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 TITAN
A ROMANCE.
FROM THE GERMAN OF

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER,

TRANSLATED BT

CHARLES T. BROOKS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. IL

BOSTON:
TICK NOR AND FIELDS.
1 8 62.
 .

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by

TICK NOR AND FIELDS,

the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachuaetts

University Press:
Welch, Bigelow, and Company,
Cambridge.
 Contents of Vol. ii.

—f—
SEVENTEENTH JUBILEE.
PAGE
— Illumination of Lilar
Pkiucely Nuptial-Tekrition. . 1

EIGHTEENTH JUBILEE.
Gaspard's Letter. — The Blumenbühl Church. — Eclipse
OF the Sun and of the Soul 23

NINETEENTH JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Office of Comforter. — Arcadia. — Bouve-
rot's Portrait-Painting 43

TWENTIETH JUBILEE.
Gaspard's Letter. — Partings 64

TWENTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
The Trial-Lesson of Love. — Froulay's Fear of For-
tune. — The Biter bit. — Honors of the Observatory 94

TWENTY-SECOND JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Heart. — Dangerous Spiritual Acquaintances 117

TWENTY-THIRD JUBILEE.
Liana 134
iv CONTENTS.

TWENTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
The Fever. — The Cure 151

TWENTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.
The Dream. — The Journey 165

TWENTY-SIXTH JUBILEE.
The Journey. — The Fountain. — Kome. — The Forum . 174

TWENTY-SEVENTH JUBILEE.
St. Peter's. — Rotunda. — Colosseum. — Letter to
ScHOPPE. — The War. — Gaspard. — The Corsican. —
Entanglement with the Princess. — Sickness. — Gas-
pard' s Brother. — St. Peter's Dome, and Departure . 196

TWENTY-EIGHTH JUBILEE.
Letter from Pestitz. —
Mola. — The Heavenly Ascen-
sion OF A Monk. —
Naples. — Ischia. — The new Gift
OF the Gods 232

TWENTY-NINTH JUBILEE.
Julienne. — The Island. — Sundown. — Naples. — Vesuvi-
us. —Linda's Letter. —Fight. —Departure . . . 260

THIRTIETH JUBILEE.
Tivoli. — Quarrel. — Isola Bella. — Nursery of Child-
hood. — Love. — Departure 302

THIRTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
Pestitz. — Schöpfe. — Dread of Marriage. — Arcadia. —
Idoine. — Entanglement 330

THIRTY-SECOND JUBILEE.
Roquairol 392
 CONTENTS. V

THIKTY-THIKD JUBILEE.
Albano and Linda. — Schöpfe and the Portrait. The —
— —
Wax Cabinet. The Duel. The Madhouse. Leib- —
GEBER 428

THIRTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Discoveries. — Liana. — The Chapel of the
Cross. — Schoppe and the *'
I " and the Uncle . . 468

THIRTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.
Siebenkäs. — —
Confession of the Uncle. Letter from
—
Albano's Mother. —
The Race for the Crown. Echo
AND Swan-song of the Story 485
 ;

TITAN.
SEVENTEENTH JUBILEE.
Princely Nuptial-Territion.* — Illumination of Lilar.

77. CYCLE.
HAT a universal joy of the people could now
ring and roar, for a space of eight days, from
one frontier of the land to the other ! For
so long was the public sorrow suspended
the bells sounded for something better than a march to

the gi'ave ; music was again allowed to all musical clocks

and people ; all theatres would have been opened, had
there been one there, or had the court been shut up,
which was a continual play-house ; and now one could

* Jean Paul here Germanizes (or Frenchifies) the Latin word ter-
The meaning is, that this marriage might well be
ritio (a terrifying).

an in terror em affair to poor Luigi (as well as to the bride, according

to Schoppe's droll conceit, that all this furor of joy was a mere noise
made to scare her bach). The only other case in which the author
uses this word is near the end of the third paragraph of Cycle 15,

where the reader should have been informed that real territion is an
expression borrowed from the inquisitors, who, when verbal threaten-
ings fail, bring on ocular ones by showing the instruments of tortui-e
to the victim. This is applied to Froulay's system with his children.
In this sense the rod which used to hang over the fireplace or looking-
glass when some of us were children was a real territion. — Tr.
VOL. II. 1 A
 — !

2 TITAN.

walk and visit and promulgate decrees in high, places,

without the black border. By and by, when this refresh-

ing interlude was over, during which one enjoyed orches-

tra, punch, and cakes, they were to go back again with
the more zest to weeping and tragedies.
On the morning of the tedious procession of carriages
going forth to form the escort, the Prince rode out before-
hand over the limits, with Bouverot and Albano, — all

three as being the only people in the land who were inde-
pendent and uninterested in the festival. Poor Luigi
I have already very distinctly stated, in the first volume

of "Titan," that the princely bridegroom who to-day

mounts the bridal bed can only be a father of his country^

not father of a family. Under the heaven of his princely

throne, as on the first row of the chess-field, all is to be

made and regenerated, — officers, even the queen of
chess, but not the Schach* himself. It were to be wished,
since the circumstance makes the festival shade into the
ridiculous, that the bridegroom could only, by way of
shaming many old families that laugh at him, — old so
often, even in the heraldic and medical sense at once, —
show them some dozen of the princes ranged around the
nuptial altar, whom he has seated in Calabria, Wales,
Asturia, in Dauphiny, — all Europe was a Dauphiny to

him, — in short, in so many active f hereditary lands, —

that is, the heirs, not heirlooms, of foreign princes. Could
he do that, then would he look more contentedly into this
day's congratulations, because some dozen fulfilments
would be already standing by, and awaiting his nod.

* Schach means both chess and the Persian king, — the Shah. —
Tr.
t In the (French and German) sense of active property, namely, that
does sometliins:. brings in something. Active debts are one's assets. Tr.
 ;

THE BRIDEGROOM'S-COA'i' 3

But as the Marchioness of Exeter can transform the bed

of the Marquis in London, which costs three thousand
pounds, into a throne, so must the Princess also do with
hers, without being able, hke her, to reverse the trans-
formation.
I wdll therefore introduce and lead him out on the
dancing-floor of to-day's joy, not at all as bridegroom,
but, in every instance, — just as w^e speak of the crown
without the crowned head, — merely as Bridegroom's-
coat, so as not to make him ridiculous. Albano rode
along with a breast full of indignation, scorn, and pity
beside this victim of dark state policy, and simply could
not comprehend how it was that Luigi did not send the
German gentleman, that hired axe and uprooter of his
family tree, with one kick far behind him howling. Good
youth ! a prince more easily sets himself free from men
whom he loves, than from such as he has full long hated
for his fear is stronger than his love.
The great-hearted, never narrow-chested, always broad-
breasted youth found to-day, in his solemn, painful frame
of mind, everything tragical, noble and ignoble, greater
than it w^as. He showed, indeed, only a fiery eye and
animated countenance, because he was too young and
modest to make a display of personal grief ; but beneath
the eye, which was fixed on the spot of blue in the heav-
ens where his dark clouds were this day to break away
or fall upon him, stood the glistening tear-drop. The
coming evening, into which he had so often looked as into

a hell, and full as often as into a heaven, stood now, as a

confused medium between the two, so near, — ah, hard by
him ! A throng of kindred feelings attended him to the
(in his opinion unhappy) bride of — his father and this

prince.
4 TITAN.

A quarter of a mile the other side of Hohenfliess might

already be seen jogging on her Gibbon, well known
among all natural historians — not among the pohticians
— by the long owner of the Moluccas
arms which this
"
and Ape notoriously carries. " Where is my Gibbon ?
the Princess usually asked (even supposing she had in

her hand, at the moment, the English namesake, — the

and short sentences against the
historian with long nails
Christians) when she wanted her Longimanus.
At last she came prancing along all plumed and —
in riding-habit — on the finest English steed, —a tall,

majestic figure, who, indifferent to her court-retinue,

although freighted with relatives, would much rather have
looked a welcome to the blue morning sun behind a rear-
ing horse's and swan's neck. She gave the Bridegroora's-
coat with propriety greeting and kiss, but neither with
emotion nor dissimulation nor embarrassment, but freely
and frankly and cordially, too far exalted above the ridic-

ulousness of her genealogical disproportion to do other-

wise yes, even above every thought of that disproportion
;

which necessity or tyranny created. In her otherwise

fairly built — rather than finely drawn — face, her nose
alone was not so, but angularly cut and presenting more
bones than cartilage in contrast to the commonplace
character of regents. With women, marked, irregular
noses, e. g. with deep indenture of the bridge, or with
concave or convex archings, or with facettes at the knob,
&c., signify far more for talent than with men; and —
except in the case of a few whom I myself have seen —
beauty must always sacrifice something to genius, although

not so much as afterward the genius of others sacrifices to

beauty, as we men in general have, unfortunately per-
haps, done.
 ALBANO AND THE PRINCESS. 5

The Count was presented to the Princess she had not ;

known him, —
aUhough she had heard of him and seen
his father so long, — but had rather fancied him to re-

semble the Bridegroom's-coat. The coat could not — or

should not — have failed to be flattered by this blooming
likeness. The likeness entirely explains the beautiful
interest which she now must needs take in both, because
it always takes a couple of people to make a resemblance.
She spoke with the son without any embarrassment
about the Knight of the Fleece having been presented by
her and her Court with a (flower-) basket,* and extolled
his knowledge of art. " Art," said she, " makes in the

end all lands alike and agreeable. When that is once

had, one thinks of nothing further. At Dresden, in the
inner gallery, I really believed I was in joyous Italy.
Yes, if one should go to Italy itself, one would forget even
Italy in the midst of all that one finds there." Albano
answered, " I know, I too shall one day intoxicate myself
with the old wine of art, and glow under it ; but for the
present it is to me merely a beautiful, blooming vineyard,
whose powers I certainly know beforehand, without as yet
feeling them." The Princess won his esteem so exceed-
he put the question to her, when the Prince, a
ingly, that
few steps onward, was surveying from the window the
swelling flood of the Pestitz escort, how the German
ceremonies of her rank struck her artistic taste. " Tell
me," said she, hghtly, " what station among us has not
full as many, and where, in the whole range of situations,
do not priests and advocates play their part ? Just look
for once at the marriages of the imperial cities. The
Germans are herein no better nor worse than any other
nation, old or new, wild or polished. Think of Louis
* Referring, of course, to her refusal of him. — Tr.
 ;

ö TITAN.

Fourteenth. Once for all, such is man ; but I do not, of

course, respect him for that."
The Prince reminded them now of the hour of march
and the Princess mustered together, by way of attiring
herself for the grand entree, more, dressing-maids and
toilet-boxes than Albano, according to her words, or we,
according to the cartilages of her nose, — which seemed
spiritual wing-bones, — should have expected. Her
hurrying people followed her with more dread than
reverence for her rank or character ; and some, who
occasionally ran by out of the di'essing-chamber, had
downcast faces.

At last she appeared again, but much fairer than be-

fore. There must surely belong to the manliest woman
more charming womanliness than we think, since such a
one gains by female finery, by which the most effeminate
man would only lose. " Kank," said she to Albano, show-

ing a great candor in opinions, which easily consists with

a quite as great reserve in emotions, " oppresses and con-
fines a great soul oftentimes less than sex." Her calling
herself a great soul could not but strike the Count, be-
cause he now saw before him the first example — another
man knows innumerable examples — of the fact, that dis-

tinguished women praise themselves outright, and far

more than distinguished men.
The grand movement began. On a boundary bridge,
which, Uke the printer's hyphen, was at once sign of sep-
aration and of connection between the two principalities,
half Hohenfliess already sat halting in carriages and on
horseback, until an upset, shabby old vehicle, with village
comedians, could be raised again on the fourth wheel, and
the mythological household furniture which they had in
hand packed in. But when the Princess made her way
 SGHOPPE'S DROLL HYPOTHESIS. 7

by main force on to the bridge, suddenly passengers and

packers converted themselves into muses, gods of music,
gods of love, and a pretty little Hymen, and, in theatrical
decoration and apparatus, flooded the encircled bride with
their poetic effusions, representing the war of the other
gods against the virgin-stealer Hymen. The son of the
muses who had versified the matter acted a part himself,
as father of the muses. I dare say that this original
invention of the Minister was very favorably received, as
well by Haarhaar as by Hohenfliess.
Froulay, all prinked and powdered, as if he were
stretching himself out on the bed of state between funeral-
gueridons,* marched out before her as spokesman of the
country, which wished to testify its happy participation in
her marriage to the Bridegroom's-coat. The Princess
abridged and clipped short all festal lying with a fine pair
of ladies' scissors.
Froulay had, among other carriages, brought with him
also one containing several trumpeters and kettle-drum-
mers, levied from all quarters, in which, for joke's sake,
Schoppe stood, too, who did not often stay away from
great processions of men, for this reason, because men
never looked more ridiculous than when they did any-
thing in mass and multitude. By way of bringing salt
to the solemnities, he set up in his carriage the hypoth-
esis that they were doing all this merely, with the best
intention, for the sake of driving the bride back again to
where she had come from, partly by way of sparing her
the sham- and stage-marriage, partly by way of sparing
the land the new court-state. Her ear, he assumed, when
the cannon drawn up on the surrounding hills mingled
with the trumpeting of his thunder-car, and three post-

* A French name for candlesticks. — Tr.

8 TITAN.

masters, with fifleen postilions, who had not been posted

there for nothing, witli their best horns and lungs, blew
their horns at the same moment, — her ear must be very
much tortured, and she somewhat repelled, by such a
welcome. Hence they even send empty state-coaches
wdth the rest, just for the sake of the ratthng, even as, in
the province of Anspach, the farmer, merely by frightful
screaming, without ammunition or dogs, drives the stags
from his crops.* As ships do in the fog by lanterns and
drums, so would states fain keep themselves apart by
illumination and firing.

She still, however, I see, moves onward, said he, on

the way, — sometimes taking into his hands with profit
the diphthong of the kettle-drum, — and we must all

accordingly follow after ; but perhaps her ear is already

dead, and she is now only to be come at through the eye.
In this hope he was exceedingly delighted with the dapple
uniform of the assembled ofiicers and feather scarecrows
of the court-liveries. Now there is still to come, he pre-
dicted, joyfully, the gold-spangled, triumphal arch, with

vases and pipers, through which she must directly pass ;

and do not people scare away sparrows from the cherry

trees, then, with gold leaf and Selzer pitchers ?

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 gymna-

* Frightfully is this true cry of humanity echoed in Hess's Flying

Journeys, Part IV. p. 156 ; at present a more humane administration
has quieted it by means of the game-tax.
 SCHOPPE'S ANXIETY RELIEVED. 9

sium and the university, — all which, however, to be sure,

is only a skirmish with the outposts ; for the gate is occu-

pied 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 of
pillory uncon- satin, quite

scious of the effect — a dismal Pereat- Carmen * 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 prin-
cipalities clustered at the palace-windows, rode twice
through the palace-yard; this double dose must take
hold. Schoppe's hopes were farthest from failing when
he found that, was
because it 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 Librarian the
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
* It was to him a hearty pleasure such a marriage-poem
to present
with the rhymes, flights, and notes of admiration and exclamation by
the very best new-year's rhymer in the world; and the consciousness
of his pure, though satirical, purpose set him entirely at ease about
any charge of being elaborate or too servile in particular applications.
[The Pereat-Carmen means, an Ode of Anathema. Te.] —
1*
lO TITAN.

the princely cousins, even the future successor to chair

and throne, wish their cousin Luigi health, a happy mar-
riage, and sequel thereto, although they, through their
friend, —a living succession-poison,* — 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 hes. O,
must not princes themselves lie, because they are eter-
nally cheated ? themselves learn to flatter, because they
are forever flattered ? He himself could not bring him-
self to cast so much as the smallest mite of a lying con-
gratulation 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 understand-
ing were tedious to — complained several times
him to
Albano, the Princess displeased him with her
that cold,
witty understanding but the Count — out
; regard of for
the beloved of and out of hatred toward her
his father,
and butchers — could only
sacrificial priests a pity being,
who perhaps must hate now, because her greatest love had

* Poison admiuistered to obtain a succession or inheritance. Adler.

— Tr.
 ILLUMINATION OF LILAK. II

set. How many noble women, who would otherwise have

held it a higher thing to admire than to be admired, liave
become powerful, rich in knowledge, almost great, but un-
happy 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 w^hich so many a riddle and his

dearest one were to be solved. What does man see be-
fore him, when with the thread in his hand he steps out of
the subterranean labyrinth ? Nothing but the open en-
trances into other labyrinths, and the* choice among them I

is his only wish.

78. CYCLE.

ON the loveliest evening,

transparent to the very bottom of
when the heavens were
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 tu-
multuous 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
 ;

12 TITAN.

sun, of which one half trembles glistening before the sun

and the other vanishes in a gray mist. Ah, before Liana
ithad 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 hght. Eveü 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 her-
self so much the more fixedly to a select one. Albano
espied, in the dark, di'iving 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. Li 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 bhnd 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 PaviHon 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 PaviHon seemed to her
to have vanished away; one seemed to stand on a
solitary, open spot, guai'ded with some tree-stems, which
 ! :

LIANA PERSONATES IDOINE. 13

all vistas of the garden met and crossed. Wondrously, as

if by sportive dreams, were the regions of Lilar intermin-
gled, 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,* Liana —
as if gliding out
of the air through a glass side-door, in Idoine's favorite
attire, — ma white dress with silver flowers, and in un-
adorned 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 songeJ''\ She was to say more and offer

a flower ; but when the Princess, with emotion, went on to

exclaim :
" Soeur clierieV^ % 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 lan-
guishing 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. 0, never had she, or any other form, been so
ethereally beautiful, so heavenly-blooming, and so meek
and lowly
* Between every two windows stood a pier-glass, which blended its
reflection of the distant vista with those of the windows. Opposite
each mirror stood only one window the inteiTal between the two was
;

filled and concealed with foliage.

t "I am but a dream."

} " Cherished sister."
 TITAN.

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.
During the illusion and the embrace, at a nod from the
Prince, all twigs and gates of the garden were involved
in a glistening conflagration ; all water-works of the en-
chanted wood started up, and fluttered aloft with golden
wings; in the inverted rain played a white, green,
golden, and gloomy world, and the jets of water and of
flame flew up mischievously against each other, like
silver and gold pheasants. And the splendor of the
burning Eden embraced the Temple of Dream, and the
reflection fell on its inner green fohage-work, and
turned it to gold.

Liana, holding the hand of the admiring Princess,

stepped out, with downcast, bashful eyes, into the bright,
busy city of the sun, into the din of the music and of
the exultant spectators. Upon Albano the stormy scene
came shooting like a torrent ; such opposite and strangely
intermingled parts played before such opposite persons,
the splendor of the evening's gladness, and the nightly
bewilderment in his bosom, made it hard for him to walk
through this evening with a firm step.

The Princess soon drew him onward in her wake and

vortex ; Liana she let not go from her side. The llinis-
ter daubed and starched up with old gallantries the erotic
slave ; but to every one he appeared, as the Princess
settles with creditors after the death of the Prince, to
imitate only the manner of ministers, whose spirit loves
 ALBANO OUT OF HIS ELEMENT. 15

to proceed from Father and Dauphin — ßlioque * — at

once, in order to seat itself, not between, but upon two

princely chairs. She seemed, however, since his manoeu-
vring with Liana, to receive him more haughtily. He
was sufficiently blessed in the good fortune of his daughter,
as his step-son Bouverot was by her nearness, and this .

pair of knaves lay deeply buried and revelhng in nothing

but flowers. Albano could divine nothing more than that
even a cold dragon, an orang-outang of souls, was darkly
spying out the charms of this angel.

. The Minister's lady and the Lector took turns, with an

easy alternation, in guarding Liana from every word —
of Albano. The Princess let herself be conducted through
the sparkling pleasure-avenues, through the enchanted
wood which was standing in moist lightnings, and finally
to the thunder-house, by way of taking the burning gar-

den from all points into her picturesque eye Liana and ;

Albano attended her through all the walks of her with-

ered, stale Arcadia, and held their shattered hearts mutely
and steadfastly together. True to her word with her
parents, she gave him no warmer look or tone than any
other, but no colder one neither
for her soul would not
;

torment, but only suffer and obey. He made he —

thought —
all his looks and tones gentle, nor did the

noble man avenge himself by a single manifestation of

coldness, or in fact of any insincere making-of-friends
with the princely female-recruiting-officer of crowns and
hearts.
The Princess began to be unintelligible to him. They
passed from the romantic to romance, then to the ques-
tion, why it did not portray marriage. "Because," she

* An allusion, of course, to the theological dogma of the procession

of the Holy Spirit from Father and Son. — Tr.
i6 TITAN.

replied, " it [romance] cannot be without love." " And

marriage ? " asked Albano, uncourteously. " Cannot ex-

ist without a friend," said she ;

" but Love is a god, nec
Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus incident" * she
added, for she had learned Latin for the sake of the
poets.
Bouverot finished the verse, in order to make the
sense ambiguous, — " Nec quarta loqui persona tahoretV f
No one understood this last but the Lector and the
Princess.
Why are there no
" lamps in that house? " she inquired.
" Who Hves there ? " She meant Spener's house. Liana
answered only the latter question, and concluded her
glowing picture with the words, "He lives for immor-
tality." " What does he write ? " inquired the Princess,

misunderstanding her; and Liana must needs give a

Christian explanation of the matter, whereupon the unbe-
lieving woman smiled. There arose forthwith a dispute
for and against the eternal sleep, which took up not much
less time than they needed for making the circle of the
thunder-house. The Princess began :
" We should have
quite as much to say against our every-day sleep, if it

were not a fact, as against the eternal one." " More, too,

however, against our ever waking out of it," said Albano,

striking in, and cut short the religious disturbances.
The Princess came back again with her inquiries after
Spener, who had interested her by his long mourning
for her deceased father-in-law ; and Liana, sure of her
mother's concurrence, poured herself out into a stream of

* " Nor let a god interpose unless a knot occurs which is worthy of
such helper."
t
" Nor let a fourth person (i. e. when you have the married couple
and friend) intrude his advice."
 STRUGGLE OF ALBANO'S FEELINGS. 17

speecli and emotion, — her eyes were forbidden shed to

one, — on which was borne along a subhme image of her

teacher. How the exaltation of this so delicate, tender
soul thrilled her friend ! So in the pale, small moon and
evening star do higher mountains rear themselves than
on our larger earth !
" She was once inspired for thee,

too, but now no more," said Albano to himself, and stayed

behind after all the rest had gone on, because his soul had
been long since full of pains, and because now the Princess
began to displease him.
He posted himself alone, and looked at the ringing,
gleaming war-dance of joy. The children ran illuminated
through the uproar and in the bright green foliage. The
tones hovered and hung twining together into one wreath,
high in their ether above the noisy swarm of men, and
sang down to them their heavenly songs. Only in me,
said he to himself, do the tones and the lights toss a sea
of agony to and fro, in no one else, in her not at all ; she
has brought with her for all others her old gladdening
heart of love, not for me she has not
; thus far suffered,
she blooms in health. He considered not, however, that
in fact his struggles alsohad shed not a drop of water
into the dark red glow of his youth in Liana well might ;

wounds from such conflicts, like those of the scratched

Aphrodite, only dye the white roses red.
But he determined to remain a man before so many
eyes, and to await the crisis and Liana's solitude. He
therefore exchanged several rational words with his foster
relatives from Blumenbühl ; — he said to Rabette :
" It

pleases you, does it not ? " He startled, unintentionally,

the Captain, who was hovering about some new faces

from Haarhaar, with the unmeaning question, " Why dost
"
thou leave my sister so alone ?
 ";

i8 TITAN.

But as often as he looked at Liana, who to-day went in

her long veil, as the only one without any thick, heavy
gala-wrappage, as if she were a young, breathing, tender
form among painted stone statues, so bashfully putting
others to the blush, glistening and trembling hke an
egrette, — so often did masses of flame fly wildly to and
fro within him. Passion, as the epilepsy often does with
its victims, hurries us away, precisely at the dangerous
crises of hfe, to shores and precipices. He leaned his
head against a tree, slightly bowed down; then Charles
came along out of his waltzes of joy, and asked him, witli
alarm, what provoked him so ; for his bending down had
cast gloomy, wild shadows upon his tense, muscular face
" Nothing," said he, and the face gleamed mildly when he
lifted it up. At this moment, also, came the unreflecting
Rabette, and would fain draw him into the general joy,
and said, " Does anything ail thee ? " " Thou !
" he re-

plied, and looked at her very indignantly.

"
" Go into the gloomy oak-grove to Gaspard's rock !

cried his heart. " Thy father never bowed ; be his son !

Thereupon he strode away through the world of bril-

liancy but when, far within, amidst the darkness, he
;

leaned his head upon the rock, and the tones came toy-
ingly and teasingly in after him, and he thought to him-
self, how he could have loved such a noble soul, — O how
exceedingly ! — then it was as if something said within
"
him, " Now thou hast thy ßrst sorrow on earth !

As during an earthquake doors fly open and bells

ring, so at the thought, " first sorrow," was his soul rent
asunder, and hard tears dashed down. But he wondered
at hearing himself weep, and indignantly wiped his face
on the cool moss.
Weakened, not hardened, he stepped out into the en-
 !

ALBANO ACCOSTS LIANA. 19

chanted land, besprinkled with glimmering jewels, and

among the tones which came dancing more rapturously
to meet him, and would fain snatch his soul away
and lift it up and set it on high places, so that it might
look down into far and wide spring-times of life Here !

on this once blessed soil he saw lying the shattered,

trampled pearl-string of his future days. " O how happy

evening " thought he, and looked
!
we might have been this

into the bright Feast of Tabernacles, into the gilded but

living branch work, — into the green, flitting reflection,
rocked by the night-wind, and into the wild-fire of
burning bushes in the flowing waters. On the arched
triumphal gates stood lights like heaven-descended con-
stellations of the wain, and behind him the dark clois-

ter-wall of Tartarus, which showed sublimely in its

summits only single small lights ;

and, over beyond, the
silent mountains sleeping in night, and here the noisy
life of men, playing with the night-butterflies about the
lamps
Thus does the fire within us of itself create in us the ,

storm-wind which fans it still higher. The tones that

floated by him spoke to him every thought which he
would fain kill. As man sees himself, so does he often
hear himself, in the presence of a sound of music.
At this moment Liana went off some distance from the
crowd with Augusti. " I will speak with her, then it will
be over," said he to himself, as he drew near her, battling
and wrestling with himself he saw plainly that she wanted
:

tobe back again among strange listeners. " Liana, what

have I then done to thee ? " said he, with the deep-souled

tone of a tender heart, bitterly despising the Lector's

presence and powers. " Only do not desire an answer
to-day, dear Count," said she, turning back, and took in
 !

20 TITAN.

haste Augusti's arm ; but he remarked not that she did

it to avoid sinking. Upon this he cast at the Lector a
fierj look, hoping to be offended and then avenged, — left

her in haste and silence; — the sweetest wine of love a hot

ray had sharpened into vinegar ; — and he slipped away,
without knowing it, into the temple of dream.
He went up and down therein, murmuring, " Je ne suis
qu'un songe " ; but was soon driven out into Tartarus
by his disgust at so many copies of himself moving round
with him, and by the eternal spring of tones flying after
him, which just now beside the upturned flower-bed of life

was so intolerable.
In Tartarus all the apparatus of horror seemed to him
now very diminutive and ridiculous. Just then, not far
from the Catacomb avenue, Roquairol and Rabette came
to meet him. Roquairol's flaming face was extinguished
and Rabette's turned backward, when Albano passionately
strode forth tomeet them, and, still more imbittered by
the remembrance of the time when their heavens were con-
temporaneous, and flaming up under the wind which blew
upon his glowing ruins, attacked the Captain with : " Art
thou a friend ? Art thou no devil ? Thou hast re-
ferred me to this evening : never, never say a word more
!
of it " Both trembled, confused and colorless ; Albano,
,
without further reflection, ascribed the growing pale and
turning away to their sympathy for his martyrdom.
What a confounding, hostile night
He roved onward and onward, the licking fire of the
joy and music that pursued him tormented him unspeaka-
bly, — the tones were to him mocking tropical birds of
fairer, warmer zones that came fluttering to meet him.
" I will just go to my bed, so soon as it once becomes still
within there !
" He was half a mile off, when the music
 BLIND LEA REAPPEARS. 21

of Lilar still continued to sound after him; he sternly

stopped his ears, but Lilar still sounded on within them, —
then he perceived that he was only listening to himself.
But all the time it seemed to him as if the merry ringing
must, as in Don Juan, resolve itself into a cry of murder
at the presence of ghosts.
The avenue of coming days ran to a frightful point
before him, when he now snatched out from them the
moon of his heaven, which had once gleamed upon his
childish heart and upon the paths of Blumenbühl. The
blooming, dancing genius of his past, all unseen, with only
the wreath of joy in its hand, stole away behind him,
while he struggled with the dark angel of futurity going
before him, who dragged him along after him through
sounding thickets, — through sleepy villages, — through
moist, trickling valleys. At last Albano looked up to

heaven, beneath the innumerable eternal stars, to the

hanging blossom-garden of God. "I am not ashamed

before you," said he, " because I weep on this ball, and am
oppressed before your immensity. Up there ye stand, all
of you, far asunder, — and on all great worlds every poor
spirit has, after all, only one little spot beneath its feet

where it is happy or miserable. When only this night

has once gone by, and I am gone to my bed to-morrow I ;

"
shall certainly be a man and stand fast !

Suddenly he heard several times an almost exasperated

cry of lamentation. At length he beheld, near a stream,
outstretched white sleeves or arms ; he went to the female
form. " Alas ! I am blind of God," said she ;
" I too was
at the illumination, and have strayed away ; I am gener-
ally acquainted with road and lane ; over yonder Ues our
village ; I hear the shepherd dog, but I cannot find the
bridge over the water." It was the grown-up blind girl
 "

22 TITAN.

of the herdsman's hut. " Does it still go on pleasantly

there ? " he asked, as he guided her along. " All over !

said she. On the bridge of the Rosana she would not,

out of vanity, let herself be directed any farther.

He returned through the pleasant bushes, which were
already dripping with the dew of morning, to an eminence
before Lilar. All was down below there a few
still ;

scattered lamps flickered in the flute-dell, and in Tartarus

a couple, like deadly tiger-eyes, still lingered. He went
down into the vacant land away over the silent, flat grave,
— up through his gloomy, downward-ascending cavern-
avenue, — and into his bed. " To-morrow !
" said he with
energy, and meant his vow of steadfastness.
 EIGHTEENTH JUBILEE.
Gaspard's Letter. — The Bltimenbühl Church. — Eclipse of
THE Sun and of the Soul.

79. CYCLE.
F in the foregoing night a strange, hostile
spirit cruelly drove against each other and
away from each other human beings with
bandaged eyes, so will that spirit on the
morning after, when from a cold cloud he surveyed his
battle-field with sparkling eyes, have almost smiled at all

the joys and harvests which he prostrate round about him

down below there.
In Blumenbühl, Rabette, in lonely corners, wrings her
hands with trembling arms, and breathes upon the wall-
plaster, to wipe away the redness of wet eyes ; out of
Lilar comes Albano, gloomily looks upon the earth instead
of its inhabitants, and from the astronomical tower gazes
eagerly into the heavens, and seeks no friend ;
Roquairol
musters up horses and riders, and makes himself, out in the
country, a merry, drunken evening ; Augusti shakes his
head over letters from Spain, and reflects upon them dis-

agreeably, but deeply ; Liana leans in an easy-chair, all

crushed, with her face falling towards her shoulder, and

nothing blooming in it any longer save innocence ; her
father strides up and down, with a reddish-brown complex-
24 TITAN.

ion ; she answers but faintly, lifting from time to time

her folded hands a little. Before the night-spirit on the
cloud men's time goes swiftly by, as a fleeting pair of
wings without beak or tail the spirit has near him the
;

distantweek when Albano shall see by night from the

observatory how in the Blumenbühl church there burns
an altar-light, how Liana kneels therein with uplifted
hands, and how an old man lays his own on her serene,
shining brow, which directs itself with tearless eyes toward
heaven.
The spirit looks down deeper into the months ; he
writhes around himself for delight, and grins over all

dwelhng-places and pleasure-haunts of men which lie

about him ; often a laugh runs round along all his open
hell-teeth, only sometimes he gnashes them under the
cover of the hp-flesh.
Look away, —
for he too sees and wills it, — and step
down from the wintry spectre among the warm children of
men, and on the firm ground of reahty, where flying time,
like the flying earth, seems to rest upon steadfast roots,

and where only eternity, like the sun, seems to rise.

Albano's wound, which cut through his whole inner

man, you can best measure by the bandage which he
sought to bind around it. Our grief may be guessed from
the solace and self-deception we resort to. The next
morning he let his griefs discourse across one another, and
lay still, before their funeral wail, as a corpse ; then he
rose up, and spoke thus to himself :
" Only one of two
things is possible, — either she is still true to me, and only
her parents now constrain her, — then they again must be
constrained, and there is nothing be lamented, —
at all to
or else, from some weakness or other, perhaps towards
her tyrannical and beloved parents, she is no longer true
 ALBANO ON THE STAR-TOWER. 25

to me, or it may be out of coldness toward me, or from

religious scruples, error, and so on ; in that case I see,"

he continued, and tried to tread his two feet deeper and

firmer into the ground, without, however, having any pur-
chase, " nothing else to be done than to do nothing ; not to
be a crying suckling, a groaning sickling, but an iron
man ; not to weep blood over a past heart, over the ashes
of death lying deep upon all fields and plantations of my
youth, and over my monstrous grief." Thus did he delude
himself, and mistake the necessity of consolation for its

actual presence.
Every evening he visited the star-tower out of the city, on
the Blumenbühl heights. He found the old, solitary, meagre,
eternally-reckoning, wifeless, and childless keeper, always
friendly and unembarrassed as a making no inquiries
child,

after war-news, journals of fashion, and poesies, and never

paying money for his pleasure, except on the coach to Bode
and Zach. But the old eye sparkled when it looked from
under the sparse eyebrows into heaven, and his heart
and tongue rose to poetry when he spoke of the highest
mundane spot, the light heaven over the dark, low earth,
— of the immense, universal sea without shore, wherein
the spirit, which in vain seeks to fly across it, sinks ex-
hausted, and whose ebb and flow only the Infinite One
sees at the foot of his throne, — and of the hope of a starry
heaven after death, which then no earthly disk, as now,
shall intersect, but which shall arch itself around itself,

without beginning and without end.

If Socrateshumbled the proud Alcibiades with a map
of the world, so, when this in turn is annihilated by a
chart of the heavens, must our pride and sorrow on the
earth be still more put to the blush. Albano was ashamed
to think of himself, when he looked up into the immense
VOL. II. 2
26 TITAN.

ascending night above him, wherein days and morning

twihghts abide and move. He edified himself and his

teacher when he spoke of this : how even now overhead,

in the immensity, spring-times and paradises of new-born
worlds and thundering * suns and earths burning up are
flying across each other's paths, and we stand here below
like deaf men under the sublime hurricane, and the roar-
ing tempest and torrent shows itself to us, so far off, only
as a still, stationary, white rainbow on the brow of night.
As often as Albano's great eye came back from heaven,
it found the earth brighter and lighter. But at length the
night came, which the hostile spirit had already so long
lived in anticipation. It was already very late, and the
heavens quite serene ; the nebulae crowded down nearer,
as higher market-towns f the sky seemed more white
;

than blue. Albano thought of the hidden loved one,

who, were she by his side, would still more consecrate
the heavens and himself with her heartful of unceasing
prayers ; when suddenly, through his lowered telescope,
he espied light in the Blumenbühl church, — the princely
vault open, — Liana kneeling at the altar, with uplifted
hands, — and an old man near her, as if blessing her.
Fearfully stood the torch-flames and Liana's face and
arms upside down ; for the telescope caused everything to

appear inverted.
Albano, shuddering, begged the astronomer to look that

way. He too saw the apparitions, to him, however, name-

less. " There are probably people in the church," said

* Angels' Song in Faust, where the sun completes his course with
Donnergang, — Tr.
t Nebelfleckenand Marktflecken are the German words Flecken, ;

like our spot, having two meanings, as if we should say spots of mist
and dwelling-s/?o<s. Tk.—
 ! !

HEART-SINKING OF LIANA. 2?

he, indifferently. But Albano rushed down, — hardly al

lowing the astonished astronomer time to call out aftei

him with an invitation to the total eclipse of the sun to-

morrow, — and ran toward Blumenbühl. How his heart

wore itself out in the race, and most of all in the hollows,
where he lost sight of the illuminated church, must remain
a secret, because it was hidden even from himself in the
tempest of his feelings. At last he saw the white church
before him, but the church-windows were without any
light. He knocked hard at the iron church-door, and
!
cried, " Open " he heard only the echo in the empty
church, and nothing more.
So he went back, with a stormy past in his bosom, through
the sleeping night the earth was to him a spirit-island,
:

the spirit-islands were to him earths his being, his city ;

of God was burning up, he felt.

It lay on the morrow still in full glow, when the Lector

came to him, and brought him the incomprehensible mes-
sage from Liana, that she wished, about noon, to speak
with him alone in Lilar. He was not this time enraged
against the suspected messenger, and said, full of w^onder,
*'
Yes." With what bold, adventurous forms does our life-
cloud rise to heaven, ere it disappears

80. CYCLE.

LETOn us go to Liana, with whom

the morning after the illuminated night she
the riddles dwell
felt,

upon reflection, for the first time, the horrible effort with
which she had kept the promise of silence made to her
parents ; she sank down with unstrung energies, but also
with renewed and ardent fidelity. " What," she kept con-
tinually saying to herself, — "what then had this noble
 28 TITAN.

man done to deserve that I should cause him a whole

evening full of pangs ? How often he looked at me im-
ploringly and judgingly ! O that I might have been per-
mitted to hold up thy beautiful head, when thou leanedst it

heavily against the rough pine-bark !

" "What had made
her most melancholy in the heavy midnight had been his
silent disappearance ; how often had she looked up at
his thunder-house outwardly illuminated with lamps, while
within only darkness lay at the window ! Now she felt

how near he dwelt to her soul ; and she wept the whole
morning over the night, and the ray of love stung her
more and more hotly, just as burning-glasses bring the
sun before us more potently when it looks down just after
rain. The mother showed her gratitude to her to-day for
her yesterday's sacrifice in keeping her word by returning
love and confidence; though the father did not by any
means, since with him one was as little saved by good
I works as with the elder Lutherans, but only damned for
the want of them even now, however, when the parents
;

had drawn from the previous night the newest hopes of

renunciation, the daughter could not humor a single one
of them.
How often she thought of Gaspard's letter ! Is it a
shot-off arrow, which, with a wound on its poisonous
point, is on its slow way from Spain to Germany, or the
friendly light of a never yet seen fixed star, just entered
upon its distant track towards our lower world ?

Augusti had, however, received the letter even before

the night of the illumination, only he had not found good
reasons for delivering it. Here it is :
—
" I must needs value your anxiety very much, without,

however, adopting it. Albano's love for Mademoiselle

 LETTER FROM DON GASPARD. 29

von Fr., in whom I have already formerly remarked,

with great pleasure, a certain virtuosity * in virtue, so to
speak, secures us and him against the influence of the
ghostly machinery, and against connections of other kinds
which might well be more dangerous for his studies and
his warm blood. Only one must leave this kind of youth-
ful plays to their own course. If he becomes too closely
attached to her, then he may see to the denouement of
the affair. Why shall we cut this pleasure still shorter
for him, when you, too, ah^eady complain to me of the
sickliness of the fair one ? In the latter part of autumn
I shall see him. His brave, vigorous nature will know
well how to bear privation. Assure the Froulay house
of my best sentiments.
G. D. C."
The Lector would gladly have thrown this letter into
the paper-mill, so little was there in it that was " ostensi- 1

hle.'^ To be sure, Gaspard's murderously polished and .

pointed irony about Liana's sickliness, if he showed her

the letter, would still remain, to this innocent, unsuspect-
ing peace-princess, a sheathed blade. The north-wind of
egotism, too, which ran through the communication would
not, as it was, after all, a favorable side-wind for Albano's
prosperous passage through life, be felt or heeded by the
lovers ; but that was the very rub ; for she might look
upon Gaspard's disguised "No" as a "Yes," and just
fatally entangle herself in the thread whereby a friend
would draw her up over her steep precipice.
Meanwhile the letter must be delivered ; but he did it

with long, hesitating evasions, which were intended appar-

ently to withdraw the veil for her from the covered " No."

* A coqiietting with virtue as a virtuoso, of course Gaspare! means.

The word corresponds to religiosity. — Tk.
30 TITAN.

She read it with fear, smiled, weeping, at the murderous

irony, and said, softly, " Yes indeed !
" The Lector had
already half a hope in his eye. " If the knight," said

she, " thinks so, can I do less ? No, good Albano ; now
I remain true to thee. My life is so short, therefore let
it be cheering and devoted to him as long as is in my
power."
She thanked the Lector so warmly and pleasantly for
the arrow from Spain, that he had not the capacity of
being hard enough to thrust home its darkly poisoned end
into the fair heart. She begged him, for the sake of
sparing him, not to be present at her firm explanation
with her father, but rather, at most, out of indulgence
to her own and her mother's feelings, to take upon him-
self the task of making her explanation to her mother.
He consented simply to — both, instead of one, of these
things.

The gentle form stepped quietly into her father's pres-

ence, and there, shrinking not before thunder and light
ning, carried her explanation through to a close, saying
that she severely rued her disapproved love, that she
would bear all penalties, and do and suffer all, both heVe

and with the Princess, as " eher pere " should demand,
but that she dared not longer offend the innocent Count
of Zesara by the show of a most undutiful desertion. At
this address the Minister, who had suffered himself, in
consequence of her recent submissive self-denial, to be
lifted up by refreshing expectations, now stretched pros-
trate on the ground, dashed down from his Tarpeian rock,
could not utter a single sound but this :
" Imbecille ! thou
marriest Herr von Bouverot ; he takes thy picture to-

morrow thou sittest to him." He took her, with stern

;

hand and three terribly long strides, to his lady. " She
 THE UPPER AND NETHER MILLSTONES. 31

will remain," said he, " under guard in her chamber ; no

one may visit her except my son-in-law; he will paint
the Imbecille en miniatured " Go, Imbecille !
" said he,

beside himself. Her entire want of womanly cunning had

actually, to the statesman, drawn a curtain over her deep,
sharp eye. A straightforward man and mind resembles
a straight alley, which appears only half as long as one
which runs by crooks^ and turns.

The Lector, who never meant to be regarded as a

special amateur of connubial sham-fights, had already
taken himself off. The thirty years' war of the spouses
'
— for it only wanted a few years of that — gained life

and reinforcement. The old bridegroom diffused over his

face that convulsive smile which, with some men, resem-
bles the convulsive quiver of the cork when it announces
the bite of the fish. He asked whether he were now
wrong in trusting neither daughter nor mother, both of
whom he charged with a partisan understanding against
him, and insisted that now, after such proofs, he ought not
to be blamed either for stricter measures or for a straight-
forward march to his object ; and with the sitting, for

which the German gentleman had twice begged him, he

commenced the campaign. The Minister's lady, as a
punishment for Liana, remained silent on the subject of
so excessively great a present to Bouverot as a miniature '

likeness would be.

The tender daughter, jammed and crushed in the meet-
ing between two stone statues, represented to her mother,
that she could not possibly hold out under so long inspec- ,

tion of a man's eye, and least of all Herr von Bouverot's,

whose looks often went like thorns into her soul. Here-
upon the father replied and retorted in the mother's name,
by drawing a chair up to the desk, and inviting, on the
32 TITAN.

spot, the German gentleman to come to-morrow and paint.

Then Liana was sent away with a word which drew even
from this delicate flower the lightning-spark of a momen-
tary hatred.
The Imperial peace-protocol lay open now before the
two spouses, and there merely wanted some one to dic-
tate, when the Minister's lady rose up, and said, " You
must learn to respect me more."
She had the coach tackled, and drove off to the Court
Chaplain, Spener's. She knew Liana's respect for him,
and his omnipotence over her pious disposition. Even to
herself he was still imposing. Down from that earlier
theological age in which the Lutheran Father-confessor
still reigned nearer to the CathoUc, he had, through the
power and magnanimity of his character, brought a shep-
herd's staff, which was distinguished from a bishop's staff
only by being made of better wood. She must needs
narrate to him twice over Liana's relations the ardent, ;

indignant old man could not at all comprehend or believe

a love which must have been spun out right under his old
eyes without his knowledge. " Your excellence," he at
length answered, " has, indeed, committed a mistake in not
communicating to me this important circumstance before
to-day. How easily, with God's help, would I have con-
ducted all to a blessed issue However, there
! is nothing
lost. Let your excellence send the maiden this very
night to me, but alone, without you ; that must be done ;

"
then I stand pledged for the rest !

Objections and cautions would merely have inflamed

the old man's ambition and anger, — both which still

worked on beneath the ice of his hoary hair ; she therefore

confidently promised him all, with that subraissiveness,
which she had also transmitted as an inheritance to Liana.
 LIANA RENOUNCES ALBANO. 33

Right hopefully did Liana receive the command of a

night ride to the good, pious father. She started off with
only her devoted maiden. With deeply agitated soul she
appeared before her father-confessor. She opened herself
to him as to a God ; he decided just as if he were one.
What a sight for another eye less proud than Spener's
would have been this lowly, but composed saint, whose
heart, like a sunbeam, always appeared loveHest in its

breaking asunder.
But here the history moves in veils The old man !

commanded her maiden to stay behind, and took her alone

over into the silent Blumenbühl. He unlocked for her the
church, lighted a torch at the altar, in order that the deso-
late darkness might not play any prelude to her timid eye,
and completed what her parents could not.

How he extorted from her the promise to renounce her

Albano forever is a mystery watched and hidden by the
Great Sphinx of the oath which she swore to him, only —
the far-off man, who lost the fair soul, had from the ob-
servatory of the suns gazed at the bright church-windows
and discovered behind them disturbing apparitions, with-
out knowing that they were true, and decided his life.

She went back again coldly across the meadows and

mountains of old days, which had once been so bright, to
the dwelling of the old man, who dismissed her with greater
reverence than had marked his reception of her. On the
night-journey she was mute, and wrapped up in herself,
and exchanged not a word with her maiden. Her parents
still awaited her ; the mother looked anxiously out into the
night and into the future. At length the living carriage
rolled into the court. Great and mighty as one who, hav-
ing been executed in innocence, starts up into life again
before the dissector and, regarding him as the judge on
34 TITAN.

high, speaks with unfettered freedom and gladness, so did

she come into the presence of her parents : hke the cold
marble of a god's form, she stood there, pale, tearlessly
cold and calm. She knew it not, and she willed it not, but
she soared high over life, even beyond a child's love, she —
could not kiss her mother so fervently as once, she stood —
undismayed before her blustering father, and said, then,

without a tear, without emotion, without a blush, and with

soft voice, " I have this night renounced my love before
God. The pious father has convinced me." " And had
the man better reasons for it in petto than I ? " said Frou-
lay. " Yes," said she ;
" but I have sworn in the Tem-
ple to keep silence until time discloses all. Now I pray
you by the All-just One only to allow me to give him back
in person his letters, and tell him that I cease to be his,
not, however, from fickleness, but from duty ; I entreat
this, dear parents. Then may God dispose of the rest,
and I shall never be disobedient to you again." The
wretched father, puffed up still more by this triumph,
would fain have made this last prayer of the dying heart
bitter to her, and even insinuated a flying suspicion of the
motive of the interview ; but the mother, smitten in her
fair soul by the fairest, interceded warmly, and contemp-
tuously and arbitrarily decided in the affirmative. Nor
did Liana seem to take much notice of the paternal No.
When he had gone, the mother, weeping for bUss, snatched

the silent form to her embrace ; but Liana wept not so

easily upon her bosom as once out of love, whether it was

that her heart was too much exalted, or that it came back
just as slowly into the old condition as it went out of it.

" Receive thanks, daughter," said the mother ; " I shall

now make thy life more happy." " It was happy enough.
I was to die ; therefore I must needs love," said she. So
 ECLIPSE OF THE SUN AND THE SOUL. 35

she went smiling into the arms of sleep, with hard-beating

heart. But in dream it appeared to her as if she were
sinking away in a swoon, losing her mother, and struggling
up again fearfully out of the grasp of flying death, and then
weeping for joy that she lived again. Thereupon she
awoke, and the glad drops, softly released by the dream,
still flowed from her open eyes, and softened like a thaw-

ing-wind the stiff soil of life.

Ye great or blessed spirits above us ! When man here,

under the poor clouds of life, throws away his fortune, be-

cause he prizes it less than his heart, then is he as

blessed and as great as you. And we are all worthy of a
holier earth, because the sight of the sacrifice exalts, and <

does not oppress us, and because we shed burning tears,

not from pity, but from the deepest, holiest love and joy.

