathy, but tore open thereby all the wounds of the past. She herself seized upon the remedy, namely, the telling of her story,—however earnestly he persisted that he knew, and, indeed, could well guess all,—and drying her eyes, informed him how all stood,—and that Charles was a good deal with his mother in Arcadia; that the Minister still acted the old tyrant toward his only child, and did not dole out to him a farthing more than ever, although he was always heaping up greater and greater debts, especially since there was no longer any Liana silently to wipe them away; that he borrowed everywhere, only, however, he never would accept anything from her; that he still continued to desire and know nothing but the Countess, and that God knew what all this would come to. Anticipating all inquiry, she added: "He knows the whole already, all thy intercourse with that same person. He behaves quietly and pleasantly about it, but I know him as well as I want to. Ah!" she sighed, in the fulness of anguish, and added immediately, with the same voice: "Thou lookest at me; is it not true thou findest me very haggard to what I once was?" "Yes, indeed, poor girl!" "I drank much vinegar on his account, because Charles loves slender figures; and grief has much to do with it too," said she.
Albano would have consoled her with the nearer possibility of a union of Charles with her, since the impossibility of every other union had been decided, and readily tendered his services for any prefatory word or coercive measure. "Before God and us, he is thy husband," said he. "That he never could have been," replied she, blushing, "for he never could have been honest; and did I not write thee that I am now too proud for it, too?" "Then cast him off forever!" said he. "Ah!" said she, fearfully, "do I know, then, that he meditates no harm against himself? Then I should reproach myself with it eternally." Involuntarily he could not but compare with this loving, holy fear, the hardness of the Princess, who could relate so gladly and proudly how many a love-smitten life had fallen a victim to her prudish heart and coquettish face. "What wilt thou do now?" he asked. "I weep," said she. "Ah, Albano, that is enough, indeed, that thou hast given me hearing and counsel; I am cheerful again. But be once more his friend."