81. CYCLE.
WARMLY day, like the
and brilhantly did the sun, who to-
unhappy one, was to be eclipsed,
begin his morning race. Liana awoke on the burial-day
of her love, not with yesterday's strength, but faint and
languid, somewhat cheered, however, by the prospect of a
return of her peaceful time. The mother, although her-
self sickly, pressed her, early in the morning, to her heart,
in order to prove the pulse of the heart most precious
to her. Liana looked affectionately and yearningly, with
moist eye, into her moist eye a long time, and was silent.
"What wilt thou ? " asked her mother. " Mother, love

me more now, as I am alone," said she. Then in her

mother's presence she bound together all Albano's letters,

without reading them, except the one in which he begs

her brother for his love. She sported with her mother,
 "

36 TITAN.

as fate does with us and as poor parents do with their

children, who at first give them bright, gay garments, be-
cause these are more easily dyed into dark ones.
Her mother sought gradually to take away from her
her spiritual fantasies, the death-moss, as it were, which
clung sucking to her green, young life. "Thou seest,'*
said she, " how thy angel can err, since he approved thy
love, which thou now condemnest." But she had an
answer: "No, the pious father said, it had been right
until the time when he told me the secret, and that the
Bible says, one must forsake everything for love." Thus,
then, does this poor creature, as they tell of the bird of
Paradise, soar straight upward in heaven, until she drops
down dead.
She manifested to her mother almost a feverish gayety,
— a sunshine on the last day of the year. She said, how
it refreshed her, that she could now speak freely with her
dear mother of her former lovely days. She portrayed
to her Albano's great, glowing heart, and how he deserved
the sacrifice, and the " pearly hours " which they had
lived together. "After all," said she, cheerfully, but in
such a way that tears came into the hearer's eyes, " noth-

ing of it has really passed away. Remembrances last

longer than present reality, as I have conserved blossoms

many years, but never fruits." Yes, there are tender
female souls which intoxicate themselves only among the
blossoms of the vineyard of joy, as others do only with
the berries of the vine-hill. The Lector's note arrived
with the intelligence that Albano was awaiting her in
Lilar.
Now, as the hour of interview drew so near, she grew
more and more uneasy. " If I can only persuade him,"
!
said she, " that I have acted as an upright maiden
 LIANA GOES TO MEET ALBANO. 37

Before exchanging her morning chamber for the mourn-

ing-carriage, she set all things to rights there for drawing,
when she should return ; she had, she said, had a very
bad dream, but she hoped it would not come to pass.

With her work-basket on her arm, in which the letters

lay, she stepped into the carriage, which they had to open,
because its sultry air oppressed her. But the sultriness
was the breath and atmosphere of her own spirit, and
everything beautiful which met her became to her to-day
a benumbing poison-flower. Fearfully she kept grasping
and pressing the hand of her mother, because every cry,
every form that darted by, fluttered over her like a rus-
tling storm-bird ; a crier, with his rough tone, cut across
her nerves ; they trembled more gently again, only when
a pastor and his servant passed by with the sick-cup for
the evening drink of weary people. O, the fair way
was long to her ! She had so long to hold together
with fainting powers the breaking heart, which was to
speak so firmly and decidedly and distinctly with her
beloved.
The sky was blue, and yet neither of them remarked
that it was beginning to be dark without clouds, since the
moon already stood with her night upon the sun. As
they passed over the woodland bridge into the living
Lilar, where on all branches hung the old bridal-dresses
of a decorated past, Liana said, with intense earnestness, to
her mother :
" For God's sake, not into the old castle of
the dead !
"* " But which way then ? That is his ren-
dezvous," said the mother. " Anywhere else, into the —
Dream-temple. He sees us already ; yonder he goes
over the gates," said she. " God Almighty be with thee,
and speak not long," said the weeping mother, as she went
* Where the Prince had died and she had been made blind.
 ;

38 TITAN.

from her into the temple, in whose mirrors she could

behold the parting of the innocent beings.
Albano came slowly along down through the walks ; he
had cleared his eye of tears and his heart of storms. O,
how had he hitherto, like a long-tossed mariner, peered
into his dark clouds, in order between their misty peaks
to discover the mountain-peaks of a green continent !
—
that he was to-day to lose so much, namely all, his most
mournful conclusions had not gone so far as that ; nay, he
maintained so much tranquillity, that he sent back over-
head the little Pollux, who came dancing after, not with
threats, but with presents.
At last he stood with quivering lips before the beloved,

beautiful form, who, childlike, pale, trembling, and watch-

ing her work-basket, looked upon him a Httle, and then
struggled with her sinking eyes. Then his heart melted
the flood of old love rushed back high into his life.

Liana," said he, in the softest tone, and drops fell from
his eyes, " art thou still my Liana ? I am the same as
still

ever; and hast thou too not changed?" But she could
not say no. A gash was made into the arteries of her
life, and tears sprang up instead of blood. His good form,
his familiar, brotherly voice stood again so near to her, and
his hand held hers again, and yet all was over ; a hot sun-
glance flashed across her former flowery garden-life, and
showed it in a melancholy illumination, but it lay far from
her. " Let us," he went on, " be strong now at this singu-

lar meeting again. Tell me very briefly everything, why

thou hast hitherto been so silent and done so. I have
nothing to say, — then let all be forgotten." He had
unconsciously raised her hand, but the hand pressed itself

down and trembled withal. "

Dost thou tremble, or do
I ? " said he. " I, Albano," said she, " but not from any
 "

LIANA REVEALS ALL. 39

fault : I am true, O God, I am true even unto death !

He looked upon her with a wild, wondering look. " To

yau, to you I am so, but it is all over," she cried, con-
founded and confounding. "No," she added, command-
ingly, as he was accidentally on the point of going with
her out of the perspective range of the Dream-temple, —
" no, my mother wishes to see us from the Dream-temple
yonder."
He grew red at the maternal espionage ; his eye flashed
into hers a certain resentment against the " you," and his
hot looks wanted to di^aw out of her agitated face the
delaying riddle. Necessity commanded strength ; she
began.
" Here " — she stammered, and could hardly raise the
basket for trembhng, " your letters to me !
" He took
them gently. "I have resigned you," she continued ; " my
parents are not to blame, although they did not like our
love. There is a mystery, which concerns merely you
and your happiness, that has constrained me to part from
you and from every joy." " Do you wish your letters

too ? " said he. " My parents — " said she. " The mys-
tery about me ? " said he. " An oath binds me," said
she. "Last night in the church at Blumenbühl before
the priest ? " he asked. She covered her eyes with her
hand and nodded slowly.
" O God !
" cried he, weeping aloud, " is it thus with
life and joy and all truth ? So ? How ye have lied " —
he looked at his letters
— "about eternal fidelity and love!
Whom did you mean then, ye hellish liars ? " He flung
them away. Liana was about to pick them up he trod ;

on them violently, and looked bitterly upon the affrighted

one. Now he fell into a storm, and drew and poured out,
like a water-wheel during the influx of the floods, his
 ;

40 TITAN.

tumultuous, suffering breast, and ceased not his cruel

pictures of his love, her weakness, her coldness, his pain,
her former oaths, and her present violated one about his
mysterious fortune, which he said he did not want at all.

Her silence wrought him up to a wilder whirl. Her quick,

intense breathing he heard not.
" Do not torment thyself. It is all impossible now," she
answered, imploringly. " 0," said he indignantly, " I will
not re-change the change, for the Lector and the Pope
would again change that !
" He fell now into that indura-
tion and palsy of the heart which is pecuhar to man ; the
stream of love hung as a frozen, jagged waterfall over the
rocks.
" I did not think thou wert so hard," said she, and smiled
strangely. " I am harder still," said he ;
" I speak as thou

actest." " Leave off, leave off, Albano, — it grows so

dark to me. O, I will instantly to my !
mother " she cried
suddenly. The two old black spiders, let down by Fate,
stood again over her fair eyes and overspun them, busily
spinning, with a closer and closer web and over
; the golden
strips of life already grew a gray mould.
" It is the solar eclipse," said he, ascribing the blind-
ness to the faintly gleaming sickle of the quarter-sun.
He saw overhead in the blue heaven the lunar lump cast
like a gravestone into the pure sun. Not so much as a
real shadow, but only enervated shadows lived in the un-

certain gray light ; the birds fluttered timidly around

cold shudders played like ghosts of the noonday hour in
the little, faint lustre which was neither sunlight nor moon-
light. Gloomy, gloomy lay life before the youth ; through
the long black marble colonnade of the years sorrows came
stalking on like panthers, and grew brightly spotted under
the retreating sun-glances of the past.
 — ";

THE DOUBLE ECLIPSE. 41

" This is indeed very fitting for to-day," he continued ;

"such a sudden night without evening-twilight. Lilar

must be covered up to-day. Look up at the moon,
how darkly it has rolled over the sun ; once she too was
!
our friend. O, make it still gloomier, utter night
" Albano, forbear ; I am innocent, and I am blind.

Where is the temple and my mother ? " she cried, moan-

ing ; the spiders had fast closed the wet, tearful eyes.
" By {lie Devil, it is the eclipse of the sun !
" said he, and
gazed into the blindly groping, timid face, and guessed all
but he could not weep, he could not console. The black
tifjer of the most cruel anguish hun<? clamberins; on his
breast and carried him away. " No, no," said Liana, " I
am blind, and I am innocent too."
Little Pollux, made happy by his presents, had led along
a begging mute, who followed with the ringing mute's-
bell. " The dumb man cannot say anything," said Pollux.
Liana cried, " Mother, mother ! my dream comes, the
death-bell tolls."
The JVIinister's lady rushed out. " Your daughter," said
Albano, " is blind again, and God send the father and the
mother, and whoever is to blame for it, their retribution of
misery." " What is the matter ? " cried Spener, sudden-

ly stepping out, who had previously seen the meeting, and

had come to the mother. " A wretched maiden ;
your
work too !
" replied Albano.

" Farewell, unhappy Liana " said he, and was about to !

depart but stopped, and after gazing wildly on the beau-

;

tiful, tortured countenance which wept with its blind eyes,

he cried, " Dreadful " and went away. !

Long did he lie, up in the thunder-house, with his eyes

buried in his arms, and when he at last, and quite late,

without knowing where he was, roused himself, as from a

42 TITAN.

dream, he saw the whole landscape illumined by a serene

day, the sunshine unveiled and warm in the pure blue,
and the close carriage with the blind one rolled rapidly
across the woodland bridge. Then Albano sank down
again on his arms.
 NINETEENTH JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Office of Comforter. —
Arcadia. — Bouverot's
Portrait-Painting.

82. CYCLE.
""OW that Albano lived without love or hope ;

now that he had seen the polar-star of his life

fall like a shooting-star into a wilderness still

as death ; now that every one of his actions

and every recollection darted out a scorpion-sting, and he

sent back Liana's letters, forsook Lilar, the house of the
Doctor, the Lector, Liana's relatives, and the pious father;
now that he directed his face, gradually growing pale,
only to books and stars ; men who know no higher sorrow
than selfish sorrow must needs imagine that nothing weighs
upon bosom but the ruins and rubbish of the shattered
his
air-castles of his hope and youthful love. But he was
more nobly unhappy and disconsolate he was so, because :

he had for the first time made a human creature and the
best of beings miserable, — his beloved blind ! Into this
abyss of his heart all neighboring fountains of sorrow
flowed together. The smallest gayly-painted shards of his
urn of fortune were as if shattered afresh, when he heard
from day to day that the poor girl, although daily stationed
in the bath-house before the healing fountains, was nev-
ertheless brought back each time without a ray of light
44 TITAN.

or hope, and that she now feared nothing more, lament-

ed nothing more on this robbers' earth, than that death
might perhaps close her eyes before they had seen her
mother again.
0, the wound of conscience is no scar, and time cools
it not with his wing, but merely keeps it open with his

scythe! Albano called back toremembrance Liana's

bitter entreaty for indulgence ; and then it was no conso-
lation to him, that, during that eclipse of the sun, he had
not wished to sacrifice her eyes, but only her heart. In
the burning-glass and magnifying-mirror of consequences
fate shows us the light, playing worms of our inner man
as grown-up and armed furies and serpents. How many
sins pass through us unseen and with soft looks, like
nightly robbers, because, like their sisters in dreams, they
steal not out from the circle of the breast, and get no
outward object to fall upon and strangle. The fair soul

readily detects in an accident a sin. Only those hard

stormers of heaven and earth before whose triumphal
chariots there starts up beforehand a wagon-rampart full
of wounds and corpses, —
that is, the fathers of war,
which, in the long course of history, ministers have oftener
been than princes, — only these can calmly kindle all the
volcanoes of earth, and let all their lava-torrents stream

down, merely that they may have — fair prospects. They

manure Elysian fields into a battle-field, in order to raise
therein a redder rose-bush for a mistress.
The first thing Albano did, when he arrived at the
Doctor's house, was to trudge out of it down into the

remote valley town, in order neither to see the suspected

Lector, still less to hear daily the malicious Doctor Sphex

upon the relapse of the blindness. Only the faithful

Schoppe jogged off with him, especially as he, by a well-

 ;

SCHOPPE, THE COMIC COMFORTER. 45

adapted course of behavior, had contrived to get up an

opposition party against himself in the Sphex family,
which could no longer suffer him in the house. The
Librarian's warmth toward the Count had grown very
much with the Lector's coldness, and on similar grounds.
The bold march out to Lilar and the passionate wildness
of the youth had fastened him more closely to Albano's
side. " I thought at first," said Schoppe, " the young
man was coming to be nothing but an elderly one, when
I saw him stalking along so to school. I often held the
man in the moon — where notoriously, from an absence of
thirst and atmosphere, there is nothing to drink — to be a
greater tippler than he. But at last he strikes out. A
youth must not, like old Spener, represent everything in '

bird's-eye perspective, from the apex downward. He

must, in the beginning, like incipients in authors' studies
and painters' studios, make all lines a little too large,
because the little ones come of themselves. There are
thunder-steeds, but no thunder-asses and thunder-sheep
as, however, the tutors and lectors would be glad if there
were, and would be glad to have such to drive along
before them, — they who, like the billiard-markers, suffer

no open fire in the pipe, but only one under cover."

Albano lived alone now among books. Liana's brother
came to him seldom, and then ice-cold, and said nothing
of the patient, although he always stayed for her sake. As
he himself had once woven the first web of her blindness,
he must, of course, especially with his impainted fire of
love for his sister, have a real hatred for him who had

drawn it over her again ; so Albano thought, and gladly

bore it as a punishment. So much the oftener did the
Captain let himself be drawn to the German gentleman's,
upon whose good graces he now, contrary to what was to
46 TITAN.

be expected, always won. It is a question — that is to say,

there can be no question — whether his talent and inclina-

tion for winding himself around the most unlike men was
not mere coldness toward all hearts, all of which he only
travels over, because he does not mean to dwell in any one.
Rabette, also, wrote the Count several bills of impeach-
ment about the Captain's growing coolness. In one she
even says, " Could I only see thee, in order for once to
have some one who would let me weep, for laughter I
have not for a considerable time any longer known." The
good Albano entered this desertion also upon his sin-

register, as if it were grandchild to his devil's children.

The Princess prevailed occasionally to allure him out

of solitude, when she put the gentle bird-whistle to her
fair lips. She seemed, for the father's sake, to take a
veritable interest in the melancholy son, who showed no
grief, to be sure, but also no joy. Besides, the masculine
woman, more helmeted than hooded, loves to place the
pillow of rest under the sick head, and under the faint
head her arm as a chair-back ; and such a one consoles
fondly and tenderly, often more tenderly than the too
feminine woman. Almost every day she visited her
future court-dame and visionary sister * at the Minister's,
and could therefore tell the lover all about her. Mean-
while, she acted as if she knew nothing of Albano's rela-
tions to the blind one ;
— the very dissembling betrays
tender forbearance toward two beings at once, Albano
said ; — so she could freely give him all the medical

* Gesichts-scJiwester. Visionary is here used in the sense of seen in

vision, as in the line where ^neas describes seeing Hector's ghost,

*'
I wept to see the visionary man."

The reference probably is to the scene in the dream-temple, where

Liana personated Idoine, Cycle 78. — Tr.
 SCHOPPE'S PLASTER-OF-PARIS CURE. 47

reports of the fair sufferer's case, as well as the opinions

entertained about her in general. After the manner of
the strongwomen, she bestowed upon her all just praise,
without any petty womanish deduction, and wished nothing
so much as her restoration and future company.
"I am capable of doing everything for an uncommon
woman, as well as everything against a common one,"
said she,and asked whether his father had already writ-
ten him about her plan with Liana. He said no, and
begged her for it. She referred him, however, to the
paternal letter, which must soon come. She found fault
only with Liana's propensity to be always embroidering
fantasy-flowers into the groundwork of her life, and called
her a rich Baroque pearl.
But from all these conversations Albano returned only
more confused to Schoppe he heard only lip-solace, and
;

the death-sentence, that the long-suffering soul from whom

he had stolen creation was becoming more and more
immured in the deepest cavern of life, near which only
the deeper one of the grave lies bright and open. Every
soft, soothing, warm gale wafted to him by the sciences or
by human beings passed over that cold cavern, and became
to him a sharp norther. O, had he been called to release
her from his sinking arms amidst lovely days, into a long,
eternal Paradise, and had she forgotten him in the intoxi-
cation of rapture, he too could have forgotten that ; but
that he should have thrust her away into a cold realm of
shadows, and that she must needs remember him for
sorrow, — this must he forever remember.
Schoppe knew no " plaster " for all this distress (to use

his own fine play on words) " except the plaster of

Paris," * namely, an excursion. At least, he concluded,
* Stein-pßaster means pavement — Tr.
 ;

TITAN.

when one is out in the country, all inquiries about one's

health are done with, and all these poisonous anxieties
about the answer; and on return one finds much pain
spared or in fact all the trouble gone.
Albano obeyed his last friend ; and they rode off into
the Principality of Haarhaar.

83. CYCLE.
WHOEVER thinks that Schoppe, on the way,
was to Albano a flying field-lazaretto of con-
solation,— an antispasmodicum, — a Struve's table of ail-

ments and remedies, — a pulverized Fox's lung for the

and
hectic of the heart, &c., every milestone
that at he
delivered a consolatory sermon, — whoever thinks so,

Schoppe himself laughs him to scorn.

"What then," said he, " if misfortune does knead a
young man thoroughly and soundly in her kneading-trough ?
The next time, he, w^ho now in the power of grief, will
is

I
have her in his power. Whoso has never borne anything,
never learns to bear up under anything." * As regards
weeping, he, as a Stoic, was, as may well be imagined, an
enemy to it at least Epictetus, Antonine, Cato, and sev-
;

eral such, men made less of ice than of iron, would very
-•ii*^ willingly, as he so often said, have allowed the body these
f
extreme unctions of sorrow, provided only the spirit be-
neath and behind all had kept itself dry. The true
disconsolateness is to desire and to accept consolation
why will not one then for once just go through with the
pang out and out without any physic ?

* Or one might paraphrase Schoppfe's half-punning and half-pro-

verbial saying:"Who has never known her durance, never learns
en(fMrawce."—Tk.
 SCHOPPS ON A WORLD'S RUINS. 49

But his view of things and his actual life became,

without his express intention, powerful over the Count,
whom everything great only enlarged, as it belittles

others. Schoppe sat like a Cato upon ruins, but, to be

sure, upon the greatest of all ; if the wise man ought to
be a barometer-tube at the Equator, in which even the
tornado produces little displacement, he was a wise man.
Accidentally he tore open the Count's glued-up wings at
an inn by means of the Hamburg Impartial Correspondent,
which he found lying there. Schoppe read aloud out of it

two extensive battles, wherein, as by an earthquake, lands

instead of houses were buried, and whose wounds and
tears only the evil genius of the earth could be willing to

know; thereupon he read, — after the death-marches of

whole generations, and the rending open of the craters of
humanity, — with uninterrupted seriousness, the notices,
under the head of Intelligence, where one solitary indi-

vidual mounts upon an unknown little grave and announ-

ces and asseverates to the world, which surely condoles
with him, — " Frightful was the blow which laid our child
of five weeks — " ; or, " In the bitterest anguish which

ever — "
;
or, " Overwhelmed with the loss of our father
in the eighty-first year of his age," &c.
Schoppe said, he pronounced that to be right ; for every
distress, even a universal one, after all, housed itself only
in one individual breast ; and were he himself lying on
a red battle-field full of fallen sheaves, he would sit up
among them, if only he could, and deliver to those lying
around him a short funeral sermon upon his shot-wound.
" So has Galvani observed," he said, " that a frog which
stands in electrical relations quivers as often as thunder
rolls over the earth."
He adhered to this position, also, out of doors. He
VOL. II. 3 D
 ;

TITAN.

cited with disapprobation what Matthison remarks, — as a

traveller's note by the way, — that in the modern town,
Avenches, in Switzerland, on the site of the Helvetian
capital, Aventicum, which was by the Romans,
laid in ruins

J
the plan of the streets and walls may be traced by the
thinner strips of grass ; whereas, in fact, the same stereo-
graphic projections of the past lay manifestly all about in
every meadow, — every mountain was the shore of a
deluged old world ; every spot here below was actually
six thousand years old and a relic ; all was churchyards
and ruins on the earth, particularly the earth itself
" Heavens !
" he continued, " what is there, in fact, which
is not already gone by, — nations, fixed stars, female
virtue, the best Paradises, many just men, all Reviews,
Eternity a parte ante, and just now even my feeble
description of all this ? Now, if life is such a game of

nothingness, one must prefer to be card-painter rather

than king of cards'^
A vigorous, high-minded man, like Albano, will hardly,
then, in the midst of thirty -years' wars, last days, emigrat-
ing nations, crumbling suns, strip oflf his coat, and exhibit
to himself or the universe the ruptured vein which bleeds
on his breast.

So stood matters, when the two friends at evening

climbed a half-open woodland height, from which they
saw below them a wonderful glory-land, so friendly and
foreign, as if it were the remains of a time when the
whole earth was still warm, and an ever-green orient
land. It seemed, so far as they could see for the trees
and the evening-sun, to be a valley formed by the angle
of mutually approaching mountains, and stretching away
immeasurably toward the west. A party-colored wind-
mill, flinging round its broad wings before the sun, con-
 THE VILLAGE OF ARCADIA.

fused the eye, which would fain analyze the throng of

evening lights, gardens, sheep, and children ; on both steeps
white-clad children, with long, green hat-ribbons flowing
behind them, were keeping watch ; a motley Swissery
ran through the meadow-green along the dark brook ; on
a high-arched hay-wagon there drove along a peasant-
woman, dressed as if for a marriage festival, and at the
side went country-people in Sunday finery ; the sun with-
drew behind a colonnade of round, leafy oaks, those — /

German liberty-trees and temple-pillars, and they —

soared aloft, transfigured and magnified in the golden blue.
At this moment the surprised travellers saw the shaded
Dutch village near below, — composed, as it were, of neat,
painted garden-houses clustered together, with a linden-
circle in the middle, and a young, blooming hunter not
far off, Amazon, who with one hand took off her
or an
hat, stuck full of twigs, and with the other let the cross-

beam with the bucket mount high over the well.

" My friend," inquired Schoppe of an official messen-
ger who came behind them with tin-plate and knapsack,
" what do you call this village ? " " Arcadia," was the
reply. " But to speak without any poetic white-heat or
culminating of fancy, my poetic friend, how is that can- i

ton down below there properly named ? " asked Schoppe

again. Petulantly the official messenger answered, " Ar-
cadia, I say, if you cannot retain it, — it is an old crown-
domain ; our Princess Idone (Idoine) keeps herself there
year in and year out for constancy, and does everything
there at her own pleasure ; what will you have more ? "
" Are you, too, in Arcadia ? " * " No, in Sowbow," an- {

swered the messenger, very loud, over his shoulders, for

he was already five steps ahead.

* Schoppe here alhides to the poem of Schiller, " Auch ich war in
Arcadien geboren." — Tr.
52 TITAN.

The Librarian, who saw his friend in great commotion

at the messenger's discourse, put to him joyfully the ques-

tion, whether they could have found better night-quarters

than these, except these very same in the moon of May.
But how was he astounded at Albano's plunging back
into the limbo which conscience and his love had kin-
dled! Idoine's illusive resemblance to Liana had sud-
denly flashed across his thoughts. " Know'st thou," said
he, continuing to tremble more violently in his agitation
by reason of the magic of evening, " wherein Idoine is

unlike her? She can see," he himself added, "for she

has not seen me yet. O forgive, forgive, firm man ! truly
I am not always She is dying at this moment, or
so.

some calamity or other draws near to her like a smoke ;

before a conflagration, it mounts up duskily and in long

clouds within my soul. I must absolutely go back."
" Believe me," said Schoppe, " I shall one day tell you
all that I now think ; for the present, however, I will
spare you." Neither did this, however, produce any
effect; he turned about; but through the whole of the
next day's journey his cup of sorrow, which Schoppe had
scoured so shiny, continued to be stained with moisture
and blackness. They could not arrive till evening, when
a magic mist of twilight, moonlight, smoke, vapor, and
cloud-red made the city a somewhat strange place. Al-
bano's eagle eye clove the smoke in twain, and it vanished.
He saw only the blind Liana, on the high Italian roof,

run against the statues, or headlong down over the edge.

Wildly, and without uttering a sound, he ran through the
deep streets, — lost sight of the Palace buried in build-
ings, and ran so much the more furiously ; he imagined
to find her crushed to atoms on the pavement, — he sees
the white statues again, she holds one entwined within
 !

LIANA'S COMFORTS IN HER BLINDNESS. 53

her arms, and the old gardener, he of the Oereus serpens,

stands with his hat on his head before her. When, at

length, he arrived directly under the walls of the Palace,

there stood overhead a strange maiden beside her, and
below women, running together, looked up, asking one
another, " God, what is the matter now ? " Liana looked
(so it seemed) to the heavens, wherein only a few stars
burned, and then for a long space into the moon, and then
down upon the people ; but directly she stepped back
from the statues. The gardener came out of the court,
and said, as he passed, to his inquiring wife, " She can
see." " O my good man," said Albano, " what do you
say ? " " Only just go up there !
" he replied, and strode
busily away. moment came Bouverot on foot,
At this —
Albano, with a short bow and greeting, stepped across his
path. Bouverot looked at him a moment " I have not :

the honor of your acquaintance," said he, wildly, and

hurried off.

84. CYCLE.

TAKEdaynowwhenthe
a neai-er look at the bhnd Liana
her mother bore her home, a ruined
! From

creature, there gradually began for her, under her solar

eclipse, a cooler and a tranquil life. Earth had changed ;

her duties towards it seemed rolled off from her ; the

silver-glance of youth, Hke a human look, now blinded;
her short joys, those little May-flowers, plucked off already
under the morning-star ; the object of her first love, alas

as her mother had predicted, not so tender as she had ?

thought, but very masculine, rough, and wild, hke her

father, time and the future extinguished, and the coming
days for her only a blind, painted show-gate, which men's
hands do not open, and through which she can no longer
 ;

54 TITAN.

force her way, except with her unencumbered soul, when

it has thrown back on the earth the heavy traihng mantle
of tlie flesh.

Herheart clung now —

as Alban o did to a man's —
more than ever to a female heart, which beat more ten-
derly and without the fever of the passions just as the ;

compass-needle shows itself as a spiral lily, so did virtue

show itself to her as female beauty.
Her mother never left her blind-chair ; she read to her,
even the French prayers, and kept her up by consolation
and she was easily consoled, for she saw not her mother's
distressed face, and heard only the quiet tones of her
voice. Julienne, since the burial of the first love, had
thrown oflP an old crust, and a fresh flame for her friend
sprang up in her heart. " I have dealt by thee honestly,"
said she, upon one occasion ; then they secretly declared
themselves to each other, and then their souls, like flower-
leaves, Hnked themselves together to fonn one sweet cup.
The Princess spoke seriously about studies and sciences,
and gained even the mother, whom in men's society she
had pleased less. At evening, before retiring, Caroline
flew down, still, as from the heaven of joy, into her realm
of shadows, and grew daily in brilhancy and beauty of
complexion, but spoke no more ; and Liana fell softly to

sleep, while they looked upon each other.

At times a pang came to her when she thought that

she should perhaps never see her precious parents, espe-
cially her mother, any more ; then it seemed to her as if

she were herself invisible and already making her pil-

grimage alone down the deep, dark avenue to the next

world and heard her friends and companions at the gate
far behind calling after her. Then she tenderly sent her
love over, as if out of death, and rejoiced in the great
 ! ;

FROULAY AND BOUVEROT PLOTTING. 55

reunion. Spener visited his pupil daily ; his manly voice,

full of strengthening and solace, was, in her darkness, the

evening-prayer-bell, which leads the traveller out of tlie

dusky thicket back to the more cheerful lights. Thus was

her holy heart drawn up to still greater heights of holi-
ness, and the dark passion-flowers of her sorrows shut
themselves up to sleep in the tepid night of blindness.
How different are the sufferings of the sinner and those of

the saint ! The former are an eclipse of the moon, by

which the dark night becomes still blacker and wilder
the latter are a solar eclipse, which cools off the hot day,
and casts a romantic shade, and wherein the nightingales
begin to warble.
In this way Liana maintained, in the midst of the sighs
of others around her, and in the tempestuous weather that
enveloped her, a tranquil, healing bosom. So does the
tender white cloud often in the beginning hurry away, a
torn and tattered fugitive through the heavens, but at last
move along in rounded form and slow pace overhead
there, when down below the storm still sweeps over the

earth, and whirls and tears everything. But, good Liana,

all the thirty-two winds, let them waft pleasant days to
thee or blow them away, hold on longer than the dead
calm of repose

85. CYCLE.
HE Minister, when she came home from Lilar with
X murdered eyes, had set in his right eye a hell, and

into his left a purgatory, for no fatality had ever before

so cheated him, namely, so completely upset all his
projects and prospects, — the ofl&ce of court-dame for his
daughter, that ring guard on the finger of the Princess, and
finally every chance of a haul with his double-woven net.
56 TITAN.

Unspeakably did the man struggle against the spoon in

which fate offered him the powder wherein he was to let

the swallowed diamonds of his plans go down ; he delivered

the strongest sermons, — so did he, like Horace, name his
Satires against " his women " ; he was a war-god, a hell-

god, a bea^t, a monster, a satan, — everything; — he was in

a frame now to undertake anything and — but everything,
what availed it ?— Much, when German gentlemanthe
surprised him just in this mood of moral feeling. He
made no scruple of refreshing the paternal memory on the
subject of the promised sitting of the daughter for a minia-
ture, and asserting his claim to it ; for the rest he was all-

knowing, and seemed to know nothing. For the sitting-

scene of a blind girl he had cut out certain original, ro-
mantic situations, according to the notices which he had

drawn out of the Captain. His artistic love for Liana

had hitherto suffered little, and his slow, stealthy advances
and reconnoitrings were in accordance with his viper-
coldness and his w^orldsman-like energy. The old father
— who in life, as in an imperial advertiser, always sought a
partner with 60-80,000 dollars for his business — declared
himself anything but averse to the match. These two
falcons on one pole, trained by one falcon-master, the
Devil, understood and agreed with each other excellently
well. The German gentleman gave to understand that
her miniature-likeness would, through her striking resem-
blance to Idoine, who, like her, had never been willing to
sit, be serviceable for many a piece of pleasantry with the
Princess, but still more indispensable to his " flame " for
Liana, and just now, in her blindness, one might, indeed,
sketch her without her knowledge, — and he would write
under the picture, La belle aveugle, or something of the
kind. The old ÜMinister, as was said, swallowed the idea
 TWO TIGERS DIGGING A GRAVE. 57

with perfect gout. As the Italian female singers carry a

so-called mother instead of a passport on their journeys, so
did he regard himself as in a similar sense a so-called
father ; he thought to himself : at all events there is little
more to be done with the girl ; she lies there as so much
dead capital, and pays a miserable interest ; I can take the
god-penny-medal which the German gentleman in his god-
fatherly capacity offers to me as the father like a name for
the child, and just put it in my pocket.
This duplicate of rogues was held back in mid-current
merely by a drag-rake, which threatened to draw the prey
out of their pike-like teeth. An old, scolding, but true-
Nuremberg was the rake she
souled chambermaid from ;

could not be drawn away from Liana, or reduced to

silence. Bouverot, to be sure, a Eobespierre and destroy-
ing angel to his servants, would, in Froulay's place, have
caused the Nuremberg dame, a couple of days before-
hand, to be furnished by a servant with some complex
fractures, and then thrown upon the street ; but the Min-
ister — his heart was soft — could not do that. All that
was possible for him was this : He sent for her to his
chamber represented
;
to her that she had stolen his
Magdeburg ear ;
remained, in his present state of hear-
ing, deaf to every objection, but not to every incivility,

and at last found himself under the necessity (a word and

a blow) of driving the thievish wench out of service.
With every successor to the office, as being a new one,
money would have weight, he knew.
He proposed thereupon to beg of the Princess an invi-
tation for himself and his lady to tea and supper, to be-
speak the miniature-painter, to instruct the new chamber-
maid, and put all things in a right train.
Two tigers, according to the legend, digged the Apostle
3*
58 TITAN.

Paul's grave ; so do our two men here scratch away at

one for a saint. So much the more confidently do I say
this, as I do not otherwise see through — if nothing is to

be made but a picture — the meaning of so many circum-

stances. But the father I could almost excuse. In the
first place, he said expressly to the German gentleman,
the Abigail might, in his opinion, as well stay in the
chamber, or in the adjoining one, in case the patient
wanted anything ;
secondly, the otherwise soft man had
contracted, from his ministerial commerce with justice, a

certain grit, a certain barbarity, which is so much the more

natural to Themis, passing sentence behind the bandage,
and, as an Areopagus, without the sight of the pains, as
even Diderot * asserts that blind people are more cruel
than others ; and, thirdly, no one could well be more
ready than he more deeply, in case she should
to pity the

die, the very child whom he, as it was once pretended

Jews and witches did with Christian children, crucified, in
order, like them, to do something with the blood (as par-
ents generally, and particularly human parents, can indeed
get over easily the misfortunes of those who are near and
dear to them, but hardly their loss, just as we, in the case
of the hair of the head, which is still nearer to us, feel
not the singeing or cutting of it, but very painfully the
tearing of it up by the root) ;
and, fourthly, Froulay had
always the misfortune that thoughts which in his head
had a tolerable, innocent hue, became, like muriate of
silver or good ink, black on the spot, when they once
came to light.

Otherwise, and without taking these alleviating circum-

stances into view, there remains, indeed, much in his con-

duct which I do not vindicate.

* His Leitres sur les Aveugles.
 BOUVEROT COMES TO PAINT LIANA. 59

The evening appeared. The Minister's lady went on

her husband's arm to the court. The new chambermaid
had, as Bouverot's bridesmaid, already, three days before-
hand, made the most necessary arrangements or manoeu-
vres. She had, with great ease, borrowed for him Liana's
letters to Albano, as the mother, from habit, forgot that a
present eye was not necessarily a seeing one ; and he
could extract from them the historical touches or water-
colors, wherewith he could assume, before the blind one,
in case of a recognition on the stage, the semblance of her
hero, — namely, Albano's. With Roquairol he had played
often enough to ha.ve his voice, consequently Albano's, in

his power. Methinks his preparation-days for the festal

evening were suitably spent.

He could, as little residences drink tea earlier than \

others, make his appearance quite as early as a miniature-

painter in September absolutely must. When he beheld
the silent form in the easy-chair, with the discolored
flower-cups of the cheeks, but more firmly rooted in every
purpose, a more coldly commanding saint, then did the
exasperation and inflammation which he had imbibed at
once from her letters kindle each other into a higher
flame. Only in such chests, strung at once with metal i

and catgut, with cruelty and sensuality, is such an alliance .

of lust and gall conceivable. Bouverot's whole past, the

books of his life's history, ought, as those of Herodotus
are to the nine Muses, to have been dedicated to the
three Fates, one to each.
He stole to the set down his
window, seated himself,
paint-box, and began hastily to dot. Meanwhile Liana
heard her very cultivated, well-read chambermaid read to
her out of the second volume of Fenelon's (Euvres Spi-
rituelles. Zefisio was not affected by the Archbishop in
6o TITAN.

the least, — what he caught about pure love {sur le pur

amour de Dieii) he perverted into an impure by applica-
tions, and let himself be devilishly inflamed by the divine,
— for the rest what there was touching in Liana's rela-
tions he left as it was, as he had now to paint. Odiously
did his motley-colored panther-eyes lick hke red, sharp
tiger-tongues over the sweet, soft countenance ! — " Dear
Justa, stop, the reading is disagreeable to thee, thou
!
breathest so short " said she at last, because she heard
the portrait-painter breathe. It was no sacrifice to him,
but a foretaste, a sweet early-bit, to put off the kiss of
this tender little hand and lip and the whole exhibition
of his burning heart, until he saw her outline dotted off
with the poison-tints on the white ivory by the rapid
dotting machine of his hand. At length he had her,
many-colored* on white. "Very well, dear Justa," said
she, " the prayer bell tolls ; thou canst not see any longer.
Rather lead me to the instrument, " — namely the har-
monica. She did so. Bouverot gave Justa a sign to
retire. She did that too. The yellow garden-spider now
ran up to the tender, white flower. The spider heard
her evening choral not without enjoyment, and the devout
upcasting of her ruined eyes seemed to him a right pic-
turesque idea, which the true 'painter t resolved to transfer
to the ivory leaf, if it could be done.
" Lovely goddess !
" cried he, suddenly, with Albano's

stolen voice, into the midst of those holy tones, which

Albano had once, in a happier hour, but more nobly,
* Bunt auf weiss is the phrase, answering to " Schwarz auf
German
weiss'' (in There seems to be no way in English
black and white).
of keeping up the analogous neatness of the expression. Tr. —
t This word is in English in the original, and Jean Paul adds in a
foot-note:Die helle Kammer (the bright chamber). Does he mean the
camera obscura f Tk. —
 ;

BOUVEROT PERSONATES ALBANO. 6l

interrupted. She listened with alarm, but hardly believ-

ing her own ear in this niglit. The astonishment did not
displease the prospect painter — for her face was his
prospect — by any means whatever ;
" remember this

harmonica in the thunder-house." He confounded it with

the water-house. "You here, Count? — Justa! where
art thou ? " cried she distressfully. " Justa, come here " !

he added, calling after her. The maiden followed his

voice and his — eye. " Gracious damsel ? " asked she.

But now Liana had not the heart to ask about the door
and the admission-ticket of the Count. To speak French
with her lover would not do, as the maid understood it

hence it was that in Vienna in the years of the Revolu-

tion they forbade this language very judiciously, because
it so surely and pestilentially spreads a certain equality, —
freedom follows, — between the nobility and the servile
orders.
Maliciously and joyfully did Bouverot, to whom she
now seemed to betray a serviceable mistrust about the
Count, which pointed out a freer play-room for his char-
acter mask, remind the perplexed maiden of her com-
mands, for Justa; she must now cause her to bring a
hght.
" Infidele" he thereupon began, " I have overcome all

obstacles, in order to throw myself at your feet and sup-

plicate your forgiveness. Je nien flatte ä tort pent etre,

mais je Vose^^ he went on, made more passionate through

her. " cruelle! de grace, pourquoi ces regards, ces
mouvements ? Je suis ton Alban et il —
t'aime encore,
Pease ä Blumenhühl, ce sejour charmant, —lngrate,fespe'
rais te trouver un peu plus reconnaisante. Souviens-toi de
ce que tu ma promis,'* said he, by way of sounding her,
" quand tu me pressas contre ton sein diving . . .
62 TITAN.

A pure soul mirrors, without staining itself, the unclean

one and feels darkly the distressing neighborhood, just
as doves, they say, bathe themselves in limpid water, in
order to see therein* the images of the hovering birds of
prey. The short breath, the wavering tone of speech,
every word, and an indefinable something, drove the
frightful spectre close before her soul, the suspicion that

it was not Albano. She started up ;

" Who are you ?

God, you are not the Count. Justa, Justa

!
" " Who
else could it be," replied he, coldly, " that would dare to
assume my name ? 0, je voudrais que je ne le fusse pas.
Vous nCavez ecrit, que Vesperance est la lune de la vie.

Ah, ma lune s'est couchee, mais j'adore encore le soleil,

qui reclaire."
Here he grasped the hand of this echpsed sun fighting
with a dragon. Then his gnawed finger-nails and dry
fingers, and a passing touch of his order-cross, discovered

to her the real name. She tore herself loose with a shriek,
and ran away without seeing whither, and fell into his

hands again. He snatched her violently to his meagre

hot lips :
" Yes, it is I," said he, " and I love you more
than does your Count with his etourderieJ'
" You are wdcked and godless toward a blind maiden ;

what will you ? Justa ! is there no one then to help me ?

Ah, good God, give me my eyes," she cried, flying, with-
out knowing whither, and again overtaken. " Bouverot

Thou evil spirit

!
" she cried, warding off* in places where
he was not. He, like gunpowder, cooling on the tongue,
and singeing and shattering when greed kindled him,
placed himself at a considerable darting-distance from
her, threw a painter's eye at the charming waves and
bendings of her tempest-struck flowerage, and said qui-
etly, with that mildness which resembles the eating and
 !

LIANA SEES AND FLIES. 63

devouring milk of spunges :

" Only be calm, fairest ; it is
"
I still ; and what would it all avail thee, child ?

Giddj with the snake-breath of distress, wandering

nature began to sing, but only beginnings :
" Joy, thou

spark of Heaven-born fire

!
" — "I am a German maiden."
" "
She ran round and sang again : Know'st thou the land ?
"
" Thou evil spirit !

At this moment the giant snake, thus charmed, reared

himself aloft on his cold rings, with darting tongue, to
spring and to coil ;
" Mon cceur^" said the snake, who
always in passion spoke French, " vole sur cette houche
!
qui enchante tous les sens." " Mother " cried she, " Caro-
line I O God, let me see, God — my eyes !
" Then did
the All-gracious give them back to her once more ; the
agony of nature, the noisy preparations for the burial,
opened again the eye of the tranced victim.
How eagerly she flew out of the chamber of torture
The disappointed, mortified beast of prey was still reckon-
ing on blindness and distraction. But when Bouverot
saw that she ran lightly up the stairway to the Italian
roof, then he merely sent the maid, who came running in,
after her, to see that she received no injury; and now
again he held her previous blindness for dissimulation.
He himself took from the chamber the miniature sketch,
and dragged himself like a hungry, wounded monster
sullenly and slowly out of the house.
 "

TWENTIETH JUBILEE.
Gaspard's Letter. — Partlngs.
86. CYCLE.
HE can see again," cried Charles to the Count
the morning after, in the intoxication of joy,
without concerning himself at all about the cold
relations of the recent period ; and was en-
tirely his old self. His enmity was more frail and fleeting

than his love, for the former dwelt, in his case, on the ice,

w^hich soon melted and ran away, the latter upon the fluid
element, on which he always sailed. Coloring, Albano
asked who had been the ophthalmist. "A well-meant
fright," said he ;
" theGerman gentleman made as if

he would paint her, when my parents, according to ap-

pointment, were not there, — or he really painted her,

— at this moment I have but a confused idea of the
whole, — all at once she heard a strange man's voice, and
!
terror and fright worked naturally like electric shocks

Although the Captain heard, down on the bottom of his

billowy sea, all voices only confusedly, nevertheless he
had this time heard correctly; for Liana had extorted
from her mother the concealment of the martyrology, in
order to take away from her brother the occasion of prov-
ing his love to her by a duel with her adversary.
Albano laid up many questions about the dark history
 EMPTINESS OF ALBANO'S LIFE. 65

in his breast ; and broke off the conversation by a de-

scription of his journey.
After some days he heard that Liana with her mother
had left the city, and gone to visit the mountain-castle of a
solitary old noble widow, which lay above Blumenbühl.
Out in the clean country, it was hoped light would fall

again upon her hfe, and the maternal hand was to paint
over anew its fading colors. The Minister, who, like
other old men and like old hair, was hard to frizzle and to

shape, was, in this last and deepest pitfall of fate, struck

quite spiritless, so that he did not devour Liana, who was
also caught therein, but let her go. The whole story was
to the public eye very much covered over and beflowered
like the wall of a park. Only the Lector knew it in full,
but he could hold his tongue. He demanded back the
miniature from the German gentleman, in the name of
the mother ; that personage gave in its stead cold, hollow
hes ; nevertheless Augusti, at the entreaty of mother and
daughter,knew how to control himself, and sacrifice to
them the challenge wherewith he was going to take satis-
faction for all.

Our friend was now, since his conscience had been ap-
peased with respect to accidental consequences, smitten
with new and unmingled sorrow over the emptiness of his
present condition ; was nothing to
the most precious soul
him any longer his hours were no more harmoniously
;

sounded out by the chime of love and poesy, but monoto-

nously by the steeple-clock of every-day routine. There-
fore he took refuge with men and friendship, as under
trees still blooming in greenness near the smouldering
ruins of a conflagi-ation ; women he shunned, because they
— as strange children do a mother who has lost hers —
too painfully reminded him of his loss. How gayly, on
£
 ;

66 TITAN.

the contrary, does a general lover, who celebrates only

all-souls' and all-saints' days, go about like one new-born,
when he has happily slipped the noose of a heart which
had caught him, and now can reckon up all female forms
again with the prospect of a redeemed estate The very !

feeling of this freedom may animate him to surrender

himself the oftener, by way of tasting it again, as prisoner
to a female heart.
Albano let himself be drawn by the hands of Roquai-
rol and Schoppe to wild festivals of men, — which would
fain render the sphere-music of joy on the kettle-drum
— they were only the thorn-festivals after the feasts of
roses. So there is a despair which relieves itself by rev-
elry ; as, for example, during the plague at Athens, — or
in the expectation of the last day, — or in the anticipa-

tion of a Robespierre's butcher-knife. The Captain went

back deeper into his old labyrinth and wilderness, and
drew, so far as he could, the innocent youth into his
popular festivals with so-called sons of the muses, into
his recruiting places of pleasure, just as if he had need
on his own account to bring his friend down to himself
a little.

Albano fancied, with these Dithyrambics, his weeping

soul would be quite sung to sleep, and he only gave it in

addition a gentle rocking. Meanwhile, although he would

not have confessed it, his young rosy cheeks grew as pale
as a forehead, and his face fell in like a piano-forte key
upon the snapping of a string. was touching and hard
It

at once, when he sat laughing among his friends and their

friends with a colorless face, — with higher, sharper bones
of eyes and nose, — with a wilder eye, which blazed out
of a dai'ker socket. From music, especially Roquairol's,
wherein under the hackneyed, artistical alternation of
 :

PLEASANT NEWS AND PROMISES. 67

damper and thunder, the passionate rolling and plunging

of" our ship were too vividly represented, his ear and heart
fled as from a destroying siren. The broken-off lance-
splinter of the wound rankled and festered in his whole
being. 0, as, in the years of childhood, when the rosy
cloud in heaven seemed to him to lie directly on the
mountain where it was so easy to be reached, the mag-
nificent pile retired far into the sky so soon as he had
climbed the mountain, so now did the aurora of life and
the spirit, which he would fain seize and hold near to

him, stand so high and far overhead beyond his reach in

the blue! Painfully does man attain the alp of ideal
love; still more painful and dangerous — as in the case
of other alps — is the descent from it.

One day Chariton came into town, merely to hand him

at last a letter of her husband's, — for Dian, like all artists,
much more and agreeably executed a work of art
easily
than a letter, — wherein
he expressed his joy that he
should see Albano so soon. " Is he coming back, then ? "

asked the Count. She exclaimed, with a sad tone

" Body o' me ! — that indeed ! — according to his former
letter he has still to stay his year longer." " I do not
understand him so," said Albano.
The same evening he was invited by the Princess to
see the engravings of Herculaneum, which had come by
the same post w^ith Chariton's letter. She welcomed him
with that animated look of love which
we put on before
one who will immediately, as we hope, pour out befora
us the unmeasured thanks o his heart. But he had
nothing to pour out from his. She asked at length, some-
Avhat surprised, whether he had received no letters to-day
from Spain. She forgot that the post is courteous and
expeditious toward no house except the princely house.
 ;

68 TITAN.

As, however, Iiis letter must certainly be already lying in

his chamber, she allowed herself to take upon herself the
part of Time, who brings all things to daylight, and told
what was in the letter, namely, " that she should in
autumn undertake a little artistic journey to Rome, upon
which his father would accompany her, and he him if he
liked that was the whole secret."
; It was only the half

for she soon added, that she should be most glad to extend
the pleasure of this tour to the best draughtsman in the
city, as soon as she recovered, — Liana.
As the whole heart is suddenly illuminated with joy,
when, after a long, dark rainy day, at last in the evening
the sun arches for himself under the heavy water a golden,
open western gate, stands therein pure and brilliant as in a
rose-bower before the mirroring earth, announces to her a
fairer day, and then, with warm looks, disappears from the
open rose-bower, so was it with our Albano.
The fair day had not yet come, but the fair evening had.
He left the Herculanean pictures under their rubbish, and
hastened, as quickly as gratitude allow^ed, back to the let-

ter of his father, who so seldom sent such a favor.

Here it is :
—
" Dearest Albano : My affairs and my health are at
length in such order, that I can conveniently carry out my
plan, which I have proposed, in conjunction with the Prin-
cess, of making a short artistical tour to Rome this very
autumn, to which I invite thee, and will come myself to

take thee in October. The rest of the travelling party

will not displease thee, as it consists entirely of clever

connoisseurs, Herr von Bouverot, Mr. Counseller of Arts
Fraischdörfer, Mr. Librarian Schoppe (if he will). Unfor-
tunately Herr von Augusti must stay behind as Lector.
 !

DON GASPARD'S LETTER TO ALBANO. 69

Thy teacher in Rome (Dian) is expecting thee with mucli

eagerness. They have written to me that thou art par-
ticularly partial to the new court-dame of the good Prin-
cess, Madlle. von Fr., whom I recollect as a very capital
draughtsman. It will interest thee, therefore, to know,
that the Princess takes her, too, with her, especially since,
as I hear, a journey for health is as needful to her as
to me. In spring, which, besides, is not the pleasantest
season of the year in Italy, thou wilt return to Germany
to thy studies. One thing more, in confidence, my best
one ! They have unreservedly communicated to my ward,
the Countess of Romeiro, thy ghost-visions in Pestitz.
Now, as she is to spend the autumn and winter during my
absence with her friend, the Princess Julienne, and be-
sides will arrive earlier than I, let it not strike thee as
strange that she shuns thy acquaintance, because her
female and personal pride has been mortified by the
juggling use of her name, and feels itself challenged to a
direct refutation of the juggler. In fact, if the game
has really a serious object, one could not well choose
worse means to effect it. — Thou wilt do what honor bids,
and, although she is my ward, not insist upon seeking
her company. All this between ourselves. Adio
« G. V. C."

These prospects, — the elevating one of being so long

with his father ; the healing one of wading out from this
deep ashes into a freer, lighter land ; the flattering one
that the sick, tormented heart in the mountain-castle
might perhaps, in citron and laurel groves, find, yes, and
haply give back, too, joy and health again, — these pros-
pects were, what the joys of human beings are, very
pleasant walks in a prison-yard.
 "

70 TITAN.

On this happy walk he was soon disturbed by the image

of the coming Linda, not, however, on his own account,
but on that of his poor sister and his friend. How mahg-
nantly must this strange ignis fatuus, thought he, dance
into the nightly conflict of all these clashing relations !

Roquairol seemed, besides, to leave the too intensely

loving Rabette alone with her solitary wishes. She sent
him weekly, under cover to Albano, — once it was the
reverse, — her epistolary sighs and tears, all which he
coldly pocketed, without speaking of them or of the for-

lorn one.
Albano, weighing in silence Liana and Rabette, com-
passionated, himself, the unequal lot of his over-hasty
friend, over whose sun-steeds only an Amazon and Titaii-

ess, but not a good country-girl, could fling the bridle,

and whose Psyche's-chariot and thunder-car seemed to
him too good for a mere connubial post-chaise or child's
carriage. What a strangling struggle of all feelings will

there be, thought he, when he, kneeling at the nuptial

altar with Rabette, accidentally looks up, and discovers
among the spectators the never-to-be-forgotten lofty bride
of his whole youth, and must stammer out the renouncing
" Yes !

He was therefore in doubt whether he might venture

to disclose to him the contents of the letter, but not long
indeed. " Shall I," said he, " dissemble and juggle before
a friend ? May I dare to presuppose him weak, and
shun the acceleration of connections, which, after all,
"
must come with her ?

So soon as Charles came to him, he spoke to him first

of the intended journey, and even added the request for

his company, moved by the thought of the first parting
with his youthful friend. The Captain, whose heart
 ROQUAIROL AND RABETTE. 71

always needed the sounding-board of fancy for musical

utterance,was not able, on the spot, to have or to picture
any considerable emotions about the farewell. Then
Albano, who could not get it over his lips, gave him the
whole letter.

During the reading, Roquairol's whole face became

hateful, even in his friend's eye. He darted then such a
flaming look of indignation at Albano, .that the latter
involuntarily and unconsciously returned it. " O, verily,

I understand it all," said Charles ;

" so was the thing to

be solved. Only wait till to-morrow !

" All muscles in
him were alive, all features distorted, everything in com-
motion, just as, in a violent tempest, little cloudlets whirl
around each other. Albano would fain question and
detain him. " To-morrow, to-morrow !
" he cried, and
went off like a storm.

87. CYCLE.
N the morrow, Albano received a singular letter
from Roquairol, for the understanding of which
some notices of his connection with Rabette must be
prefixed.
Nothing is harder, when one really loves one's friend,
than scarcely to look at that friend's sister. Nothing is

easier (except only the converse) than, after being disen-

chanted by city hearts, to be enchanted by country hearts.
Nothing is more natural for a general lover, who loves all,

than to love one among them. It needs not be proved

that the Captain had been in all three cases at once, when
he, for the first time, told Rabette she had his heart, as
he was pleased to call it. She, of course, should not
have worshipped, at such a nearness, the Hamadryad in
72 TITAN.

such a Upas-tree, with whose sap so many of Cupid's

arrows are poisoned ; but she and most of her sisters
are so dazzled by men's advantages as not to see men's
misuse of them.
In the beginning many things went well ; the pure
innocence of his sister and his friend threw a strange
magic light upon the unnatural union. The prominent
advantage was, that he, as concert-master of his love,
needed little more of Rabette than her ears ;
loving was
with him talking, and he looked upon actions merely as
the drawing of our soul ; words being the colors. There is

a twofold love, — love of the feeling and love of the object.

The former is more man's lave it wishes the enjoyment ;

of its own being, the foreign object is to it only the mi-

croscopic object-bearer, or much rather subject-bearer,
whereupon it beholds its " I " magnified ; it can therefore
easily let its objects change, if only the flame into which
they are thrown as fuel continues to blaze up high ;and
it enjoys itself less through actions, which are always
long, tedious, and troublesome, than by words, w^hich pic-

ture and promote it at the same time. The love of the

object, on the contrary, enjoys and desires nothing but its

welfare (such is for the most part female and parental

love), and only deeds and sacrifices give it peace and
satisfaction ; it loves for the sake of blessing, whereas the
other only blesses for the sake of loving.
Roquairol had long since devoted himself to the love

of the feeling. Hence it was that he must make so many

words; at the Rhine-fall of Schaffhausen he would not
have been in the best, that is, the most excited mood,
merely because he could not — since the flood out-thun-
ders everything — have delivered anything himself in

praise thereof, on account of the sublime uproar.

 CHAPTERS OF CARL'S LOVE-ROMANCE. 73

His Romance with Rabette after the declaration of love

was divided into distinct chapters.

The first chapter he sweetened for himself in her
society,by the consideration that she was new and be-
longed to him and yielded him an admiring obedience.
He painted for her therein great pieces of beautiful
nature, mixed therewith some nearer emotions, and there-
upon kissed her ; so that she really enjoyed his lips in
two forms, that of action and that of speech ; from her, as
has been said, he wanted only a pair of open ears. In
this chapter he assumed also some possibility of their
marriage ; men so easily confound the charm of a new
love with the worth and duration of it.

He set himself about his second chapter, and swam

therein blissfully in the tears with which he sought to

write it out. In fact, this ocular pleasure afforded him

more true joy than almost the best chapters. When, in

such mood, he sat and drank by her side, — for, like a

dead prince's heart, he loved to bury his living one in
cups, — and then began to describe his life, particularly

his death, and his sorrows and errors in the interval, and
his suicide and infanticide at the masquerade, and his
rejected and spurned love for Linda who was then :

more moved to tears than himself? No one but Ra-

bette, whose eyes, —
having been, through her father and
brother, as little acquainted with men's tears as with ele-
phants', stags', or crocodiles' tears, — so much the more
richly, but not so sweetly as bitterly, streamed over into
his sorrow and love. This poured fresh oil again into
his flame and lamp, until he at last, like that pupil of

Goethe's master wizard, with the brooms that carried

water, could no longer govern his spirits. Poetic natures
have a sympathetic one ; like justice, they keep a surgeon
VOL. II. 4
74 TITAN.

in iheir pay near the rack, who immediately sets again

the broken limbs, yes, even regulates beforehand the
places for the crushing fractures.*
A man should never weep on his own account, except
for ecstasy. But poets and all people of much fancy are
magicians who — exact counterparts of the burnt en-
chantresses — weep more easily, although more at images,
than at the rough, sore calamity itself, in order to put the
poor enchantresses to the worst water-ordeal. Trust them
not ! On the machinelle-poison-tree the rain-drops are
poisonous which roll from its leaves.
Meanwhile it must never be concealed, that the Cap-
tain in this second chapter strengthened his resolution of

really marrying the good and so tender E-abette. " Thou

knowest, " he said to himself, " what upon the whole there
is in and about women, one or two deficiencies, more or
less, make little difference ; thy man-like folly of requir-
ing her, as they do hired animals, to be warranted with-
out fault, may surely be regarded as gone by, friend."
Now he set himself down to dip into the ink for his

third chapter, wherein he merely sported. His lip-om-

nipotence over the listening heart refreshed him to such a
degree, that he made frequent experiments to see whether
she could not laugh herself almost to death. Women in
love, by reason of weakness and fire, take the laughter-
plant most easily ;
they hold the comic heroic-poet still

* This passage may throw some light for the reader on a somewhat
obscure one at the end of the first paragraph in Cycle 31, where Jean
Paul seems to intimate the wish that, as there are surgeons employed
at the rack to point out how far torture may go without killing the
viel im, and so defeating the very object of the cruelty, so there might
be in regard to the enjoyments of princes, in order to point out how
far they may go without spoiling themselves and imposing sickly,
Vt'orthless, burdensome rulers upon the country. Tr. —
 :

THE CHAPTER OF ALTERNATIONS.

more as their hero, and prove therewith the innocence

of their laughing at him. But Roquairol loved her less

when she laughed.

In his fourth chapter, — or sector, or Dog-Post-day,
or letter-box,* or in whatever other way I have (ludi-

crously enough) made my divisions, instead of using the

Cycle, — in his fourth Jubilee, I say, it went, so to speak,

harder with him. Rabette grew at last sated and sick of
his eternally jumping off and opening the pot of the lach-
rymal glands that hung between the wheels, to grease
his mourning-coach. Deep emotion was every day made
more disagreeable and bitter to him; he must be ever
giving longer and more vivid tragedies. Then he began
to perceive that the tongue of the country maiden is not
the very greatest landscape-painter, soul-portrayer, and
silhouettiste, and that she hardly knew how to say much
more to him than, "Thou, my heart!" He made, on that
account, in the fourth chapter, rarer visits ; that again
helped him considerably, but only for a short time. For-
tunately, the half-mile from Pestitz to Blumenbühl count-
ed in with Rabette's lines and rays of beauty ; in the

city, in same street, or in fact under the same roof,

the
he would have remained too cold from very nearness.
The most natural consequence of such a chapter is the
fifth, or the chapter of alternations, which still blows up
some flames by the ever-swifter interchange of reproaches
and reconcihations, so that the two, as electrical bodies
do little ones, alternately attract and repel each other.
Sometimes he drank nothing, and merely treated her
harshly. Sometimes he took his glass, and said to her
"1 am the devil, thou the angel." The greatest offence

* Titles of the chapters respectively in " The Invisible Lodge," in

" Hesperus," and in " Quintus Fixlein." Tr. —
76 TITAN.

to his love bis father gave, by the approbation which,

most unexpectedly, he bestowed upon it. It was to the

Captain exactly as if he should realize the silver-wed-

ding if he ever solemnized the golden one. In the ser-
vice of the goddess of love one more easily grows bald
than gray ; he was already morally bald toward the sil-

ver-bride. Fortunately, a short time before the illumi-

nation Sunday in Lilar,* he carried all sins of omission

and commission so far, that on Sunday he was in a condi-

tion to curse them ; only after scolding and sinning could

he with comparative ease love and pray, as the grovelling
spring-scarabee snaps up only when turned over on his
back. It has probably slipped, or at least escaped, the
memory of few readers, among the events of that Sunday,
that Roquairol sat in the morning with Rabette in the

flute-dell, that Rabette sang there in a depressed, and

lonesome mood, and how he, dissolved thereby, encoun-
tered his friend glorified by love. The dell affair is natu-

ral ; after so long coolness (not coldness) on this breezy,

free Otaheite-day, with all that he had in his hands
(another's hand — and a flask) beside that heart of hers,

as warm and yet as tranquil as the sun in the heav-

ens,— and then the solitary orphan flute which he made
play — and
its call, with his most hearty wish to profit
somewhat by such a day and sky, — under these circum-
stances he found himself actually compelled to draw upon
his genuine emotions, to give himself vent on the subject
of his past life (he resembled the old languages, which,
according to Herder, have many Preterites and no Pres-
ent), — yes, even on the subject of his death (also a
fragment of the past), — and then as on a heavenly way
to move forward. Of course he went not far ; he let his

* Where Albano for the last time was happy with Liana.
 THE SIXTH AND SADDEST CHAPTEK. 77

blood of St. Januarius, naraelj, his eyes, become fluid

again, (bis own blood having previously become so,) and
then demanded of the enraptured soul, whirled about in
the fairest heaven nothing less than — since she was
mute before the pocket-handkerchief thrown to her as the
canary-bird is under the one thrown over him, —a faint

singing. Rabette could not sing ; she said so, she de-
clined, at last she sang ; but during the empty singing
she thought of nothing save him and his wild, wet face.

The most miserable chapter of all, which he brought

out in his Romance, may well be the sixth, which he
wrote down on the night of the illumination in Lilar. In
the beginning he had left Rabette to stand alone a mute,
inglorious * spectator, while he ran, jumping up behind
the car of Venus full of strange goddesses. Gradually
one pleasure after another crept along toward him and
gave him the Tarantula bite, which was followed by a

sick raving. As moderation is a true strengthening medi-

cine of life, so did he uncommonly seldom resort to this
powerful medicine, in order not to be obliged to use it

in stronger and stronger doses, and he did not accustom

himself to it at all. At last, when he was full, forms ap-
peared in him as in Chinese porcelain ; t he stepped sym-
pathizingly and lovingly to Rabette, and fancied, as she
did, that he was tender or affectionate towards her, when
he merely was so towards all.

He would fain draw her away from the hostile aiTay

of eyes, to seek from her the kiss to which interdiction
and privation lent honey again ; but she refused, because
* Jean Paul does not quote Gray's Elegy, though this somewhat
might seem to imply it.
literal translation Tr. —
t The Chinese could once paint fishes and other shapes on porce-
lain,which were only visible when one filled up the vessel. Lettres
Edißantes^ etc., XH. Recueil.
 ;

78 TITAN.

there, where the eye stops, suspicion begins, when he un-

fortunately caught sight of the blind girl from Blumen-
bühl, and could call her as a pretended guard of Rabette,
in order to lead her out of the temptation among men to

the temptation in the wilderness. Pressing her to him

with such a passionate impetuosity of love as he had
never showed before, — so that the poor soul who had
been so forsaken and forlorn this evening wept over the
return of all her joys, — and speaking to her like an
angel, who acts like none, he involuntarily arrived with
her at the silent Tartarus, where all was blind and dumb.
Rabette had not suffered the blind girl to leave her
but when they entered the catacomb-avenue, which holds
only two persons, unless the third will creep along in the
water, the eyeless maid was stationed at the gate, and so
much the more, because he would not wilhngly let him-
selfbe checked by a superfluous listener. And besides,
what then was there to fear in the very raree-show of the
grave ?

Within there he spoke about the everywhere stretched-

out index-finger of death, — how " it indicated that life,

stupid as it is, should not be made by us more stupid, but

joyous." He seated himself by her side, caressing her, —
as the destroying angel sits invisible beside the blooming
child that plays in the old masonry, and into whose tender
hands he presses the black scorpion. It ^vas the very
spot where he had sat in that first covenant-night, with
Albano, opposite the skeleton with the ^olian-harp, when
his friend swore to him his renunciation of Linda. His
tongue streamed like his eye. He was tender, as, accord-
ing to the popular superstition, corpses are tender which
mourners die after. He threw fire-wreaths into Rabette's
heart, but she had not, like him, streams of words to
 ;

RABETTE FALLS A SACRIFICE. 79

quench them withal. She could only sigh, only embrace

and men fall into sin most easily from weariness of good,
but tedious hearts. More swiftly did laughter and weep-
ing, death and drollery, love and wantonness, spring over
into each other ; moral poison makes the tongue as light
as physical makes it heavy. Poor girl ! the maidenly
soul is a ripe rose, out of which, so soon as one leaf is

plucked, all its mates easily fall after. His wild kisses
broke out the first leaves ; then others fell. In vain the
good genius wafts holy tones from the harp of death, and
sends up angry murmurs in the orcus-flood of the cata-
comb, — in vain ! The darkest angel, who loves to tor-
ture, but rather innocent ones than the guilty, has already
torn from heaven the star of love, to bear it as a murder-
brand into the cavern. The poor, narrow little life-garden
of the defenceless maid, wherein but little grows, stands
over the long mine-passage which runs away under
Roquairol's wide-extended pleasure-camp ; and the dark-
est angel has the lint-stock already lighted. With fiery
greediness the spark-point eats its way onward as yet ;

her garden stands full of sunshine, and its flowers wave ;

the spark gnaws a little into the black powder. Suddenly

it tears open a monstrous flame-throat ; and the green
garden reels, then flies, blown up, scattered to atoms, falls

in black clods out of the air down upon far distant places ;

and the life of the poor maiden is all smoke and ruin.
But Roquairol's wide-spread and jointly rooted pleas-
ure-parks withstood the earthquake much more vigorously.
Both then came up out of the mine-passage sorrowfully,
for the Captainhad lost a httle arbor in the explosion ;

but they found no more the blind girl, who, in her search
for them, had They encountered only the
lost herself.

roving Alban o, who himself was sorely wailing and rav-

8o TITAN.

ing, although he this evening had lost nothing but —

pleasures.
Let us lead up the deluded maiden and her million
companions with some words before a mild judge ! This
is not the only thing which that judge will weigh, that
she, stupefied by the blossom-dust of a reeking spring
season of joys, smothered into dumbness with the virgin's
veil, prostrate before the storm of fancy (as women fall

so much the more easily before another's fancy and a

poetic one, the seldomer their own blows upon them, and
accustoms them to standing firmly), suffered the reward
of a whole virgin life to die ; but this is what most
strongly mitigates the sentence, that she bore love in her
heart. Why, then, do not the male sex recognize that
the loving female, in the hour of love, will really do
nothing less than all for her beloved, that woman has all

power for love, against which she has so little, and that
she, with the same soul and at the same moment, would
just as readily sacrifice her life as her virtue, and that
only the demanding and taking party is bad, deliberately
and selfishly ?

The last or seventh chapter of his robber romance is

very short and contradictory. The third day he visited

her in her garden, was delicate, rational, temperate, re-

served, as if he were a married man. As he found her
full of trouble, which she, however, only half expressed^
he accordingly, out of anxiety for her health, came again
several times and, when he found that she had not suf-
;

fered in the least, he stayed — away. Towards Albano,

during the aforesaid anxiety, he behaved meekly, and,
after it, he was the same as ever, but not long ; for when
his sister, whom of all human beings he perhaps loved
most purely, became blind through Albano's wildness, he
 ROQUAIROL'S LETTER TO ALBANO. 8l

then, even on account of a similarity of guilt, flung at him

a real hatred, and something like it at all his (Albano's)

relations. Rabette got nothing from him now but —

letters and apologies, short pictures of his wild nature,
which must, he said, have free play-room, and which,
fastened to another, must beat and bruise and gall that
one with the chain quite as much as itself. All objections
of Rabette's he knew how to remove so well, as they

consisted only in words, and not in looks and tears, that

he at last himself began to perceive he was right ; and

almost nothing was left to the poor May-flower, crushed
by the fall of this smooth May-pole, than the real last
word, — namely, the mute life, which is not the first thing
to announce to the murderer that he has smitten and de-
stroyed a heart.

88. CYCLE.

HERE is Roquairol's letter to Albano :

—
" It must once be, we must see
and be over ;

each other as we are, and then hate each other, if it must

be so. I make thy sister unhappy thou makest mine ;

unhappy and me too ; these things just balance each

other. Thou distortedst thyself out of an angel to me
more and more passionately into a destroying angel.
Strangle me, then, but I grapple thee too.
" Now look upon me, I draw off my mask, I have con-
vulsive movements on my face, like peoplewho live after
drinking sweet poison. I have made myself drunk with
poison, I have swallowed the poison-pill, the great poison

globule, the earth-globe. Out with it freely ! I exult no

more, I believe nothing more, I do not even lament right
valiantly. My tree is hollowed out, burnt to a coal by
 82 TITAN.

fantastic fire. When, occasionally, in this state, the in-

testinal worms of the soul, exasperation, ecstasy, love, and
the like, crawl round again, and gnaw and devour each
other, then do I look down from myself to them Uke ;

polypuses, I cutthem in twain and turn them wrong end

foremost and stick them into each other. Then I look
J
again at my own act of looking, and as this goes on ad
infinitum, what then comes to one from it all ? If others

,
have an idealism of faith, so have I an idealism of the
heart, and every one who has often gone through with all

) sensations on the stage, on paper, and on the earth, is in the

same case. What boots it ? If thou shouldst die at this

moment, I often say to myself, then, as all radii of life
'
run together into the minute point of a moment, all would
verily be wiped out, invisible ; to me, then, it is as if I
had been nothing. Often I look upon the mountains and
floods and the ground about me, and it seems to me as if

they could at any and every moment flutter asunder and

melt away in smoke, and I with them. The future life (as
even the present is hardly to be called a life), and all that

hangs thereupon, belongs to the ecstasies which one winks

at ;
especially it belongs to the ecstasy of love.
" As thou so readily assumest every diff*erence from thy-
self to be enervation, so do I say to thee outright : Only
ascend farther, only knead thyself more thoroughly, only
lift thy head higher out of the hot waves of the feelings,
then wilt thou no longer lose thyself in them, but let them
billow on alone. There is a cold, daring spirit in man,
which nothing touches at all, — not even virtue ; for it

alone chooses that, and is its creator, not its creature. I

once experienced at sea a storm, in which the whole ele-
ment furiously and jaggedly and foamingly lashed itself

into commotion, and flung its waters pell-mell through each

 ROQUAIROL'S SENSUAL PHILOSOPHY. 83

Other, while overhead the sun looked on in silence ; — so

be thou ! The heart is the storm ; self is the heaven.
" Believest thou that the romancers and tragedians,
that is, the men of genius among them, who have a thou-
sand times aped, and aped their own apings of everything, {

divine and human, are other than I ? What keeps them

and the world's people still real is the hunger after money
and praise ; this eating gastric-juice is the animal glue,
the salient point in the soft floating and fleeting world.
The apes are geniuses among beasts ; and the geniuses
are — not merely before higher beings, as Pope says of
Newton, but even here below — apes, in aesthetic imitation,
in heartlessness, malignity, malicious pleasure, sensuality,
and — merriment.
" The last and last but one I reserve for myself. Against
the longueurs (lengthy passages) in life's book, — a book
which no man understands, there is no remedy except —
some merry passages, of which I think no more so soon
as I have read them. In order only to get over this cold,
hobbly life, I will surely sooner scatter below me rose-
cups than thistles. Joy is of itself worth something, if
only that it crowds out something worse before one lays
down his heavy head and sinks into nothingness.
" Such am I ; such was I ; then I saw thee, and would
be thy Thou — but it serves not, for I cannot go back ;

thou, however, goest forw^ard, thou becomest my very self

one day,— and then I would have loved thy sister ! May
me
she forgive Here drink pure wine
for it ! ! I know best
how one withfares women, — how the their love blesses
and — how
robs, other all love, like fire, kindles itself with i
-

much better wood than that which feeds it, — and how,
universally, the Devil gets all he brings.
" O, why then can no woman love but just so far as one
 !

84 TITAN.

' will have her, and no further, —

absolutely none ? Hear
me now : everywhere lazy preachers would fain hold us
back from all transitory pleasure by telling us of the dis-
comfort that comes after. Is not then the discomfort
transitory too? Rabette meant well with me, on the
' same ground of desire upon which I meant well with her
and myself. But does any one know, then, what purgato-
rial hours one wades through with a strange heart, which is
'
full, without making full, and whose love one at last hates,

— before which, but not with which, one weeps, and never
about the same thing, and to which one dreads to unveil
any emotion, for fear of seeing it transmuted into nourish-
ment of love, —
from whose anger one imbibes the greater
wrath, and from its love the lesser And now to have !

absolutely the more joyous relations screwed down for-

ever to this state of torment, when they ought rather to
exalt us above the tormenting ones, the long wished for
gods'-bliss of Hfe perverted forever into a flat show and
copper-plate engraving, — the heart into a breast and
mask, — the marrow of existence into sharp bones, —
and yet, as to all reproaches of coldness, chained only to

silence, bound innocent and dumb to the rack, — and

that, too, without end
" No, sooner give me the frenzy which one di-aws from
the temple of love as well as from that of the Eumenides !

,
Better burn up in a real flame of misery, without hope,
I without utterance, even to paleness and madness, than be
so loving and not loved ! He who has once burned in
this hell, Albano, continues to frequent it forevermore :

that is the last misery. Can I not worry down life and
' death, and wounds and stings beforehand ? — and certainly
I am not weak. Nevertheless, I am not the man to put
'
restraints upon a sentimental discourse, or harpsichord
 ROQUAIROL'S ACCOUNT OF RABETTE. 85

fantasy, or, reading or singing, not though sorrow in per-

son should hold before me a menace, undersigned by all

the gods, that a female listener whom I cannot endure

would immediately thereupon become my lover, and from
that my mistress and my hell.
" The Greeks gave Love and Death the same form,
beauty, and torch; for me it is a murderous torch; but I
love Death, and therefore Cupid. Long has hfe been to
me a tragic muse ;
willingly to the dagger of a muse do I
offer my breast ; a wound is almost half a heart.
" Hear further ! Rabette has a fine nature, and follows
it ; but mine is for her a cloud of empty, transitory foi-m
and structure ; she does not understand me. Could she,

then would she be the first to forgive me. O, I have

indeed treated her hardly, as if I were a destiny, and she
L Resent, but hear * On the night of the Illumination
!

her longing and my emptiness brought us in the fiery

rain of joy more warmly together ; among the shiningly
mailed and smoothly polished court-faces her ingenuous
one bloomed lovely and living as a fresh child on the
stage or at court ; we happened into Tartarus, — we
sat down in the place where thou didst swear to me thy
resignation of Linda ; in my senses wine glowed, in hers
the heart. O, why is it that, when one speaks and
streams, she has no other words than kisses, and makes
one sensual from ennui, and forces one to speak her
speech ? My mad boldness, which fancy and intoxication
breathe into me, and which I see coming on and yet
await, seized me and drove me like a night-walker. But
always is there in me something clear-seeing, which
itself weaves the drag-net of delusion, throws it over me,
and carries me away entangled in its meshes. So behold
* " Strike, but hear me." — Tr.
86 TITAN.

me on that night with the burning net-work about my

head ; the rivulet of death murmurs to me, the skeleton
sweeps across the harp-strings, — but, enveloped, impris-
oned, darkened, dazzled with the fiery hurdle- work of
pleasure, I heed neither annihilation nor heaven, nor
thyself and that evening, but I di«g all together and into
the hurdle, — and so sank thy sister's innocence into the
grave, and I stood upright on the royal coffin, and went
down with it.

" I lost nothing, — in me there is no innocence ; I

gained nothing, — I hate sensual pleasure. The black
shadow, which some call remorse, swept broadly along
after the vanished motley-colored pleasure-images of the
magic-lantern; but is the black less optical than the
motley ?

" Condemn not thy poor sister ; she is now more mis-
erable than I, for she was happier ; but her soul remains
innocent. Her innocence lay treasured up in her heart
as a kernel in the stony peach ; the kernel itself burst its

mail-coat in the warm, nourishing earth, and forced a way

for its green leaves to the light.
" I visited her afterward. All her soul's pangs passed
over into me ; for all actions and sacrifices on her ac-
count, I felt myself ready ; but for no feelings. Do what
you will, thou and my father, I will positively, in this

stupid stubble-field of life, where one reaps so little in

freedom, not banish myself into the narrow thirty-years'
hedge of marriage. By Heaven ! for the miserable,
forced intoxication of the senses, and under it, I have
already endured more than it is worth.
" Not that which I yesterday read in thy presence gives
me this resolution, — as to that, ask Rabette about it, —
and my frankness toward thee is a voluntary offering,
 !

ROQUAIROL APOSTROPHIZES LINDA. 87

since the mystery between two might, but for me, have
remained a mystery still : but I will not be misappre-
hended by thee, — by thee, the very one who, with so little

reflection upon thy inner being, so easily makest unfavor-

able comparisons, and dost not perceive that thou didst
sacrifice my sister in Lilar precisely so, only with more
spiritual arms, and didst cast her eyes and joys into

Orcus. I blame thee not ; fate makes man a sub-fate to \

woman. The passions are poetic liberties, which the

moral liberty takes to itself. Thou didst not, I assure
thee, have too good an opinion of me ; I am all for which
thou tookest me, only, however, still more too; and the
more too is still wanting to thyself.
" O, how much swifter my life flies since I know that
she * is coming ! Fate, which so oft plays weight and
wheels, and swings the pendulum of life with its own hand,
heaves off mine, and all wheels roll unrestrainedly to meet
the blissful hour. She is my first love ; before her I tore
up all my blooming yeai'S, and flung them to her on her
path as flowers ; for her I sacrifice, I dare, I do all, when
she comes. 0, whoso fears nothing in the empty froth-
and-sham-love, what should he dread or decline in the
real, living sun-love ? Thou angel, thou destroying
angel, thou camest flying down into my stale, flat life, thou
fleest and appearest, now here, now there, on all my
paths and pastures : O tarry only long enough for me
to dig my grave at thy feet, while thou lookest down
upon me
" Albano, I behold the future and anticipate it ; I see
full clearly the long net stretched over the whole stream '

which is to catch, entangle, and strangle thee ;

thy father
and others, too, are drawing you both toward one another
* Linda.
 ! !

88 TITAN.

therein, God knows for what. It is for that she comes

now, and thy tour is only show. My poor sister is soon
conquered, that is, murdered ; particularly, as one needs
for the purpose, with her belief in spirits, no other voice
than that incorporeal one, which over the old Prince's
heart pointed out to thine its limits
" What lights burn in the future, between dark situa-

tions and bushes, in murderous corners ! Be it as it may,

I march forward into the caverns ; I thank God, that this
impotent cold-sweating life gains again a pulsation of the
heart, a passion ; and then or now do to me, who could
act safely and secretly and dishonestly, what thou choosest.
Fight with me to-day or to-morrow. It shall rejoice me,
if thou layest me on my back in the last, long sleep. O
the opium of makes one in the beginning lively, then
life

drowsy, how drowsy Willingly will I love no more, if

!

I can die. And so without a word further, hate or love

me, but farewell
" Thy Friend, or Thy Foe."

89. CYCLE.
" /r Y " cried Albano. The second hot pain
•
^"O®
"lY
IVA darted from Heaven into his life, and the hght-
ning-flash blazed up fiercely again. As a heartless car-
cass of the former friendship, Roquairol had been thrown
at his feet; and he felt the first hatred. That poison-
mixing of sensual and spiritual debauchery, that ferment-

ing-vat of the dregs of the senses and the scum and froth
of the heart, — that conspiracy of lust and bloodthirsti-
ness, and against the same guiltless heart, — that spiritual
suicide of the affections, which left behind only an airy,

roaming spectre, ever changing its forms of incarnation,

 "

EFFECT ON ALBANO. 89

upon which there no longer remains any dependence, and

which a brave man already begins to hate for the very
reason that he cannot lay hold of this yielding poison-
cloud and give it battle, — all this seemed to the Count,
who, without the transitions and mezzotintos of habit and
fancy, had been ushered over out of the former light of
friendship into this evening-twilight, still blacker than it

was. Beside the superficial wound which his family pride

received in the maltreatment of his sister, came the deep,
poisonous one that Roquairol should compare him with
!
himself, and Liana's ruin with Rabette's. " Villain

said he, gnashing his teeth ; even the least shadow of re-
semblance seemed to him a calumny.
Most assuredly Roquairol had miscalculated upon him,
and set out his poetic self-condemnation too much on the
reckoned strength of a poetic sentence from the judge.
As in an uproar one unconsciously speaks louder, so he,
when fancy with her cataracts thundered around him, did
not justly know what he cried and how strongly. As he
often, to be sure, found less that was black in himself than
he depicted, so he presumed that another must find even
still less than he himself. He had, too, in his poetic and
sinful intoxication, made for himself at last the moral dial-

plate itself movable, so that it went with the index ; in

this confusion it was never indicated to him where inno-
cence was.
Had he foreseen that his epistolary confessions would
bound and rebound in more hostile corners than his oral

ones did aforetime, he would have prepared them other-

wise.
For agitation Albano could not directly write the short
parting-letter — not a challenge — to the abandoned one,
but delayed, in the certainty that the Captain would not
 "

90 TITAN.

come himself, — when all at once he came. For procras-

tination he could not bear ;
bodily and spiritual wounds he
received as theatrical ones ; too much accustomed to win
men, he too easily brought himself to lose men. A terri-

ble apparition for Albano ; it was but the long coffin of

his murdered favorite set upright ! — that now over that

powerfully-angular face, once the stronghold of their souls,
furrows of weeds should wind, that this mouth, which
friendship had so often laid upon his, should have become
a plague-cancer, a concealing rose to the tongue-scorpion

for the good Rabette when she approached so trustingly,

— to see and think of that was clear anguish.
Hardly audible were greeting and thanks ;
silently they

walked up and down, not beside but against each other.

Albano sought to get the mastery over his wrath, so as to
say nothing but the words " Begone from me, and let me :

forget thee He meant "

to spare Liana in her brother,
!

who had reproached him with being sacrificial-knife to

her unjust suspicions keep us better in the time immedi-
;

ately following, because we are not willing to let them

grow into just ones. "I am candid, thou seest," Roquai-
rol began, with moderation, because his ebullitions had
been half distilled and dropped away from the point of
his pen ;
" be thou so, too, and answer the letter." " I

was thy friend, — now, no more," said Albano, choking.

" I have not surely done anything to tliee^'' was the reply.
" Heavens ! Let me not say much," said Albano.
" My miserable — my innocence of
sister, the coming of
the Countess, — my wretched, abandoned* sister ! O God!
drive me not — I respect thee
to frenzy, no more, and
!
so go
" Then fight
!
" said the Captain, half drunk wnth emo-
tion and half with wine. " No," said Albano, drawing in
 ;

ROQUAIROL AND ALBANO FIGHT. 9I

a long breath, as if for a sigh of indignation ;

" to thee

nothing is sacred, not so much as a life !

" This pupil of
death so easily threw after his own life-daysand joys
and plans all those of another into the tomb with them
that was what Albano meant, and thought of the sick
Liana, so easily dying of others' wounds ; love (instead

of friendship) had passed along like a soothing woman

before his provoked soul but the foe misunderstood him.
;

" Thou must," said the Captain, wildly mocking ;

" thine
"
shall be precious to me !

" Heaven and Hell ! I meant a better one," said he ;

" slanderer, toward thy sister I have 7iot acted as thou hast
against mine, — I have not wished to make her miserable,
I am not as thou ! — and I shall not fight ; I spai-e Aer,
not thee." But the hell-flood of wrath, which he through
Liana had wished to turn off into a flat land, and make
more shallow, swelled up thereby as if under an enchant-
er's hand, because Roquairol's lie about her being sacri-
ficed came so near home in that connection.
" Thou art afraid," said the exasperated Roquairol, and
still took down two swords from the wall. " I respect

thee not, and will not fight," said Albano, only stim-
ulating him and himself the more, while he meant to
control himself
Just then Schoppe stepped in. " He is afraid," repeated
Roquairol, weapon in hand. Albano, reddening, gave, in
three burning words, the history. " You must fight a little

before me !
" cried the Librarian, full of his old hatred
for
Roquairol's dazzling and juggling heart. Albano, thirst-
ing for cold steel, grasped at it involuntarily. The fight
began. Albano did not attack, but parried more and more
furiously and as, while so doing, he beheld the angry
;

ape of his former friend with the dagger in his hand, which
 !

92 TITAN.

had been ploughed up out of the blooming garden-beds of

the loveHest days, and upon wliich he had trodden with
his wounds : and as the Captain with increasing storminess
flashed away at him like lightning, unavaihngly : then did
he see on the grim face that dark hell-shadow standing
again, which had stood and played thereon, when he had
strangled Rabette struggling in his grasp ;
— the draw-
bridge of countenances, whereupon once the two souls met,
stood, suddenly raised high in the air. More fiery grew
Albano's glance ; more drunk with indignation, he set
upon the were-wolf of devoured friendship ;
— suddenly he
severed his weapon from him like a claw : when Schoppe,
indignant at the unequal forbearing and fighting, would
fain invoke vengeance with Rabette's name, and cried,
" The sister, Albano!"
But Albano understood by that Charles's sister, and
hurled one sword after the other, and fiery drops stood in
his eye, and hideously distorted the face of the foe before
him. " Albano !
" said Roquairol, his wrath exhausted,
relying on the tear-built rainbow of peace, — "Albano?"
he asked, and gave him his hand. " Farewell ; live hap-
pily, but go ; I am still innocent, — go !
" replied Albano,
who felt bitterly the tempest of the first wrath overhead,
which having settled down between his mountains, con-
tinued to beat upon him. ^ In the Devil's name, go
I too shall be roused at last," said Schoppe, interfering.
" In such a name one goes willingly !
" said the Cap-
tain, whose tongue-muscles always stiffened in Schoppe's

presence, and silently departed ; but Albano had for

some time ceased to look upon him, because he could
never endure another's humiliation, but, like every
strong soul, bowed down at the same time
felt himself
Avith any abasement of humanhy, just as great thrones
 ;

SCHOPPE'S OPINION OF ROQUAIROL. 93

tolerate no distinguishing marks of servility in their '

neighborhood.*
Schoppe began now to remind him of his own earliest

predictions about Roquairol, and to name himself the

Great Prophet-Quartette, — to denounce the fellow's in-

curable scurvy of mouth and heart, — to compare his

^

theatrical firmness with the Roman marble and porphyry,

whicli has on the outside a stone rind, but inwardly only
woodjt — to remark how his internal possession might be
said to be, like that of the German Order, only a tongue,
— and in general to declare himself so vehemently against
self-decomposition through fancy, against all poetical con-
tempt of the world, that any other but Albano might well
have taken his zeal for a defence of himself against the
slight feeling of a similarity.

Schoppe had strong hopes Albano would listen to him

believingly, and would grow angry, laugh and answ^er
but he became more grave and silent ; — he looked at the

honest Librarian — and fell passionately and silently on

his neck — and speedily dried his heavy eye. O, it is

the gloomy day of mourning, the burial-day of friendship,

when the outcast, orphan heart goes home alone, and it

sees the death-owl fly screaming from the death-bed of

old feeling over the whole creation.
Albano had, in the beginning, inclined to go this very
day Blumenbühl and lead his forsaken sister to the
to

mausoleum of truth but now his heart was not strong

;

enough to sustain his own words to his sister or her im-

measurable and inconsolable tears.
* For instance, the German imperial court allows no servants'
livery.

t Buildings in Rome which appear to consist of one or the other of

these have only an outside layer thereof.
 — ;

TWENTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
The Tbial-Lesson of Love. — Froulat's Fear of Fortune
The Biter bit. — Homors of the Observatory.

90. CYCLE.
INCE the extinction of the engagement, and
since Gaspard's letters, Albano's eye had been
directed toward the fiiirest ruins of time,
unless one excepts the earth itself, — to Italy

and his injured vision held fast to this new portal of his
life, which was to usher him into the presence of the fair-

est and greatest which nature and man can create. How
did the fire-mountains, and Rome's ruins, and her warm,
golden-blue heavens, already unfold to him their splendor,
when in fancy he led the suffering Liana before them, and
her holy eyes refreshed themselves with measuring the
heights ! A man who travels with his beloved to Italy
has in the very fact that he might do without one of the
two, both double. And Albano hoped for this felicity,

since all testimonies which he met with of Liana's resto-

ration to health promised as much. As to Dr. Sphex,
— the only one who opened a pit for her, and in it cast

a death-bell, and swore to everybody, she would fall

with the leaves of autumn, — him he saw no more. He

wished, however, — he —
said to himself, whole
in this

joint-tour, only her happiness, not at all her love. So

 THE PRINCESS COURTS ALBANO. 95

did he see himself always in his self-mirror, namely,

only veiled ; so did he regard himself often as too stern,
although he was so little of that ; so did he take himself
to be conqueror of his own heart, when his fair coun-

tenance already wore pale, sickly hues.

The present stood as yet dark above him, but its neigh-
boring times, the future and the past, lay full of light.
What a journey, in which a beloved, a father, a friend, a
female friend, are of themselves, on the very road, the cu-
riosities which others find only when they reach the end !

The Princess was the female friend. Since Gaspard's

letters to her and to him, since the hope of a longer and
nearer enjoyment of his society, she found more and more
pleasure in subduing all clouds round about her, so as to ,

smile and shine upon her friend only out of a blue heaven.
She alone at court seemed to take mildly and rightly the
blunt youth, whose proud frankness so often ran against
the disguised pride of the Count, and particularly against
the open pride of the Prince ; she alone seemed — as
nothing is seldomer guessed in and by circles than fair

sensibility, especially by courtly ones and especially manly

sensibility — softly to spy out his, and to increase its
warmth by her sympathy. She alone honored him with
that strict, significant attention which mankind so seldom
give, as well as can so seldom appreciate, because they
never have occasion but for love and passion, in order
to — render justice, incapable, otherwise than by comet-
light, by warm-flames and fires of joy, to read the best
hand. All that he was, she simply presupposed in him ;
i

his pre-eminent qualities were only her demands and his

passports ; she made his individuaUty neither her model

nor her reflection ; both were painters, no pictures. He
heard often, indeed, that she had a masculine severity,
 "

95 TITAN.

especially in her dictatorial capacity, but not, however,

that she was womanishly inhuman. To the customary
vermin of courtlings, which gives itself elevation on its
worm-rings only by crawling, she was repulsive and tor-
turing ;
although, as a new-comer, she should, it would
seem, have been a new-born child, that brings with it

raisins to the older children. On Sunday, when at courts,

as on the stage in Berlin, spiritual popular pieces are
always brought out, she was (among the Sunday-born-
children, who see more spirits than they have) a Mon-
day's child, which wishes to find for itself one, who,
whether he has ever been dubbed noble or not, at all

events knows how to distinguish an original from the

copy, as well in his own self as in a picture-gallery. On
that account many lords, and stiU more ladies, thanked
God, if they had occasion to say nothing more to her
than " God bless you !

In this way she appeared to the Count every day more

worthy of his father. As into a warm spring sunshine
did he enter for the first time into the flattering magic
circle of female which even here cast and
friendship,
moulded two wings for love out of the wax-cells of the
enjoyed honey it was, however, with him love for Liana,
;

towhom the friend could most easily give wings for Italy.
He felt that soon an hour of overflowing esteem would
strike, when he could confidingly open the high-walled
cloister-garden of his former love. For she made room
for him to be near her as often as the narrow compass
of a throne and the all-betraying height of its location
would admit. But something disturbed, watched, beset
both, —a rival neighbor, as it seemed. It was the sin-

gular Julienne, who always, when things were getting on,

stepped out of her box on to the stage of the Princess,
 AN EVENING WITH GOETHE'S TASSO. 97

and confounded the play. Frequently she came after

him sometimes he had gotten invitations from her just
;

the moment before others from the Princess followed,

which hers, therefore, as it seemed, must have anticipat-
ed. What did she mean ? Would she possibly win from
a youth whom she had so often provoked by her con-
tempt of men, and by the lightning-like dartings of her
indignation, his love, merely, perhaps, because he had
always so warmly reciprocated her friendly glances, as
those of so dear a — friend of his beloved ? Or did she
want of him only hatred for the honored Princess, and
that indeed out of envy and the usual resemblance of
women to ivory, whose white hue so readily becomes
yellow, and which only by a thorough warming gets the
fair color again?
These questions were rather repeated than answered
by an evening which he and Julienne spent at the
Princess's. A good reading was to give the picture-
exhibition of Goethe's Tasso. Fine art, and nothing but
art, was with the Princess the art of Passau* against
court- and life-wounds ;
and, in general, the world-system
was to her only a complete picture-gallery and Pembroke
cabinet and gallery of antiques. The reading parts were
so distributed by the manager, the Princess, that she her-
self got the Princess, Julienne the confidante Leonore,
Albano the Poet Tasso, a youthful-cheeked Chamberlain
the Duke, and Froulay Alphonso. This latter, who had
learned to prefer works of artifice to works of art, and
the princely cabinet to any cabinet of art, in spite of his
heart stood ready there for a journey to the mountain of
the muses, arrayed for that purpose by the Princess in a

* "Pretended secret of making one's self invulnerable." Adler.

— Tr. *
VOL. II. 5 O
 ;

98 TITAN.

mountain-habit. Thus forced more and more every day

into the poetical fashion, he looked, of course, like any
other abortion, which has come into the world with pan-

j
taloons, queue, and the like all born on him, on purpose
to condemn the modish way of the world, just hke a
'
street-sweeper in Cassel.
Albano read with outward and inward glow, not
toward the reading Princess, but toward the Princess
she personated, from a habit of his heart which life

always set a-glow ; and the Princess read the role of her
role very well, of course. Her artistic feeling told her,

even without the prompting of tender sensibihty, that in

i Goethe's Tasso, — which, most
for the part, is related to
the Italian Tasso, as heavenly Jerusalem
the the to

Jerusalem delivered, — the Princess almost Princess of

is

Princesses. Never did the god of the muses and of the

I sun pass more beautifully through the constellation Virgo
than here. Never was veiled love more radiantly un-
veiled.

I
The Minister read off the powerful proser Alphonso,
as he scolds at Tasso and Albano, as well as a trumpeter
of cavalry reads the notes which are affixed to his sleeve
! in fact, he found the man quite sensible.

The younger * Princess might, in the general poetic

concert, have done her share of the talking some quarter
of an hour, more or less, when she suddenly threw down,
in a lively manner, the beautiful volume of Goethe's
works, of which there were three copies there, and said,

with her impetuosity, " A stupid part ! I cannot abide

it !
" All the world was silent. The senior * Princess
looked at her significantly ; the junior Princess looked at

* These distinctions are given for the German Princessinn and

Fürstinn. — 1^.
 THE ANONYMOUS WARNING. 99

her still more significantly, and went out, without coming

back again. A court dame took up the reading, and went
calmly on.
To most of those present this interlude was properly
the most interesting ; and they willingly continued to

think of it during the reading of the latter part. The

Princess, who had long believed the Princesse loved the
Count, was delighted with the inconsiderateness of her
adversary. Albano, although her warm eye had struck
him of old, explained to himself the absconding on the
ground of chagrin at the subordinateness of her part in
the reading, and the general incompatibility of the two
women ; for while Julienne, at her own expense, slighted
the Princess, and took little pains to conceal her opinion,
so also did that of the Princess appear involuntarily. So
soon as one party manifests its hatred, the second can
hardly conceal its from the third.

When Albano came home, he found the following leaf

on his table :
—
" The P decoys thee ; she loves thee. With
eclat she will send in the next place the M back,
in order to give bold relief to her virtue, and produce an
imposing effect upon thee. Shun her ! I love thee, but
differently and eternally.
" Nous nous verrons un jour, mon frere."

Who wrote it ? Not even as to the admission-ticket of

this cartel could the servant make any deposition. Who
wrote it ? J ulienne ; to this point, at least, all roads of
probability converged; only in that case mysteries lay
round about him. Significant was the French subscrip-
tion, which stood in like manner exactly under the picture
of his sister, which his father had given him on Isola
lOO TITAN.

Bella;* but that might be a coincidence. He investi-

gated now these new silver-veins of his Diana- f and

family-tree by the touchstone of his whole history. His
mother and Julienne's had gone to Italy with his father
in one and the same year both had been uncommon wo-
;

men and mutual friends, and his father the friend of both.

There was the possibility of a false step on the part of

his father, which had been concealed. Quite as easily
might the traces of this error have been shown to Julienne.

Then, further, the hypothesis of her sisterly love would

throw light on her whole previous winding course ; her
affectionate interest in Albano ; her love-race with the
Princess ; her correspondence with his father ; her en-
listing of the Count's affection for Romeiro, which, as it

seemed, heated her quite as much against the Princess as

it chilled her toward Liana; above all, the singularity
of her love for him, which never unfolded itself further
and more openly; — all this gave ground to suspect that it

might be only a sister's kindred blood which blazed so

often on her round cheeks, when she had unconsciously
gazed at him too long. After this step he made forth-
with the leap ; he now suspected, also, that she alone had
sought to dazzle and delude him into the love of her
Linda with the magic mirror of spiritual existences.

As respects the relation of the Princess to the Minister,

every word upon that subject was to him a lie. He was
quite as reluctant to let himself part with a good opinion
of others as a bad one. Ordinary men readily give
the good opinion away and hold the bad one fast ; weaker
ones are easily reconciled, and hardly parted. He was
* 5. Cycle.
t The Diana-tree of the chemists is a crystallized composition of
silver, mercury, and spirits of nitre. — Tr.
 THE PRINCESS SPREADS HER NET. loi

unlike either. Hitherto he had so easily ascribed in his

own mind the Princess's friendship for the Minister, her
visitation journeys with him through the land, and the
like, to her manly prudence and foresight, which would
fain at once keep watch over the future hereditary land
of her brother and hold the key to it and to this proba-
;

bility, as the Minister accommodated himself equally well

to the related parts of a cicerone and an overseer, he still

adhered.
The following week brought along a circumstance,
which seemed to throw a greater light into the dark
billet.

91. CYCLE.

THE promised circumstance has

older circumstances which occurred between the
its root again in

Princess and the Minister ; these I here premise.

The Minister had been very soon furnished by his
friend Bouverot — whose clammy woodpecker's tongue
licked off unseen the vermm of all mysteries out of all
musty cracks in the throne — with a description of all

that the Princess concealed m herself in the shape of

Phoenix ashes and rubbish : he had instructed him that
she, cold as a piece of ice ground into a convex lens,

never would melt herself, but only others ; that she was
one of those more rare coquettes who, like sweet wines,
become sour through warmth, and only sweeter by cold ;

and that she therefore had about her one of the worst
habits, — which made the most grievous jobs for every
one. It was, namely, the following: She had a heart,
and would never suffer it to lie in her bosom as dead
capital ; but it must pay interest, and circulate. So the
lover became, in the beginning, more wide awake and gay
 I02 TITAN.

from day to day, then from hour to hour ; he knew all

by-ways through wood and hollow, all thieves' paths and

shorter cuts in this love-garden regularly by heart, and
would foretell the critical* quarter of an hour on his re-
peating watch when he should arrive at the summer-house.
It was not by any means unknown to him (but com-
ical) what it signified, that the said lover would pass with
her from sentences to glances, from these to kissing of the

hand, then to kissing of the mouth, whereupon he would

find himself caught, entrapped, and imprisoned in the
Whistonian comet's-train of her ell-long (or mile-long)
hair as in a bird-net (in which, however, the noose was
also the berry-bait), and bent up in his prison to such
a degree as to know what o'clock it had struck on his
repeater. But when all
just then, clouds seemed fallen
^
from heaven, he himself would fall out of both into a
basket from her ; — that was the bad point. In fact, Ger-
man who had made all other
princes of the oldest houses,
experiments, saw themselves made immoral, ay, ridicu-
lous, and knew not at all what to think about it; for the

Princess openly wondered at such monsters, gave all the

world a copy of her challenge, showed all the world the
redness and the loftiness of her turkey-hen's-neck, and
suffered such an old tempter of a Prince, or whoever it

was, never more in her haughty presence.

As princes (in such cases) know what they want, so
of course they spread it about that sheknew not what she
would have ; and often not till long after an hereditary
prince came the apanaged brother of the same court, and
later the legitimated one. However, the thing remained
the same; namely, she remained like the spherical con-
cave mirror, which indeed images behind itself what stands
* Literally, the pastoral, &c. — Tk.
 ! ;

FROULAY RUNS INTO THE NET. 103

close before it, as large and upright, but so soon as it

comes into its focus, makes it invisible, and then out be-
yond that point hangs it quite diminished and topsy-turvy
in the air. Her love was a fever of debility, in which
Darwin, Weikard, and other Brownists, by stimulating
means — wine, for instance — produce a slower pulse, and
even promise therefrom a cure. So far Bouverot to the

Minister
But to the Minister came thereby an inexpressible
favor. For princes' sins jumped not at all with his pro-
fessional studies and trade. When, therefore, she had de-
cided upon having his understanding and powerful physi-
ognomy near her, and had named him Minister of her
most intimate relations in Haarhaar, then was it solemnly
laid down and sworn to within him, never, though she
were kindness itself, to be the robber of her honor to her
straw-widower. In the beginning, like all his predeces-
sors, he got on easily with mere pure feelings and dis-

courses ; as yet there was nothing desired of him, except

that he should sometimes unexpectedly dart at her a sly
look full of loving tenderness ; and he must also have a
longing. He darted the look ; he also got up longings
and so he felt himself comfortably enough insured for
such a successful love affair.

But it stopped not here. Hardly had her Albano ap-

peared, when the thorn-girdle and hair-shirt of the pure
Minister was made disproportionately more rough and
thorny, and the strongest requirements, namely, gifts, re-

doubled, in order that the poor Joseph might the more

speedily assail her honor and therefore run into his ruin,
which should be bait for the Count. By this time he had
been already brought along so far that he wove and knot-
ted in her flying hair (to him poisonous snake-hair), — he
 TITAN.

must needs blow out soap-bubbles of sighs from his pipe,

— he must needs quite often be beside himself; yes, he
must even (if he would not see himself chased away as
a hypocritical rascal) be half-sensual, although still decent
enough. Meanwhile he was not to be tempted into a
temptation by the Devil himself. Whenever he even
thought of the subject, shuddepng, how the least misstep
might hurl him from his ministerial post, then he would
as soon have let himself be impaled and quartered as
bewitched. For a third party, not for these two, — they
were the sufferers, — it would perhaps have been a feast,

to have seen how they (if I may use a too low compari-
son) resembled a pair of silk stockings drawn over each
other, which for and by each other, when one keeps them
distended * at a certain distance, ethereally blow them-
selves and fill, but immediately collapse, flat and flabby,
when they touch each other.
Of course, in the long run, it fell heavily upon the old
statesman to have to leap along before the dancing
pageantry of love-gods as their arch-master, tackled into
the triumphal car of the Cyprian, —a flower-garland on
his state-peruke, in his eyes two Vauclusa fountains,
the cavity of his breast a choked-up Dido's cave, wear-
ing in his button-hole an arrow in a heart, or a heart on
an arrow, and faring toward the capitol, in order there,

after the Roman fashion, not so much to sacrifice as to be

sacrificed. Nothing except the tin boxes which the gov-

* Symmer observed the following White and black stockings

:

drawn over each other in dry, cold weather, when one draws them
apart, the outer by the lower end, the inner by the upper end, become
charged with opposite electricities, the white positive, the black nega-
tive when separate, they swell out toward each other, and seek each
;

other ; when in contact, they hang down flat and broad. — Fisher's
Physical Dictionary, Vol. I.
 THINGS APPROACH A CRISIS. 105

^
ernment officers and exchequer messengers stowed away
for himhome could
at fan fresh and cool again the stale-
mated man, who would fain be a checkmated one.
He read with her Catullus, she with him the better pic-
tures out of the Prince's cabinet ; it was allowed him to

reward her by his Latinity for her artistic favors : but

he remained, nevertheless, as he was.
When women wish to carry a point, and find hindrances
constantly recurring, they grow at last blind and wild, and
dare anything and everything. The tour to Italy ap-
proached so fast ; still the Minister was no nearer to let-

ting go his high consideration for his beloved, — although

from just her own motive, that of the tour, with the near-

ness of which he animated himself to a cheerful endur-

ance of so short a flame. Her passion for the Count
increased with the Count's tranquillity, because coldness
strengthens strong love, just as physical coldness makes
strong people more vigorous and weak ones more puny.
Froulay, as an old man, was, as it seemed, capable of
creeping along so for a whole age to his object, without
making one unnecessary leap, since old people, like ships,

always move slower the longer they have been going, and
on similar grounds, namely, that both, by the adhesion of
filth, weeds, barnacles, and the like, have become un-
wieldy. In short, the Princess at last ceased to ask for

anything, but matters went thus :

—
The Prince had gone a journey, the Princess had been
invited as god-mother out into the country. The castel-
lain on one of her country castles, who had already the
year before invited the Minister, had not been restrained
by bashfulness from making his way still farther up on
this rope-ladder, with his descendant under his arm, and
up there on the throne laying his child of the land in the
5*
io6 TITAN.

arms of her, the Princess herself. Princes love to let

themselves down — on thin silk-worm threads — (as

Avell as up) ; they value the good-natured, stupid people,
and would fain in this way raise somewhat the poor
creeping dwarf-beans, — for they well know how little it

matters, — and, so to speak, pole them and boot them by

means of the leg of the princely chair. Beside this, the
Minister had been invited as grand-god-father (so called).
The autumn day was only a brighter, more perfect spring,
and the autumnal night stood under a brilliant full moon.
Courts always long so exceedingly to be away in the
country, among the idyls of murmuring rivulets, sighing
branches, and tree-tops, and bleating Swisseries, and
farmers ; Courts — that is, courtiers, court-dames and
official chamberlains'-staves, and others — yearn so for
the society of human beings ; as beasts are driven by the
December hunger, so does a noble hunger drive them
down from the throne-mountains into the flat plains ; not
that they would fly from ennui, but they desire only a
different kind, as their very pastime consists in the abbre-
viation and alternation of their ennui.
Hardly had the Court appeased its first longing for the
people with whom it stood for half a quarter of an hour
on a confidential, conversational footing, when it came to

itself again, and dispersed itself through the princely gar-

den, in order to consume full as long a time in satisfying
its longing after nature. A sponsoress of the sponsoress
promised Christianity in the stead of Princess and child.

The Princess herself attached the Minister to her as a

chamberlain. The grand-god-father looked out into the
prospect of a d —d long evening, in which he should be
obhged to parade round her procession-banner. For the
enjoyment of the evening there was a concert, and for the
 THE PASTORAL HOUR THREATENS. 107

enjoyment of the concert card playing had been arranged ;

and for the enjoyment of the latter, the Princess had

seated herself alone with Froulay, in order, during the
general playing of cards and instruments, to have some
inaudible conversation with him. Suddenly the two
pounds which were hung up in his breast — for no heart,
according to the anatomists, weighs more than that —
became two hundred-weight heavier, when she asked him
whether he was steadfast and could confide in her and
dare for her. He swore that, if only as Princess, she
might expect of his two-pounder any and every sacrifice

and mark of veneration. She went on she had some

:

weighty things to intrust him with to-day about herself

and the Prince ; she wished, when the Foule was gone,
to speak with him alone ; he need only go up the little

stairway from the side of the garden to the door of the

library-chamber was open in the poetical book-
; this ;

case on the was a spring in the wall, the pressure

left side

of which would open to him the tapestry door of the

apartment, where he was to await her.
Immediately she rose, presuming upon an affirmative.
How it fared now with the two pounds of his sixty-four-
ounce-heart can gratify none but his deadly enemy to
realize. So much lay written before him with long,
thick, stony letters, as on an epitaphium, namely, that
after a few hours, when the other lords, in other respects

still greater sinners than he, could snore away quietly in

the pleasant ministerial houses which formed the court of
the Palace, that then for him, innocent knave, the wolf-hour,
that is to say, the shepherd's hour,* would so soon strike,

when he on the most flowery meadow must kneel beneath

the butcher's knife. But he — angry that his faith in

* The ^pastoral hour of sentimental love. — Tr.

io8 TITAN.

female and princely impudence should prove a soothsayer

— made silently all kinds of oaths to himself, that, even
if as much were imposed upon him as on the greatest
saints and universal philosophers, he would nevertheless
behave like both, for instance, like old Zeno and Franz.
The Princess sought him all the evening less than
usual. At last he took his respectful leave of the whole
court, but with the prospect of creeping, not, like them,
under silk quilts, but under cold bowers. He even
marched — sure of himself — up the stairway, opened
the library-chamber, found the spring, touched it, and
stepped through the tapestry door into the princely —
bedchamber. " It is certain, then," said he, and cursed
about him inwardly to his heart's content, lying prostrate
and crushed quite flat beneath the love-letter weight. In
the side chamber on the left hand he already heard her
and a chambermaid, who was undressing her. On the
chamber stood ajar.
right the door of a second but lighted
He stood long in doubt whether he should step into that,
or stay where he was under the light-screen of a dark
corner. At last he laid hold of the protection of night.

During his suspense and her disrobing, he had time to

rehearse or read over his part ; now he came to an agree-

ment with himself, in case of necessity, — and if he should
find himself pushed too hard — and all the more, as the
place would speak more against her than against him,
inasmuch as every one must needs ask, whether he could
otherwise have possibly gained admission, — in such a case
of necessity, where only the choice between a satire and
a satyr was left him, he determined to transform himself
on the spot into a respectful — Faun.
Directly the Princess strode in, but in the direction of
the illuminated chamber. " I have no further occasion
 SCANDAL IN PESTITZ.

for thee," she called back to the chambermaid. " Diable ! "

screamed she, in the bedchamber, spying out the tall

Minister ; " who stands there ? Hanna, a light ! del ! "

she continued, recognizing him, but continuing to speak
French, because Hanna understood nothing of that.
Mais, Monsieur! Me voila done compromise! Quelle
meprise ! Vous vous etes trompe de chamhres ! Par-
donnez, Monsieur, que je sauve les dehors de mon sexe
et de mon rang. Comment avez-vous-pu — '*
She ut-

tered all this, perhaps, by way of blinding the German

witness, with an angry accent. The grand-godfather —
who, after all previous gratifications, felt like a cock, who

has gulped down many live chafers, and is now threatened

with his life by their sticking in his distressed crop —
kept not silence, but replied in German, opening the
tapestry door, meanwhile, that he had, even as she com-
manded, laid the books out of the library in the lighted
chamber, and had been caught in transitu. He went im-
mediately through the tapestry ; but she could hardly con-
tain herself for terror, had the physician called in the
morning, and sent back her retinue. Froulay — however
much like the Spanish he found his romances, among
which, according to Fisher's assertion, the thieves' litera-
ture is the best — at last did not know, himself, what to
make of it.
The chambermaid had to make profession with the
vow of silence, which she kept as strictly as she could,
but not more so. Next morning very few alighted before
their own doors, most before the doors of others, in order
to land the news together with the injunction of the Prin-
cess not to make the thing eclatant, because in that case
the Prince would hear of it.

If ever the nobility of Pestitz was happy en masse, it

I lO TITAN.

was this very morning. Nothing was wanting to uni-

versal joy but a chambermaid who should have only
understood as much French as a hunting-dog.

92. CYCLE.
LBANO heard the report ; the Minister had long
Ji~\. appeared to him contaminating, like a cold corpse
of a soul now he hated him still more as a tormenting,
;

blood-sucking dead man. For the Princess his heart had

hitherto stood security to him. She was to him a blue
day-sky, wherein to others only a hot sun blazes, wherein
he, however, through the mysterious depths of the soul
and of friendship, had found soft constellations beaming.
But now since the rumor, which, like the magicians in the
presence of Moses, threw soot into her heaven, she stood,
to his eyes, shining under new lights. The hatred which
he by his very nature, i. e. from pride, had of all rumor,
because it controls and is not to be controlled, worked in
him with fresh fire ; he resolved, even because Liana must
be the daughter either of her hereditary foe or of her
lover, and the Princess her rival, to venture freely on the
strength of his heart and what it knew, and at this very
juncture to communicate openly to the Princess his prayer
for her mediation in favor of Liana's company upon the
journey, — in other words, of his heaven.
On the morning after, the Prince came back, — the
Princess immediately had her carriage tackled, — toward
evening she came with one carriage more into town. The
report ran through all card-tables that the Spanish
Countess Romeiro had arrived at the Palace. Reports
are polypuses ;
wounding and mutilating only multiplies
them ;
only sticking them into each other makes one out-
 !

ALBANO'S HOPE AND RESOLVE. Ill

of two: the report of Linda's arrival swallowed up the

report of Froulay's disgraceful attempt.
But Albano! Like the discovery of a new world, this

turned his old one topsy-turvy. Linda, that foreign trop-

ical bird, came flying in advance of his approaching father,
who rose before him like a rich land out of the distance,
— the soil where he had found so many thorns and
flowers soon sank behind him, with all its treasures and
days, below the horizon. Only Liana could not vanish
with it; that muse of his youth must he lead with him into
the land of youth. By those usual magic arts of the heart
had Linda's nearness awakened in him an insuperable
longing for Liana.
He was now decided to remind the Princess of her
earlier promise to pour the life-balsam of a southern tour
upon Liana's sick nerves, and through her now, betimes,
before the confusion of the last pressing moments should
prostrate anything, to put the Minister's lady in tune, and
gain her over, who, like all court people, would certainly
hardly resist a princely wish and a happy prospect.
If, however. Liana, from any fault of her own or of
others, stayed behind, then was it his sworn determination,
for no power, not even his father's, to stir from the native
land of his eternal bride ; but to root himself before her
sick-cloister, until she either passed out therefrom free
and cheerful again into open life, or buried herself, darkly
veiled, in the gloomy nun-choir of the dead. O, to come
back to seek her in the romantic grounds of olden time,
and to find her nowhere but behind the speech-grating of
the hereditary vault, — this was a thought his heart could

not endure
The Princess herself furnished him an opportunity of
making his request ; she sent him an invitation to an
112 TITAN.

astronomical party at the observatory, through her faith-

ful court-dame Ilaltermann :
" I have to write to you,

verbally, merely the following," wrote she. " Come this

evening to the observatory ; I and my good Haltermann

are going thither." This Haltermann, a Fraiilein of few
charms or spiritual flag-feathers, but of many dogmas and
premature wrinkles, had already for years hung indisso-

lubly upon the Princess, keeping everything secret, and

favoring all her "make-your-appearances" (rendez-vom)
by merely saying, " My princess is as pure as gold, and
only few know her as I do."
Nothing could happen more propitious to Albano's
wishes. He stood earliest of all on the noble observa-
tory, in the midst of the lovely night. It was some days
after the full moon ; that shining world was as yet hidden
behind the earth, but the let-on jets of its rays shot up by
fits and starts. On all mountain-peaks glimmered even
now a pale light, as if the distant morning of super-terres-
trial worlds were falHng upon them. Through the val-

leys the Hght-shunning, black, earthly beast. Night, still

stretched himself out, and reared himself up against the

mountains. The mountain-castle of Liana was invisible,
and showed, like a fixed star, only a light. Suddenly the
autumnal purple upon all summits around the
castle was
bedewed with silver by the moon, and a shower of light
came down on the white walls and along the white avenues
of the garden ; at last, a strange, pale morning, glimmer-
ing through all bowers, lay in the garden, as it were
the tender gleaming of a high, perfectly pure spirit, who
only in the holy, silent night trod the low earth, and then
and there sought nothing but the pure, still Liana.
As Albano looked and dreamed and longed, the Prin-
cess came up, with her Haltermann. The Professor al-
 ;

LINDA DP:SCRIBED AND LUNA OBSERVED. II3

most broke himself in two with his salam before them,

and allowed the fixed suns no astrological influence upon
his erect posture. Albano and the Princess met eacli

other again with an increase of reciprocal warmth. But

the first question of the Princess was, whether he had
seen the Spanish countess. Indifferently he said, he had
been invited by the Princesse since her arrival, but had
not gone. " Ma helle scßur admires her most," continued
the Princess ;
" but she deserves it somewhat. She is

majestically built, taller than I, and fair, especially her

head, her eye, and her hair. She is, however, more plas-
tically than picturesquely beautiful, rather resembling
a Juno or Minerva than a Madonna. But she has her
peculiarities. She cannot endure any w^omen, except such
as are simple, straightforward, and blindly good; hence
her chamber-women live and die for her. Men she holds
to be poor creatures, and says she should despise herself
if she should ever become the wife or slave of a man
but she seeks them for the sake of information. To the
Prince she has unnecessarily, though she was in the right
as to the matter of fact, said bitter things. He laughs at
it, and says there is nothing she does love, not even chil-
dren and lap-dogs. You must see her. She reads much ;

she lives only with the Princesse, and seems, if one may
judge by her dress, to count little upon any conquests, at
least at our court."
Albano said, many of these traits were truly grand,
and broke short off. During the conversation the Pro-
fessor had diligently arranged and screwed up everything,
and was now ready to commence. He remai'ked upon
the bright, bland, summer-like night, — proceeded, after
some introductory observations, into the moon, in order to
lead the six eyes to the most considerable lunar spots, —
H
 114 TITAN.

foreshadowed, in a preliminary way, several shadows

overhead there, — introduced them to the Crater of Ber-
nouilli (" I make use of Scröter's nomenclature," said he),
— the highest mountain range Dörfel ("it consists, of
course, of three summits," said he), — the Landgrave of
Hesse-Cassel (" Hevel, however, calls it IMount Horeb,"
said he), — then Mont Blanc, and the ring-mountains in
general ; and concluded with the sly assurance, that the
observatory was, to be sure, still very deficient in instru-

ments.
The Haltermann longed indescribably after the Land-
grave of Hesse-Cassel in the moon, and endeavored to

get at the telescope. " It is only a spot in the planet,

my child
!
" said the Princess. " And is the Mont
Blanc overhead, then, nothing but a spot, too ? " asked
she, disappointed. The Princess nodded, and looked into
the telescope ; the magic moon hung like a piece of day-
world close to the glass. " How its fair, pale light and

f
all its magic passes away when it is brought near ! as
!
when the future becomes present " said she, to the aston-

ishment of the Professor, who could never make anything

out of the planet excepting precisely when it was near.
She interrogated him about Saturn's ring. " There are
properly two, your Highness ; but the observatory just at
this time wants an instrument to see it," said he, and
aimed again in the direction of the former shot.

Albano saw his life-gardens sparkling round about him

with the warm glimmer of an after-spring ; and his inner

being trembled sweetly and sadly. He took a comet-

seeker, and flew round among the stars, towards Blumen-
biilil, into the city, up the mountains, only not to the
white castle with the illuminated corner-chamber and the
little garden. His whole, heart turned backward for
shame and love before the gate of Paradise.
 ALBANO PLEADS FOR LIANA. I15

At this moment, the Haltermann, at a hint to retire, led

the way down with the astronomer, in order to favor the
Princess with a moment free from witnesses. Albano
stood before her, noble in the moonlight ; his eye was
radiant ; his features showed emotion. She grasped his

hand, and said, "We certainly do not misunderstand each

other, Count ? " He pressed her hand, and his eyes

gushed full. " No, Princess !
" said he, softly. " You
give me your friendship. I do not deserve it, if I do not
trust it entirely. I give you now the proof of my open
confidence. You know, perhaps, the history of my for-
tunes and my loss ;
you know the Minister." " Alas,

alas !
" said she ;
" even your hard history, noble man,
has become familiar to me."
" No " replied he, passionately " I was more cruel
! ;

than my fate. I tormented an innocent heart I made ;

an obedient daughter miserable, sick, and blind. But I

have lost her," he continued, with rising emotion, and
turned sidewise, in order not to see the glimmering heights
of Liana's residence, " and bear it as I can, but without
any secret way to repossession. Only the victim can-
not be permitted to bleed to death over yonder, with her
stern, narrow-hearted mother. O, the honey-drops of tlie

pleasures, they and Italy's heaven, might well heal her.

She dies if she stays, and I stay to look on. Friend, O

"
how great is the favor I ask !

" Gladly shall it be granted you ! Day after to-mor-

row I visit the mother and daughter, and certainly will
decide the latter for the journey, in so far as it depends
upon me. I do it, however, — to be frank, — merely out
of genuine friendship for you ; for the girl does not please
me entirely with her mysticism, and certainly does not
love as you do. She does everything for people merely
from love to God ; and that I do not like."
ii6 TITAN.

" Ab, so thought I, too, once ; but whom should the

pious love, except God ? " said he, absorbed in himself

and the night, and in too hyberbolical a style for the taste
of the Princess. His glimmering eye hung fast on the
white mountain-palace, and spring-times floated down
from the moon, and glided to and fro on the illuminated
track of his vision ; and the beautiful youth wept and
pressed ardently the hand of the Princess, without being
conscious of either. She respected his heart, and dis-

turbed it not.

At last, they both came down the high stairway, where

the astronomer joyfully awaited them, and confessed to
both how very much, to speak freely, their attachment
and devotion to astronomy not only gladdened, but even
animated and inspired him.
" Day after to-morrow, certainly !
" With these words,
the Princess departed, in order to grant the pensive,
full-hearted youth consolation and dreams.
 TWENTY-SECOND JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Heart. — Dangerous Spiritual Acquaintances.

93. CYCLE.
LBANO was now again lashed to the Ixion's

wheels of the clock. The setting off of the

Princess and her answer were to suddenly set

up lights in the dark, wide cavern in which
he had so long travelled, without knowing whether it har-
bored frightful formations and venomous beasts, or wheth-
er it was vaulted, and filled with glistening arches and
subterranean pillared halls. Over Liana's condition two
hands — Augusti's and that of the Minister's lady — had
hitherto held fast the veil. Both were persons who never
liked to answer the question, How do you do ? However,
he now let his whole soul rest upon the Princess, since
the astronomical evening, in remembering which, he could
hardly comprehend how it was that he was able at that
time to speak to a female friend about his love as much
and more than ever to a friend of his own sex. But man
does not love to speak of his feelings before a man, and ^

does love to before a woman. A woman, however, loves

best to do so before a woman. Meanwhile, the Princess
held him in bonds by the finest flattery which can be, —
by decided and silent attention. He was as sick and
'

sated of verbal praise as he was partial and tributary to

that which came in a practical shape.
ii8 TITAN.

Pending the arrival of the decision, a confused time

elapsed ; like a man who travels in the night, he heard
voices and saw lights ; and it needed morning to decide

upon their hostile or friendly significance. Rabette lay

sick and bleeding away her faint heart for not he had ;

drawn out of it the astringent dagger, namely, Charles's —

love, —
but the latter had himself anticipated him with
bitter-sweet tears over the bitterest.
Charles had met him once, with his hat drawn down
over his brows, and grimly-stinging look, without a greet-
ing. Everywhere he heard that Charles in vain besieged
and blockaded Linda's and Julienne's double gate. This
and Liana's illness made the tropical savage like a grown-
up wild boy of the woods. Even in the present state of
separation, —
on the death-field of friendship, Albano —
felt it as a wound to humanity, that Charles did not take
for granted — for to the contrary presumption he imputed
the street-grimness — that he would not seek to see the

Countess.
Even in the Librarian, for several days, a mystery
seemed to have been lurking. He, however, since it had
been growing lighter and lighter to Alban in Schoppe's
depths, and he had looked in behind his comic mask, even
to the honest eye and loving lips, became very near to

his heart, especially after so many partings ; for even the

Lector, according to his custom never to court the love
of any man, or, at least, faithless friend, kept himself
aloof from him, —a thing which afllicted the very same
youth, who inwardly approved it.

For several days, I say, Schoppe had been transposed

into an entirely new tune, and become his own remainder
and after-summer. It began with his blowing away at a

miserable haying song a whole half-day on the bugle ; the

 A CHANGE COMES OVER SCHÖPFE. I19

remaining half be sang it off vocally. Instead of reading

and writing, he went up and down in the city and in his

chamber. All that which he had formerly despatched

witl rapidity, — running, swallowing of victuals, speaking,

smoking, starting up, — went now

all this club-footed, and
finally stood fast. His slow rousing up, and his tender,

gentle step, might have seemed ludicrous to those w^ho

were acquainted with his former days. His large, noble
wolf-dog, whom he had ten times a day suffered to hug
him round the neck with his fore-paws, and whose breast,
drawn up on the skin, he so fondly pressed to his own,
when he held with him a Lange's and consistorial collo-
quy, he now neglected to such a degree that the dog
became attentive, and did not know what to think of it.

How little could he once endure the yelp of a cudgelled

hound without sallying out of his house-door as protector

and patron, because he conceived one might well treat .

men like dogs, but not dogs themselves so ! Now he

could hear their screaming, merely because, as it seemed,
he did not hear it.

As he formerly often went to Albano merely to walk

up and down, without a loud word, because he said, —
" By this I recognize my friend, that he does not under- (

take to entertain me or himself, but will merely sit there,"

— so now he came still more mute, often touched ten-
derly, like a playful child, the shoulder of Albano as he
sat reading, and said, when the latter looked behind him,
" Nothing !
" Meanwhile, Albano inquired not about the
change ; for he knew he would surely unveil it to him in
good time. Their hearts stood over against each other
like open mirrors.
So lay the dark wood of life before Albano, with its

paths running through each other and deep into the

1 20 TITAN.

thicket, as he stood upon the cross-way of his future and

waited for his genius, who, either as a hostile or as a good
one, was to bring him Liana's decision. At last there
came from the gloomy wood a genius, but it was the dark
genius, and gave him this note from the Princess :
—
" Dear Count : I am always true, and would rather
be unsparing than wntrue. The sick Mademoiselle v. F.
is no longer in a condition to make a tour or profit by it.

I take a lively interest in the case. However fondly I

could wish to-day myself to speak consolation to you, I
hope, nevertheless, after this intelligence, not to have occa-
sion to do so.

"Your Friend."

What a dark cloud-break out of the morning redness

of youth ! So then the secret joy which he had hitherto
nourished had been the forerunner of the dreadful blow,*
the soft murmuring before the waterfall-t That his very
love was to be the blazing sword which pierced through
her life : 0, he dwelt upon that so constantly ; that pained
him so ! But there was no moisture in his eye ; the
wormwood of conscience embitters even sorrow.
When man is no longer his own friend, then he goes to
his brother, who is a friend still, in order that he may
softly speak to him and restore his heart and soul ; Al-
bano went to his Schoppe.
He found not him, but something else. Schoppe, name-
ly, kept a diary about " himself and the world," wherein
his friend might read whatever and whenever he wished ;

only he must pardon it, if he carried away with him from

* The " vant-courier " of the " thundei-bolt." — Tr.

t On Wilhelmshöhe a long musical tone precedes the falling of the
water.
 !

SCHOPPE'S DIARY. 121

the reading, since it was written throughout just as if no

one were to see it again, — angry slaps of the fan, and
that, too, with the hard end. " Why should I spare thee
any more than myself ? " said Schoppe. To this thou
they had come without being able to say when, chary as
they generally were of this official style of the heart, this
holiest dual of souls toward others ;
" for I thank God,"
said Schoppe, " that I live in a language in which I can
sometimes say you, yes even (if men and monkeys are
subjects for it) between every two commas, your Well-
born, as well as your High-born, or Otherwise-born."
Albano found the diary open, and read with astonish-
ment this : —
" Amandus-day. A stupid and extremely
remarkable day for the well-known Hesus or Hauus !
*

I can hardly persuade myself that the poor Thunder-god

deserved to walk along behind the tall Proserpine,! and
at last to peep into her face, her brow, her lips, her neck
O God ! If such a god had stayed now on the spot ! As
Pastor fido he by good fortune rose up again and went on
his way. O hell-goddess, heaven-stormer of Hesus, thou
hast made Can he ever let thee go ?
thyself his heaven !

The Pastor becomes his own baiting-

" Afternoon.

house, he knows not how to stay he lives now in all streets,

;

in order to behold his Jeanne d^Arc-en-ciel,X and suffers

enough. But, Hesus, are not sorrows the thorns, where-
with the buckle of love fastens ? To-day Friday § went
with the Princess to the observatory. The wind is

south-east-east, II
— read thirteen monthlies in one hour,

* Both are names of the old German God of Thunder; he means

by this.
himself, however,

t The Molossi called all beautiful women Proserpines.

X Thus ought Schiller's Holy Virgin to be named.
§ His Albano.
II
Schoppe means very south-east. — Tr.
VOL. II. C
122 TITAN.

— Spener sees life transfigured and poetic in the shining

magnifying-mirror God, as well as another man.
" Sahina^s day. With the Pastor it grows worse, if I
see right. He is in the way to work himself over into a
billet-doux-presser, to powder himself by night in bed;
and tlie knave already raises in the heat, like milk which
is kept warm, poetic cream. Only may Heaven never
grant him to fall into a rational discourse with his hell-

goddess, face to face, breath to breath, and the two souls

be confounded together Verily, Fhns * would snatch
!

him away, Hesus would devour a millennial kingdom at

once I fear he would become too wild with the nectar,
;

and too hard for me to control.

Evening. Is it not already so far gone with the Pastor,

that he has borrowed him an author out of the whining de-
cade of the age (he is ashamed to name him), and will fain
let himself be affected by the stupid stuff, while he muses
upon the effect which the author had upon him in his
fourteenth year. Of course he stumbles at him, in his
present period of life, like a night-watchman by day ; but
still he cries back his cry, and has a new affection on
the subject of his old. So does the declension of comu
in the grammar still smile upon me, even to this hour,
because I recollect how easily and ghbly in the golden

moons of childhood I retained the whole of the Singular.

" Simon Jud.'f Curse on it A fair face and a false !

Maxd'or make, in the course of a year, a couple of hun-

dred knaves, who differ from each other only in this, that
one wishes to keep and the other to get rid of the article.

* So the Vandals named Death.

t Simon and Judas' s day, when the weather was apt to be stormy.
See Act I. Scene 1, of Schiller's William Tell. " To-day is Simon
and Judas's day. Hark how the deep howls "
! Tr. ! —
 SCHÖPFE ADVERTISES FOR SITTERS. 123

Hesus frowns, and charges home upon a million rivals

already. Like button- and lace-makers, or like copper-
and brass-founders, two so nearly of a trade cannot let

each other get on.* Right ! hell-goddess, that thou batest

all men ! That is, to be sure, something for the Pastor,
— a wound-salve ! Scioppius, the two Scaligers, and the
vigorous Schlegels, &c. — "

Here the diary passes to other matters. An old por-

trait, for which Schoppe had sat to himself, he had re-
touched. A notice to be inserted in the " Pestitz Weekly
Advertiser " announced the purpose of the picture :
—
" The undersigned, a portrait-painter of the Flemish
school, makes known that he has taken up his residence
in Pestitz, and that he is ready to paint all of every sta-
tion and sex that may sit to him. As a sample of his
execution may be seen at his studio a portrait of himself,
which represents him sneezing, and which may be com-
pared with the original on the spot. I also cut profiles.
"Peter Schöpfe,
"No. 1778."

Probably that was to move the hell-goddess to sit for

once to the sneezing painter. Albano could not but be

astonished in the midst of deep pain. In the beginning,
he had imagined, according to the simplicity of his nature,

that he himself was meant by Hanus.

At this moment, Schoppe appeared. Albano spoke first,

and said, softly, " I, too, have read thy diary." The Li-
brarian started back with an exclamatory curse, and
looked glowingly out of the window. " What is the
matter, Schoppe ? " asked his friend. He whirled round,
stared at him, and said, twisting the skin of his face apart,

* " Two of a trade can never agree," — Tr.

124 TITAN.

like one who is cleaning bis teeth, and drawing up his

upper lip, like a boy who bites into his bread and butter,
" I am in love," and ran up and down the chamber in a
flame, bewaihng, at the same time, that he must Hve to
experience such a thing in himself in these his oldest
days. " Read my diary no more," he continued. " Ask
not about the name, brother ; no devil, no angel, not the
hell-goddess, shall know it. One day, perhaps, when I
and she lie in Abraham's bosom, and I on hers — thou art
"
so troubled, brother !

" Fly gayly in the sun-atmosphere of love !

" said his
friend, in that sadness of conscience which makes man
simple, calm, and lowly ;
" I will never ask nor disturb
thee ! Read that
!
" He gave him the note of the
Princess, and said to him also, while he read, " Cursed be
every joy where she has none ! I stay here till it is

decided whether she lives or not." " I stay here too,"

rejoined Schoppe, with an involuntarily comic expression.

" Be serious !
" said Albano. " Once I could," said he,
!
tearfully ; since day before yesterday no more
Meanwhile, Albano approved Schoppe's separation
from the travelling company ; both secured to each other,
even in friendship, the most precious freedom. Of tutors'
attendance neither made account. Schoppe often ridi-
culed tutors of much information and manners, when they
assumed he educated anything out of Albano or into him.
He said " The age educated, not a ninny milUons of
: ;

men, not one ;

properly, at most, a pedagogical group of
Pleiades sent their light after him, — namely, the seven
ages of man, every age into the next following. The
individual resembled very much the entire humanity,
whose revolutions and improvements were nothing more
than retouchings of a Schickaneder's magic flute by a
 THE BALDIIEAD AT RATTO'S. 125

Vulpius. Meanwhile, however, there hovered around \

the silly, discordant piece a melody of Mozart, in respect

to which one outstrips father and language-master."
" Wherefore do we sinners creep and buzz about here ?

Let us to Ratto's !
" said Schoppe. With extreme re-

luctance,Albano agreed to it he said the cellar had in

;

it him something uncomfortable, and a sultry fore-

for

boding oppressed his bosom. Schoppe referred the pre-

sentiment to the pressure of the rafters of his ruined
which still lay upon his breast, and the
pleasure-castle,
remembrance of that Roquairol, now flying in the abyss,
who had once drunk his health in the cellar, and after-
wards confessed to him in Lilar. Albano followed at
last, but reminded him of the fulfilment of another pre-
sentiment, which he had had on the hill above Arcadia.
" We neither of us play the best personages in love ; I

meanwhile let us go into the cellar," said Schoppe, on the

way, and, with a quite unwonted hardness, stretched his 1

favorite upon the rack of his drollery. Once, when he

was not himself in love, he was so capable of a tender,
indulgent, serious silence on that subject ; but now no
more.

94. CYCLE.
cellar there was the old running in and out
INof the
strange and familiar faces. Albano and Schoppe
climbed together those pure heights of the mountains of
the Muses, where, as on natural ones, the atmosphere of
hfe rests hghter, and the ether draws nearer to the short-
ening column of air. Men comfort each other more easily
on their Ararat than women in their vales of Tempe.
After Schoppe, made more fiery by the tempestuous
 "

126 TITAN.

atmosphere of puncli and love, had for a considerable time

plaj'ed off the lightning-spark of his humor in zigzag, and
with a calcining effect, through the world-edifice, suddenly
an unknown person, like a death's-head, perfectly bald
and even without eyebrows, but with a rosy hue on his
withered cheeks, stepped up to their table and said, with
iron mien, to Schoppe :
" Within fifteen months this day

you will have become crazy, my merry cock-sparrow !

" O !
ho " Schoppe broke out, inwardly shrinking up
the while. Albano grew pale. Schoppe collected him-
self again, stared sharply and courageously at the repul-
sive shape, which rolled its withered but rosy skin to and
fro upon sharp, high cheek-bones, and said :
" If you un-
derstand me, prophetic gallows-bird and cock-sparrow,
and are not yourself crack-brained, then am I in a con-
dition to prove that one can make very little of a case out
of such a thing as madness." Hereupon he showed —
but as one cooled-down, burnt-out, and deserted by his
host of images — that madness, like epilepsy, gave more
pain to the spectator than the performer ; for it was only
an earlier death, a longer dream, a day-walking instead
of night-walking ; for the most part, it gave what the
w^hole of life and virtue and wisdom could not, — an endur-
ing agreeable idea.* Even if, which was rare, it chained
a man to a tormenting one, still this became, nevertheless,
a panoply against all bodily sufferings. He had, there-
fore, for himself, never feared madness any more than
dreaming, but could not bear to hear others speak, or even
to see them, in either of these states. " We shudder,"
said Albano, " at a man who talks to us in his sleep as to

* An Englishman observed, that, among the fixed ideas of the mad-

house, that of subserviency rarely occurs; its inhabitants being most-
ly gods, kings, popes, savants.
 SCHÖPFE QUESTIONS THE BALDHEAD. I27

an absent person, or who, when awake, talks only to him-

self alone ; and whenever I hear myself soliloquize, it is

just the same."

"I am no philosopher," said the Baldhead, indifferently,

whose perfect, shining baldness was more frightful than

hateful. Schoppe asked angrily, " Who he was, then, quis
and quid and quihus auxiliis, and cur and quomodo and
quando." * " Quando ? — After fifteen months I come
again. Quis'^ — Nothing; God uses me only when he has
to make some one unhappy," said the bald one, and begged
a glass and the liberty of drinking with them. Albano,
freely granting it, said, in an inquiring tone, he had pro-
bably just arrived ? " Just from the great Bernhard,"
said the bald one, growing more repulsive with every
word, because his old rosy face was a zigzag of convul-
sive distortions, so that at every moment a different man
seemed to be standing there. He went out a moment.
Schoppe, quite beside himself, said " I grow more and :

more exasperated with him, as with a hideous, hovering

fever-image. For God's sake, let us go. I have a feel-
ing behind me all the time, as if a wicked fist were thrust-
ing me upon him, that I should strangle him. He grows,
too, more and more familiar to me, like an old moss-grown
deadly foe."
Albano answered softly :
" See, my presentiment ! But
now that I have not hearkened to it, I must even see
where it will come out." His courageous nature, his ro-
mantic history and position, would not let him draw back
from a prospect so full of adventure.
But why," inquired Schoppe of the bald one, when he
"

came back, " do you cut so many faces, which do not pre-
sent you exactly in the most favorable light ? " " They
* Who and what and with what help and why and how and when.
128 TITAN.

come," said he, "from poison which was given me ten

years ago. Have you observed how aqua toffana, taken
in quantities, distorts ? In Naples, I forced it down the
throat of a beautiful girl of sixteen, who had for some
years dealt in it, and caused her to die before my eyes.
I fancy there is nothing more godless than poison-mixing."
" Abominable !
" cried Albano, seized with the deepest
repugnance for the man ; as to Schoppe, his fury had
actually relieved him.
At this moment a poor, meagre joiner's wife came in
for liquor, who kept her eyes cast down and half closed
with shame and weakness ; she ventured not to look up,
because the whole town knew that she was forcibly driven
out of her bed at night into the street to see a funeral
procession, which some days after was really to move
through it, already in prelude and prefiguration pass be-
fore her. Hardly had the bald one beheld her, when he
covered his face. " There only a single innocent one
is

among us," said he, all pale and uneasy " this youth ;

here," pointing to Albano. Just then a carriage with six

horses thundered by overhead. Schoppe jumped up,
twice in succession put the question to Albano, who was
lost in thought :
" Wilt thou go with me? " turned angrily
away at the word No, stepped close up to the bald one,
and said furiously :
" Dog !
" and turning on his heel went
out. On the pale, bloodless skin of the Baldhead no ex-
pression stirred, only his hand twitched a Httle, as if there
were near it a stiletto to lay hold of, but he sent after him
that look at which the maiden in Naples died.
Albano was enraged at the look, and said :
" Sir, this

man is a thoroughly honest, true, vigorous nature ; but

you have exasperated him even against himself, and must
acquit him of blame." With soft, flattering voice he re-
 SCHÖPFE ARMS AND WARNS ALBANO. 1
29

plied :
" My acquaintance with him dates not from to-day,
and he knows me, Albano asked whether, when he
too."

spoke of the great Bernhard some time since, he meant

the Swiss mountain of that name. " Certainly " replied !

he. " I travel thither yearly to spend a night with my

sister." " So far as I know, there are only monks there,"
said Albano. " She stands among the frozen ones in the
cloister-chapel,"* he replied. "I stay all night before
her, and look upon her, and sing Horas."
Albano, while listening, felt himself singularly changed,
which he could ascribe only to the punch, — it v/as less
intoxication than glow; a flying blaze roared over his
inner world, and the red lustre hovered about on its

farthest borders ; now did it seem to him as if he stood

entirely on the same ground with the Baldhead, and could
wrestle with this evil genius. " I had a sister, too," said

Albano ; " can one call up the dead ? " " No, but the
dying," said the Baldhead. " Ugh !
" said Albano, shud-
dering. " Whom would you see ? " asked the Baldhead.
" A living sister, whom I never have seen yet," said Al-
bano, in a glow. " It requires," said the Baldhead, " a

little sleep, and your knowing also where your sister was
on her last birthday." Luckily Julienne, whom he took
for his sister, had, on hers, been at the Palace in Lilar.
He told him so. " Then come with me !
" said the
Baldhead.
At this moment Schoppe's servant brought Albano a
sword-cane and the following note :
—
" Brother, brother, trust him not. Here is a weapon,
for thou art quite too foolhardy. Run him right through,

* Where, as is well known, the uncorrupted corpses lean against

each other.
6* I
 :

TITAN.

if he does so much as make faces. All sorts of unknown

people have this evening asked after thee and thy where-
abouts. It is to me as if no life at all were safe to me
from the beast, — thine or hers. Be on thj guard, and
come ! Schöpfe.
" Run him through, however, I pray thee."

"Are you afraid, perhaps?" asked the Baldhead. "That

will appear," said Albano, angrily, and, taking the sword-

cane, went with him. As the two passed through the

little, dark anteroom of the cellar, Albano saw in a mir-
ror his own head set in a fiery ring. They passed out of
the city into the open country. The bald one went ahead.
The sky was bright with stars. It seemed to the Count
as if he heard the subterranean waters and fires of the
globe and the creation. Hardly did he recognize out
there the way to Blumenbühl. Suddenly the bald one
ran into a field on the left. The lean joiner's wife stood
on the Blumenbühl road quite stiff, and saw abstractedly
a corpse move along invisible, and heard the far-off bell,

which is borne by the mute Death.

So it seemed.
Then did Albano follow the Baldhead more daringly
the fear of spirits kills the fear of man. Both moved
along in silence beside each other. In the depth of the
distance, it seemed as if a man floated, without walking
or stirring, slowly and steadily onward through the air.

The white skin on the bald one twitched incessantly, and

one invisible fist after another thrust itself forth from the
clay of his face, as in the act of striking. Once there
over it the look of the Father of Death.*
flitted

Suddenly Albano heard around him the smothered

murmur and confused talk of a throng. There was
* Who had appeared to him on Isola Bella.
 ALBANO'S GHOSTLY DREAMS. 131

nothing on either side. " Do you hear nothing ? " he

asked. " All is still," said the Baldhead. But the swarm
kept on murmuring and whispering eagerly and hotly, as
if it could not be ready and agreed. The bold youth
shuddered. The gates of the shadowy kingdom stood far
open into the earth ; dreams and shadows swarmed in and
out, and flew near to bright life.

The two stepped up to the thicket before Lilar. There

came a boy out of the wood with an enormously big
head, helping himself along on two crutches, and holding
a rose, which he offered, with a nod, to the youth. Albano
took it, but the little fellow nodded incessantly, as if he
would say he should like to have him smell of it. Albano
did so ; and suddenly the sinking of the stage of life, a
bottomless' slumber, drew him down into the dark, un-
fathomable depths.
When he awoke heavily, he was alone and unarmed,
in an old dusty Gothic chamber. A faint little light

scattered only shadows around. He looked through the

window it seemed to be Lilar, but on the whole land-
;

scape snow had fallen, and the heavens were white with
cloud, and yet the stars singularly pierced through.
" What is this ? Am I standing in the mask-dance
of dreams ? " he asked himself.
Then an arras went up ; a covered female form, with
innumerable veils on the face, stepped in, stood a moment,
and flew to his heart. " Who is it ? " he asked. She
pressed him to her bosom more passionately, and wept
clear through the veil. Knowest thou me ? " he asked.
"

She nodded. " Art thou my unknown sister ? " he asked.

She nodded, and with a sister's close embrace, with hot
tears of love, with rapturous kisses, held him fast to her-
self. " Say, where livest thou ? " She shook her head.
132 TITAN.
" Art thou dead or a dream ? " She shook her head. " Is
thy name Julienne ? " She shook her head. " Give me a
sign of thy truth !
" She showed him half of a gold ring
on a table that stood near. " Show thy face, that I may
believe thee !
"
She drew him away from the window.
" Sister, by Heaven, if thou liest not, then raise thy
!
veil " She pointed with her long, outstretched, envel-
oped arm to something behind him. He kept on intreat-
ing. She motioned vehemently toward a certain place,
and repelled him from herself. At length he obeyed, and
turned sidewards ; then he saw in a mirror how she sud-
denly threw up the veils, and how, beneath them, the
superannuated form appeared whose image, with the sig-

nature, his father had given him on Isola BeUa. But

when he turned round again, he felt on his face a warm
hand and a cold flower ; and a second slumber drew
downward his conscious being.
When he awoke, he was alone, but with
his weapon,

and on the wooded spot where he had first sunk to sleep.

The sky was blue, and the light constellations ghmmered ;

the earth was green, and the snow gone ; the half-ring he
no longer held in his hand ; around him was no sound,
and no human being. Had all been but the fleeting cloud-
procession of dreams, the brief whirl and shaping that
goes on in their magic smoke ?

But life and truth had burned so livingly into his

breast, and the tears of a sister still lay on his eye. " Or
might they be only my brotherly tears
!
" said his per-
plexed spirit, as he rose, and in the bright night went
homeward. All was as still as if life were yet sleeping
on ; he heard himself, and feared to waken it ; he looked
upon his own body as he walked along. Yes, thought he,
this thick bed in which we are wrapped plays off before
 "

THE SEVENTY YEARS' SLEEP.

US even the woes and joys of life. Just as, in our sleep,
we seem to stifle under falling mountains when the cover-
let settles over our lips, or to stride over sticky, melted
metal when it oppresses the feet with too great a thick-
ness of feathers, or to freeze, like naked beggars, when it

is shoved off, and exposes us to the night-chill, so does

this earth, this body, throw into the seventy years' sleep
of the immortal lights and sounds and chills, and he
shapes to himself therefrom the magnified history of his
joys and sorrows ;
and, when he once awakes, only a little

of it proves true !

" Heavens ! why comest thou so late, and so pale ? "

asked Schoppe, who had been a long time in Albano's
chamber, waiting for him. " O, ask me not to-day
!

said Albano.
 TWENTY-THIRD JUBILEE.
Liana.

95. CYCLE
EVER did Schoppe let fly at himself more
curses than on the morrow, during Albano's
recital, and on this account, to be sure, that
he had not stayed so as to arrest the Baldhead,
the fly-wheel of so many ghostly movements, in the midst
of the revolutions, by dashing right at the spokes. He
earnestly besought the Count, at the next appearance, at
least, — especially in Italy, — to tear off, without mercy,
the Baldhead's mask, though hung upon it. The
life

youth had been moved too intensely by the events of the

jiight. He therefore spoke of them reluctantly, and with-
out dwelling upon them. As in him all sensations stirred
more intensely and overpoweringly than in Roquairol,
he had not, like him, pleasure in portraying them, but
shrank from it. He looked up the little old likeness of
his sister which his father had given him on the island.

What a striking reflection of the nightly image in the

mirror ! This moss of age on a sister must have been
artificially produced there, merely for the purpose of
hiding the resemblance. The presumption of its being
Julienne he gave up again, after the denial of the veiled
one, and from the improbability of such a nocturnal
 " !;

ALBANO RESOLVES TO SEE LIANA. 135

performance, and postponed mearfuring the altitudes of

all these incomprehensible airy apparitions till he should
have the aid of his daily expected father.
Ah, over all his thoughts swept incessantly in vulture-
circles a distant, dark form, the destroying angel, that
would fain stoop greedily upon the helpless Liana ! The
staring stiffness of the corpse-seeress on the Blumenbiibl
road — especially since the sad billet of the Princess —
now in the dark intersecting thicket paths, into which his

life's course had entangled itself, danced on before him as

a juggling phantom of terror.
A new and single resolve stood now in his soul like

a rigid arm fast by the way-side, pointing ever in one

direction, up the Blumenbühl road. " Thou must go to

her," said the resolve ;

" she must not die in the delusive

belief of thy anger and thy old severity ; thou must see
her again, to ask her pardon, and then shalt thou weep
till her grave opens and takes her away." " O, how I
then," he said to himself, " before the dying-throne of this
angel, shall bruise with contrition my hard, haughty, wild
heart, and take back everything, everything whereby I
blinded and wounded the tender soul in Lilar, that she
may not despise too much the short days of her love, and
that her heart may at least part from me with one little

farewell pleasure ! And that, God, grant us !

In vain did Schoppe propose thereupon, that he should

seek with him the business-office of the night-wonders,
which so probably must be found in the Gothic-temple
this very day he would force his way into the presence
of his pale loved one. Schoppe continued to insist ve-
hemently on the visit to Lilar, and at last demanded it,
and commanded compliance ; but now it was a lost case,
and Albano's refusal was panoplied. " Plague take it
136 TITAN.

why let myself, then, be boiled in these tear-pots ? " said

Schoppe, and marched out.

But after a short time he came back with a billet from
— Gaspard, wherein the latter demanded for to-day relay-
horses from the post-house, and with a proposition from
himself that they should go to meet his father. How
refreshingly did the nearness of his father breathe over
Albano's sultry waste ! Nevertheless, he said No the
second time; his long willing and warring and every
hour's lapse veiled Liana more and more darkly from him
in her cloud, and he thought anxiously of his dream about
her on Isola Bella;* and finally he had his suspicions
aroused by Schoppe's holding him back so significantly.
And herein he erred not. Schoppe acted upon quite
other grounds than Albano had yet learned. The Lector,
namely, who with wise old honesty kept a distant watch,
through Schoppe's agency, over the rebellious youth,
whom, however, he took every occasion to praise, had
pointed out to his proxy the up-towering, leaden-heavy
cloud-pile which was moving onward and lowering over
the head of the youth ;
namely. Liana's impending death.
At first, for some time the quarrel with her parents,
that poetic hardening, as it were, of Liana's nerves, had
been to them wine of iron, but afterward they melted in
the soft water of renunciation, autumnal rest and devo-
tion. There is a bland calm which loosens men as well
as ships ; a warmth in which the wax-figure of the spirit

melts down. Every day, too, came the pious father and
spread her wings, loosed her from earthly hopes and
earthly anxieties, and led her up into the glory of the
throne of God. The fair spring-breezes of her ended

* Where she had melted away from him in the cloud when he
was aboutto embrace her.
 LIANA AND LINDA MEET. 137

love she let breathe again, but in a higher region ;

they
were now thin, mild, ethereal zephyrs, breaths of flowers.
She knew now, at once, that she was dying and loved
God. She stood already like a sun, tranquil and far
away in her heaven, but like a sun she seemed to move
obediently around the little day of her mother, and shed
on her a soft warmth. Her tears flowed out as sweetly

as sighs, as evening dew out of evening redness. As one

sinks, blissfully cradled, in joyous dreams, so she floated,
long borne up, drawn slowly onward, with buoyant fleshly-
garment, on the flood of death.
Only a single earthly obstacle had hitherto broken the
gentle fall, — the ardent expectation of the coming of the
E-omeiro, whom she so dearly loved as the friend of her
friend Julienne. At last she made her appearance, and
took too powerful a hold of Liana's fancy ; for it was just
the wings of fantasy which, in this tender, constant sw^an,*
were too strong. How did the sick one humble herself
at the feet of this shining goddess ! How unworthy did
she find herself of her former love for Albano ! So little

had Spener, humble only before God, been able to pre-

vent her taking up with her two jewels out of her former
life into her present glorified state, her old lowliness be-

fore men and her old anxiety for those she loved.
Julienne sought again and again ta*dissuade her ; but
one evening — when she learned that Albano was to be
taken to Italy — she twined herself around Linda's heart,
and told her, with her wonted over-fulness of feeling,
only Albano deserved her. Linda answered with aston-
ishment ; she could not comprehend a self-annihilating
love ; in her case she should die. " And am not I, then,
dying ? " said Liana.

* The swan, with a stroke of her wing, can break an arm.

138 TITAN.

Julienne, thereupon, immediately begged Liana to spare

tlie embarrassment of the noble Countess on this subject.

Liana, without being offended, remained silent ; but the

new desire now possessed her to see once more her lost
Albano, and show him her former fidelity and his error,
and with dying heart to make over to him a new and great
one. She was very frank in uttering all the last wishes
of her holy soul. Her mother and Augusti held her
from her purpose as long as they could, that she might
not take so dark, poisonous a flower as the pleasure of
such a meeting must be to her sick heart. But she
entreated her mother : How could it harm her this year,

as it was not till the next — according to Caroline's pre-

diction — she was to go hence ? Meanwhile they sought
to put farther and farther off from her the last purpose,
in the hope that Gaspard would carry away the Count,
and with the intention, only in the extreme case of having
to give up all hopes, of gratifying for her this fatal wish.
Then she turned with her request to her brother ; but
he, partly from mortified vanity and partly from love for

his sister, depicted Albano on the colder side, said he was

going off to a gay country, would easily cease to regret
her, &c. How did it almost provoke the gentle soul, be-
cause, with a woman's sharpsightedness, she detected in
this an approachiij|^ breach of love towards Albano and

Rabette, and a return of partiality for Linda, who was to

be left behind ! She had akeady for some time been
curious about Rabette's being so long invisible. For the
poor soul had not, since her fall, since the burial of her
innocence, been in a state to be prevailed upon, by prayers
or commands, to appear with her downcast, sinful eye be-
fore the friend of eternal purity; and now it was abso-
lutely impossible for her, since Linda's arrival and visits
 LIANA IS SINKING. 139

had crushed even the lightest, lingering gossamer-web of

her flying summer, and her throat, full of anguish, was
stifled and choked with the closeness of the funeral-veil.

Brother, brother," said Liana, with inspiration, " think

what our poor parents get from us children ! I fulfil no
hope of theirs ; every hope rests on thee ! Ah, how
angry will our father be " she added, with her old dread
!

and love. Her brother held it right to keep from her

the truth (about Rabette's degradation and concealment),
which would this time wear the form of an armed fate,

and so he put in the place of the truth his brotherly love.

Hence he had hitherto denied himself the only opportu-

nity of speaking with the Countess — by Liana's sick
chair. "Thou must die," he once said to her in en-
thusiasm ;
" it is well that thy web is so delicate, that
the cross-play of so many talons may rend it asunder.
What mightest thou not have suffered, even to thy seven-
tieth year, men " He, too, believed
from the world and !

— from own experience

his —
that there are more sor-
rows of women than of men, just as, in heaven, there are
more eclipses of the moon than of the sun.
So things stood till the night when Albano saw the
Baldhead, the playing of the eclipses, and his veiled sister.

That night one string after another snapped in Liana's

life a rapid change came over her
; and early the next ;

morning she had abeady received the last sacrament from

her Spener's hands. The Lector got this sad intelligence
from the Minister's lady at nine of the morning. Hence
itwas that he sought so eagerly through Schoppe to hold
back the youth from the sight of a dying bride.
Subsequently came Gaspard's billet, which put it into
the heads of both to try to induce him to go meet his
father, and — by a message to him — to persuade the lat-
 TITAN.

ter, at least for some days, to turn back with Albano from
the approaching earthquake, that the ground might sink
before the son should tread upon it.

But this, too, as has been already related, missed the

mark. Albano acquainted Schoppe directly with his
suspicion of some unpleasant event. The latter was just
on the point of giving an answer, when he was spared the
necessity by a panting messenger from Blumenbühl, who
handed Albano the following note from Spener :
—
« P. P.
" Your highborn grace must with all speed be informed
that the mortally sick Fraiilein von Froulay desires most
earnestly this very day to speak with your highness in
person ; and you have so much the more need to haste,
as, according to her own representation, she can hardly
with the least probability be expected, especially as pa-
tients of this genre can always foresee their death accu-
rately, to survive the present evening, but must pass out
of this mortality into the eternal glory. In my own
person, I need hardly admonish your grace as a Chris-
tian, that a soft, still, pious, and devout demeanor would
be far more suitable and seemly than cruel worldly sorrow
beside the dying-bed of this glorious bride of Christ, in
regard to whose death every heart will wish, '
Lord, be
my death like that of this just one !
' With this sugges-

tion, I remain, with distinguished respect,

" Your highborn grace's submissive
"Joachim Spener, Court Chaplain.
" P. S. If your highness does not come directly with

the messenger, I beg earnestly the favor of a few lines in

reply."

Albano said not a word, gave the note to his friend,

 ALBANO HASTENS TO SEE LIANA. 141

pressed his hand gently, took his hat, and went slowly
and with dry eyes out into the road that led up to the

mountain-castle.

96. CYCLE.

HE hurried along with a shudder round by the spot

where the corpse-seeress had stood the previous
night, in order to behold her dreams, transformed into
dark-clad human beings, wind slowly down from the
mountain-road. It was a still, warm, blue after-summer

afternoon. The evening red of the year, the ruddy-

glowing foliage, stole from mountain to mountain ; on
dead pastures the poisonous saffron-flowers stood together
untouched ; on the overspun stubble spiders were still

working away at the flying summer, and setting up a few

threads as the ropes and sails wherewith it was to hasten

its flight. The wide circle of air and earth was still, the
whole heaven cloudless, and the soul of man heavily
overcast.
Albano's heart rested upon the season as a head rests
upon the executioner's block. Naught did he see in the
wide blue of heaven but Liana soaring therein ; nothing,
nothing on the earth, but her prostrate, empty form.
He felt a sharp pang when suddenly, on the heights

of Blumenbühl, the white mountain-palace flashed upon

his sight. He ran down wildly along by the abhorred_,
the transformed, and deformed Blumenbühl, and hurried
away up into the deep hollow pass which leads to the

mountain-castle. But where this splits into two ascending

defiles, young man, with the veil of sorrow over his
the
eyes, tookby mistake the left, and hurried on between its
walls more and more eagerly, till, after the long chase, he
142 TITAN.

came out on the heights, and beheld the gleaming palace

of sorrow behind him. Then did it seem to him as if the
landscape stretching far away below him heaved to and
fro confusedly, like a stormy sea, with billowing fields

and swimming mountains and the heavens looked down

;

still and serene on the commotion. Only down below^ on

the western horizon slept a long, dark cloud.
He stormed down again, and in a few minutes arrived
at the little flower-garden of the house of mourning. As
he strode impetuously through it, he saw, up at the castle-

windows, the backs of several people. If they should

turn round, said he, word would immediately go
the
round. There comes the murderer At this moment, the !

Minister's lady came to a window, but quickly turned

round when she saw him. Heavily he went up the
stairs the Lector came feelingly to meet him, and said
;

to him, " Composure for yourself and forbearance for

others ! You have no witness of your interview, but your
own conscience," and opened to the speechless youth the
silent chamber of sickness.
Burdened and bowled down with grief, he softly en-
tered. In an easy-chair reclined a white-clad figure, with
white, sunken cheeks, and hands laid in one another, lean-
ing her head, which was encircled with a variegated
wreath of wild-flowers, on the arm of the chair. It was
his former Liana. " Welcome to
!
me, Albano " said
she, with feeble voice, but with the old smile, like sunrise,
and stretched out to receive him her hand which she
raised with difficulty ; her heavy head she could not raise
at all. He drew near, sank on his knee and held the
precious hand, and his lip quivered and was dumb.
" Thou art right w^elcome to me, my good Albano !
" she

repeated, still more tenderly, with the impression that he

 ALBANO AND THE DYING LIANA. 143

had not probably heard it the first time and the well- ;

known voice coming back to him started all the tears of

!
his heart into one gushing rain. " Thou, too, Liana " he
stammered, still more softly. Wearily she let her head
fall over on the other arm of the chair, which was nearer
to her ; then did her life-tired blue eyes look right closely
upon his wet and fiery ones ; how did each find the
other's countenance paled and ennobled by one and the
same long sorrow ! Red-cheeked and in full bloom, and
with a load of sorrows, had Liana entered the strange,
cold death-realm of sore probation for the higher world,
and without color and without sorrows had she come
back again, and with heavenly beauty on the face from
which earthly bloom had faded. Albano stood before her,
pale and noble also, but he brought back on his young,
sick, sunken countenance the pangs and the conflicts, and
in his eye the glow of life.

" O God, thou hast changed, Albano," she began, after

a long gaze. " Thou lookest quite hollow : art thou so
sick, love ? " she asked, with that old anxiety of affection
which neither the pious father nor the last genius, who
makes man cold towards life and love, ere he withdraws
them, had been able to take from her heart. " O, would
to God ! — No, I am not," said he, and stifled, out of for-
bearance, the internal storm ; for he would so gladly have
poured out his woe, his love, his death-wish before her in
one mortal cry, as a nightingale sings herself to death and
falls headlong from the branch.
Her chilled eye long rested, warming itself, upon his
face, full of inexpressible love, and at last she said with a
heavy smile, " So, then, thou lovest me again, Albano !

Thou wast even in Lilar wholly in error. After a long

time my Albano will begin to learn why I separated from
 "

144 TITAN.

him, — only for his good. On this, this my dying-day, I

tell thee that my heart has been ever true to thee. Be-
lieve me ! My heart is with God, my words are true.

See, this is why I begged thee to come to me to-day, —

for thou shalt mildly, without remorse, without reproach,
in thy long-coming life, look over upon thy first youthful
love. To-day thou wilt not take it ill of thy little Linda *
that she speaks of dying, — seest thou haply that I was
then in the right ? Bring me the leaf yonder
!

He obeyed ; it was a sketch which she had made with

trembling hand to represent Linda's noble head. Albano
did not look upon the leaf. " Take to thyself," said
it
"
she ; he did so. " How kind and compliant thou art !

said she. "Thou deservest her, — I name her not to thee,

— as the reward of thy fidelity towards me. She is more
worthy of thee than I ; she is blooming, like thyself, not
sick, like me ; but never do her wrong ; it is my last

wish that thou shouldst love her. "Wilt thou distress me,
determined spirit, by a vehement No ? "
" Heavenly soul !
" he cried, and looked upon her be-
seechingly, and presented her the stifled No as an offer-
ing to the dead. " I answer thee not. Ah, forgive, for-
give that earlier time "
!
For now he saw for the first
time, how meekly, gently, and yet fervently, the still, ten-
der soul had loved him, who even yet, in the dissolution

of the body, spoke and loved as in the beautiful days of

Lilar, just as the melting bell in the burning steeple still

continues, from the midst of the flames, to sound out the

hours.
" Now, then, farewell, beloved !
" she said, calmly, and

* The reader may not remember that " the httle Linda " was the
cipher under which JuHenne disguised in her letters the name of
Liana, as mentioned in the third paragraph of the 43d Cycle. — Tr.
 " ;
;!

LIANA'S PRAYER FOR ALBANO. I45

without a tear, and her feeble hand offered to press his

"a happy journey into the beautiful land ! Accept eternal
thanks for thy love and truth, for the thousand joyous
hours which I will, up yonder, at length deserve,* for

Lilar's fair flowers. . . The children of my Chariton

have put them on me.t . . . Je ne suis qvüun songe.\
What was I going to say to thee, Albano ? My farewell
Forsake not my brother ! O how thou weepest ! I will
still pray for thee !

The dying have dry eyes. The tempestuous weather

of life ends with cold air. They know not how their
babbling tongue cuts into widely rent hearts. This most
gentle soul how knew not she thrust sword upon sword
through Albano, who now felt that to the saint whom
already the spring-gales, the spring-fragrances of the
eternal shore were floating to meet and welcome, he
could be nothing more, give nothing more, nor even so
much as take from her her humility.
When she had said it, her head, with the crown of
flowers, raised itself upright ; inspired, she drew her hand
out of his, and prayed aloud with fervor :
" Hear my
prayer, God and let him be happy till he enters into
!

thy glory. And should he err and waver, then spare

him, O God, and let me appear to him and exhort him.
But to thee alone, O all-gracious one, be praise and
thanks uttered for my pleasant, peaceful life on the earth
thou w41t, after I have rested, bestow on me up yonder
the fair morning in which I may work. . Wake me
.

* She regarded her present hfe as a quiet play-life, like that of chil-
dren, and only the second as the actual one.
t Here and henceforward she talks, indeed, wildly; but she knows,
nevertheless, that the wreath of wild-flowers is from Chariton's chil-
dren.

J I am only a dream.
VOL. II. 7 J
 ;

146 TITAN.

early from the sleep of death. . . Wake me, wake ! . .

Mother, the morning-red* lies already upon the trees."

At this moment, her mother, with other persons, rushed
into the chamber.Her vision, bewildered with the drow-
siness of death and the w^andering of her speech, an-
nounced that the cold sleep with open eyes was now at hand.
" Appear to me, thou art indeed with God !
" cried Albano,
distracted. In vain would Augusti have led him away
wdthout answering, without stirring, he stood fast-rooted
there. Liana grew paler and paler ; death arrayed her
in the white bridal garment of Heaven ; then his eye
ceased its weeping, grief froze, and the broad, heavy ice
of anguish filled his breast.
Liana's eye was fixed steadily on a light spot of the
softly veiled evening heavens, as if seeking and waiting
for the heavens to lift and show the sun. Indifferent to
all present, her brother stormed in with his lamentation :

" Go not to God, or I shall see thee no more ! Look on

me, bless, sanctify me, give me thy peace, sister !
" She
was silently lost in the lightening and breaking sun-cloud.
" She takes thee for me," said Albano to Charles, on

account of the similarity of their voices, " and gives thee

not her peace." " Steal not my voice !
" said Charles,
angrily. " O, leave her in peace," said the mother, out

of whose downcast eyes only a few light tears fell trem-

bling on the garland of the daughter, whose faint head,
upturned toward heaven, she held, leaning against herself,

with both hands.

All at once, when the sun opened the clouds like eye-
lids, and looked serenely from beneath, the still form
quivered. The dying see double ; she saw two sun-balls,
and cried, clinging to her mother, " Ah, mother, how large

* Slie sees the autumn-foliage.

 :

LIANA'S LAST KAPTUROUS WORDS. I47

and fiery his eyes are !

" She saw Death standing in

heaven. " Cover me with the pall," she begged, distress-

fully, — " my veil !
" Her brother caught it up, and
covered with it the wandering eyes and the flowers and
locks. The sun, too, mercifully veiled himself again with
clouds.
" Think on Almighty God !
" said the pious father to
her, in a loud voice. " I think of him," answered the
veiled one, in a low tone. The aurora of the second
world stands black before mortals. They all trembled.
Albano and Roquairol grasped and pressed each other's

hands, the latter from hatred, Albano from agony, as one

gnashes at metal. The chamber was full of uncongenial, <

discordant people, whom death made equal. At one side

Albano saw that a strange form, repulsive to him, had
stolen in. It was his impenetrable father, whose great,
dark eyes were fastened sharply and sternly on his son.
Out of a second chamber two tall, veiled female forms
gazed at the third, and saw no face, and no one saw

theirs.

Liana played with her fingers at the veil. Evening

stood in the chamber, and the silence between the light -

ning-flash and the thunder-clap. " Think upon Almighty

God !
" cried Spener. She answered not. He continued
" Of our source, and of our sea ; he alone stands by
thee now in the dark, when the earth, and its dwellers,
"
and all lights of life, are sinking away beyond thy reach !

Suddenly she began, and said, with a low tone of glad-

ness, and with words swiftly following each other, as
when one talks in sleep, and with increasing rapture and
rapidity, " Caroline ! here, here, Caroline ! This is my
hand, — how beautiful thou art !
" The invisible angel
who had consecrated her first love, who had attended her
148 TITAN.

Mhole life, gleamed again, like a new-risen raoon, over

the whole dark scene of death ; and the splendor gently-
melted the little May night into the great spring morning
of the second world.
Now the veiled nun of heaven leaned, quite still, on
her mother. The death-angel stood invisible and wrath-
ful among his victims. With great wings hung the screech-
owl of anguish over mortal eyes, and pecked with black
beak down into the breast, and nothing was heard in the

stillness but the owl. More darkly rolled the Knight's

melancholy eyes to and fro in their deep sockets between
the still bride and the still son ; and Gaspard and the
destroying angel gazed upon each other gloomily.
At that moment Liana's harp sent out a, clear, high,

ringing tone far into the silence. The Fatal Sister who
spun at her life knew the signal, checked herself, and
stood up ; and the sister with the scissors came. Liana's
fingers ceased to play, and beneath the veil all became
still and motionless.
" Thy head is heavy and cold, my daughter," said the
disconsolate mother. " Tear the veil away !
" cried the

brother ; and when he drew it down, there lay Liana,

peaceful and smiling beneath it, but dead, — the blue
eyes open toward heaven, the transfigured mouth still

breathing love, the maidenly lily-brow encircled with the

tiower-wreath which had sunk down around it ; and pale
and glorified with the moonlight of the higher world was
the strange form which passed majestically forth from the
midst of the puny living among its lofty dead.

Then gushed the golden sun through the clouds and

through all the tears, and circumfused with the blooming
evening twilight, with the youthful rose-oil of his even-
ing clouds, the faded sister of heaven ; and the transfig-
 "; ;

ALBANO RECOGNIZES HIS FATHER. 149

ured countenance wore again the bloom of youth. In

heaven all the clouds, touched with her wings as she
swept through them, burst out into long, red blossoms
and through the high, misty veil, fluttering up over the
earth, glowed the thousand roses which had been strown
about or sprung up on the cloud-path on which the virgin
passed up over the earth to the Eternal.
But Albano, the forsaken Albano, stood without tears
or eyes or words among the commonplaces of sorrow, in
the crimson evening fire of the holy chamber of transfig-

uration, amidst the earthly bustle that went on round the

still form. In the depths of the past. Sorrow showed him
a Medusa's-head ; and he still looked upon it when his

heart was already petrified by it, and he heard continually

the gloomy head murmur the words, " How bitterly did
the dead one, when in Lilar, weep at the harsh Albano I

Her brother, upon his rack, said many barbarous words

to him. He heard or heeded them not, because he was
listening to the horrible Goro;on head.
" Son," cried Gaspai'd Cesara, earnestly, — " son, dost

thou not know me ? " Through the heavy, deathly heart

a life-voice flashes upon him. He looks round, and sees
his father, with terror arranges him into a shape, and falls

cries only, "

!
upon his breast, and Father " and again
and again, " Father " ! He continued to cry out, grasp-
ing him violently like a foe, and said :
" Father, that is

Liana
!
" Still more passionate grew the embrace, not
from love, only from agony. " Come to thyself, and to

me, dear Albano," said the Knight. " O, I will do so

she is dead now, father !

" said he, with a choked voice
and now his grief broke upon his father like a cloud upon
a mountain, into one incessant tear, — it streamed forth
as if the innermost soul would bleed itself to death out
 "

TITAN.

of* all the open veins, — but the weeping only stirred up
his sorrows, as a rain-storm does a battle-field : he became
more inconsolable and impetuous, and sullenly repeated
the previous exclamation.
"Albano!" said Gaspard, after some time, with' stronger
voice, " wilt thou accompany me ? " Gladly, my father
!

said he, and followed him, as a bleeding child with its

wound follows its mother. " To-morrow I will speak,"

said Albano, in the carriage, and took his father's hand.

His wide-open eyes hung swollen and blind upon the

warm evening-sun, which already rested on the moun-
tains ; he continued smiling and pale, and weeping softly ;

nor did he mark when the sun went down, and he arrived
in the city.
" To-morrow, my father
!
" said he languidly and be-
seechingly to the Knight ; and shut himself in. Nothing
more was heard from him.
 ;

TWENTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
The Fever. — The Cure.

97. CYCLE.
LBANO for a long time remained mute in a
]by-chamber. His father left him to the heal-

ing influence of quiet. Schoppe waited for

him patiently, that he might console him by

looking upon and hstening to him. At last they heard
him in there praying fervently " Liana, appear to me
:

and give me peace!" Directly after he stepped out

strong and free as an unchained giant, with all the blood-
roses on his face, — with lightnings in his eyes, — with
hasty tread. " Schoppe," said he, " come with me to the

observatory ; there hangs high in heaven a bright star

"
on that she is buried : I must know that, Schoppe !

The noble soul lay in the violent hands of a fever.

He was just going out with him, when he beheld the
Knight, who gazed upon him intently. " Only do not

become numb and palsied again, my father!" said he,

embraced him but gently, and forgot what he had been
going to do.
Schoppe went for Doctor Sphex. Albano returned to

his chamber, and walked slowly up and down there with

bowed head and folded hands, and said to himself con-
solingly, " Only wait, however, till it strikes again."
 ;

TITAN.

Sphex came and saw and — said, " It is simply an in-

flammatory fever." But no force could bring him to the

point of undressing himself for bed, or even for a bleeding.

" What! " said he, modestly; " she may surely appear to
me at any moment and give me peace. No ! no !
" The
physician prescribed a whole cooling snow-heaven for the
purpose of snowing the crater full. These coohngs and
frost-conductors also the wild youth refused. But then
the Knight assailed him with that thundering voice of
his, and with that fury in his eye which revealed the
ever-enduring but 'covered wrath-fire of the haughty
breast :
" Albano, take it !
" Then the patient became
considerate and compliant, and said :
" my father, I do
"
indeed love thee !

Through the whole night, of which the faithful Schoppe

remained watcher and physician, the crazed body kept on
playing its feverish part, driving the youth up and down,
and at every stroke of the clocks constrauaing him to

kneel down and pray :

" Liana, do appear, and give me
peace !
" How often did Schoppe, otherwise so poor in
expression, hold him fast with a long embrace, only to
beguile the harassed one into a short repose. Incompre-
hensible to the physician the next morning were the ener-
gies of this iron and white-hot nature, which fever, pain,
and walking had not yet bowed, and on which all pre-
scribed ice-fields hissed and dried up, — and frightful

appeared to him the consequences, as Albano continued

to be his own incendiary, and, at every striking of the
hour, fell on his knees and languished and looked for the
heavenly apparition.
His father, however, left him, like a humanity, to his
own energies ; he said he was glad to see such a rare
case of unenfeebled youthful vigor, and felt no feai* at all
 DON GASP ARD 'S FAREWELL VISITS. I
53

and he gave, too, with perfect calmness, his orders about

packing up everything for the journey to Italy. He
visited the court, i. e. everybody. Upon any one who
knew what he was wont to demand of men and deny to
them, this general complaisance towards all the world
inflicted the pang of wounded honor, even if Gaspard
addressed him too. He first visited the Prince, who,
although the Knight, when in Italy, had quietly adminis-
tered to him the poisoned Host of love, together with her

poison-chalice, always hung upon him familiarly. The

Knight inspected with him the new accessions to the
works of art the two sharply and freely compared their
;

opinions in regard to them, and gave each other com-

missions for the approaching absence.
Thereupon he went to his travelling companion, the
whom, indeed, his galling pride had not
Princess, towards
left behind one particle of flower-dust from his former
love, who, however, in the smooth, cold mirror of his epic
soul, in which all figures moved about and freely in clear
conception, occupied, by virtue of her powerful individ-
uality, the foreground, as a central figure. As he placed
freedom, unity, even license of spirit, far above sickly
pietism, hypocritical imitation of other people's talents

and penitent warfare with one's self, he held the Princess,

even with her cynicism of tongue, as " in her way dear
and deserving." She inquired with much interest after
his son's condition and prospect of travelling with them ;
he gave her, with his old calmness, the best hopes.
The Princess Julienne was inaccessible. She had been
compelled to see how the faithful playmate of her youth
had been drawn by a harsh, hostile arm from the flowery
shore into the flood of death, and how the poor gii'l had
drifted away exhausted ; this completely prostrated her,
7*
154 TITAN.

and gladly would she have plunged headlong after the

victim. She had not been, the day before, in a condition
to go with the two veiled ones to the castle.

Gaspard now hastened to one of these, the Countess

Romeiro, with whom he found the other also, the Princess
Idoine. The latter had not been able to read so much in

every letter about the sister of her face and soul, without
travelling from her Arcadia in person to see her and
prove the fair relationship when she arrived in her
; but
veil at the house of mourning, her kinswoman had already

drawn hers over her dying eye and when it arose, she ;

saw herself extinguished, and beheld, in the deep mirror

of time, her own dying image. She kept silence within
herself, as if before God, but her heart, her whole life,

was stirred.

The resemblance was so striking that Julienne begged

her never to appear before the afflicted mother. Idoine
was, it is true, taller, more sharply cut and less rosy than
Liana in her days of bloom ; but the last pale hour,
wherein the latter appeared beside her, made the whitened
form taller and the face nobler, and withdrew the flowery
veil of maidenhood from the sharp outline.

Idoine said little to the Knight, and only looked on and

saw how her friend Linda overflowed with real childlike
love in return for his almost paternal affection. Both
maidens he treated with a respectful, warm, and tender
morality, which must have appeared wonderful to an eye
(for example, the Prince's) which had often witnessed
the unmerciful irony wherewith he so loved to draw
downward in a slow spiral of licentious discourses, rotten,
worm-eaten hearts, — half installed in God's church and
half in the Devil's chapel, — shy, soft, sensitive sinners,
inwardly-bottomless Fantasts, the Roquairols, for in-
 SCHÖPFE PKESCRIBES FOR ALBANO. 155

stance, more and more deeply and with ever-increasing

pleasure to the centre of infamy. The Prince thought,
in such cases, " He thinks exactly as I do " but
;
Gaspard
did with him just so.
Even the trembhng, pale Julienne stole in, at last, to

see him. They avoided, so far as they could, for her

sake, the open grave of her friend ; but she asked, herself,
after the sick lover of that friend very urgently. The
Knight, who for most answers of moment had provided
himself with an original phrase-book of nothings, particu-
larly with ice-flowers of speech, such as, " It is going on
as well as can be expected under the circumstances," or,
" Such things are to be looked for," or, " It will all come
right," made use on this occasion of the last-named flower
of rhetoric, and replied, " It will all come right."

When he reached home, nothing had come right, but

the flood of the evil was at its highest. There lay the
youth — dressed, in bed, — unable to walk any longer, —
in a burning heat, — talking wildly, — and yet at every
stroke of the clock uttering his old prayer to the high,
shut-up heavens. Hitherto his firm, vigorous brain had
been able to hold fast its reason, at least for all that did
not touch Liana ; but gradually the whole mass went
over into the fermentation of the fever. In vain did his
father, once, when he knelt and prayed for the apparition
of the dead, arm himself with all the wrath and thunder
of his personality. " Give me peace " Albano continued
!

to pray, softly, and, as he said it, looked him softly in

the face.
Schoppe, at this point, with the look of one who has a
weighty mystery, took the father aside, and said he knew
an unfailing remedy. Gaspard evinced curiosity. " The
Princess Idoine," said he, " must not concern herself at all
156 TITAN.

about miserable childish trifles, but just when it strikes

and he kneels, boldly present herself to him as the blessed
and conclude the plaguy peace." Contrary
spirit, to •

what might have been presumed, the Knight said, ill-

humoredly, " It is improper." In vain Schoppe sought

to preach him over to the sunny side, — he only went
farther over to the wintry side at the appearance of
another's intention ; no one could bring him to a gentle
warmth but himself. At last Gaspard, after his manner,
let so much drift-ice of above-mentioned phrases drive
over the permanent ground-ice of his character, that
Schoppe proudly and indignantly held his peace. Be-
sides, the preparations for the journey went on as if the
father meant to snatch his son as a brand from the fever-
burning, and tear him distractedly out of the old circles
of love. Schoppe made known to him his intention of
staying at home ; he said he had nothing against it.

Now did Schoppe feel on his own scratched-up face

the cutting North of this character, to which he had gen-

erally been partial :

" ' Trust no long, lank Spaniard,' was

the just saying of Cardanus," * said he.

Albano was sick, and therefore not inconsolable. He
drew from the Lethe of madness the dark draught of
oblivion of the present ;
only when he knelt did he see
mirrored in the stream his lacerated form and a cloudy
heaven. He heard nothing of this, — how the poor
named their names, that they might weep gratefully
around their sleeping benefactress, and how under their
* The passage reads in Cardan. Prsecept. ad Filios, c. 16, thus :

" Loiigobardo rubro, Germano nigro, Hetrusco lusco, Veneto claudo,

Hispano longo et procero, mulieri barbatse, viro crispo, Grseco nulli
confidere nolite." [Let no ruddy Lombard, black German, purblind
Etrurian, limping Venetian, long and lean Spaniard^ bearded woman,
curly-haired man, nor any Greek at all, be trusted.]
 SCHÖPFE AND THE ^PINEUSE AFFAIRE. 157

lamentations the once healing music of their counte-

nances now lay deaf and dumb. He heard nothing of
the raving of her brother, nor of the loud (acoustically
arranged) grief of her father, nor of the stiff mother
wrapped in dull anguish. He knew not beforehand that
the pale Charis would appear one evening in her corona-
tion-chamber in the midst of lights for the last time on
earth, crowned, decked, and slumbering. To him, indeed,
at every hour died an infinite hope, but each hour bore
him also a new one.
" Poor brother," said Schoppe the next day, in noble

indignation, " I swear to thee, thou shalt get thy peace

to-day." The pale patient looked upon him imploringly.
" Yes, by Heaven !
" Schoppe swore, and almost wept.

98. CYCLE.
SCHOPPE had resolved not to trouble himself at all
about the Knight, — who divided his evening be-
tween the Minister and Wehrfritz in Blumenbühl, — but
to betake himself at once to the presence of the Princess
Idoine with the great petition. First, however, he would
get the Lector as porter or hilleteur of the locked court-
doors, and as surety for his words. But Augusti was
indescribably alarmed; he insisted the thing would not
do, —a Princess and a sick young man, and an abso-
lutely ridiculous ghost-scene, &c. ; and his own father,
indeed, already saw through it. Schoppe upon this

became a spouting fire-engine, and left few curses or

comparisons unused upon the man-murdering nonsense of
courtly and female decorum, — said it was as beautifully
shaped as a Greek fury, —
bound up the wound on a
it

man's neck as the cook-women did on a goose's, not till

 !

158 TITAN.

after it had bled to death, so that the feathers might not

be stained, — and he was as much of a courtisan, he
concluded ambiguously, as Augusti, and knew what de-
cency was. " May I not propose it to the Fürstinn, then,

who certainly esteems him so highly ? " Augusti said,

" "
That does not alter the case." " Nor yet to Julienne ?

" Nor yet to her," said he. " Nor yet to the most satanic
Satan?" "There is surely a good angel between," re-
plied Augusti, "whom you can at least with more pro-
priety use as an intercessor, because she is under obliga-
tions to the Knight of the Fleece, — the Countess of
Romeiro." " O, why not, indeed ? " said Schoppe, struck
with the idea.
The Lector —
who was one of those men that never
use their own hands, but love to do everything by a third,
sixth, farthest possible one, after a system of handing
analogous to the fingering-system — urged upon the re-
flecting Schoppe his ready willingness to introduce him to

Linda, and her ability to do something in this " epineuse

affair e.'^
Schoppe went up and down in a state of unusual dis-

traction between two opinions, — shook head his often

and vehemently, and yet stopped suddenly, — fluttered
and shook still more violently, — looked the Lector at
with a glance of sharper inquiry, — length he stoodat
fast, struck down with both arms, and said :
" Thunder
and lightning seize the world ! Done, then ! So be it

I go right to her. Heavens, why am I then, so to speak,

so ridiculous in your eyes — I mean just now ? " The
courtly Lector had, however, transformed the smile of the
lips into a smile of the eyes only. On Schoppe's face
stood the warmth and haste of the self-conqueror. As
men can be at once hard of hearing amidst the common
 "

SCHÖPFE BEFOHE HIS SOUL'S QUEEN. 1

59

din of life, and yet open to the finest musical tones,* so

were Schoppe's inner ears hardened against the vulgar
noise of ordinary impulse, but drank in thirstily all soft,
low melodies of holier souls.

The Lector — loving Count more the far heartily than

he was loved by him — was taking for the Librarian by
storm at once to the castle, because just now was the most
favorable hour, of court-recess, from half past four to half
past five. Schoppe said he was on hand. In the castle
Augusti commanded a servant, who understood him, to

usher Schoppe into the mirror-room. He did so; brought

lights immediately after ; and Schoppe went slowly up
and down, with his annoying retinue of dumb, nimble
orang-outangs-of-the-looking-glass, rehearsing his part and
calculating the future. Singularly did he feel himself
seized now with his young, fresh sense of that former
freedom which he was just suspending. He recognized
Liberty, held her fast, looked upon her, and said to her,
" Go away, only for a little while ; save him, and then
come back again !

The multiplication of himself in the mirrors disgusted

him. "Must ye torment me, ye I's?" said he, and he
now represented to himself how he was standing before
the richest, brightest moment and finest gold-balance of
his existence, how a grave and a great life lay in this

balance, and how his " I " must vanish from him, like
the copied glass I's round about him. Suddenly a joy
darted through him, not beyond the worth of his resolve,
but greater than its occasion.
At last, near doors flew open, and then the nearest.
Then entered a tall form, with head still half turned back,
all enveloped in long, black silk. Like an enraptured
* E. g. the Leader Naumann.
 "

i6o TITAN.

moon on high tops of foUage, there stood before him, on

the dark, silken cloud, a luxuriantly blooming, unadorned
head, full of life, with black eyes full of lightnings, with
dark roses on the dazzling face, and with an enthroning,
snowy brow under the brown, overhanging locks. It

seemed to Schoppe, when she looked upon him, as if his

life lay in full sunshine ; and he felt, with embarrassment,

that he stood very near the queen of souls. " Herr von
Augusti," she began, earnestly, " has told me that you
wished to put into my hands a petition for your sick
friend. Name it to me clearly and freely. I will give
you, with pleasure, a frank and decided answer."
All recollections of his part were sunk to the bottom,
and dissolved within him ; but the great guardian-genius,
who flew along invisible beside his life, plunged with fiery
wings into his heart, and he answered, with inspiration,
" So, too, will I answer you. My Albano is mortally
sick; he has been in a fever since last evening. He
loved the departed Fraiilein Liana. He lies bound to

the con dor's- wing of fever, and is swept to and fro. He

falls upon his knees at every knell of the clock, and, lying
close to the sunny side of fancy, prays more and more
fervently, ' Appear to me, and give me peace
!
' He
stands upright and dressed on the high pyre of the
fantastic flame-circle, and pants and bakes with thirst,

and dries and shrivels up dreadfully, as I can plainly

see . .
.

" 0, finissez done ? " said the Countess, who had bent
back with a shudder, and slowly shaken her Venus head.
" Frightful "
! Your petition ?

" Only the Princess Idoine," said he, coming to himself,

" can fulfil it, and rescue him, by appearing to him, and
whispering him peace, since she is said to be such a near
 .IDOINK'S SCRUPLES OVERCOME. l6l

ass-*, COS-*, copy, and mock-sun of the deceased." " Is

that your petition ? " said the Countess. My greatest,"

said Schoppe. " Has his father sent you hither ? " said

she. " No, I," said he ;

" his father, to be clear and free

and expHcit with you, disapproves of it."

" "
Are you not the painter of the sneezing self-portrait ?

she asked. He bowed, and said, " Most certainly." Hav-

ing replied that in an hour he should hear the decision,
she made him a short, respectful, leave-taking obeisance,

and the simple, noble form left him gazing after her in

rapture ; and he was provoked that the childish mirrors

round about should dare to send after the rare goddess so
many shadows of herself.
At home he found, indeed, the crazed young man,
whose ears alone lived any longer among realities, again
on his knees at the sixth stroke of the clock ; but his
hope bloomed now under a warmer heaven. After an
hour, the Lector appeared, and said, with a significant
smile, the thing was going on right well ; he was to get

an opinion from the physician, and then the decision

would be accordingly.
Herr von August! gave him, with courtier-like explicit-
more definite intelligence, that the Countess had
ness, the

flown to the Princess, whose regard for her future travel-

ling companion she knew, and told her she would, in
Idoine's case, do it without hesitation. The Princess con-
sidered with herself a little, and said this was a thing
which only her sister could decide. Both hastened to her,
pictured to her the whole case, and Idoine asked, with
alarm, how she could help her resemblance and her well-
meant journey hither, that they should wish to draw her
so deeply into such fantastic entanglements. At this mo-

* He would have said assonance and co-secant.

 ;

I62 TITAN.

ment Julienne came in, pale, and said she had only since
morning received intelligence of this, and it was the duty
of such a good soul to grant the apparition. Then Idoine,
considering herself and everything, answered, with dig-
nity, it was not at all the unusualness and impropriety of
the thing which she dreaded, but the untruthfulness and
unworthiness, as she would have to play false with the
holy name of a departed soul, and cheat a sick man with
a superficial similarity. The Countess said she knew of
no answer to that, and yet her feelings were not against
the thing. All were silent and perplexed. The consci-
entious Idoine was moved in the tenderest heart that ever

hung trembling under the weight of such a decision upon

a life. At last Linda said, with her sharp-sightedness,
" Properly speaking, however, after all, there is no moral
man to be deceived in the case, but a sleeper, a dreamer
and imagination and delusion are not, in fact, going to be
strengthened in him, but to be subdued." Julienne drew
Idoine aside, probably to portray to her more nearly the
youth, whom she had not seen any more than Linda.
Soon after, Idoine came back with her decision.
" If the physician will give a certificate that a human
life hangs upon this, then I must conquer my feeling.

God knows," she added, with emotion, " that I am quite

as willing to do as to forbear, if I only know first what is

right. It is my first untruth."

The Lector hastened from Schoppe to the Doctor, in
order to bring back with him from the latter, among
many turns of expression, just the most convenient cer-
tificate.

Schoppe waited long and anxiously. After seven

o'clock came a note from Augusti :
" Hold yourself in

readiness ; punctually at eight o'clock comes the privy

 THE PEACE-ANGEL APPEARS. 163

person." Forthwith, by way of sparing the patient's

feverish eyes, he put out the wax-candles, and lighted the
magic hanging-lamp of isinglass in the chamber.
He kindled the sick youth to new fever with stories of
people who had come back from the tomb, and advised
him to kneel with long, ardent prayers before the fast
gate of death, in order that her mild, merciful spirit

might open it, and healingly touch him on the threshold.

Just before eight, the Princess and her sister came in

their sedans. Sclioppe was himself seized with a shudder

at the sight of this risen Liana. With sparkling eye
and firmly shut mouth, he led the fair sisters into the
coulisse,whence they already heard, out on the adjoining
stage, the youth praying. But Idoine's tender limbs
trembled at the unpractised part in which her truthful
spirit must belie itself. She wept upon it, and her fair,
holy mouth was full of mute sighs. Her sister had to
embrace her often in order to encourage her heart.
The clock struck. With a frightful fervor the frantic
one within prayed for peace. The tongue of the hour
was imperative. Idoine sent up a look as a prayer to
God. Schoppe slowly opened the door.
Within, blooming in the magic dusk, with arms and
eyes uplifted to heaven, knelt a beautiful son of the gods
in the enchanted circle of madness, whose only and con-
tinual cry was, " O peace ! peace !
" Then, with inspira-
tion, as if sent by God, the virgin stepped in, clothed in
white, like the deceased in the dream-temple and on the
bier, with the long veil at her side, but taller in stature,
less rosy, and with a sharper, brighter starlight in the
blue ether of the eye, and more resembling Liana among
the blest, and sublimely, as if, like a renovated spring,
she had come back again from the stars, so she appeared
164 TITAN.

before Lim. His enchaining, fiery look terrified her. In

a low and faltering tone, she stammered, " Albano, have
peace " ! " Liana ? " groaned his whole breast, and, sink-
ing down, he covered his weeping eyes. " Peace !
" cried
she,more strongly and courageously, because his eye no
longer smote and staggered her and she disappeared as
;

a superhuman spirit vanishes from men.

The sisters departed silently, and full of high remem-
brance and satisfaction. Schoppe found him still kneehng,
but looking away enraptured, like a storm-sick mariner
on tropical seas, who, after long sleep, opens his eyes on
a still, rosy-red evening, just before the going down of the
blazing sun ; and the dashing wake travels on, like a bed
of roses and flames, into the sun, and the flashing cloud
flies asunder in mute fire-balls, and the distant ships float
high in the evening-red, and swim far away over the
waves. So was it with the youth.
" I have my peace now, good Schoppe," he said, softly,
" and now I will sleep in quiet." Transfigured, but pale,
he rose, laid himself on the bed, and in a few minutes a
heart wearied with so long a wading in the hot fever-
sands sank down on the fresh, green oasis of slumber.
 TWENTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.
The Dkeam. — The Journey.

99. CYCLE.
T was late when the Knight of the Fleece
arrived. Schoppe showed him joyfully the
sleeping countenance, whose rose-buds seemed
to burst as in a moist, warm night. The
Knight manifested great exhilaration at this, and still

more did Doctor Sphex, who looked in quite late. The

latter found the pulse not only full, but even slow, and
on the way to a still greater repose. He appealed, at

the same time, to Chaudeson, and several other profes-

sional examples, that great mental sufferings had often
been relieved and removed very successfully by the in-

ternal opium of lethargy.

At last Schoppe acquainted the father with Idoine's
whole method of cure. Gaspard haughtily You replied, "
still, knew my opinion, Mr. Librarian ? " " Cer-
however,
tainly, but my own too," said, with bitterness, the disturbed

Schoppe. The Knight, however, entered no further into

anything, — quite after his manner of never giving the
least light upon his real self, however much it might gain
thereby, — but gave the friend a very cold signal of
retreat.

The next morning, Schoppe found his beloved still in

 .

i66 TITA N

the soul's cradle of sleep. How he budded and bloomed I

How slowly, yet strongly, like a freeman's, moved the

breath in his unchained breast ! Meanwhile, Gaspard's
packed carriage, which was to trundle the youth away to

Italy, stopped already, at this early hour, before the door,

with its snorting, pawing horses, and the Knight expected

every minute the waking up and the — jumping in.

The physician came also, praised crisis and pulse,

added that the cream-o'-tartar (which he had prescribed
among the rest) was the cream of hfe, and said, right to
the father's face, when the latter was about to wake the
youth for starting, he had never yet, in all his praxis,

known any one who had so little acquaintance with crit-

ical points as he ; any waker would be in this case a

murderer, and, as physician, he most expressly forbade it.

From hour to hour Schoppe grew more and more out

of humor with the father ; he thanked God now — when
he considered how the Knight's treatment had beat upon
and washed over this fruit-bearing island — that Albane
had not only the heat, but also the hardness of a rock.
Dr. Sphex, equally fond of his art and his reputation,
watched like a threatening Esculapius-serpent over the
pillow, and grew more hilarious. Schoppe lingered there,
nerved against any degree of severity. The Knight
took leave of every one in his son's name, and sent all

soft hearts home; for the foster-mother, Albina and others,

were not suffered so much as to see the sleeper, — because
tears were to him a cold, disagreeable Scotch mist. The
Princess* and her retinue were already streaming along
with the gay pennons of hope on their way to the shining

Italy.

The evening was now irrevocably set for departure,

especially as, in the night, the sleeping Liana was to be
 ALBANO TELLS HIS DREAM. 167

carried into the bed-chamber, which men never again

open.
Already was the blooming Endymion overspread with
smiles and radiance of joy, as a precursive morning-star
of his waking day. His soul roamed, smiling, through
the sparkhng-cave of subterranean treasures, which the
genius of dream unlocks ; while the common waking eye
stood blind before the spirit's Eldorado, so near and yet
walled round by sleep. At last an unknown over-measure
of bliss opened Albano's eye, — the youth immediately
rose with vigor, — threw himself with the rapture of a
first recognition on his father's breast, and seemed, in the
first dreamy intoxication, not to remember the spent storm
• behind him, but only the blissful dream, — and in ecstasy

related it thus :
—
" I sailed in a white skiflf on a dark stream which shot
along between smooth, high marble walls. Chained to

my solitary wave, I flew anxiously through the winding,

rocky narrows, into which, at times, a thunderbolt darted.
Suddenly the stream whirled round and descended, grow-
ing broader and wilder, over a winding stairway. There
lay a broad, flat, gray land around me, tinged by the
sickle of the sun with a loathsome, lurid, earthy light.
Far from me stood a coiled-up Lethe-flood, which crawled
round and round itself. On an immense stubble-field in-
numerable Walkyres,* on spider's-threads, shot by to and
fro with arrowy swiftness, and sang, 'The fight of hfe
'tis we that weave'; then they let one flying summer
after another soar invisibly to heaven.
" Overhead swept great worlds ; on every one dwelt a
human being ; he stretched out his arms imploringly after

* Walkyres are charming maidens, who plan battles beforehand, and

mark out the heroes who are to fall.
 ;

i68 TITAN.

another, who also stood on his world and looked across ;

but the globes ran with the hermits round the sun-sickle,
and the prayers were in vain. I, too, felt a yearning.
Infinitely far before me reposed an outstretched mountain-
ridge, whose entire back, looming out of the clouds, glit-
tered with gold and flowers. Painfully dragged the skiff
through the flat, lazy waste of the shallow stream. Then
came a sandy tract, and the stream squeezed through a
narrow channel with my jammed-up skiff. And near me
a plough turned up something long ; but when it came
up it was covered with a pall — and the dark cloth melted
away again into a black sea.
" The mountain-ridge stood much nearer, but longer
and higher before me, and cut through the lofty stars
w^ith its purple flowers, over which a green wild-fire flew
to and fro. The worlds, with the solitary beings, swept
away over came not back and the
the mountains, and ;

heart yearned to mount up and soar away after them. I '

must, I will/ cried I, rowing. After me came stalking

an angry giant, who mowed away the waves with a sharp
moon-sickle over me ran a little condensed tempest made
;

out of the compressed atmosphere of the earth; it was

called the poison-ball of heaven, and sent down incessant
pealings.
" On the high mountain-ridge a friendly flower called
me up ; the mountain waded to meet and dam up the sea,

but it almost reached now to the worlds that were flying

over, and its great fire-flowers seemed only like red buds
scattered through the deep ether. The water boiled,
— the giant and the poison-ball grew grimmer, — two
long clouds stood pointing down like raised drawbridges,

and the rain rushed down over them in leaping waves

the water and my little bark rose, but not enough.
 '

THE LAND OF ALBANO'S DREAM. 169

'
No Avaterfall,' said the giant, laughing, ' runs upward
!
here
" Then I thought of my death, and named softly a
holy name. Suddenly there came swimming along high
in heaven a white world under a veil, a single glistening
tear fell from heaven into the sea, and it rose with a roar,
— all waves fluttered with fins, broad wings grew on my
little skiff, the white world went over me, and the long
stream snatched itself up thundering, with the skiff on its

head, out of its dry bed, and stood on its fountain and in
heaven, and the flowery mountain-ridge beside it, and
lightly glided my winged skiff through green rosy splen-
dor and through soft, musical murmuring of a long
flower-fragrance, into an immense radiant morning-land.
" What a broad, bright, enchanted Eden ! A clear,

glad morning sun, with no tears of night, expanded with

an encircling rose-wreath, looked toward me and rose no
higher. Up and down sparkled the meadows, bright with
morning dew. '
Love's tears of joy lie down below
there,' sang the hermits overhead on the long, sweeping
worlds, ' and we, too, will shed them !
' I flew to the
shore, where honey bloomed, while on the other bloomed
wine ; and as I went, my gayly decorated little skiff, with
broad flowers puffed out for sails, followed, dancing after
me over the waves. I went into high blooming woods,
where noon and night dwelt side by side, and into green
vales full of flower-twilights, and up sunny heights, where
blue days dwelt, and flew down again into the blooming
skiff, and it floated on, deep in wave-lightnings, over
precious stones, into the spring, to the rosy sun. All
moved eastward, the breezes and the waves, and the
butterflies and the flowers, which had wings, and the
worlds overhead and their giants sang down,
; We '

VOL. II. 8
 TITAN.

fondly look downward, — we fondly glide downward, to

the land of love, to the golden land.'
" Then I saw my face in the waves, and it was a vir-
gin's, full of high rapture and love. And the brook
flowed with me, now through wheat-fields ; now through
a little, fragrant night, through which the sun was seen
behind sparkhng glow-worms ; now through a twilight,
wherein wai'bled a golden nightingale. Now the sun
arched the tears of joy into a rainbow, and I sailed
through, and behind me they sank down again, burning
like dew. I drew nearer to the sun, and he wore already
the harvest- wreath. ' It is already noon,' sang the her-
mits over my head.
" Slowly, as bees over honey-pastures, swam the throng-
ing clouds in the dark blue, over the divine region. From
the mountain-ridge a milky-way arched over, which sank
into the sun. Bright lands unrolled themselves. Harps
of light, strung with rays, rang in the fire ; a tri-clang of
three thunders agitated the land. A ringing storm-rain
of dew and radiance filled with glitter the wide Eden ; it

dissolved in drops, like a weeping ecstasy. Pastoral songs

floated through the pure blue air, and a few Hngering,
rosy clouds danced out of the tempest after the tones.
Then the near morning-sun looked faintly out of a pale
lily-garland, and the hermits sang up there, *
O bliss, O
bliss ! the evening blooms !
' There was stillness and twi-
light. The worlds held themselves in silence round the
sun, and encircled him with their fair giants, resembling

the human form, but higher and holier. As on the earth

the noble form of man creeps downward by the dark
mirror-chain of animal life, so did it, overhead there,
mount up along a line of pure, bright, free gods, sent from
God. The worlds touched the sun, and dissolved upon
 ;

THE VIRGIN OF ALBANO'S DREAM. 171

it ; the sun, too, fell to pieces, in order to flow down into

the land of love, and became a sea of radiance. Then
the fair gods and the fair goddesses stretched out their
arms towards each other, and touched each other, trem-
bling for love ;
but, like vibrating strings, they disap-
peared from sight in their blissful trembling, and their
being became only an invisible melody; and the tones
sang to each other, '
I am with thee, and am with God '

and others sang, '

The sun was God.'
" Then the golden fields glistened with innumerable
tears of joy, which had fallen during the invisible em-
brace ;
eternity grew still, and the breezes slept, and only
the lingering, rosy light of the dissolved sun softly stirred
the flowers.
" I was alone, looked round, and my lonely heart
longed dyingly for a death. Then the white world with
the veil passed slowly up the milky-way; like a soft
moon, it still glimmered a little ; then it sank down from
heaven upon the holy land, and melted away upon the
ground ;
only the high veil remained. Then the veil
withdrew itself into the ether, and an exalted, godlike
virgin, great as the other goddesses, stood upon the earth
and in heaven. All rosy radiance of the swimming sun
collected in her, and she burned in a robe of evening-red.
All invisible voices addressed her, and asked, 'Who is

the Father of men, and their Mother, and their Brother,

and their Sister, and their Lover, and their Beloved, and
their Friend The virgin Ufted steadfastly her blue
? '

eye, and said, It is God And thereupon she looked

' !
'

at me tenderly out of the high splendors, and said, Thou '

knowest me not, Albano, for thou art yet living.' Un- '

known virgin,' said I, I gaze with the pangs of a meas-

'

ureless love upon thy exalted countenance. I have surely

172 TITAN.

known thee ; name thy name.' '

If I name it, thou wilt
awake,' said she. ' Name it
!
' I cried. She answered,
and I awoke."

100. CYCLE.
" ^
I
^HOU canst surely keep awake and travel one
X night ? " With this question, his father hastily

conducted him to the carriage that stood ready for the

journey, in order to steal him away while yet in the
midst of the glowing dream, with his recollections lulled
to slumber, and in order especially to get the start of the

pale bride, who this very night, by the same road, was to
go home to the last heritage of humanity. " In the car-

riage thou shalt hear all," replied Gaspard to his son's

mild question respecting their destination. Still entranced
with the light of the shining land of dreams, Albano
willingly and blindly obeyed. He still saw Liana in lofty,

divine form, standing on the evening-red ground of the

sun, which was bespangled with the dew-drops of joy, and
his eye, full of splendor, reached not down into the earth-

cellar, and to the narrow cast-off chrysalis-shell of the

liberated and soaring Psyche.
Schoppe accompanied him to the torch-lighted carriage,

but in perfect silence, in order not to awaken his heart by

intimating the destination of the journey. He pressed
with warmth the hand of the beautiful and beloved youth,
which returned the pressure, and said nothing but " "We
!

shall see Thereupon, honored

each other again, brother "
by no parting look from the imperious father, he stepped
back with emotion from his friend, who continued to wave
his warm farewells ; and the carriage rolled off, and, leav-
ing a long gleam of torch-light behind it, flew out into
the high, starry night.
 THE NIGHT-JOUENEY. 173

Freshly and meaningly did the glimmering creation

broaden out before the convalescent. Saturn was just
rising, and the god of time set himself, as a soft, flashing
jewel, in the glittering magic belt of heaven. With
sealed eyes was the unconscious youth conducted down
from the pastoral cottage of his early years, and out of
the shepherd's vale of his first love, away where the
great, eternal constellations of art beckoned, into the
divine land, where the dark ether of heaven is golden,
and the lofty ruins of the earth are clothed with grace,

and the nights are days. No eye looked over to the

heights of Blumenbühl, from which, at this very moment,
a black train of coaches was passing slowly down, with
upright-burning funeral torches, like a moving shadow-
realm, to convey the still, good heart, wherein Albano
and God lived, with its dead wounds, to the soft place of

rest. Flaming rolled the torch-carriage up the mountain-

road towards Italy.
Tearless and far-gazing, Albano's eye rested on the
glimmering, ceaselessly moving fountain-wheel of time,
eternally drawing up constellations in the east, and pour-
ing them out in the west ; and his childlike hand gently
clasped his father's.
 TWENTY-SIXTH JUBILEE.*
The Journey. — The Fountain. — Rome. — The Fokum.

101. CYCLE.
long as the night lasted, the images of Al-
dream went on gleaming with the con-
bano's
and not until the bright morning
stellations,

rose were they all extinguished. Gaspard

told him, smilingly, he was on his way to Italy. He
received the intelligence of his going abroad with an
unexpected composure. He merely asked where his
Schoppe was. When told that he had not been disposed
to join them, then did he seem to see all at once in
fancy's eye the Linden-city come following after him over
the mountains and valleys, and his last friend standing in

* Here begins Jean Paul's fourth volume of Titan, to which he pre-

fixed the following note (which needs for explanation only the state-
ment that the Author —
agreeably to an intimation in the Introduc-
tory Programme —
accompanied each of the first two volumes with a
so-called Comic Appendix, full of all sorts of quizzes having no con-
nection with the Romance) : —
"This volume concludes the whole
Titan, exclusive of any further comic appendices, for which, howev-
er, the Author hopes and fears to find still time and material enough.

Wide-awake heads may perhaps take the usual learned criticisms on

the work for the regular comic appendices thereto. And, indeed, the
gay, loose dust on the poetic butterfly-wings turn out often — when
more closely examined — to be real plumage. Meiningen, December,
1802. J. P. F. Richter."
 GRIEF TRAVELS WITH ALBANO. 175

the middle of the market-place all alone, engaged in mock-

play with himself, by way of quieting his true, strong
heart, which would fain worry down its grief and hold
fast its love. With this friend, whom he would not let

go out of his soul, Albano drew by a Jupi-

after him, as

ter's-chain, the whole stage and world of his past, and

every sad scene came close up to him. Cities and lands

rolled along before him unseen. The waves which sor-

row lashes up around us, stand high between us and the
world, and make our ship solitary in the midst of a haven
full of vessels. He turned away with a shudder from
every beautiful virgin she reminded him, like a dirge,
;

of her who was pale in death forever did Liana's white

;

face, uncovered, — like a corpse in Italy,* — seem to be

travelling along on the endless way to the grave, and
only indistinguishable forms with masks followed after
her alive. So is it with man and his grief ; by a process
the reverse of ship-drawing, in which the living drag the
dead along with them, here the dead takes the living with
him, and draws them after him far into his cold realm.
Time gradually unfolded his grief, instead of weaken-

ing it. His had become a night, in which the moon

life

is under the earth, and he could not believe that Luna

would gradually return with an increasing bow of light.

Not joys, but only actions, — those remote stars of night,
— were now his aim. He held it unjust to keep back in
the presence of his father the tears which often forced
themselves from him in the midst of conversation, merely
because his father took no interest in them still he ;

showed him, nevertheless, by the Energy of his discourses

and resolves, the vigorous youth. Only the reproach
* The corpse is borne uncovered to burial ; its attendants follow
muffled up.
176 TITAN.

which he had cast upon himself for his guilt in Liana's

death had suffered itself to be swallowed up in the peace
which Idoine had given him, although he now held her
apparition to have been only a feverish waking dream
about Liana.
His father kept a profound silence about Idoine's ap-
pearance on the stage of action, as well as all disagreea-
ble recollections. He spoke much, however, of Italy and
of the spoils of art which Albano would acquire there,
especially through the company of the Princess, the
Counsellor of Arts, and the German gentleman, who had
gone on before them, and whom one might soon overtake.
The son turned to him at last with the bold inquiry
whether he really had a sister still, and related the ad-
venture with the Baldhead. " It might well be," said

Gaspard, with a disagreeable jocosity, " that thou hadst

still more sisters and brothers than I knew of. But what
I know is, that thy twin-sister Severina died this year in
her cloister. For what, then, dost thou take the night-
adventure ? " "I should almost think it a dream," he
replied. Here, accidentally, his hand found its way to

his pocket, and to his astonishment struck upon the half-

ring which his sister had presented him. The strange-
ness of the whole thing sank deep among his sensations,

and that night of horror passed swiftly and coldly through

his noon. He and his father examined the ends of the
divided ring, on each of which a broken-off signature
ended abruptly. " There is nothing miraculous, how-
ever," said the Knight. " How do we know, then, that
there is anything natural ? " said Albano. " Mystery,"

replied Gaspard, " or the spirit-world, dwells only in the

spirit." " We must," the son continued, " even in the
case of the commonest optical tricks, derive our pleasure
 THE KOONDAY HALT. 177

from something else than the resolving of the deception

of fancy into a deception of the senses, because other-
wise the magic would necessarily please us more after
the solution than before. These are the points and
poles of human nature, upon which the eternal polar
clouds hang. Our maps of the kingdom of truth and
spirits are the map-stones, which stand for ruins and
villages ; these are lies^ but still they are likenesses. The
spirit, forever an exile among bodies, desires spirits."

"That is just about what I meant, too," said Gaspard.

Albano, however, insisted more distinctly upon his de-
cision respecting the Baldhead and the sister. "Anything
else," said the Knight, quite petulantly ;
" it is to me a
very disagreeable conversation. Take the world in thy
way and be quiet !
" " Dear father," asked Albano, with
surprise, " do you mean at some future time to definitely
enlighten me on the subject ? " " So soon as I can,"

said the Knight, abruptly, with such sharp and stinging

glances at the son, that the latter, flinching from them, as
from arrows, hastily bent away his head out of the car-
riage ; when he for the first time observed that his father
did not mean him at all ; for he still continued to look as
sharply in the same direction as if he were close upon
the point of falling into his old torpor.
Gaspard's expression about the indwelling of the spirit-

ual world within the spirit, and his look, and the thought
of his palsy lent a -romantic awfulness to the hour and
the silence in Albano's eyes. Down below on the bank
of the stream stood a concourse of people, and one came
running Hke a fugitive or a spokesman out of the crowd.
A boy at some distance threw himself down on a hill, and
laid his ear to the earth, in order to hear somewhat accu-
rately the rolling of their carriage-wheels. In the village
8* L
 ;

178 TITAN.

where they made their noonday halt there was an inces-

sant toUing. Their host was at the same time a miller
the din of waves and wheels filled the whole house ; and
canary-birds sent their additional jargoning through the
jargon.
There are moments when the two worlds, the earthly
and the spiritual, sweep by near to each other, and when

earthly day and heavenly night touch each other in twi-

lights. As the shadows of the shining clouds of heaven
run along over the blossoms and harvests of earth, so
does heaven universally cast upon the common surface
of reality its hght shadows and reflections. So did Al-
bano find it now. The ring and the mystic word of his

cold fatherhad dazzled him like hghtning. Below at the

house-door he found a maiden, who carried along before
her a box of citrons. Suddenly and unpleasantly the
tolling stopped ; he looked up to the belfry, and a white
hawk sat upon the vane. Soon came the bell-ringer him-
self,- to get something to drink, and began upon the cham-
berlain with strong and yet not ill-meant curses, for hav-
ing kept him tolling there these three weeks, and said he
only wished that such a one as that distinguished person-
age himself had been the previous year had only been
obliged to toll regularly three days after the decease of
the blessed daughter. He urged the miller to "buy some
of the citrons, because they were good, juicy, and had a
thin rind ; and he and the ' parson's boy * ' must recog-
nize them as coming from the burial of the gracious
Fräulein ; and in fourteen days, at all events, he would
need some for the assembled clergy, as bride-father!"
are the customs here ? " asked Albano.
" Why, you see, when any one dies," said the sexton,

* Such, for instance in Hungary, is the designation of a deacon.

 NEW SCENES AND OLD MEMORIES. 179

very respectful and friendly, " then the parson and my

littleness get a citron, and so does the corpse too ; but if

any one is married, then the clergy get the same, and so
also the bride. This is the fashion with us, my most
gracious master."
Albano went out into the garden back of the house,
into which the exposed mill-wheels threw their silver

sparks, and which was as if swallowed up in the splendor

and uproar of the open water. While he looked into the
glimmering, flying whirlpools, the citrons which the corpse
as well as the bride got hovered before his excited mind.
Emotion is full of similes. Time was, thought he, when
Liana should have journeyed to the citron-land, and into

the low woods where the snow of blossoms and the gold
of fruits play together between green and blue, and there
she was to have gained health and refreshment ; now she
holds the citron in her cold, dead hand, and she is not
quickened.
He looked round, and seemed to stand in a strange
world. In the blue of heaven an invisible storm without
clouds swept along like a spirit ;
long rows of hills shifted

and sparkled with red fruits and red leaves ; out of the
gay trees glowing apples were flung ; and the storm flew
from summit to summit, and down upon the earth, and
roared along down the whole course of the disturbed
stream. One could fancy spirits played around the earth,
or would appear upon it, so singularly seemed the bright
welkin stirred and illuminated. By this time, Albano
had come unconsciously into a dark, wooded wilderness ;

therein leaped, unseen, unheard, a pure, light fountain out

of the earth upon the earth ; the storm without was still,

only the fountain was heard. " The holy one is near
me," said his heart. " Is not the fountain her image ? Is
i8o TITAN.

it not the very image of her eternal tears ? Does she

not press upward out of the earth, where she dwells ? '*
All at once he saw in his hand, as if another's hand had
laid it therein, the sketch of Linda's head which Liana,
with dying hands, had made and presented ; but his fancy
powerfully impressed upon the picture the resemblance
to the artist, so clearly did he see Liana's soft face upon
the paper.
He went forth again into the shining world. " How
poor I am !
" he cried. " I see her upon the golden cloud
which sails from the evening sun toward morning ; I see
her in the cool fountain of the vale, and on the moon, and
on the flower. I see her everywhere ; and she rests only

on one spot. O, how poor !

" And he looked up to
heaven, and a single long cloud was floating therein,
swiftly and far away.

102. CYCLE.

THUS fly by,

did the days, with their cities and landscapes,
and the world mirrored itself in Albano's
life as in a poem. One faculty after another, the whole
bowed harvest of his inner being, gradually rose up again
green and dripping ; but, at the same time, the thorn of

grief also grew strong. While his eye and spirit were
filling themselves with the world and all spoils of knowl-
edge, the evil spectre of pain still kept his abode in the
ruins, and came forth when the heart was alone, and
seized it.

He touched Vienna, where he must needs be pleased

to be introduced to several distinguished friends of Gas-
pard, who here, for the first time, disclosed to him that he
belonged not to the Cavalieros del Turone, but was an
 !

ALBANO AND THE ALPS AGAIN. l8l

Austrian Knight of the Fleece. "It is so singularly

familiar to me here," said Albane ;
" whence can this

arise ? " " From some resemblance to another city," said

Gaspard ; " whoever travels much comes out of like cities

into like." Every day grew more dear and

his father

intelligible to him, and yet no more confidential or inti-

mate. After a warm day and famihar conversation with

Gaspard, one stood, at the next succeeding interview,
again in the very antechamber of his acquaintance ; as
in the case of hard-natured maidens, after every May-
month's day the melted May-frost begins to fall anew.
Age respects love, but, unlike youth, it respects little the
signs of love. However, Albano maintained the pride
of letting his father see him wholly and with all his dif-
ferences, without hiding his summer from the face of
winter.
From day to day Gaspard found letters to himself at
the post-offices, particularly from Pestitz, as Albano saw
externally by the post-marks, for not one was handed over
to him. He desired more and more to overtake the
Princess, who was now only one day's journey in advance
of them. They saw already those giants of winter, the
Swiss and Tyrolese Alps, in their encampment ; those
sons of the gods stood, armed with avalanches and cat-
aracts and winters, sentinels around the divine land where
gods and men reciprocally imitated each other. How
often did Albano, when the sun at evening glowingly
blended with the snow-clad Alpine heights, gaze with a
pang of sadness at those thrones, which he had once
beheld quite otherwise, much more golden, so hopefully
and trustingly, from Isola Bella ! The heights of thy
past life, said he to himself, are also white, and no Alpine
horns any longer sound up there, among serene, sunny
days, and thou art deep in the valley
l82 TITAN.

They passed, even now, the popular festival of a

belated vintage. The Knight informed himself about
everything with the curiosity of a wine-dealer, and with
the science of a vine-dresser. So did he botanize uni-
versally upon the earth after every spear and sprig of
knowledge. Albano wondered at this, since he had here-
tofore Gaspard sought and strove after
believed that
nothing but the Paris- and Hesperides-apples of art,
because, in his station, he could have no occasion for any
other fruits, or need their meat and their kernel, either to
enjoy or to plant them.
They sank into the depths of the mountains of Tyrol.
The heights stood already wrapped in the close, white
bier-cloth of winter, and through the valleys the cold
storm went to and fro, the only living thing. Albano's
longing after the mild land of youth grew, between the
storms and the Alps, higher and higher; and Rome's
image, the nearer it approached him, assumed more co-
lossal dimensions. Gaspard made the journey go on
wings, in order to anticipate the rain-clouds of autumn.
In a dark travelling night they worked their passage,
as it were, away through the mountains, like their com-
panion, the river Adige, which tears up a giant rock, and
heaves it into the mild plain, and softly speeds on its level
way. The sun appeared, — and Italy.

It had rained. A bland air fluttered from the cypress

hills through the valley, and through the vine-festoons of
the mulberry-trees, and had forced its way along between
blossoms and the fruits of the Seville oranges. The Adige
seemed to rest, like a curling giant-snake, upon the mot-
ley-colored landscape of country-houses and olive-groves,
and to set rainbows upon one another. Life played in
the ether ;
only summer birds floated in the light blue ;
 THEY OVERTAKE THE PRINCESS. 183

only the Veuus-chariot of pleasure rolled over the soft

hills.

Albano's full soul gushed out, as it were, into the broad

bed which led him from the mild plain to the magnifi-
cent Rome !
" When we journey back," said Gaspard,
" then remember thy approach." They stopped at a
village with great stone houses. Albano was looking
upon the warm out-o'-door life around him, the uncovered
head, the naked breast, and the sparkling eyes of the men,
the great sheep with silken wool, the little, black, lively
pigs, and the black turkey-cocks, when he suddenly heard
his name and a German greeting from a balcony overhead.
It was the Princess ; her carriages stood just aside ;

Bouverot and Fraischdöfer were with her. How like

balsam it steals through the heart, in a strange land, and

though it were the loveliest, to meet again a brother or
a sister inhabitant of a rougher land, as if one were meet-
ing in the second world a kindred son of earth ! The
Adige, too, that had previously in the wild mountains
accompanied him under the name of the Etsch, followed
him with its fairer designation into the plain. The
Princess seemed to him, he knew not why, to have be-
come milder, more maidenly in form and look, and he
reproached himself with his earlier error. But he only
committed a later one. Beyond Vienna her strongly
drawn physiognomy was surpassed by sharper southern
ones, and the striking* colors in which she loved to array

herself were outshone by the Italian. A strange soil is

a masquerade ball-room or a watering-place hall, where

only human relations, and no political ones, prevail, and in

a strange land men are least strangers. All touched each

other in friendliness, as strange hands feel after and grasp

* Screaming and outscreamed are Ricliter's bold words. — Tr.

 :!

TITAN.

each other during the ascent of mountains. With what

veneration did Albano look upon the Prmcess ! For he
thought, " She would fain have taken the departed one
with her into the healing Eden. O, the saint would in-
deed be happy this morning, and her blue eye would
weep for bliss." Then his did so, but not for bliss ; and
thus are the fire-works of life, like others, built always by
and upon water. Then was the oath solemnly sworn
within him before the beautiful face of the dead Liana
" I will be truly the friend of this her friend !
" Man
plays a new part in the drama of life most warmly and
best ; over our introductory serm(5ns the Holy Spirit
floats, brooding Avith the wings of a dove ;
only by and by
do the eggs lie cold. Albano, never yet initiated into any
friendship but a man's, worshipped that of woman as a ris-
ing star, and for this, as for the former, he found far more
capacities of sacrifice treasured up in his warm soul than
for love. Man is in friendship what woman is in love,
and the reverse ;
namely, more covetous of the object
than of the feeling for it.

With new swelling sails and flying streamers, in gayly

decorated singing-vessels, with propitious side winds, did
the gay passage fly through cities and pastures.
Nothing hangs out over the corso of a long journey a
finer festoon of fruits and flowers, for a carriage which
goes before, than a couple of carriages coming after.

What fellowship of joy and danger in night quarters

What bespeaking of lines of march ! What joy over the
adventures past and to come, namely, over the reports
of the same ! And how each loves the others !

Only toward Bouverot Albano showed a steady cold-

ness but the Knight was friendly. Albano, brought up
;

more among books than among men, often wondered

 —

BOUVEßOT AS PAYMASTER. 185

within himself, that in the former the same difference of

sentiments passed by him so hghtly, which among the
latter assailed him so sharply. At last his father asked
him upon one occasion, " Why dost thou demean thyself
so strangely toward Herr von Bouverot ? Nothing ex-
asperates more than a considerate, quiet hatred ; a pas-
sionate hatred does so far less." " Because it is my law,"
he answered, " to flee and to hate the everlasting untruth-
fulness of men in their connections with each other. Out
of mere humanity to place one's self on a par with unlike
persons, designedly to make a friendly face to any one, to
have such a feeling towards a man, that one is not at
liberty to speak it out to him on the spot, that may well
be deemed complete slavery, and confounds the purest."
" Whoso will love nothing but his likeness," replied Gas-
pard, " has nothing but himself to love. Yon Bouverot,"
he added, laughing, " is, after all, a brave host and trav-
elling compagnon." who could withstand even
Albano,
people whom he respected, made no inquisition upon his
father, but thought the German gentleman only the
more despicable.
That gentleman, born a pettifogger and pedler, had, it
must be observed, cleared a pathway of deep footprints
for himself in the snow of the Knight and the Princess,

both of whom, like all long travellers,* were uncommonly

avaricious, —by overseeing and overreaching all hosts
and Italians in settling up the Patto,'\ and even by his
understanding the art of being profoundly coarse just at
the right time, whereas upon turning from the host to the

Princess he would become as much a man of the world

* Curiously enough, the German phrase is constructed here so as to

mean, in strict grammar, " all tall travellers.'" Tr.—
t Compact, account. —
Tk.
 !

TITAN.

again as Fontenelle or any Frenchman, who in such cases

always counts up and curses longer than he eats. The
Knight of the Fleece, who, as he confessed, had never
travelled so cheaply, covered him, therefore, with the
laurel which grew all about here, and looked as gay as
he had never looked before. Only to his son was the
cold, wrathful, coarse man a volcano, ejecting slime and
water. Ride a mile ahead of a crowned head or a classic
author, who is also one, and in general before people who
have money, but not to spare, and only save them a few
gold pieces a day, — never shall you have seen the said
heads more glad or grateful than in such a case
Everywhere Albano would fain have alighted, and
stepped in among great ruins and into the splendor of
the scattered insignia, which had been lost by the con-
querors of the world out of their triumphal chariots on
the way to Rome. But the Knight advised him to spare
and save his eyes and inspiration for Rome itself. How
his heart beat, when at last in the waste Campagna,
which lay full of lava-eruptions around the nest of the
Roman eagles, those world-driven storm-birds, they rolled
along over the Flaminian road! But he and Gaspard
felt themselves wonderfully oppressed. One seemed to
be wading through the stagnant lake of a sultry sulphur-
ous atmosphere, which his father ascribed to the brim-
stone huts at Baccano, — he thirsted for the snow on the
distant mountains, — the heavens were dark-blue and
still, — single lofty clouds flew arrow-swift through the
silent wilderness. A man in the distance set down
again an urn which he had dug up, and prayed, anxiously
looking to heaven, and telling his beads. Albano turned
toward the mountains, to which the evening sun was sink-
ing, as if dissolved in piercing splendor. All at once the
 NIGHT-ENTRY INTO ROME. 187

Knight ordered the postilion to stop, who passionately

threw up his arms toward heaven, while it went on rum-
bhng under the carriage, " Holy mother
and exclaimed,
of God, an earthquake But Gaspard
!
touched
" his son,

who seemed intoxicated with the splendors of sunset, and

said, pointing, " Ecco Roma ! " Albano looked, and saw
in the depths of the distance the dome of St. Peter's
gleaming in the sun. The sun went down, the earth
quaked once more, but in his spirit nothing was save
Rome.

103. CYCLE.

HALF an hour after the earthquake, the heavens

swathed themselves in seas and dashed them
down in masses and in torrents. The naked Campagna
and heath were covered with the mantle of rain. Gas-
pard was silent, —
the heavens black, the great thought —
stood alone in Albano, that he was hastening on towards
the bloody scaffold and the throne scaffolding of human-
ity, the heart of a cold, dead, heathen-world, the eternal
Eome ; and when he heard, on the Ponte Molle, that he
was now going across the Tiber, he felt as if the past had
risen from the dead, — as if the stream of time ran back-
ward, and he were sailing on it ; under the streams of
heaven he heard the seven old mountain-streams rushing
and roaring, which once came down from Rome's hills,
and with seven arms uphove the world from its founda-
tions.

At length the constellation of the mountain city of

God, that stood so broad before him, opened out into
nights ; cities with scattered lights lay up and down, and
the bells (which to his ear were alarm-bells) sounded out
i88 TITAN.

the fourth* hour, when the carriage rolled through the

triumphal gate of the city, the Porta del Popolo ; then
the moon rent her black heavens, and poured down out
of the cleft clouds the splendor of a whole sky. There
stood the Egyptian obelisk of the gateway, high as the
clouds in the night, and three streets ran gleaming apart.
" So," said Albano to himself, as they passed through the
long corso to the Tenth Ward, " thou art veritably in the
camp of the god of war ; here, where he grasped the
hilt of the monstrous war-sword, and with the point made
the three' wounds in three quarters of the world. Rain
and splendor gushed through the vast, broad streets, —
occasionally he passed suddenly along by gardens and
into broad city-deserts and market-places of the past.

The rolling of the chariot amidst the rush and roar of

the rain resembled the thunder, whose days were once
holy to this heroic city, like the thundering heaven to the
thundering earth ;
muffled-up forms, with little lights,

stole through the dark streets ; often there stood a long

palace with colonnades in the fire of the moon, often a
solitary gray column, often a single high fir-tree, or a
statue behind cypresses. Once, when there was neither
rain nor moonshine, the carriage went round the corner
of a large house, on whose roof a tall, blooming virgin,
with an uplooking child on her arm, herself directed a
little hand-light, now toward a white statue, now toward
the child, and so alternately illuminated the whole group.
The friendly company made its way to the very centre of
his exalted soul and brought with him many a recol-
it to

lection ;
particularly was a Roman child to him a wholly
new and mighty idea.
They alighted at last at the Prince di Lauria's, Gas-

* Ten o'clock.
 DINNER AT PRINCE DI LAURIA'S. 189

and old friend. Near his palace lay

pard's father-in-law,
theOampo Vaccino (the ancient Forum), and the radiant
moon shone on the broad steps and the three wondrous
edifices of the Capitol ; in the distance stood the Colosseum.
Albano ascended hesitatingly into the lighted house, be-
fore which the carriage of the Princess stood, reluctantly
turning his eye from those heights of the world, from
which once a light word like a snow-flake rolled far and
wide, and grew and grew, till at last in a strange land it

crushed a city with the weight of an avalanche.

The Princess, with her company, saw with pleasure
the new-comers. The old Prince Lauria welcomed his
grandson courteously and with reserve. His innumerable
servants spoke among them almost all the languages of
Europe. Albano immediately asked the Knight after his

teacher Dian, that graft of a Greek upon a Roman ; but

the most human thing was precisely that which Gaspard,
as is always the case with great men, had not thought of.

They sent to his residence, which was near ; he was not

at home.
They sat down to dine. The Prince immediately en-
tertained them with his favorite show-dish, the political
progress of the world, and gave the latest news of the
French Revolution. Gazettes of the times were to him
Eternities,news was his antiques he took all the news-
;

papers of Europe, and therefore kept for each a German,

Russian, English, Polish servant, to translate it for him.
By the side of his satirical coldness toward all men and
things, the political and Italian zeal appeared the stronger,
with which he defended the French against the Knight,
who composedly despised them ;
and, indulging himself
after his manner, even in bad puns, conceded to the old

Romans the Forum and to the modern the Campo Vaccino,

I90 TITAN.

and even to the ancient Gauls the field of Mars, and to

the modern French a field of March.
Albano could not conceive of there being any joking
60 near the Fm'um, and thought every word must be
great in this city. The cold Lauria spoke warmly for

France, like a minister, regarding only nations, not in-

dividuals, and his sentiment pleased the youth.

Then the Princess led the stream of conversation to

Rome's high art. Fraischdörfer dissected the Colossus
into limbs, and weighed them in the narrowest scales.

Bouverot engraved the giant in historical copperplate.

The Princess spoke with much warmth, but without
point. Gaspard melted all up together, as it were, into a
Corinthian brass, and comprehended all M^ithout being
comprehended. On his coldly but strongly up-shooting
life-fountain he let the world play and dance like a ball.
Albano, dissatisfied with all, kept his inspiration, sacri-
ficing to the unearthly gods of the past round about him,
after the old fashion, namely, with silence. Well might
and could he have discoursed also, but quite otherwise, in
odes, with the whole man, with streams which mount
and grow upwards. He looked more and more longingly
out of the window moon in the pure rain-blue and
at the
at single Forum out of doors there
columns of the ;

gleamed for him the greatest world. At last he rose up,

indignant and impatient, and stole down into the glimmer-
ing glory and stepped before the Forum but the moon- ;

lit night, that decorative painter, which works with irreg-

ular strokes, made almost the very stage of the scene
irrecognizable to him.
What a broad, dreary plain, loftily encompassed with
ruins, gardens and temples, covered with prostrate capitals
of columns, and with single upright pillars, and with trees
 THE FOUNTAIN AND THE SURPRISE. 191

and a dumb wilderness ! The heaped-up ashes out of

the emptied urn of time, and the potshards of a great
world flung around ! He passed by three temple col-
umns,* which the earth had drawn down into itself even
to the breast, and along through the broad triumphal arch

of Septimius Severus ; on the right stood a chain of

columns without their temple ; on the left, attached to a
Ciiristian church, the colonnade of an ancient heathen
temple deep sunk into the sediment of time ; at last the

triumphal arch of Titus, and before it, in the middle of

the woody wilderness, a fountain gushing into a granite

basin.
He went up to this fountain, in order to survey the
plain out of which the thunder-months of the earth once
arose ; but he went along as over a burnt-out sun, hung
round with dark, dead earths. " O man, O the dreams
of man !
" something within him unceasingly cried. He
stood on the granite margin turning toward the Colos-
seum, whose mountain-ridges of wall stood high in the
moonlight, with the deep gaps which had been hewn in
them by the scythe of Time. Sharply stood the rent and
jagged arches of Nero's golden house hard by, like mur-
derous cutlasses. The palatine hill lay full of green gar-
dens, and on crumbling temple-roofs the blooming death-
garland of ivy was gnawing, and living Ranunculae still

glowed around sunken capitals. The fountain murmured

babblingly and eternally, and the stars gazed steadfastly
down with imperishable rays upon the still battle-field,

over which the winter of time had passed without bring-

ing after it a spring, — the fiery soul of the world had
flown up, and the cold, crumbling giant lay around ;
—
torn asunder were the gigantic spokes of the fly-wheel

* Of Jupiter Tonans.
 " !

192 TITAN.

which once the very stream of ages drove. And in addi-

tion to all this, the moon shed down her light like eating
silver-water upon the naked columns, and would fain
dissolve the Colosseum and the temples and all into their

own shadows
Then Albano stretched out his arms into the air, as if
he could therewith embrace and flow away, as with the
arms of a stream, and exclaimed " ye mighty shades, :

you who once strove and lived here, ye are looking down
from heaven, but scornfully, not sadly, for your great
fatherland has died and gone after you ! Ah, had I on
the insignificant earth (full of old eternity), which you
have made great, only done one action worthy of you !

Then were it to me a sweet privilege to open my heart

by a wound, and to mix earthly blood with the hallowed
soil, and to hasten away out of the world of graves to

you, eternal and immortal ones But I am not worthy !

!
of it

At this moment there came suddenly along up the Via

Sacra a tall man, deeply enveloped in his mantle, who
drew near to the fountain ; without looking round threw
down his hat, and held a coal-black, curly, almost perpen-
dicular hindhead under the stream of water. But hardly
had he, turning upward, caught a glimpse of the profile

of Albano absorbed in his fancies, when he started up all

dripping, stared at the Count, fell into amazement, threw

his arms high into the air, and said, " Amico ? " Albano
looked at him. The stranger said, " Albano / " " My
Dian !
" cried Albano. They clasped each other pas-
sionately,and wept for love.
Dian could not comprehend it at all. He said, in Ital-

ian, " But it surely cannot be you ;

you look old." He
thought he was speaking German all the time, till he
 DIAN SHOWS THE RUINS OF ROME. 193

heard Albano answer in Italian. Both gave and got

only questions. Architect merely
Albano found the
browner, but there was the lightning of the eyes and
every faculty in its old glory. With three words he
described to him the journey and the company. How
does Rome strike you ? " asked Dian, pleasantly. " As
life does," replied Albano, very seriously ;
" it makes one
too tender and too hard. I recognize here absolutely
nothing at all," he continued ;
" do those columns belong

to the magnificent Temple of Peace ? " " No," said

Dian, " to the Temple of Concord of the ; other there
stands yonder nothing but the vault." " Where is Saturn's
Temple ? " asked Albano. " Buried in St. Adrian's
Church," said Dian, and added, hastily, " close by stand
the ten columns of Antonine's Temple ; over beyond there,
the Baths of Titus ; behind us, the Palatine Hill, and so
on. Now tell me — "

They walked up and down the Forum, between the

arches of Titus and Severus. Albano —
especially beside
the teacher who in the days of childhood had so often
conducted him hitherward — was yet full of the stream
which had swept over the world, and the all-covering
water sank but slowly. He went on to say, " To-day,
when he beheld the obelisk, the soft, tender brightness of
the moon had seemed to him eminently unbecoming the
giant city ; he would rather have seen a sun blazing on
its broad banner ; but now the moon was the proper
funeral torch beside the dead Alexander, who at a touch
collapses into a handful of dust." " The artist does not

get far with feelings of this kind," said Dian ;

" he must
look upon everlasting beauties on the right hand and on
the left. " Where," Albano went on asking, " is the old
Lake of Curtius, the Rostrum, the pila Horatia, the
VOL. II. 9 M
 ;

194 TITAN.

Temple of Vesta, of Venus, and of all those solitary col-

umns?" "And where is the marble Forum itself?" said
Dian ;
" it lies thirty span deep under our feet." " Where
is the great, free people, the senate of kings, the voice of
the orators, the procession to the Capitol ? Buried under
the mountain of potshards. O Dian, how can a man,
who loses a father, a beloved in Rome, shed a single tear,
or look round him with consternation, when be comes out
here before this battle-field of time, and looks into the
charnel-house of the nations ? Dian, one would wish
"
here an iron heart, for fate has an iron hand !

Dian, who nowhere stayed more reluctantly than upon

such tragic cliffs, hanging over, as it were, into the sea
of eternity, always leaped off from them with a jest. Like
the Greeks, he blended dances with tragedy. " Many a
thing is conserved here, friend," said he ;
" in Adrian's

church yonder they will still show you the bones of the
three men that walked in the fire." " That is just the
frightful play of destiny," replied Albano, " to occupy
the heights of the mighty ancients with monks shorn
down into slaves."
" The stream of time drives new wheels," said Dian
" yonder lies Raphael twice buried.* How are Chariton
and the children doing ? " " They are blooming on," said
Albano, but in a sombre tone. " Heavens !
" cried Dian,

with all a father's terror, " is it really so?"t "Verily,

Dian !
" said Albano, softly. " Does Liana," said Dian,
" still come often to Chariton's ? And how fares the
sweet one ? " Albano answered, in a low tone, " She is

* The body in the Pantheon, the head in St. Luke's Church.

t One is reminded here of the manner in which Macduflf receives
Rosse's announcement that his wife and children were " all well."
— Tr.
 DIAN'S GRIEF FOR LIANA. 195

dead." " What dead ? Impossible

! ! Froulay's daughter,
Albano ? The gold-rose ? O speak !
"
he cried. Albano
nodded aflirmatively. " Ah ! thou good maiden " said !

he, piteously, with tears in his black eyes, " so friendly,

so enchantingly lovely, so fine an artist ! But how did it

come to pass ? Have you, then, not been acquainted at

all with the lovely child ? " " One spring only," said
Albano, hurriedly. " My good Dian, I will now go back
to my father, and I can answer no more questions." " O
certainly But I must learn more," Dian concluded.
!

And so they climbed silently and speedily over rubbish

and torsos of columns, and neither gave heed to the
mighty emotion of the other.
 TWENTY-SEVENTH JUBILEE.
St. Peter's. — Eotunda. — Colosseum. — Letter to Schöpfe. —
The War. — Gaspard. — The Corsican. — Entanglement
WITH THE Princess. — Sickness. — Gaspard's Brother. — St.
Peter's Dome, and Departure.

104. CYCLE.
OME, like the creation, is an entire wonder,
which gradually dismembers itself into new
wonders, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, St.

Peter's Church, Raphael, &c.

With the passage through the Church of St. Peter the
knight began the fair race through immortality. The
Princess let herself be bound by the tie of art to the
circle of the men. As Albano was more smitten with
edifices than with any other work of art, so did he see
ffom afar with holy awe the long mountain-chain of art,

which again bore upon itself hills ; so did he stand before

the plain, around which two enormous colonnades run
like Corsos, bearing a people of statues; in the centre
shoots up the obelisk, and on its right and left an eternal
fountain, and from the lofty steps the proud church of
the world, inwardly filled with churches, rearing upon
itself a temple toward heaven, looks down upon the earth.
But how enormously, as they drew near, had its columns
and its rocky wall mounted up and flown away from the
vision !
 ;

INTERIOR OF ST. PETER'S. • 197

He entered the magic church, which gave the world

blessings, curses, kings, and popes, with the consciousness
that, like the world-edifice, it was continually enlarging
and receding more and more, the longer one remained in

it. They went up to two children of white marble, who

held an incense-muscle-shell of yellow marble ; the chil-
dren grew by nearness till they were giants. At length
they stood before the main altar and its hundred perpet-
ual lamps ; —
what a stillness Above them the heaven's !

arch of the dome, resting on four inner towers ; around

them an overarched city, of four streets, in which stood
churches. The temple became greatest by walking in it

and when they passed round one column, there stood a

new one before them, and holy giants gazed earnestly
down. Here was the youth's large heart, after so long a
time, filled. " In no art," he said to his father, " is the

soul so mightily possessed with the subhme as in archi-

tecture ; in every other the giant stands in it and in the
depths of the soul, but here he stands out of it and close
before it." Dian, to whom all images were more clear than
abstract ideas, said :
" He is perfectly right." Fraisch-
dörfer replied :
" The sublimity here also lies only in the
brain ; for the whole church stands, after all, in something
greater, namely, in Rome, and under the heavens, in the
presence of which latter we certainly should not feel
anything." He also complained, " That the place for the
sublime in his head was very much narrowed by the in-
numerable volutes and monuments w^hich the temple shut
up therein at the same time with itself." Gaspard said,

taking everything in a large sense :

" When the sub-
lime once really appears, it then, by its very nature,
absorbs and annihilates all little circumstantial orna-
ments." He adduced as evidence the tower of the min-
 TITAN.

ster,* and nature itself, which is not made smaller by

its grasses and villages.
The Princess, among so many connoisseurs of art,

enjoyed in silence.
The ascent of the dome Gaspard recommended to defer
to a dry and cloudless day, in order that they might be-
hold the queen of the world, Rome, upon and from the
proper throne ; he therefore proposed very earnestly the
visiting of the Pantheon, because he was eager to let this
follow immediately after the impression of St. Peter's
Church. They went thither. How simply and grandly
the Hall opens upon one ! Eight yellow columns sustain
its brow, and majestically, as the head of the Homeric
Jupiter, its temple arches itself ! It is the Rotunda or
Pantheon. " O the pygmies," cried Albano, " who would
fain give us new temples ! Raise the old ones higher out
of the rubbish, and then you have built enough." f They
stepped in ; there reared itself around them a holy, simple,
free w^orld-structure with its heavenly arches soaring and
striving upward, an odeum of the tones of the sphere-
music, a world in the world ! And overhead I the eye-
socket of the light and of the sky gleamed down, and
the distant rack of clouds seemed to touch the lofty arch
over which it shot along ! And round about them stood
nothing but the temple-bearers, the columns ! The tem-
ple of all gods endured and concealed the diminutive
altars of the later ones.

Gaspard questioned Albano about his impressions. He

said he preferred the larger church of St. Peter. The

* Strasburg cathedral. Tr. —

t The hall of the Pantheon seems too low, because a part of its

steps ishidden by the rubbish.

J This opening in the roof is twenty-seven feet in diameter.
 ST. PETER'S AND THE PANTHEON. 199

Knight approved, and said that "youth, like nations,

always more easily found and better appreciated the

sublime than the beautiful, and that the spirit of the
young man ripened from strength to beauty, as his body
ripens from beauty to strength however, he himself pre-
;

ferred the Pantheon." " How could the moderns," said

the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdörfer, "build anything,
except some little Bernini's towers ? " " That is why,"
said the offended Provincial Architect, Dian, who de-
spised the Counsellor of Arts, because he never made a
good except in the aesthetic hall of judgment as
figure,

critic, never in the exhibition-hall as painter, " we mod-

erns are, beyond contradiction, stronger in criticism, though
in practice we are collectively and individually block-
heads." Bouverot remarked, " The Corinthian columns
ndight be higher." The Counsellor of Arts said, " After
all, he knew nothing more like this fine hemisphere than
a much smaller one, which he had found in Herculaneum,
moulded in ashes — of the bosom of a fair fugitive."
The Knight laughed, and Albano turned away in disgust,
and went to the Princess.

He asked her for her opinion about the two temples.

" Here Sophocles, there Shakespeare but I compre- ;

hend and appreciate Sophocles more easily," she replied,

and looked with new eyes into his new countenance.
For the supernatural illumination through the zenith of
Heaven —
not through a hazy horizon transfigured —
in her eyes the beautiful and excited countenance of the
youth, and she took for granted that the saintly halo of
the dome must also exalt her form. "When he answered
her :
" Very good But in Shakespeare Sophocles also is
!

contained ;
not, however, Shakespeare in Sophocles ; and
on Peter's Church stands Angelo's rotunda " !
Just then
 —

200 TITAN.

the lofty cloud all at once, as by the blow of a hand out

of the ether, broke in two, and the ravished sun, like the
eye of a Venus, floating through her ancient heavens,
for she once stood even here, — looked mildly in from the
upper deep ; then a holy radiance filled the temple, and
burned on the porphyry of the pavement, and Albano
looked around him in an ecstasy of wonder and delight,
and said, with low voice :
" How transfigured at this mo-
ment is everything in this sacred place ! Raphael's spirit
comes forth from his grave in this noontide hour, and
everything which its reflection touches brightens into god-

like splendor !
" The Princess looked upon him tenderly,
and he lightly laid his hand upon hers, and said, as one
"
vanquished, " Sophocles !

On the next moonlit evening Gaspard bespoke torches,

in order that the Colosseum with its giant-circle might,
the first time, stand in fire before them. The Knight
would fain have gone around alone with his son dimly
through the dim work, like two spirits of the olden
time, but the Princess forced herself upon him, from a
too lively wish to share with the noble youth his moments,
— and perhaps, in fact, to have her heart and his own
common property. Women do not sufficiently compre-
hend that an idea, when it fills and elevates man's mind,
shuts it up against love, and crowds out persons, whereas
withwoman all ideas easily become human beings.
They passed over the Forum by the Via Sacra to the

Colosseum, whose lofty, cloven forehead looked down pale

under the moonlight. They stood before the gray rock-
walls, which reared themselves on four colonnades, one
above another, and the flames shot up into the arches of
the arcades, gilding the green shi'ubbery high overhead ;

and deep in the earth had the noble monster already

 MUSINGS IN THE COLOSSEUM. 201

buried his feet. They stepped in, and ascended the

mountain full of fragments of rock, from one seat of the
spectator.^ to another; Gaspard did not venture to the
sixth, or highest, where the men used to stand, but Alba-
no and the Princess did. Then the youth gazed down
over the cliffs, upon the round, green crater of the burnt-
out volcano, which once swallowed nirje thousand beasts
at once, and which quenched itself with human blood ;

the lurid glare of the flames penetrated into the clefts

and caverns, and among the foliage of the ivy and laurel,

and among the great shadows of the moon, which, like

recluses, kept themselves in cells ; toward the south,

where the streams of centuries and barbarians had
stormed in, stood single columns and bare arcades, —
temples and three palaces had the giant fed and lined
with his limbs, and still, with all his wounds, he looked
out livingly into the world.
" What !
a world " said Albano. " Here coiled the
giant snake five times about Christianity ! Like a smile
of scorn lies the moonlight down below there upon the
green arena, where once stood the colossus of the sun-
god. The star of the north* gUmmers low through the
windows, and the serpent and the bear crouch. "What a
world has gone by "
!
The Princess answered, that
twelve thousand prisoners built this theatre, and that a
great many more had bled in it. " O, we too have build-
ing prisoners," said he, " but for fortifications ; and blood,
too, still flows, but with sweat ! No, we have no present;
the past without it must bring forth a future."
The Princess went off* to break a laurel-twig and pluck
a blooming wall-flower. Albano sank away into musing,

* The pole-star, as well as other northern constellations, stands

lower in the south.
9*
 ";

202 TITAN.

— the autumnal wind of the swept over the past stubble,

— on holy eminence he saw the
this constellations, Rome's
green hills, the glimmering city, the Pyramid of Cestius
but all became past, and on the twelve hills dwelt, as
upon graves, the lofty old spirits, and looked sternly into
the age as if they were still its kings and judges.
" This in remembrance of the place and the time !

said the Princess, returning and handing him the laurel

and the flower. " Thou mighty one, a colosseum is thy
flower-pot ; for thee nothing is too great, and nothing too
!
small " said he, and threw the Princess into considerable
confusion, till she observed that he meant not her, but
Nature. His whole being seemed newly and painfully
moved, and as it were removed to a distance, — he looked
down after his father and went to find him, — he looked
at him sharply, and spoke of nothing more this evening.

105. CYCLE.
ALBANO, like a world, was wonderfully changed
by Rome. After he had thus, for several weeks,
lain encamped among Rome's creations and ruins ; after

he had drunk out of Raphael's crystal magic goblet, whose

first draughts only cool, while the last send an Italian fire

through all the veins ; after he had seen the mountain-

stream of Michael Angelo, now as a succession of cata-
racts, now as a mirror of the ether ; after he had bowed
and consecrated himself before the last greatest descend-
ants of Greece, before her gods, who, with calm, serene
countenance, stand looking into the inharmonious world,
and before the Vatican Apollo, who is indignant at the
prose of the age, at the abject Pytlionian serpent, which
is ever renewing its youth ;
— after he had stood so long
 ALBANO'S LETTER TO SCHÖPFE. 203

in splendor before the full moon of the past, all at once

his whole inner world was overcast, and became one great
cloud. He sought solitude ; he ceased to draw or to

practise music ; he spoke little of Rome's magnificence.

Bj night, when the daily rain ceased, he visited alone the
great ruins of the earth, the Forum, the Colosseum, the
Capitol ; he became more passionate, unsocial, sharp ; a
deep, brooding seriousness reigned on the lofty brow, and
a sombre spirit burned through the eye.
Gaspard, unobserved, kept his eye upon all secret un-
foldings of the youth. A mere sorrow for Liana did not
seem to be his case. In the northern winter this wound
would only have frozen up, and not healed up ; but here,
in the temple of the world, where gods lie buried, a noble
heart gathered strength, and beat for older graves. The
Princess, who, under the mask of friendship for the fa-
ther, aspired after the son, he sought less than the old,

cold Lauria and the fiery Dian.

At this same period, he longed sadly for his Schoppe ;

on that breast, he thought, would the secret of his own

have found the right place and comfort. It was to him
as if he had, since this separation, lived with him uninter-
ruptedly, and become bound to him by a faster fraternal
bond. Thus do spirits dwell and melt together in the
invisible land and when the bodies again meet each
;

other in the visible, the hearts find each other again mu-
tually more acquainted. Unfortunately, among all the
letters that his father received from Pestitz, he heard not
one sound from his friend over the mountains, whom he
had left behind in the dark relations of a strange, per-
plexing passion. He never reckoned silence as a fault

against Schoppe, whose hatred and spite against all letter-

writing he well knew. However, his own heart could not
bear it any longer, and he wrote to him as follows :
—
204 TITAN.

"We were torn from each other sleeping, Schoppe.

That time has veiled itself, and remains so. Very wide
awake will we be when we look on each other again.
Of thee I know nothing if Rabette does not write
; to me,
I shall have to bear about with me and endure this burn-
ing impatience till our meeting in summer. Of myself
what is there to write ? I am changed even to my inner-
most being, and by an ingrasping giant-hand. When the
sun passes over the zenith of countries, they all wrap
themselves in a deep cloud ; so am I now beneath the
sun at its highest point, and I am also shrouded. How a
man Rome, in actual Rome, can merely enjoy and
in
weakly melt away before the fire of art, instead of starting
up red with shame, and striving and struggling for power
and exploits, is what I cannot comprehend. In painted
Rome, in the Rome of poetry, there laziness may luxuri-
ate; but in the real Rome, where obelisks, Colosseum,
Capitol, triumphal arches, incessantly behold and reproach
thee, — where the history of ancient deeds, all day long,
like an invisible storm-wind, sweeps and sounds through
the city, and impels and lifts the'e, — 0, who can stretch
himself out in inglorious ease and contemplation before
the magnificent stirring of the world ? The spirits of
saints, of heroes, of artists, follow after the living man,
and ask, indignantly, * What art thou ? '
With far other

feelings dost thou go down out of the Vatican of Raphael,

and over the steps of the Capitol, than thou comest out
of any German picture-gallery or antique cabinet. There
thou seest, on all hills, old, eternal majesty. Even a
Roman woman is, in shape and pride of stature, still

related to her city. The dweller beyond the Tiber is a

Spartan, and thou wilt no more find a Roman than a Jew
stupid ; whereas in Pestitz thou must become impatient
 ALBANO EULOGIZES WAR. 205

with the very contrast of the mere form. Even the

calm Dian maintains that the odious masks of the ancients
look like the faces in the German streets, and their Fanns
and other bestial gods like nobler court-faces, and that
their copy-pictures of Alexander, of the philosophers, of
the Roman tyrants, however pointedly and prosaically
they stand out in contrast to their poetical statues of the
gods, resemble the present ideals of the painters.
" Is it enough, here, to creep around the giants with
eyes full of astonishment and folded hands, and then lan-
guidly and pusillanimously to lie pining at their feet ?

Friend, how often in the days of discontent did I pro-

nounce the artists and poets happy, who at least may
appease their longing by light and joyous creations, and
who with beautiful plays celebrate the mighty dead, —
Archimimes of the heroic age. And yet, after all, these

voluptuous plays are only the jingling of the bells on the

lightning-conductor : there is something higher ; action is

life ; therein the whole man bestirs himself, and blooms

with all his twigs. Not of the narrow, timid achievements
of littleness on the oar-bank and the lolling-bank of the
times are we speaking here. There still stands a gate
open to the coronation-city of the spirit, — the gate of sac-
rifice, the door of Janus. Where else on earth than on
the battle-field is the place to be found in which all ener-
gies, all offerings, and virtues of a whole life, crowded into
an hour, play together in divine freedom with thousand
sister powers and offerings ? Where else do all faculties
— from the most rapid sharp-sightedness even to all bodily
capacities of despatch and of endurance, from the highest
magnanimity down to the tenderest pity, from all contempt
of the body even up to the mortal wound — find the lists
so freely open for a covenant-rivalry ? although, for the
 206 TITAN.

very same reason, the play-room of all the gods stands

open also to the mask-dance of all the furies. Only take
war in a higher sense, where spirits, without relation of
gain and loss, only by force of honor and of object, bind
themselves over to destiny, that it shall select from among
their bodies the corpses, and draw the lot of victory out
of the graves. Two nations go out on the battle-plain,
the tragic stage of a higher spirit, in order to play against
one another, without any personal enmity, their death-
parts ; still and black hangs the thunder-cloud over the
battle-field ; the nations march on into the cloud and all

its thunders ; they strike, and gloomily and alone bums

the death-torch above them ; at last it is light, and two
triumphal gates stand built up, — the gate of death and
the gate of victory, — and the host has divided and passed
through both, but through both with garlands of honor.
And when it is over, the dead and the living stand
exalted in the world, because they had not cared for life.

But when the great day is to be still greater, when the

most costly thing is to come to the spirit which can hal-
low life, then does God place an Epaminondas, a Cato, a
Gustavus Adolphus, at the head of the consecrated host,

and freedom is at once the banner and the palm. O,

blessed he who then lives or dies at once for the god of
war and for the goddess of peace !

" Let me not profane this by speaking of it. But take

here my softly spoken but firmly meant word, and lay it

up in thy bosom, that so soon as the probable war of

Gallic freedom breaks out, I take my part decidedly in
it, for it. Nothing can hold me back, not even my fa-

ther. This resolution belongs to my peace and existence.

Not from ambition do I form it ;
though I do from an
Even in
honorable self-love. my earlier years I could
 THE THREE IMMORTALITIES. 207

never enjoy the flat praise of an eternal domestic felicity,

which certainly beseems women rather than men. Of
course hardly any one else has thy strength or dispo-
sition to take everything great quietly, and silently to
melt down the world into an internal dream. Thou
gazest upon the coming clouds and along the milky-way,
and sayest coldly, Cloudy ! But dost thou not, prithee,
allow thyself too deeply in this feelmg, in this cold vault ?

It is true, the poison of this feeling will, in all parts of

Rome particularly, that churchyard of such remote na-
tions, such opposite centuries, consume one more sweetly
than anywhere else ; but couldst thou know the change-
able, except by contrast with the unchangeable, standing
side by side with it ? and where does death dwell but in

life ? Let decay and dust reign ! there are, after all,

three immortalities ;
although in the first, the superterres-
trial, thou dost not beHeve ; then the subterranean, for
the universe may decay, but not its dust ; and the immor-
tality which ever worketh therein, namely, this, that every
action becomes more certainly an eternal mother than it

is an eternal daughter. And this union with the universe

and with eternity encourages the ephemera, in their
flying-moment, to carry and sow still farther abroad the
blossom-dust, which in the next thousand years will per-
haps appear as a palm-grove.
" Whether I disclose myself to my father is to me still

a matter of doubt, because I am still in doubt on the

subject, whether I am to take his previous expressions
against the modern French for sharp earnest, or only as
another ins^tance of the sportive coldness wherewith he
was formerly wont to treat his very divinities, — Ho-
mer, Raphael, Caesar, Shakespeare, — from disgust at the
mimicking idolatry which the vulgar show to true eleva-
2o8 TITAN.

tion and to false. Greet my brave, manly Wehrfritz,

and remind him of our union-festival on the day when
the news comes of the demolition of the Bastille. Fare-
well, and stay by me !

" Albano."
On the evening of writing this letter he went with his
father to a Converzatione in the Palazzo Golonna ; here
they found the dark marble gallery, full of antiques and
pictures, perverted from a chamber of art and a parlor
into a fencing-school ; all arms and tongues of Romans
were in commotion and in conflict about the latest devel-
opments of the French Revolution, and most in its favor.

It was at the time when almost all Europe forgot for some
days, what it had been for centuries learning from the po-
litical and poetic history of France, that this same France
could more easily become a magnified than a great nation.
The Knight alone gave himself up rather to the works of
art than to the sham-fight in his neighborhood. At length,
however, he heard distant words which announced how
Albano, like all the youth of that day, was marching ex-
ultingly after the Queen of Heaven, Liberty, following on
in the train of eternal freemen and eternal slaves after the
equality of the times then he drew nearer and remarked,
;

in his manner, " That the Revolution was something very

great ; but that he found, however, in great works, e. g. in
a Colosseum or obelisk, in the bloom of a science, in war,
in the heights of astronomy, of physics, less to admire
than others, for it was merely a mass in time or space
that created it, a considerable multitude of little forces.
But only great ones a man should respect.* In revolu-

* The sum and system of electric, galvanic, chemical, anatomical

experiments, tactics, a coi^pus juris, &c., may well put us to astonish-
ment; but humanity itself appears no greater for gigantic structures,
 :

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION MOOTED. 209

tion he saw more of the former than of the latter. Free-

dom was as Httle gained as lost in one day ; as weak
individuals in a state of intoxication were exactly the
opposite of themselves, so too therewas a sort of intoxi-
by multitude."
cation of the multitude
Hereupon Bouverot replied, " That is exactly my
sentiment, too." Albano made answer, and very visibly
only to his father, because he profoundly despised the
German gentleman, and held him utterly unworthy of
enjoying high works of art, for which he had brought
with him an eminent taste, although no sense, and said
" Dear father, the twelve thousand Jews did not design
the Colosseum which they built, but the idea was, after all,

at some time or other, entirely in one man, in Vespasian ;

and so universally must there preside over the concentric

directions of little forces some great one, and though it

were God himself." " To that source," said Gaspard,

" to which everything godlike is referred, thou mayst
transfer it if thou wilt." Bouverot smiled. " The Gallic
intoxication," replied Albano, warmly, " is surely and
verily no accidental one, but an enthusiasm grounded at
once in humanity and in time, for whence otherwise the
universal interest in it ? They may perhaps sink, but
only to soar higher. Through a red sea of blood and
war humanity wades toward the promised land, and the
wilderness is long ; with gashed hands, gluing themselves
in their own blood, they, like the chamois-hunters, climb
upward." " The chamois-hunters themselves," said the

which are put together by millions of elephant-anfs ; but when an ele-

phant carries a building, when an individual shows any one power in
—
new degrees and relations, Newton the power of mathematical in-
tuition; Raphael the plastic; Aristotle, Lessing, Fichte, penetration;
or another goodness, firmness, wit, &c., — then does hiimanity gain
and extend its limits.

N
 ;

2IO TITAN.

Knight, " do the same still more, when they undertake

to come down from the Alps ; meanwhile such hopes are
charming, and we will wish their fulfilment."
gladly
" Signor Conte,'^ added Bouverot, " was very happy in
naming the outbreak a fit of intoxication. One sleeps
it out but in the morning there is a great deal broken
;

and to pay." " Intoxication ? " said Albano " what best ;

thing lias not occurred in a state of enthusiasm, and what

worst thing has not been done in cold blood ? Say, Herr
von Bouverot ? Yes, there is a grim, dreadful frost of
the soul, as well as a similar physical frost, which, like
the greatest heat, makes one black and blind and sore ;
*

something like French tragedy, cold, and yet barbarous'^

" Thou approachest the tragic, son," said Gaspard, in-
terrupting him, and reinforcing the German gentleman
" we may expect of the French very much political sa-
gacity, especially in distress ; that is their forte. Therein
they match women. They women, either
are, too, like

uncommonly tender, moral, and humane, when they are

good, or, like them, quite as cruel and rough, when they
are beside themselves. It may be predicted, that, in a lib-
eration-war, if one should break out, they will, in valor,
take precedence of all parties. That will dazzle exceed-

ingly, since, after all, nothing is rarer than a cowardly

people. One learns to estimate military courage very
moderately, when one sees that the Roman Legions, pre-
cisely when they were mercenary, bad, slavish, and half
freedmen, namely, under the Triumvirate, fought more
courageously than ever. The citizens fought and died to

the very last man for that insignificant incendiary, Cati-

line, and only slaves were made prisoners."
This speech set a hot seal upon Albano's mouth ; it

* In Greenland the intense cold makes people black and blind.

 DIAN SIDES WITH ALBANO. 21 I

seemed exactly as if his father had found him out, and

took his old pleasure in damping, like a fate, all enthu-
siasm, and giving all expectations, even gloomy ones,
the lie. The offended, self-inflaming spirit remained now
fast covered from Gaspard and Bouverot.
But to his Dian he showed all on the morning after.

He knew how this friend, with the arm of an artist and a

youth at once, bore and waved the banner of fi-eedom,
and therefore he broke before him the dark seal of his
previous melancholy. He confessed to his most beloved
teacher his full-grown purpose, so soon as the unholy war
against GalHc liberty, which now hung out its pitchy
torch in all streets of the city of God, burst into flames,
to repair to the side of freedom, and to fall himself sooner
than see her fall. " Truly, you are a brave man," said
Dian. " Had I not child and profession hanging upon
my neck, by Heaven, I myself would join you. An old
fellow like that yonder sees much and hears badly. He
shall not nose out anything, nor his beast of a Barigello
neither." He meant the Counsellor of Arts, Fraisch-
dörfer, whom he, with an artist's obstinacy, eternally
abominated, because the Counsellor painted worse and
criticised better than himself. " Dian, your word is finely

said ; yes, indeed, age makes one physically and morally

far-sighted for one's self, and deaf to others," said Albano.
" Have I spoken well, Albano ? But truly such is the
fact," said he, very much pleased, in his difiidence with
respect to his language, at the praise of its beauty.
After some time, the Knight, just as if he saw away
through the seal, uttered some words which took hold of
the youth on all sides. " There are," said he, some vig-
orous natures which stand exactly on the boundary-line
of genius and talent, fitted out, half for active, half for
212 TITAN.

ideal effort, and, withal, of burning ambition. They feel

forcibly all that is beautiful and great, and would fain

create it again out of themselves ; but they succeed only
very feebly in doing so. They have not, like genius, one
direction toward the centre of gravity, but they stand
themselves at the gravitating point, so that the directions
destroy each other. They are now poets, now painters,
now musicians ; most of all do they love in youth bodily
courage, because in that strength most easily and expedi-
tiously expresses itself through the arm. Hence, in early
life, everything great which they see enraptures them,
because they think to create it anew, but later in life

quite aimoys them, because, after all, they have not the
power. They should, however, perceive that it is just
they, if they know early how to guide their ambition, who
have drawn the finest lot of various and harmonizing
powers. They seem to be rightly fitted for the enjoy-
ment of all that is beautiful, as well as for moral develop-
ment and for the care of their being, for whole men, —
something like what a prince must be, because in that
office one must have for his all-sided destination all-sided
directions of effort and kinds of knowledge."
They stood, as he said this, just on Mount Aventine ;

before them the Pyramid of Cestius, that epitaphium of

the Heretics' Churchyard, wherein so many an undevel-
oped artist and youth sleeps, and, near by, the lofty

potshard mountain * {monte testaccio), before which Al-

bano always passed along with a miserable, sickly feel-

ing of stale dreariness. The shock which his father's

ideas gave his own, and the relationship of the potshard

mountain to the strangers' churchyard, caused Albano to
* Wherein since the time of Servius TuUius all potshards have
been thrown.
 THE YOUNG CORSICAN COMRADE. 213

answer rather himself than his father, with a melted ice-

drop of displeasure in his eye :

" Such a nameless moun-
tain of pots is, upon the whole, also the history of nations.

But one would much rather kill one's self on the spot
than, after a long life, to bury one's self so namelessly and
ingloriously in the mass at last."

After his union with himself, he grew more happy.

Already he began with zeal to set himself to work, agree-
ably to his nature, which, as in the seed-corn, put forth
out of one seed-point stem and root, thoughts and actions.
He threw all other pursuits away, and studied the art
of war, ancient and modern, for which Dian borrowed
and supplied him the books and the study-chamber.
With unspeakable delight and exaltation, he ran over
again the sun-charts of the Roman history, here on the
very body of the burnt-out sun itself, and often, when he
read descriptions of its volcanic eruptions, he stood in the
very craters where they had occurred.
Dian gave, into the bargain, his knowledge of the small
service, and gladly gave himself for bodily exercises,
when he had previously ushered him up to divine service

under the heaven of Raphael's art, where graces, like

constellations, walk in the lofty ether ; for with Dian body
and soul were one casting ; the most delicate ocular nerve
and the hardest brachial muscle were one band. At last,

as a word was much more disagreeable to him than an

action, and as he had much rather bestir the whole body

than the tongue, he introduced to the Count an oratorical

brother-in-arms, a young Corsican, all alive, as if formed
out of the clear marrow of life.

The two young men loved and exercised each other for
a time in romantic freedom, without so much as asking
each other's name. They fought, read, swam. The Cor-
214 TITAN.

sican almost idolized Albano's form, strength, head, and

soul, and poured his whole heart into one which he could
not wholly comprehend ; as many maidens do only when
in love, so did he only when playing war show soul and
sense. Albano's clear gold complacently reflected back
the strange form, without, like glass, annihilating its own
at the same time.
On one occasion the glow of the Corsican grew into a
flame, which showed up the whole character of his life to
his friend in a bright illumination, and his peculiar aim
and thirst, namely, for Frenchmen's blood, " which," he
said, "he hoped to quench in the approaching war."
Had Albano been like him, then would they, like fight-

ing stags, have mortally entangled themselves in each

other's antlers ; for the obstinate, inflexible courage of
the Corsican — more a sensual courage as Albano's was
more a spiritual — could not endure a contradiction.
Like his class, he desired of Albano a right strong
backing word to his speech ; but Albano said : " This is

the very greatness in war, that one can and dare do with-
out exasperated passion, without personal enmity, all that

which the weakling can do only by such means verily ;

it were nobler," said he, " to kill in battle a loved than a

!
hated one." " Silly chimeras " said the Corsican, an-
grily ;
" what ? Thou wilt kill the French and yet love
them ? " Albano's magnanimity threw off at once every
timid mask, and he said :
" In one word, I shall some time
fight for the French and with them." "Thou, false one?"
said the Corsican, " impossible ! Against me ? " " No,"

replied Albano, " I pray God that we may never meet in

that hour !
" " And I will supplicate Him right earnestly,"
said the Corsican, " that we never may meet again at all
except one day at the point of the bayonet. Adio!" So
 ENTANGLEMENTS WITH THE PRINCESS. 215

saying, he turned on his heel in a fury and never came

back again.

106. CYCLE.

UNLIKE other fathers, Gaspard had been, since the

first battle about war, the same as ever, yes, almost
better than ever; with his old respect for every strong
ifidividuality, he took it quite agreeably that the sun of
the youth entered so perceptibly into the signs of summer,
and soared above the earth higher as well as warmer.
He gave him the nearest proof of his undiminished
regard in the fact, that, amidst the gradual preparations
for returning to Pestiz, he answered in the affirmative to

a quite unexpected wish of his son's for — separation.

That is to say, Albano, who now, like ivy, wandered with
all his blossoms and twigs among the monuments of the
heroic past, and twined himself faster and faster around
them, would not part from Rome without having seen
Naples. To reinforce his own longing came also Dian's
inspiration for the daughter-land of his father-land, for
the splendor of its sky and earth, for its Grecian ruins,
which the Architect preferred to the Roman. " In

Rome," Dian had said, " you have the past ; in Naples,
on the other hand, the bold present. I will accompany
you to and fro, and we will go home together. For you
are not, to be sure, as yet, properly speaking, versed in
the beautiful, but in nature, in the heroic and in effect.
Naples is the place, then." The Knight — although the
whole object of the journey had been already gained by
Albano's having regained his spirits consented without —
hesitation to the appendix of a second, on the condition
that he should not stay behind longer than a month.
But just at this time, when his inner world seemed at
2l6 TITAN.

liberty to tune itself so harmoniously, came hostile dis-

cords nearer and nearer, which at a distance he still took
for harmonies. The discord evolved itself slowly out of
his indefinite connection with the Princess, because every
such connection with women decided itself uncomfortably
at last, seldomer ending in love than in hatred.
The Princess hitherto had done and suffered every-
thing, in order to be dangerous to him, even before she
became inteUigible. She played Liana as well as she
knew how, and took out of her theatrical wardrobe the
nun's veil of a religious virginity, although women of
genius are mostly sceptical, as men of genius are credu-
lous. She made him the confidant of her past life, and
gave the history of those who had died for her, or at
least pined away, and she told all this, after the manner
of women, with more satisfaction than remorse ; only her
connection with his father she indulgently let rise from
its grave behind a touching nun's veil, and in fact imitated

the son in his respect for the Knight, whom in her soul

she bitterly hated. When Albano for hours forgot the

present, and steadfastly gazed into the sacrificial fire of

the past and of art, and showed her on the mountains of

his world flames which burned not on her altar, then did
she patiently accompany him on this road of art, and
only stopped when she could, before spots where one had
a view of the — present.
He
became daily her warmer friend, without so much
as dreaming of her intentions. Only a man no woman —
— can wholly overlook another's love ; the love w^hich is

long overlooked seldom, if ever, becomes a reciprocated

love. Albano was too delicate to presuppose in the be-

loved of his father, and in the wife of another, and in a

friend of his own beloved, this desire of an impropriety.
 THE PRINCESS GROWS MELANCHOLY. 217

Moreover, he always placed quite as small a reliance

upon his desert as he did a great reliance on his right.
She doubted, but despaired not of a warmer feeling on
his part. A woman hopes as long as a second does not
hope with her. Albano's nocturnal visits to the Capitol
and the Colosseum were always found by the eyes which
followed him to be worthy of his noble character. Daily
did the firm youth become dearer to her by his new bloom
and by his manly development. Sometimes she strongly
hoped, beguiled by his friendly sincerity and by that
heroic melancholy which was not to be explained by her
on any other principle, far or near. This to her so un-
usual rising and sinking on her waves shook her health
and her character, and she became involuntarily more
like Liana, with whose dove's plumage she had in the
beginning been fain only to array herself in white ; the
sparkling sun-rainbow became a moon-rainbow ; with her
strong powers she flung half of her former self away, —
her mania for decoration, art, and pleasing, — and she
became intensely uneasy when a Roman fair one, with
southern hveliness exclaimed, as often happened, behind
the Count, as he walked before her, " How beautiful he
is !
" Sorely was she punished for her earlier malicious
sportings with others' hearts and sorrows by her own ;

but such dark days are the very ones in which love more
especially roots itself, as trees are best grafted in cloudy
days.
Albano observed her change. The charming melan-
choly of her once vigorous countenance, this reflection of
her silent cloud, moved him to a sympathizing inquiry
into her health and happiness. She answered him so
confusedly and confoundingly, —-sometimes even imput-
ing to Albano, with all his sharp-sightedness, dissimula-
voL II. 10
2l8 TITAN.

tion and wickedness, — that she led him into the strangest

error.

Namely, under so great a certainty that some earth-

shadow had passed across her whole life, and would not
stir, he must needs seek the body which cast it, which —
was, in his mind, Gaspard, whom she, as he imagined,
still loved. He carried this presumption back very rea-
sonably through all her earlier conversations and looks.
It was so natural that they who were at an earher period
separated by a throne should now, in this lovely land of
free connections, long for each other again. Beside all

this, the Knight had, according to his inexorable irony,

received her show of courting him with show on his pai't,

— that is to say, with seriousness, — and therefore always

served himself up as a side-dish to her enjoyment of his
son, and carried over an after-winter into the spring.
This double show Albano recalled to himself as double
ü-uth.

Then, too, fate stepped in suddenly among his new

conclusions. His father was taken dangerously sick of
an unnerving spring-fever, caught from the sirocco-wind.
" Take no special interest," said Gaspard to him, " either
in my sufferings or expressions. I have, in such situa-
tions, a weakness which 1 am afterwards ashamed of, and
yet cannot avoid." Albano was moved, by many an un-
expected outbreak of the sick man's heart, even to the

warmest love. If the ruins of a temple inspire melan-

choly, thought he, why shall not the ruins of a great soul

affect me so still more ? There are men full of colossal

relics, like the earth itself. In their deep heart, already
grown cold, lie fossil flowers of a fairer period ; they
resemble northern rocks, on which are found the impress
of Indian flowers.
 GASFARD'S HORRID BROTHER ARRIVES. 219

The sickness undermined itself. Gaspard remained

without sympathy for himself ;
only his affairs, not his
end, troubled him. He held private interviews with his
step-father Lauria, by way of impressing the finishing
black seal of justice on his life. An express must stand
in readiness to fly, the moment after his death, with a
letter to Linda ; Iiis son must himself break one open,
and deliver a sealed one to the Princess. Very harshly
and imperiously did he demean himself toward the son,
when he demanded of him an oath, immediately after his
death, to travel off to Pestitz ; for when Albano, who so
longed to see Naples, and upon whom all these conditions,
presupposing his father's death, fell hard, hesitatingly
declined, Gaspard said, " That is so really human and
common, to bewail the pains of others immoderately, and
sympathize with them sincerely, and yet ungraciously to
sharpen them so soon as the smallest thing must be done."
Albano gave his word and oath, and never let himself be
seen by his father again, when he wept out of a child's
love.

Unexpectedly there presented himself before this sick-

bed Gaspard's nearest and earliest kinsman, his brother.

Albano stood by when the strange being came up and
spake to the mortally sick man, and turned two stiff,

glassy eyes, which looked as if they had been set in,

quite away from him with whom he spake, — so fantastic,

and yet full of the cold world toward his dying brother,
— with hanging
loosely face-skin upon significant face-

bones, — a gray were-wolf on his hind legs, just charmed

out of the beastly hide into the human skin, — like the
destroying angel, a destroying man, and yet without pas-
sion. It stretched out toward Albano its long hand, but
he, repelled by something unnamable, could not grasp it.
220 TITAN.

This brother said he had come from Pestitz, — handed

over two letters from there, one to Gaspard, one for the
Princess, — and began to say something about his travels,
which seemed uncommonly acute, fantastical, learned,
incredible, and oft really unintelligible. Once Albano
said, " That is a downright impossibility." He began the
narration again, made more incredible, and insisted
it still

it was actually so. Thereupon he went away, to Greece,

as he said, and took the coolest leave imaginable of his
dying brother.
Gaspard now said to Albano, " I should like to have
you, after my death, rightly estimate this strangeling, if

he ever comes near you, or rather avoid him altogether,

as he never says a true word, and that from a pure and
disinterested delight in pure lies; still more," he con-
tinued, " shun the deep, deadly scorpion-sting of Bouve-
rot, as well as his cheating hand at play." Albano was
surprised at the aspect of this speech (agreeably so at its

moral sharpness), for he had hitherto imagined that he

found in his father quite other sentiments regarding
Bouverot.
The next day he found his father already with his

foot on the steps to come up out of the tomb. The

express had been discharged, — all letters remanded,
— the Prince Lauria stood there with beaming face.
" Simply another's sickness has cured me of mine," said
the father. The letter which his brother had brought
him from Pestitz had contained the intelligence that his
old friend, the reigning Prince, was swiftly approaching

his last hour, because they had held his dropsy to be

embonpoint, and had delayed the treatment of it. "I
hope," said Gaspard, " to have been so wholesomely agi-
tated by my sympathies in this matter, that I shall still
 ALBANO FANCIES GASPAKD IN LOVE. 22I

be able to make tiie journey in season for the last hour

of friendship." He added, that then this journey would
make way again for Albano's to Naples.
Then came the Princess in consternation about the
letter, which announced her husband's danger and her
own departure. Gaspard answered by giving his son a

hint expressive of his desire for a private interview with

her. They remained alone together for a long time. At
last the Princess came back quite changed, and begged
him, with almost stammering hesitation, to accompany
her to the o'pera seria. She was moved and embarrassed,
her eyes glistening, her features inspired ; his father, too,
he found excited, but apparently strengthened.
Here a long beam of noonday shot through his whole
previous labyrinthine wood, namely, the confirmed pre-
sumption of his father's love, which now, through the
approaching dissolution of the marriage chain of the
Princess, and in the debility of sickness had broken out
more strongly ; hence Gaspard's letter to the Princess,
hence their keeping together in Pome and on the way
thither, &c.

Never did Albano love his energetic father more than

after this discovery of a tender sentiment ; and toward
the Princess his heart now grew from a friend to be all

at once a son. Besides, as among the five prizes of he-

reditary human love he had gained only one, —a father
(no mother, no brother, no sister, and no child), — so was
he filled with this new delight at the gain of a mother.
All that respect could do, warmth express, and hope
betray, he indulged.
It was a night when in Rome spring already threw
flowers again through the clouds of winter. At the the-
atre they gave Mozart's Tito. How on a foreign soil is
222 TITAN.

one carried away by a strain from one's native land,

which has followed him hither ! The lark that sings
over Roman ruins exactly as over German fields is the
dove which, with her well-known song, brings us the
olive-branch from our native land. Up to this time,
Albano, on the Alpine road over ruins, had sent his eye
eagerly forward only along the future race-ground of war,
and had seldom raised it toward the heaven where the
glorified Liana was, and he had forcibly dashed away
every rising tear. But now his sick father had lifted the

curtain of the bed under the ground where her remains

slept ; now did the clear stream of tones which had
passed through the lands of his youth and his paradises
come all at once strongly over the mountains, and mur-
mur down so near to him with its old waters. At first

his spirit defended itself against the old, slumbering days,

which spoke in their sleep ; but when at length the tones

which Liana herself had once played and sung before

him came across over the bier of the mountains, and hung
down as shining tapestries of golden days, when he re- —
flected what hours he and Liana might have found here,
but had not found, —
then his dark grief ran up the scale
of tones as an evil, plundering genius, and Albano saw
his dreadful loss stand clearly in heaven. Then he
turned not his eye toward the Princess, but in the con-
secration of music pressed the hand by which the departed
saint was once to have come
into these fields. By and
by he said, " I shall, in the rich Naples, long more and
more after my only female friend, and envy the happy
man who is permitted to accompany her." She fell into
great emotion at this new intelligence of his intended
separation, and into a still greater at his passionate trans-
formation, which she knew how to deduce, with the rich-
 NEWS AND NEW MOVEMENTS. 223

est dowry for her tendercst hopes, from her departure,

and even the approaching departure of her spouse. But
she concealed the greater emotion behind the lesser.
They parted from each other with mutual joys and
errors. Albano was made more and more happy by the
improvement of his father's health the Princess was ;

made so by the increase of the son's warmth, and her life

mounted out of the ship of war into an express-balloon,

an air-vessel winged with tidings of peace. Thus did
both approach closer and closer to the curtain, whose
pictures they took for the scenery of the stage itself, only
to be so much the more astonished when it rose.

107. CYCLE.

THE dried-up bed of the Knight's

richly inundated
life

again by the agitations of his

had been

heart. Even because, in well days, he held himself to-

gether, like mountains, with ice and moss, so in sick
days, it seemed, did a real, internal commotion more
easily restore his old energy and repose. He armed
and equipped himself for travelhng, which best built up
and built upon his capricious body. The Princess put
off her departure from day to day, merely in the firm and
ardent expectation that Albano would impart to her, to
take with her on her way, the fairest concluding word of
her whole life. In Albano this blooming land awakened
longings for — Spain, and Naples, he hoped, would ap-
pease them. Spring was already dawning upon Rome,
and rising in Naples the nightingale and man sang
; all

night long, and the almond-trees were everywhere in

bloom. But it seemed as if the three travellers were
waiting for each other. Could the Princess hurry away
224 TITAN.

from the heart upon which her being bloomed and took
root, —
she, Hke a torn-up rosemary twig, whose roots, at
the same time with those of a germinating wheat-grain,
take a double hold of the earth ? Albano, too, would not
hasten the hour which cast him into remote corners of the
earth, far away at once from his father and his friend, —
them into an after-winter, him into an early and latter

spring, — and least of all just now. His spirit had ap-
peased itself, and become reconciled with itself, by the
resolution of war. His Portici was gloriously built up on
the buried Herculaneum of his past.

A letter from Pestitz decided matters. The mortally

sick Prince wrote to the Princess, and begged to see her
again ; the letter was like a fire, bursting the common
ground and scattering all that stand thereupon ; the three
confederates formed the purpose to set off on one and the
same day, — on one morning, — so that one dawn might
shed its gold into three travelling-carriages at once.
Yet one thing the Princess desired on the evening pre-
vious to the departure, namely, Albano's company to the

dome of St. Peter's in the morning ; she wished to take

Rome once more into her parting soul, when the dawn
in its redness and splendor gilded the city. Albano, too,

was glad to drink the must of a fiery hour, which might

clear itself up into an eternal wine for the whole of hfe ;

for he knew not that the lively Princess, — made still

more lively by Italy, — after waiting so long and impa-

tiently for the fairest word from his lips, at last ventured
indignantly upon a parting hour, in which it must escape
from him.
Early before sunrise, when, in Rome, many more go to
bed than get up, he waited upon her ;
only her faithful
Haltermann accompanied them. She still glowed with
 SUNRISE FROM ST. PETER'S DOME. 225

her night-long vigils, and seemed very much moved.

Rome still slept ;
occasionally they were met by coaches
and families, which were just finishing their night. The
sky stood cool and blue over the dawning morn, the fresh
son of the fair night.
The wide circus before St. Peter's Church was solitary

and dumb as the saints upon the columns ; the fountains

spoke : one constellation more went out above the obelisk.
They went up by the winding stairway of a hundred and
fifty steps to the roof of the church, and came out through
a street of houses, columns, little cupolas and towers,
through four doors into the monstrous dome, — into a
vaulted night. In the depths below the temple rested,
like a broad, gloomy, lonesome valley with houses and
trees, a holy abyss, and they walked along close by the
mosaic-giants, the broad colored clouds on the heaven of
the dome. While they were ascending in the high vault,
Aurora's golden foam glistened redder and redder on the
windows, and fire and night swam into each other among
the arches.
They hastened yet higher and looked out, just as a
single living ray darted upon the world, as out of an eye,
from behind the mountains around the old Alban moun-
;

tain smoked a hundred glowing clouds, as if his cold cra-

ter was again bringing forth a flame-day, and the eagles
with golden wings baptized in the sun flew slowly along
over the clouds. All at once the sun-god stood upon the
fair ridge ; he stood erect in heaven, and rent away the
network of night from the covered earth ; then burned
the Obelisks and the Colosseum and Rome from hill to

hill, and on the sohtary Campagna sparkled in manifold

windings the yellow giant snake of the world, the Tiber,
— all clouds dissipated themselves into the depths of
10* o
 ;

220 TITAN.

heaven, and golden light ran from Tusculum and from

Tivoli, and from the vine-hills into the many-colored
plains, over the scattered villas and cottages, into the
citron and oak groves ; low in the far west the sea was
again as at evening, when the hot god visits it, full of
splendor, ever kindled by him, and became his eternal

dew.*
In the morning world below lay far and wide the great,
still Rome, — no living city, a solitary, enormous, enchant-
ed garden of the old, hidden, heroic spirits, laid out on
twelve hills. The unpeopled pleasure-garden of spirits
announced itself by its green meadows and cypresses
between palaces, and by its broad, open stairways and
columns and bridges, by its ruins and high fountains and
garden of Adonis, and its green mountains and temples
of the gods ; the broad city avenues had passed away
the windows were barred up ; on the roofs the stony dead
looked steadfastly at each other ;
only the glistening
fountain waters were awake and alive and active, and
a single nightingale sighed, as if she would die at last.

" That is great," said Albano, at length, " that all is

solitary down below and one sees no present. The old

heroic spirits can pursue their existence in the vast
vacuity, and march through their old arches and temples
and play, up on the columns, wdth the ivy."
" Nothing," replied the Princess, " is wanting to the
magnificence but this dome, which from the Capitol we
might in fact see besides. But never shall I forget this
spot."
" What were all beside ? " said he. " The flat regions

* This expression seems to be borrowed from Goethe's " Fisher " : —

'* Lockt dich dein eigen Angesicht,
Nicht her in ewigen Thau ? " — Ta.
 AX AWKWARD MISUNDERSTANDING. 227

of life in general pass bj without a memorial ; from

many a long past no echo reverberates, because no
mountain breaks the broad surface ! But Rome and
this hour with you will live within us forever."
" Albano," said she, " why must we find each other so

late and part so early ? Yonder goes your way along by

the Tiber, — God grant into no devouring sea !
"

" And yonder goes yours over the bright mountains,"

said he. She took his hand, for his tone expressed and
excited so much emotion. Divinely gleamed the world
from the dark spring flowers even up to the lofty Capitol,

and the bells sounded down the hours ; the festal fires
of day blazed on all heights ; life was broad and high
as the prospect; his eye stood under a tear, — no sad one,
however, but such a tear as when the world's eye glances
sunnily under the water, and has higher hues, which the
dry world destroys. He pressed her hand, she his.
" Princess, friend," said he, " how I esteem you ! After
this holy hour we separate. I would fain give you a
sign that shall not pass away, and say a bold word to my
father, which should express myself and my respect, and
which, perhaps, might solve many a riddle."
Her eye fell, and she merely said, " May you ven-
ture ? " " O forbid it not " said he ; " so
!
many a divine
bliss has been lost by one hour's hesitation. When shall
man act extraordinarily, then, except in extraordinary
situations ? " She was silent, awaiting the morning-sound
of love, and in a continued pressure of hands they went
down from the lofty place. Alban's being was a trembling
flame. The Princess comprehended not why he still
deferred this spring-tone ; no more did he see through
her, unskilled in reading women and their broken words,
those picture-poems, half form and only half speech.
228 TITAN.

Just as if an ea^le had flown down from his morning

splendor, and, as a predatory genius, flapped his wings
over his eyes ; so had the flashing morn dazzled him so
exceedingly that he meant to venture, now in the parting
hour, to be mediator between his father and the Princess,
by a word which should take away the partition-wall
between their loves. His delicacy made many an objec-
tion against this proceeding, but when a weighty object
was in sight, there was nothing he so abhorred as quailing
caution ; and daring he held to be worth as much to a
man as winning.
The Princess, misunderstanding, but not mistrusting,
followed him into his father's house with an expectation —
bolder than his — that he would perhaps actually confess
to the Knight his love for her. They found the father
alone and very serious. Albano, although aware of his
aversion to bodily signs of the heart, fell on his neck
with the half-choked words of the wish :
" Father ! a
mother
!
" To this childhke relation had his previous
feelings raised and refined themselves. " Heavens,
!
Count " cried the Princess, astounded and enraged at

Albano's assumed insinuation. The Knight, sparkhng

with wrath, and full of horror, seized a pistol, saying,
"Unlucky — " but before one knew at which of the three
he would shoot it oflf, his numbness seized and held him
like a coiling snake imprisoned in a murderous embrace.
" Count, did I understand you ? " said the Princess, fling-

ing the word at him, indifferent toward the petrified foe.

"O God," said Albano, moved by the sight of the paternal
form, " I meant no one !
" " None were capable of
that," said she, " but a base creature. Farewell. May I
never meet you again " !
So saying, she went off.

Albano stayed, unconcerned as to whether he himself

 GASPARD AND THE PRINCESS QUARREL. 229

was not meant by the pistol at tlie side of the sick man,
who had stiffened exactly opposite to a man's corpse
across the way which they were just busied in painting.
Gradually life wrestled again out of winter, and the
Knight, as cataleptics must, finished the address w^hich
he Lad begun with the word " Unlucky — " " woman,
of whom art thou mother ? " He came to himself and
looked wakefully around ; but soon the lava of wrath ran
again through his snow "
Unlucky boy, what was the
:

talk about?" Albano disclosed to him, with innocent

soul, that he had cherished the hope, in the probable event
of the Prince's death, of a union between his father and
the Princess, and for himself, of the good fortune of
having a mother.
" You young people always imagine one cannot have
any genuine love without carrying it out and directing it

to some one," replied Gaspard, and began to laugh hard

and to find something very comic in the "sentimental
misunderstanding " ; but Albano asked him now very
seriously about the origin of his misunderstanding. Gas-
pard gave him the following account : Lately, in his
sickness, he had, upon the first news of the Prince's
approaching death, a desperate battle with the Princess,
w^ho in the event of this death desired a regency, — or
guardianship, — even on the bare ground of the possi-
bility of an heir to the princely hat. The Knight said
to her decidedly this 'possibility was an impossibility, and
he would, without further preamble, attack her with new
proofs yet unknown to her. He gave her directly to
understand that he was even armed against the case of
an ocular demonstration of the contrary (a Hereditary
Prince) being presented to him. The Princess repHed
with bitterness, she could not conceive why he need in the
 '

TITAN.

least concern himself any more about the Haarhaar line

and succession, or take any more care for it than for that
of Hohenfliess. He brought her even to tears, for he
could unsparingly hurl the most barbarous words, like
harpoons, deep into her heart ; he had the perfect resolu-
tion of a statesman, who, Hke a great bird of prey, drives
the victim, which he can neither conquer nor draw away,
to a precipice, and beats it over the brink with his wings,
in order that he may find it subdued for him down below.
A life which even as it passes away, like the sinking
glaciers, discovers old corpses! Just as the happy one
spreads out his love of an individual warmingly over
humanity, so does the misanthrope hold the stinging focus
(or freezing-point) of his broad and general coldness
toward humanity at one great foe alone, whereas pre-
viously every smaller offence was forgiven the individual,
and imputed only to mankind in a mass.
This, then, was that secret interview whose traces
Albano had taken for fairer emotions than of hatred.
"And now," said the Knight openly, in order to punish
his high feeling with cutting impudence, " when thou
madest to me the concise and obscure speech : 'A mother !

I could not but take thee for the father, and from this thou
mayst easily explain the rest." " Father," said he, " that

was a crying injustice to each " ; and departed with three

hot wounds, torn in him by the trident of fate. At his

departure Gaspard reminded him to keep his word of

returning in a month, and added jokingly, that the old
man whom they were painting over yonder was a Ger-
man gentleman, with whom he once carried on the joke
of a sudden conversion.*
Before an hour Albano was travelling with his Dian
* See Titan, 3d Cycle. [Painting, i. e. rouging of the cheeks. — Te.]
 !

QUANTO E' B£LLO! 231

out of the illuminated Rome. The blue heavens, floating

down, undulated on the heights and on the dome of St.

Peter's, and long shadows, begemmed with pearls of dew,

still slept on the flowers ; but the blessed morn had flown
far back out of the hard day. They met before the
gate a circular crowd, m4io stood around the beautiful
form of one murdered, and who repeated, with a pleased
expression, over the prostrate body, instead of casting the
word with indignation in the teeth of the murderer,
" Quanto e' hello ! "* And Albano thought how often they
"
had exclaimed behind his back, " Quanto e hello !

* How beautiful he is
 TWENTY-EIGHTH JUBILEE.
Letter from Pestitz. Mola. — —
The Heavenly Ascension
OF A Monk. —
Naples. Ischls.— —
The new Gift of the
Gods.

108. CYCLE.
LITTLE light in our apartment can screen
us against the Winding effect of the whole
heaven-broad lightning-glare ; so it needs in
us only a single, constantly shining idea and
tendency, that the rapid alternation of flame and light in
the outer world may not dizzy us. Had not Albano had
an end in view which could be seen far-off, — had he not
kept before his eye an obelisk in his life-path, — how
long would the last scene, with its pangs cutting through
each other, have confounded him ! Now he was like the

kindled olive- and laurel-leaves around him, whose flames

grow green as they are themselves. Dian, who drove
away the pains of others, because he, being easily mova-
ble, soon grew from a spectator to a sharer of them, made
Albano and himself gay by his ardent interest in every

beautiful form, every ruin, every little joy. He had the

rare and beautiful gift of being cheerful upon journeys,
of plucking every flower, but no thistle ; whereas the
majority jog along with the night-cap under the hat ; from
station to station, gaping as they go on, and in grumbling
 ;

LETTER FROM RABETTE TO ALBANO. 233

war with every face, they travel through whole paradises

as if they were antechambers of hell.
In the waste Pontine marshes, wherein only buffaloes
thrive and men grow pale, Dian sought for all sorts of

amusement, and even drew forth his letter-case, in order

to get over the last fishing-water of the papal territory,

out of the reach of Peter's fisherman successors, without

falhng into a deadly sleep. There he stumbled, with a
modern Greek curse, Albano, which had
upon a letter to

been enclosed in one from Chariton, and which in Rome

he had forgotten, in the hurry of departure, to hand over
but he soon laughed about it, and found it good that in

this " Devil's-dale " one had something to read against

sleep.

It was the following from Rabette :

—
" Heartily loved brother, one longs to know whether
thou still thinkest a little bit of thy friends in Blumenbühl,
now that in the magnificent Italy thou art certainly quite
in thy essee.* That thou livest in all our hearts, that
thou hast long known, and thou shouldst only know how
long after thy departure we all wept for thee, as well thy
mother as myself ; and a certain one f thinks now-a-days
quite differently of thee from what he did in old times.
Much has happened this winter. The Minister's lady
has separated from her husband, and hves on her estate,
sometimes in Arcadia with the Princess Idoine. Our
Prince is dangerously sick with the dropsy, and father
can get a scrap of business from the province by this, as

he says. Thy Schoppe has gone on a journey of a couple

* This is the Latin esse, heing^ and is defined in German as *'

well-
being." The phrase means here something like what we call being
in one's element. — Tb.
t Roquairol,
 ;

234 TITAN.

of months, leaving behind a letter to thee, which he has

intrusted to father's care. He stayed latterly with us,
and in thy room, and visited attentively the Countess
Romeiro. It is a shame for him, for he means well ; but
Master Wehmeier and all of us in the place are con-
vinced that he is, in short, mad, and he believes it, too,

and says he shall therefore soon set his house in order.

As touching the Countess Romeiro, she has gone off with

Princess Julienne ;
none, however, knows whither. They
say the Prince has shown her too marked attentions, and
she would rather be off to Spain. Others talk of Greece,
but the certain one assures me she is gone to Rome to her
guardian : of that now thou wilt know better than myself.
The certain one undertook all that was within human
possibility in order to win her, partly by letters, partly in

person, to no purpose ; not one smile could he gain as

often as ever he addressed her even at cour. All this I
have (wilt thou believe it?) from his mouth, for he is

again often with me, and reveals to me his whole heart.

Mine, however, I hold together fast, that not so much as
the smallest drop of blood may trickle out from it, and
God alone sees how it passes, and what a weeping there
is therein. Ah, Albano, a poor girl who is in strong
health must endure much before she can die. Often my
eye can no longer remain dry, and I then say his talk
does it, which, to be sure, is partly true, but to thee I
show the dessous des cartes. Never, never more can I
be his, for he has not dealt ingenuously with me, but alto-

gether recklessly, and he knows it too. Nor is a single

kiss allowed him ; and I tell him, only for God's sake, not
to take that as a coquette's manner to draw him to me.
My good parents do not rightly know what they are to

make of our intercourse, and I fear father may break out

 THREE POSTSCRIPTS.

then I shall have very bitter days. But shall I repel the

poor, sick, pale spirit from myself, too ? shall the glowing
soul, exhaling like smoke, rise to heaven, and consume
itself? Whose heart will not break when he is at a
Festin^ and she immediately, offended at his presence, goes
home again ? —
as lately happened, and he said to me, in

a perfect rage, ' Well, very well, Linda, one day, be sure,
thine eye will be wet for me.' Then I know well that he
means no good, and I spare him from an anxious dread
on that account for shall two, brother and sister, sink in
;

their bloom ? He would long ago have travelled after

her, had he not daily hoped she was coming back. Ah,
could 1 tear my loving heart out of my breast, and put
it into hers instead of the other, that so she might love
him with all my love, Albano, right gladly would I do it.

But the paper comes to an end on this side, and mother

wishes on the other to write a greeting. Farewell ! is

the wish of Thy faithful sister,

Rabette."
"How goes it with my most precious son? Is he pros-
perous, still good and well ? Does he still think of his
true foster-parents ? This in the name of his father and
in her own, asks and wishes.
His faithful mother,

Albina von W."

"P. S. His old teacher, Wehmeier, likewise greets
his darling in strange lands ; and we all rejoice in the
prospect of his return. A."
" P. S. Brother, I, too, must make a P. S. Schoppe
has painted you know who, and scenes, even, have arisen
out of the circumstance. But more of this when we
meet. The Princesse Idoine has visited our Princess
often this winter. R."
236 TITAN,

As letters accommodate themselves more to the placfe

where they were bom, than to that where they are de-
livered, it often happens that what went out as seed,
arrives, after its long journey, already in a germinating
state, and with roots, and inversely in the shape of blos-
soms rather than of dry seed; and every sheet is a double
birth of two distant times, that of writing and that of
reading. Thus was Albano, now under this serener sky,

on this soil of a greater world of the past, and with a

soul full of new springs, the less overtaken and darkened
by Rabette's letter, through which the northern winter
clouds had passed. The ingenuous Rabette, the mild
Albina came after him in fancy but softly over the strange
mountains and through the strange climes, and laid a
cooling hand on his hot brow ; his old Schoppe stood in

his old worth before him, and Liana floated again through
the lofty blue. Toward the weather-beaten Roquairol he
felt not so much as compassion, but a hard contempt ; and
Linda's mind was exactly after his, like the
steadfast
proud look and gait of Roman women. He now thought
over many things more cheerfully than ever, and even
wished to look once in the magic-face of that Heroine.
In Fondi the Neapolitan world-garden began, and
w^hen they entered upon the road to Mola, they went
deeper and deeper into blossoms and flowers. In flying
sheets — addressed, perhaps, to his father, still more prob-
ably to his Schoppe — his bliss and his soul expressed
themselves ; it treasured up, as it were, some stray
orange-blossoms dropped out of the Eden through which
they had so rapidly flown. Here they are :
—
sundown on Ascension-day we arrived
" Shortly before

in Mola; the native Dian was full as much overcome

 ALBANO'S DESCRIPTION OF MOLA. 237

with the green majesty, which he had not seen for a long
time, as I, and I do not yet believe him when he says
that it blooms and smells more finely about Naples. I
hung already
did not go at all into the city, for the sun
toward the sea. Around me streams the incense smoke
of reeking flowers from citron-woods and meadows of
jessamin and narcissus. On my left the blue Apennine
flings his fountain-waters from mountain to mountain, and
on my right the mighty sea presses upon the mighty
earth, and the earth stretches out a firm arm and holds
a shining city* hung with gardens, far out into the mul-
titudinous waves, — and into the unfathomable sea lofty

islands have been cast as unfathomable mountains f low ;

in the south and east a glimmering mist-land, the coast of

Sorrento, grasps round the sea like a crooked-up Jupiter's-
arm, and behind the distant Naples stands Vesuvius, with
a cloud in heaven under the moon. '
Fall on thy knees,
fortunate one,' said Dian, 'before the sumptuous pros-
pect !
' God, why not do it in earnest ? For who can
behold in the glow of evening the monstrous realm of
waters, how yonder busy and restless motion grows still

in the distance, and only sparkles, and at last, blue and

golden, blends with the sky, and how the earth here shuts
in the. delicate, floating fire with her long lands into a
rosy, steady earth-shadow, who can behold the fire-rain
of infinite life, the weaving magic circle of all forces in
the water, in the sky, on the earth, without kneeling down
before the infinite spirit of Nature and saying, '
How
near to me thou art, Ineffable
!
' O here he is both
near and far, bliss and hope come glimmering from the

* Gaeta.
t The island Ischia, with its mountain Epomeo high as Vesuvius,
Capri, &c.
238 TITAN.

mistj coast, and also from the neighboring fountains,

which the hills pour down into the sea, and in the white

blossoms over my head. O does not, then, this sun,

around which burning waves flutter, and the blue over-
head and over yonder, and the kindling lands of men,
worlds within the world, — does not this distance call out

the heart and all its aspiring wishes ? Will it not create
and grasp into the distance and snatch its life blossoms
from the highest peak of heaven? But when it looks
around itself upon its own ground, there too again is the
girdle of Venus thrown around tlie blooming circumfer-
ence, brightly green grows the tall myrtle-tree near its

little dark myrtle, the orange glimmers in the high, cold

grass, and overhead hangs its fragrant blossom, the wheat

waves with broad leaves between the enamels of the
almond and the narcissus, and far oflf stands the cypress,
and the palm towers proudly;* all is flower and fruit,

spring and harvest. '

Shall I go this way ? shall I go that
way ? '
asks the heart in its bliss.

" Thus did I see the sun go down under the waves, —
the reddening coasts fled away under their misty veils, —
the world went out, land after land, from one island to
another, — the last gold-dust was wafted away from the
heights, — and the prayer-bells of the convents led up
the heart above the stars. how happy and how wist-
ful was my heart, at once a wish and a flame, and in my
innermost being a prayer of gratitude went forth for this,

that I was and am upon this earth.

" Never shall I forget that If we throw away ! life as
too small for our wishes, still do they not belong to hfe

itself, and did they not come from it ? If the crowned

earth rears around us such blossoming shores, such sunny

* " Die ilyrte still, und hoch der Lorbeer steht." — Goethe. — Tk.
 "

THE ASCENSION OF A MONK. 239

mountains, would she fain enclo.se therewith unhappy

beings ? Why is our heart narrower than our eye ? why
does a cloud hardly a mile long oppress us, when that
very cloud stands itself under the stars of immensity ?

Is not every morning and every hope a beginning of

spring? What are the thickest prison-walls of hfe but
vine-trelhses built up for the ripening of the wine-glow ?

And as life always cuts itself up into quarters, why must

it be merely the last, and not quite as often the first, upon
which a full-beaming moon follows ? '
O God,' said I, as
I went back through the green world which next morning
becomes a glowing one, '
never let me ascribe thy eternity
to any one time, except the most blissful ; joy is eternal,

but not pain, for this last thou hast not created.'
" ' Friend,' said Dian to me, on the way, when I could
not well conceal from him my inner commotion, ' what
may not your feelings be, then, when you look back upon
Naples on the passage over to Ischia ! For it is plain to
perceive that you were born in a northern land.' '
Dear
friend,' said I, 'every one is born with his north or
south ; whether in an outer one beside, that is of little

consequence.'

So far his leaf upon Mola. But a wonderful circum-

stance seemed this very night to take him at his word in
respect to the last assurance contained in his letter. In
the yard of the inn were assembled many boatmen and
others; all were contending violently about an opinion,
and the most were continually saying :
" To-day, to be
sure, is Ascension Day, and he, too, has wrought miracles."
''Ascension?" thought Albano, and remembered his
birthday, which often fell on this festival. Dian came up
and related, laughing, how the people were expecting down
 •

240 TITAN.

below the ascension of a monk, who had promised it this

night, and many beheved him for this reason, because he
had already done a wonderful work, namely, given a
dead man his speech for two hours, before all Mola. They
both were agreed to witness the work. The multitude
swelled, — the promised man came not, who was to lead
them to the place of ascension, — all became angry rather
than incredulous. At length late at night a mask appeared
and gave, with a motion of the hand, a sign to follow it.

All streamed after, even Albano and his friend. The

pure moon shone fresh out of blue skies, the wide garden
of the country slept in its blossoms, but all breathed, fra-
grance, the slumbering and the waking flowers.
The mask led the crowd to the ruins of Cicero's house,

or tower, and pointed upward. Overhead, on the wall,

stood a trembling man. Albano found his face more and
more familiar. At last the man said :
" I am a father of
death : may the Father of life be merciful to me. How
it goes with me I know not. There stands one among
you," he added at once in a strange, namely, in the Span-
ish language, " to whom I appeared one Good Friday on
Isola Bella, and announced the death of his sister; let

him journey on to Ischia, there will he find his sister."

Albano could not hear these words w^ithout excitement
and indignation. The form of the Father of Death upon
that island he saw now upon these ruins
right clearly ;

and his promise to appear him on a Good Friday came

to

again to his mind. He tried now to work his way up to

the ruins, so as to attack the monk. An inhabitant of
Mola cried, when he heard the strange language :
" The
monk is talking with the Devil." The ascensionist said
nothing to the contrary, — he trembled more violently, —
but the people sought for him who had said it, and cried,
 "

DEPARTURE FROM MOLA. 241

" It is he with the mask, for he is no more to be found."

At last the monk, quaking, begged they would be still

when he vanished, and pray for him, and never seek his
body. Albano was now close behind his back, unseen by
Dian. Just then, high in the dark blue, came a flock of
quails flying slowly along. The monk swiftly and stag-
geringly flung himself up, scattered the birds, cried
out in the dark distance, " Pray !
" and vanished away
into the broad air.

The people cried and shouted with exultation, and part

prayed ;
many believed now the Devil was in the play.
Among the spectators lay a man with his face to the
earth, and continually cried, " God have mercy on me !

But no man brought him to an explanation. Dian, pri-

vately a little superstitious, said his understanding was
at a stand-still here. But Albano explained how a corn-
plot of ghosts had been long twitching and drawing at his

life's curtain, but some day he should yet certainly thrust

his hand successfully through the curtain, and he was
firmly resolved immediately to cross over from Naples
to Ischia, to see his sister. " Verily," he added, " in this

mother country of wonder, fantasy, and everything great,

one as easily believes in fair, enriching miracles of fate,
as one does in the north in dreadful robbing miracles of
spirits."

Dian was also for the earliest visit to the island of

Ischia " Because otherwise," he added, " when Albano
;

had delivered his letters in Naples, and had been drawn

in to the Ricevimenti,* or on Posilippo and Vesuvius,
then there would be no getting away."
On the day following they departed from Mola. The
lovely sea played hide-and-seek with them on their way,
* Receptions.
VOL. II. 11 p
Z42 TITAN.

and only the golden sky never veiled itself. Naples'

goblet of joy already intoxicated one from afar with its

fragrance and spirit. Albano cast inspired looks at Gam-

pania Felice, at the Colosseum in Capua, and at the
broad garden, full of gardens, and even at the rough
Appian Way, which its old name made softer.
But he sighed for the island of Ischia, that Arcadia of
the ocean, and that wonderful place where he was to find
a sister. It was not in their power earlier than in the
early part of Saturday night —
if indeed waking and

glancing life can be called night, particularly an Italian

Saturday night — to reach Aversa. Albano insisted upon
their continuing on in the night toward Naples. Dian
was still reluctant. By chance there stood in the post-
house a beautiful girl, who might be about fourteen years
old, very much troubled at having missed the coach, and
determined this very night to go on to Naples, in order to
reach Ischia, where her parents were, early enough on the
holy Sabbath. " She had come," she said, " from Santa
Agata ; her name was only Agata, and not SantaJ"
" Probably her old joke," said Dian, but he was now —
with his love of hovering about every fair form — him-
self quite in a mood for Ihe night-ride, that so they might
carry the black-eyed one along with them, who looked
joyously and brightly into the fire of strange eyes. She
accepted the invitation cheerfully, and prattled familiarly,
Epomeo and Vesuvius, and pre-
like a naturalist, about
dicted forthem innumerable pleasures on the island, and
altogether showed an intelligence and thoughtfulness far
above her years. At last they all flew along under the
bright stars out into the lovely night.
 NAPLES AT MIDNIGHT. 243

109. CYCLE
ALBANO— goes on in the description of his journey-
thus :

" A night of unrivalled serenity ! The stars alone of

themselves illuminated the earth, and the milky-way was

silvery. A single avenue, intertwined with vine-blossoms,
led to the magnificent city. Everywhere one heard peo-
ple, now near, talking, now distant, singing. Out of dark
chestnut woods, on moonlit hills, the nightingales called to
one another. A poor, sleeping maiden, whom we had
taken with us, heard the melodies even down into her
dream, and sang after them ; and then, when she awoke
herself therewith, looked round confusedly and with a
sweet smile, with the whole melody and dream still in her
breast. On a slender, light two-wheeled carriage, a wag-
oner, standing on the pole and singing, rolled merrily
along by. Women were already bearing in the cool of

the hour great baskets full of flowers into the city ; in

the distance, as we passed along, whole Paradises of flow-

er-cups sent their fragrance ; and the heart and the bosom
drank in at once the love-draught of the sweet air. The
moon had gone up bright as a sun in the high heaven,
and the horizon was gilded with stars ; and in the whole
cloudless sky stood the dusky cloud-column of Vesuvius,
alone, in the east. •

" Far into the night, after two o'clock, we rolled in and
through the long city of splendor, wherein the living day
still bloomed on. Gay people filled the streets ; the bal-
conies sent each other songs ; on the roofs bloomed flow-
ers- and trees between lamps, and the little bells of the

hours prolonged the day ; and the moon seemed to give

warmth. Only now and then a man lay sleeping between
 ;

TITAN.

the colonnades, as if he were taking his siesta. Dian, at

home in all such matters, let the carriage stop on the
southern side, toward the sea, and went far into the city,

in order to arrange, through old acquaintances, the pas-

we might have exactly at
sage across to the island, so that
sundown out on the sea, the richest view of the stately
city, with its bay and its long coasts. The Ischian girl
wrapped herself up in her blue veil, to keep off the flies,
and fell asleep on the black, sandy shore.
" I walked up and down alone for me there was no
;

night and no house. The sea slept, the earth seemed

awake. In the fleeting glimmer (the moon was already
sinking towards Posilippo) I looked up over this divine
frontier city of the world of waters, over this rising moun-
tain of palaces, to where the lofty Castle of St. Elmo
looks, white, out of the green foliage. With two arms
the earth embraced the lovely sea ; on her right, on Posi-
lippo, she bore blooming vine-hills far out into the waves,
and on the left she held cities, and spanned round its waters
and its ships, and drew them up to her breast. Like a
sphinx lay the jagged Capri darkly on the horizon in the
water, and guarded the gates of the bay. Behind the
city the volcano smoked in the ether, and occasionally
sparks played between the stars.
" Now the moon sank down behind the elms of Posi-
—
lippo, grew
the city — dark, the din of the night died
away, — fishermen disembarked, put out their torches,
and laid themselves down on the bank, — the earth
seemed to sink to sleep, but the sea to wake up. A wind
from the coast of Sorrento ruffled the still waves ; more
brightly gleamed Sorrento's sickle with the reflection at
once of the moon and of morning, like silver meadows
the smoke column of Vesuvius had blown away, and
 ! !

SUNRISE ON THE BAY OF NAPLES. 245

from the fire-mount streamed a long, clear morning red-

ness over the coasts as over a strange world.
" O, it was the morning twilight, full of youthful
omens! Do not landscape, mountain, coasts, like an
echo, speak so many
more syllables to the soul the
the
farther off they are ? How young did I feel the world
and myself, and the whole morning of my life was crowd-
ed into this
" My came all was arranged
friend ; ; the boatmen had
arrived ;
Agata was awakened to the joy, and we em-
barked, just as the dawn kindled the mountains, and, her
sails swelhng with the morning breezes, our little vessel
flew out into the sea.
" Before we had yet doubled the promontory of Posi-
lippo, the crater of Vesuvius threw up its glowing child,

the sun, slowly into the sky, and sea and earth blazed.
The half earth-girdles of Naples, with morning-red pal-
aces, its market-place of fluttering ships, the swarm of its

country-houses on the mountains and up along the shore,

and its green throne of St. Elmo, stood proudly between
two mountains, before the sea.
" When we came round Posilippo, there stood Ischia's
Epomeo, like a giant of the sea, in the distance, girdled
about with a wood, and with bald, white head. Gradu-
ally appeared on the immeasurable plain the islands, one
after another, like scattered villages, and wildly pressed
and waded the promontories into the sea. Now, mightier
and more alive than the dried-up, parcelled out, stiff land,
the watery kingdom opened, whose powers all, from the
streams and waves even to the drops, join hands and
move in concert. Almighty, and yet gentle element
grimly thou leapest upon the lands, and swallowest
them up, and, with thy undermining polypus-arms, liest
 ' ;
!

246 TITAN.

stretching around the whole globle. But thou reinest

the wild streams, and meltest them down into waves
softly thou playest with thy little children, the islands,
and playest hand which hangs out of the light
on* the

gondola, and sendest out thy little waves which play be-
fore us, then bear us along, and play behind us.
" When we came along by the httle Nisita, where
Brutus and Cato once sought shelter after Caesar's death
when we passed by the enchanted Baja and the magic
castle where once three Romans determined upon the
and before the whole promontory,
division of the world,
where the country-seats of great Romans stood and ;

when we looked down towards the mountain of Cuma,

behind which Scipio Africanus lived in his Linternum
and died ; then did the lofty life of the great ancients
take possession of me, and I said to my friend :
'
What
men were those ! Scarcely do we learn incidentally in
Pliny or Cicero that one of them has a country-house
yonder, or that there is a lovely Naples. Out of the
midst of nature's sea of joys their laurels grow and bear
as well as out of the ice-sea of Germany and England,
or out of Arabia's sand. Alike in wildernesses and in par-
adises, their mighty hearts beat on. And for these world-

souls there was no dwelling except the world ; only

with such souls are emotions worth almost more than
actions. A Roman might here weep nobly for joy
Dian, say, what can a modern man do for it, that he lives

so late after their ruins ?

" Youth and ruins, tottering, crumbling past and eter-

nal fulness of hfe, covered the shore of Misenum and
the whole far-stretching coast. On the broken urns of
dead gods, on the dismembered temples of Mercury and
Diana, the frolicsome, light wave played, and the eternal
 ALBANO LANDS ON ISCHIA. 247

sun ; old, lonely bridge-posts in the sea, solitary temple-

columns and arches, spoke, in the luxuriant splendor of
life, a sober word ; the old, holy names of the Elysian
Fields, of Avernus, of the Dead Sea, lived still along the
coast ; ruins of rocks and temples lay in confusion upon
the motley-colored lava ; all bloomed and lived ; the
maidens and the boatmen sang ; the mountains and the
islands stood great in the young, fiery day ;
dolphins
chased sportively along beside us ;
singing larks went
whirling up in the ether above their narrow islands ; and
from all ends of the horizon ships came up and flew down
again with arrowy speed. It was the divine over-fulness
and intermingling of the world before me. Sounding-
strings of life were stretched over the string-bridge of
Vesuvius, even to Epomeo.
" Suddenly one peal of thunder passed along through

the blue heaven over the sea. The maiden asked me,
* Why do you grow pale ? it is only Vesuvius.' Then
was a god near me ; yes, heaven, earth, and sea stood
before me as three divinities. The
life's dream-leaves of
book were murmuringly up by a divine morning-
ruffled

storm ; and everywhere I read our dreams and the inter-

pretations thereof.
" After some time, we came to a long land swallowing
up the north, as it were the foot of a single mountain it ;

was already the lovely Ischia, and I went on shore intox-

icated with bliss, and then, for the first time, I thought of
the promise that I should there find a sister."
 ;

248 TITAN.

HO. CYCLE.
ITH emotion, with a sort of festive solemnity,
Albano trod the cool island. It was to him as
if the breezes were always wafting to him the words, " The
place of rest." Agata begged them both to stay with her
parents, whose house lay on the shore, not far from the
suburb-town.* As they went over the bridge, which con-
nects the green rock wound round with houses to the
shore and the city, she pointed out to them joyfully in
the east the individual house. As they went along so
slowly, and the high, round rock and the row of houses
stood mirrored in the water ; and upon the flat roofs the
beautiful women who were trimming the festal lamps for
evening spoke busily over to each other, and greeted and
questioned the returning Agata ; and all faces were so
glad, all forms so comely, and the very poorest in silk
and the lively boys pulled down little chestnut-tops and ;

the old father of the isle, the tall Epomeo, stood before
them all clad in vine-foliage and spring-flowers, out of
whose sweet green only scattered, white pleasure-houses
of happy mountain-dwellers peeped forth then was it ;
—
to Albano as if the heavy pack of life had fallen off from
his shoulders into the water, and the erect bosom drank

in from afar the cool ether flowing in from Elysium.

Across the sea lay the former stormy world, with its hot
coasts.

Agata led the two into the home of her parents, on the
eastern decli\aty of Epomeo ; and immediately, amidst the
loud, exulting welcome, cried " Here
out, quite as loudly :

are two fine gentlemen, who wish come home with me."
to

The father said, directly :

" Welcome, your excellencies !

* Borgho d' Iscliia.

 AGATA'S HOME. 249

You shall, with pleasure, keep the chambers, though

many bathing-guests will come by and by. You will find
nowhere better quarters. I was formerly only a turner
in the Fayence manufactory, but have been for these
eight years a vine-dresser, and can afford to do a favor.
When was there ever a better December and March*
than this year ? Your commands, excellencies !
" Sud-
denly Agata wept ; her mother had announced to her the
interment of her youngest sister, for which solemnity,
according to the fashion of the island, an eve of joy was
appointed to-day, because they loved to congratulate each
other upon the eternal, bliss-insuring ratification of a
child's innocence by death. The man would fain
old
have gone at once right into narrations, when Dian
begged his Albano, after so long a commotion of souls
and bodies, to go to sleep till sunset, w^hen he would wake
him. Agata showed him the way to his cool chamber,
and he went up.
Here, before the cooling sea-zephyr, the going to sleep
was itself the slumber, and the echoing dream itself the
sleep. His dream was an incessant song, which sang
itself, — " The morning is a rose, the day a tulip, night is

a lily, and evening is another morning."

He dreamed himself at last down into a long sleep.
Late, in the dark, like an Adam in renovated youth, he
opened his eyes in Paradise, but he knew not where he
was. He heard distant, sweet music ; unknown flower-
scents swam through the air. He looked out ; the dark
heaven was strewed with golden stars, as with fiery blos-
soms ; on the earth, on the sea, hovered hosts of lights ;

and in the depths of distance hung a clear flame steadily

* He means the vintage, which comes in thrice a year there, in
December, March, and August.
11*
250 TITAN.

in the midst of heaven. A dream, of which the scene

was unknown, confounded still the actual stage with one
that had vanished and Albane went through the silent,
:

unpeopled house, dreaming on, out into the open air, as

into an island of spirits.

Here nightingales, first of all, with their melody drew

him into the world. He found the name Ischia again,
and saw now that the castle on the rock and the long
street of roofs in the shore-town stood full of burning
lamps. He went up to the place whence the music pro-
ceeded, which was illuminated and surrounded with peo-
ple, and found a chapel standing all in fires of joj. Before
a Madonna and her child, in a niche, a night-music was
playing, amidst the loquacious rustling of joy and devo-
tion. Here he found again his hosts, who had all quite
forgottenhim in the jubilee and Dian said, " I would
;

have awaked you soon the night and the pleasures last
;

a great while yet."

" Do hear and see yonder the divine Vesuvius, who
joins in celebrating the festival in such right good ear-
nest," cried Dian, who plunged as deeply into the waves
of joy as any Ischian. Albane looked over toward the
flame, flickering high in the starry heaven, and, hke a
god, having the great thunder beneath it, and he saw how
the night had made the promontory of Misenum loom up
like a cloud beside the volcano. Beside them burned
thousands of lamps on the royal palace of the neighboring
island Procida.
While he looked out over the sea, whose coasts were
sunk into the night, and which lay stretching away like a
second night, immeasurable and gloomy, he saw now and
then a dissolving splendor sweep over it, which flowed on
ever broader and brighter. A distant torch also showed
 ARRIVAL OF LINDA. 251

itself in tho air, whose flashing drew long, fiery furrows

through the glimmering waves. There drew near a bark,
with its sail taken in, because the wind blew oflf shore.

Female forms appeared on board, among which, one of

royal stature, along whose red, silken dress the torch-glare
streamed down, held her eyes fixed upon Vesuvius. As
they sailed nearer, and the bright sea blazed up on either
side under the dashing oars, it seemed as if a goddess
were coming, around whom the sea swims with enrap-
tured flames, and who knows it not. All stepped out on
shore at some distance, where by appointment, as it
seemed, servants had been waiting to make everything
easy. A smaller person, provided with a double opera-
glass, took a short farewell of the tall one, and went away
with a considerable retinue. The red-dressed one drew
a white veil over her face, and went, accompanied by two
virgins, gravely and like a princess, to the spot where
Albano and the music were.
Albano stood near to her ; two great black eyes, filled

with fire and resting upon life with inward earnestness,

streamed through the veil, which betrayed the proud,
straight forehead and nose. In the whole appearance
there was to him something familiar and yet great she ;

stood before him as a Fairy Queen, who had long ago with
a heavenly countenance bent down over his cradle and
looked in with smiles and blessings, and whom the spirit
now recognizes again with its old love. He thought per-
haps of a name, which spirits had named to him, but that
presence seemed here not possible. She fixed her eye
with complacency and attention on the play of two vir-
gins, who, neatly clad in silk, with gold-edged silken
aprons, danced gracefully, with modestly drooping heads
and downcast eyes, to the tambourine of a third ; the two
252 TITAN.

whom the stranger had brought with her,

other virgins,
and Agata, sang sweetly with Itahan half-voice* to the
graceful joy. " It is all done in fact," said an old man to
the strange lady, " to the honor of the Holy Virgin and
St. Nicholas." She nodded slowly a serious yes.
At this moment there stood, all at once, Luna, played
about with the sacrificial fire of Vesuvius, over in the sky,
as the proud goddess of the sun-god, not pale, but fiery,
as it were a thunder-goddess over the thunder of the
mountain, and Albano cried, involuntarily, " God ! the
great moon !
" The stranger quickly threw back her
veil, and looked round significantly after the voice as
after a familiar one ; when she had looked upon the
strange youth for a long time, she turned toward the
moon over Vesuvius.
But Albano was agitated by a god, and dazzled by a
wonder ; he saw here Linda de Romeiro. When she
raised the veil, beauty and brightness streamed out of a
rising sun deUcate, maidenly colors, lovely lines and
;

sweet fulness of youth played hke a flower-garland about

the brow of a goddess, with soft blossoms ai'ound the
holy seriousness and mighty will on brow and lip, and
around the dark glow of the large eye. How had the
pictures lied about her, —
how feebly had they expressed
this spirit and this life !

As if the hour would fain worthily invest the shining

apparition, so beautifully did heaven and earth with all

rays of life play into each other, — love-thirsty stars

flew like heaven-butterflies into the sea, — the moon had

soared away over the impetuous earth-flame of Vesuvius,
and spread her tender light over the happy world, the
sea and the shores, — Epomeo hovered with his silvered
* Falsetto?— Tk.
 "

CONVERSATION AND RECOGNITION. 253

woods, and with the hermitage of Iiis summit high in the

night blue, — near by stirred the life of the singing, dan-

cing ones, with their prayers and their festal rockets

which they were sending aloft. When Linda had long
looked across the sea toward Vesuvius, she spoke, of her-
self, to the silent Albano, by way of answering his excla-
mation, and making up for her sudden turning round and
staring at him. " I
come from Vesuvius," said she " but ;

he is quite as sublime near at hand as afar off, w^hich is

so singular." Altogether strange and spirit-like did it
sound to him, that he really heard this voice. With one
that indicated deep emotion he replied :
" In this land,

however, everything is great indeed, even the little is

made great by the large, — this little human pleasure

here between the burnt-out volcano * and the burning one,
— all is at one, and therefore right and so godhke." At
once attracted and distracted, not knowing him, although
previously struck with the resemblance of his voice to
that of Roquairol, gladly reflecting on his simple words,
she looked longer than she was aware at the ingenuous,
but daring and warm eye of the youth, made no reply,
turned slowly away, and again looked silently at the
sports.

Dian, who had already for a long time been looking at

the fair stranger, found at last in his memory her name,
and came to her with the half-proud, half-embarrassed
look of artists toward rank. She did not recognize him.
" The Greek, Dian," said Albano, " noble Countess !

Surprised at the Count's recognition of her, she said to

him : "I do not know you." " You know my father,"
said Albano, " the Knight Cesara." « O Dio !
" cried
the Spanish maiden, startled, became a lily, a rose, a
* The island of Ischia itself.
 !

254 TITAN.

flame, sought to collect herself, and said, " How singular

A friend of yours, the Princess Julienne, is also here."
The conversation flowed now more smoothly. She
spoke of his father, and expressed her gratitude as his
ward. "That is a mighty nature of his, which guards
itself against everything common," said she, at once,
against the fashion of the quality, speaking even partially
of persons. The son was made happy by this praise of

a father ; he enhanced it, and asked in pleased expecta-

tion how she took his coldness.

" Coldness ? " said she, with liveliness, " I hate the
word cordially. If ever a rare man has a whole will
and no half of one, and rests upon his power, and does
not, like a crustaceous animal, cleave to every other, then
he is called cold. Is not the sun, when he approaches
us, cold too ? " " Death is cold," cried Albano, very
much moved, because he often imagined that he himself
had more force than love; "but there may well be a sub-
lime coldness, a sublime pain, which with eagle's talon
snatches the heart away on high, but tears it in pieces in

mid-heaven and before the sun."

She looked upon him with a look of greatness. " Truly
you speak like a woman," said she " they alone have ;

nothing to will or to do without the might of love but it ;

was prettily said." Dian, good for nothing as to general

observations, and apt only at individual ones, interrupted

her with questions about particular works of art in Na-

ples ; she very frankly communicated her characteristic
views, although with tolerable decision. Albano thought
at first of his artistic friend, the draughtsman Schoppe,
and asked about him. " At my departure," said she, " he
was still in Pestitz, though I cannot comprehend what
such an extraordinary being would fain do there ; that is
 LINDA BEGINS TO SHOW HERSELF. 255

a powerful man, but quite jumbled up and not clear. He

is very much your friend." " How does," asked Dian,
half joking, " my old patron, the Lector Augusti ? " She
answered concisely, and almost with a certain sensitive-
ness at the familiarity of his question: "It goes well with
him at court. Few natures," she continued, turning to
Albano, on the subject of Augusti, " are doomed to meet
so much injustice of judgment as such simple, cool, con-

sistent ones as his." Albano could not entirely say yes,

but he recognized with satisfaction in her respect for the
strangest individuality of character the pupil of his father,
who prized a plant, not according to the smoothness or
roughness of its skin, but according to its bloom. Never
does a man portray his own character more vividly than
|

in his manner of portraying another's. But Linda's lofty

candor on the subject, which is as often wanting in finely

cultivated females as refinement and reserve are in pow-
erful men, took the strongest hold of the youth, and he
thought he should be sinning if he did not exercise his
great natural frankness towards her in a twofold degree.
She called her maidens to depart with her. Dian went
off. " These are more necessary to me," said she to Al-
bano, " than they seem." She had, namely, she related,
something of the ocular malady* of many Spanish wo-
men, of being infinitely short-sighted in the night. He
begged to be permitted to accompany her, and wasit

granted ; he would have guided her', after what she had

said, but she forbade it.

During the walk she often stood still, to look at the

beautiful flame of Vesuvius. " He stands there," said

* Day-sight (hemeralopy) is common in hot countries; the strong-

est degree is, to be blind in the night even to light, and only in the
morning able to see again.
256 TITAN.

Albane, "in this pastoral poem of Nature, like a tragic

muse, and exalts everything, as a war does the age."
" Do you believe that of war," said she. " A man must
have," he replied, "either great men or great objects
before him, otherwise his powers degenerate, as the mag-
net's do, when it has lain for a long time without being
turned toward the right corners of the world." "How
true," said she :
" what say you to a Gallic war ? " He
owned his wish that it might break out, and his own
disposition to take part in it. He could not help, even
at the expense of his future liberty, being open-hearted
towards her. " Blessed are you men," said she " you dig ;

your way down through the snow of life, and find at last

the green harvest underneath. That can no woman do.

A woman is surely a stupid thing in nature. I respect

one and another head of the Revolution, particularly that
political monster of energy, Mirabeau, although I cannot
like him."
During these discoursings they came upon the ascent
of Epomeo. Agata accompanied the two playmates of
her earlier days with full tongue and hungry ear for so

many mutual news-telUngs. As he now went along beside

the beautiful virgin, and occasionally looked in her face,
which was made still more beautiful by mental energy,
and became at once flower, blossom, and fruit (whereas
generally the converse holds, and the head gains by the
face) : then did he pass a severe judgment upon his pre-
vious deportment toward this noble being, although he as
well as she, out of delicacy, remained silent about the
former juggling play with her name, as well as about the
wonderfulness of to-day's meeting. Silently they went
on in the rare night and region. All at once she stopped
on an eminence, around which the dowry of Nature was
 ;

THE EARTHQUAKE. 257

heaped up on all sides in mountains. They looked round

in the splendor ; the Swan of Heaven, the moon, floated
high over Vesuvius in the ether, — the giant serpent ot*

the world, the sea, lay fast asleep in his bed that stretches
from pole to pole, — the coasts and promontories glhnmered
only, hke midnight dreams, — clefts full of tree-blossoms
overflowed with ethereal dew made of light, and in the
vales below stood dark smoke-columns upon hot fountains,
and overhead they floated away in splendor, — all around
lay, high up, illuminated chapels, and low around the shore
dark cities, — the winds stood still, the rose-perfumes and
the myrtle-perfumes stole forth alone, — soft and bland
floated the blue night around the ravished earth; from
around the warm moon the ether retired, and she sank
down love-intoxicated out of mid-heaven larger and larger
into the sweet earth-spring. Vesuvius stood now, without
flame or thunder, white with sand or snow, in the east, —
in the darkening blue the gold grains of the fiery stars
were sowed far abroad.
It was the rare time w^hen life has its transit through
a superterrestrial sun. Albano and Linda accompanied
each other with holy eyes, and their looks softly disen-
gaged themselves from each other again ;
they gazed into
the world, and into the heart, and expressed nothing.
Linda turned softly round and walked silently onward.
Just then, all at once, one of the prattling maidens
behind them called out :
" There is really an earthquake
commg ; I actually feel it ; good night !
" It was Agata.
" God grant one," said Albano. " O w^hy ? " said Linda,

eagerly, but in a low tone. " All that the infinite mother
wills and sends is to me to-day childishly dear, even death
— are not we, too, part and parcel of her immortality ? "
said he. " Yes, man may feel and believe this in joy
Q
 ;

258 TITAN.

only in sorrow let him not speak of immortality ; in such

impotency of soul he is not worthy of it."

Albano's spirit here rose up from its princely seat to

greet its lofty kinswoman, and said, " Immortal one ! and
though no one else were so!" She silently smiled and
went on. His heart was an asbestos-leaf written over
and cast into the fire, burning, not consuming ; his whole
former life went out, the leaf shone fiery and pure for
Linda's hand.
When they reached the last eminence^ below which
Linda's and Julienne's dwelling lay, and they stood near
each other on the point of separation, then the maiden
suddenly cried out below :
" An earthquake " !
Out of
hell a thunder-car rolled on in the subterranean ways, —
a broad lightning flapped its wings up and down in the

pure heaven under the stars, — the earth and the stars
trembled, and affrighted eagles flew through the lofty
night. Albano had grasped the hands of the tottering
Linda. Her face had faded before the moon to a pale,
godlike statue of marble. By this time it was all over
only some stars of the earth still shot down out of the
steadfast heavens into the sea, and wondrous clouds went
up round about from below. " Am I not very timid ?
"

said she, faintly. Albano gazed into her face livingly and
serenely as a sun-god in morning-redness, and pressed her
hands. She would have drawn them away violently.
" Give them to me forever !
" said he, earnestly. " Bold
man," said she, in confusion, " who art thou ? Dost thou
know me ? If thou art as I, then swear and say whether
thou hast always been true !
" Albano looked toward
Heaven, his life was balanced ; God was near him ; he
answered softly and firmly :
" Linda, always !
" " So
!
have I " said she, and inclined modestly her beautiful
 SORROW TURNED TO LOVE AGAIN. 259

head upon his breast, but immediately raised it again, with

its large moist eyes, and said, hurriedly :

" Go now !

"
Early to-morrow come, Albano ! Adio ! Adio !

The maidens came up. Albano went down, his bosom

filled with living warmth, with living radiance. Nature
breathed with fresher perfumes out of the gardens ; the
sea murmured again below ; and on Vesuvius burned a
Love's-torch, a festal fire of joy. Through the night-skies
some eagles were still sailing toward the moon, as toward
a sun and against the arch of heaven the Jacob's-ladder
;

stood leaning with golden rounds of stars.

As Albano was walking along so solitary in his bliss,

dissolved in the rapture of love, the fragrance of the vales,

the radiance of the heights, dreaming, hovering, he saw
birds of passage flying across the sea in the direction of
the Apennines, on their way to Germany, where Liana
had lived. " Holy One above !
" cried his heart, " thou
!
desiredst this joy appear and
;
bless it " Unexpectedly
he stood before a chapel niche wherein the Holy Virgin
stood. The moon transfigured the pale statue, — the Vir-
gin took life beneath the radiance, and became more like
Liana, — he knelt down, and ardently gave God his
prayers of gratitude and Liana his tears. When he rose,
turtle-doves were cooing in dreams, and a nightingale
warbled ; the hot fountains smoked glimmering, and the
happy singing of far-off people came up to his ears.
 TWENTY-NINTH JUBILEE.
Julienne. — The Island. Sundown. — — Naples. — Vesuvius. —
Linda's Letter. Fight. — — Departure.
111. CYCLE.
FTER a long night, the fre.sh morning breathed
when Albano was to find again the treasures
of the most blessed dream, the flowers of for-
tune which the moon had opened, in broad
sunlight. Life shouted to him exultingly, as he climbed
again yesterday's heights, which shone overspread with
the varnish of light ; not to a rose-feast, but to all flower-
and harvest-festivals at once ; to feasts of myrtles and
lilies; to gleanings and blossom-gatherings. The sun
went forth over the blessed region, and as a peacock with
his trailing rainbow flies into a blossoming tree, so did the
young day, heavy with colors and laden with gardens and
full of reflections, mount the blue heights, and smile like

a child upon the world. Albano looked now from his

height down on the enchanted castle wherein yesterday
the mighty enchantress had disappeared.
He went down to it. A singing maiden on the flowery
roof, who seemed to have been waiting for him, pointed
out, leaning over without interrupting her singing, a near
apartment below her into which he was to enter. He
stepped in ; it was empty. Through the windows of
 ;

ALBANO FINDS HIS SISTER. 261

oiled paper streamed a wondrous morning light ; on the

wooden ceiling figures from Herculaneum were painted
in a Campanian vase stood yellow butterfly flowers and
myrtle-blossoms, which diffused around them a sweet
perfumed atmosphere. The singular environs enclosed
him more and more closely, for he found, in fact, some
pictures and articles of furniture which seemed familiar
to him. At last he saw, to his amazement, on the table a
half ring. He took out his half which he had got from
the pretended sister in the Gothic chamber on that ghost-
ly night, and which, to be ready for the opportunity of
a comparison, he always carried about with him. He
pressed the semicircles into one another ;
suddenly they
closed, clasping, and formed a fast ring. " God !
" thought
"
he, " what arm strikes again into my life ?

Just then the door was hastily opened, and the Prin-
cess Julienne entered hurriedly, smiling and weeping,
and exclaimed, flying to him, " my brother ! my
brother!" "Julienne," said he, seriously, and with deep
emotion, "art thou really my sister at last?" " O, long

enough has she been so

!
" replied she, and looked on him
tenderly and blissfully, and smiled through her tears.
Then she again embraced him, and again looked at him,
and said :
" Thou dear Albano-brother ! So long have I,

like a moon, been sailing around thee, and had, hke her,
to stay colder and farther off. Now will I love thee with
exceeding fondness ; my love shall run backward, and
run forward too " ! " Almighty !
" Albano broke out,
weeping, when he found himself so suddenly clasped by
a beneficent arm out of the cloud, "all this dost thou
now give me at once ? " " Ah " cried Julienne, with !

liveliness, " that I were only weeping for pure joy But !

I must eat my bitter crust of sorrow with it too Dear !

 "

202 TITAN.

brother, Luigi writes me yesterday from Pestitz that I must

hasten back, else he will hardly live to see my return.
Did I think of this on my setting out ? Thus what I
receive with one hand I must give up with the other."
Albano said nothing to this, because he could not possibly
take the least interest in the Prince. So much .the more
did he refresh himself with fresh, clear joy in the open,
breathing Orient of his earliest days of life, in the sight
of this young, pure flower, which grew and played, as it

were, in and out of the bright, fresh fountain of his

childhood.
" But, heavens ! explain to me," began Albano, " how
all came to pass." " Now, I know, the questioning be-
gins," she replied. " The ostensible sum and substance
thou shalt shortly have ; if thou askest for more, if thou
wilt peep into the book of mysteries, then I shut it to,

and repeat to thee some lies. Next October, it may be

sooner, all comes to light. This for the present, and first

of all, — my mother was, and remains, verily pure and

holy in this relationship, by the Almighty God !

" What a riddle " said he.! " Art thou the daughter

of my father ? Is Luigi my brother ? Is my dead sister

Severina thy sister ? " asked he.

"
Julienne. " Ask October !

" "
Albano. Ah, sister !

Julienne. " O brother, trust the daughter of Melchis-

edec. Further, — I was indeed the sister in the appari-

tion, whom the man with the bald head introduced to thee
in Lilar. I could not, and yet I felt that I must, have
thee ere thou hadst flown away into foreign parts. The
old age which I then had the mirror was, as thou
in
seest, made only by an artificial mirror." *
* There are metamorphosing mirrors which represent young forms
as decrepit.
 "

JULIENNE PROMISES LIGHT. 263

Alhano. " Truly, I thought then of no one but of thee.

Only how comes there a man like the Baldhead and like

the Father of Death, who so incomprehensibly predicted

"
to me in Mola that I should find thee ?

Julienne. " That is impossible. Did he name my

"
name ?
Alhano. " That only was wanting. The Pater is, for
'the rest, in all probability one and the same man with
the Baldhead. Immediately after the announcement he
went toward heaven."
Julienne. " There let him stay, by all means, and the

other too. Does this dark bond of enchantment concern

or disturb me or thee, which, in its false miracles, has
thus far always been interrupted by singular real ones ?
It was quite innocently that I happened in Lilar at that
time, and perhaps I prevented something frightful."
Alhano. " By heavens ! I must ask what, then, is his
object, who his leader, his manager ? "
Julienne. " Probably the father of the Countess, for
be lives still, I hear, unknown and unseen, although thy
father is guardian. Be astonished when thou art at
home, and leave the riddles, which, be assured, are un-
ravelling themselves so agreeably for us both, and await
the October days."
Alhano. " But one thing, beloved sister, deny me not,

I pray thee, —a clear word about my and thy wonderful

!
relation to the noble Countess ! Only that
Julienne. " Has my heart, then, already denied it

thee ? The glorious one, — well her and me and

for
thee ! Thy first word of — which the gods have
love,

now so firmly sealed, — was to be the signal-word for my

annunciation to thee ;
only from the beloved mightest thou
receive the sister. What jugglers and ghosts have done
264 TITAN.

towards it, and how much of it, no one knows better

than — October ;
why shall I, meanwhile, be choosing
between lies and perjury ? I simply did all, only to bring
you two together ; the rest I knew beforehand. Nothing
succeeded, — it all was a stifling snarl ; everything went
up hill. I saw precious beings * sowing in an unblessed
spring dreadful griefs, and withal smiling so hopefully!
and I could not hold their unhappy hands, —
I, who with

such certainty foreknew all the coming anguish. O thou

!
pure, pious soul above " said she, all at once, with quiv-
ering lip, looking towards heaven.
The brother and sister embraced each other softly, and
wept in silence at the thought of the innocent sacrifice.
" No," said Albano, very warmly, " no hell-conspiracy
could have sundered us had she only stayed with me, or
even on the earth." " See, Albano," said Julienne, col-

lecting again her more cheerful life-spirits, and opening

all blinds, " how the morning hill sparkles and swims up
and down ! Let me speak out By the very greatest!

good luck, I learned in winter that thou wast turning thy

thoughts toward Naples. Linda had already been there
once, and her mother at the baths of the neighborhood.

For me, I said to her, Ischia's baths would do as well as

any. Go with me ; we will not disturb or go near your
triste guardian in Rome at all. She readily assented.
Of course there was no mention made of thee ; previous-
ly, however, there had been often enough in letters and
otherwise, when I always praised thee beyond measure.
And now nous void done. Yesterday I received in Na-
ples the mournful letter of my brother. Of thy arrival

I knew as yet nothing. I let the Countess go alone to the

feast of tones, and hastened home with heavy heart
* Him and Liana.
 ALBANO AND LINDA MEET BY DAY. 265

When she came back, she opened her glad heart, and told
me alland then I told her all. Ah, thank God," she
;

added, falling upon his neck, " that we have now at last
disembarked in Eljsium, and that the rotten Charon's-
boat has not sent us to the bottom. But for all Europe,
even for thy Dian, mark me, the privy seal remains upon
our relationship." Albano must needs still put a few
questions. She kept answering, in a lively tone, " Octo-
ber ! October!" till all at once, as if awaking, she ex-
claimed, " O, how can I say that so gayly ? " but without
explainmg herself on the subject.
" Now will I bring thee, as I have heretofore done, to

the Countess, only by a shorter way," said she, took his

hand, led him out, opened the opposite apartment, where

Linda lived, and said, " I present to thee my brother."
Deeply blushing, the noble form came to meet them, and
embraced, without a word, her dear female friend. When
her eye met again Albano's, she was so struck that she
sought to draw away the hand which he kissed, for she
had yesterday hardly seen but in a glimmering light his

beautiful eye, and his noble brow, and the lips of love ;

and this blooming man stood, inspired with double emo-

tion, so bright and still and earnest before her, full of
noble, real love. Her heart would gladly have fallen
upon his ; at least, she gave him back her hand into his,

and wished him joy of this morning. The obvious an-

swer, " and of yesterday evening," he could not get over
his hps, from a pecuhar, modest shyness, of giving as of
taking praise. "A third man is found at last for the

travelling-college," said Julienne ;

" for thou must go off
directly, in a few days ; thou, too, must be off to Pestitz,
Albano." " I, too, sister ? " said he ; "I meant to stay a
month, and here is the visit of Vesuvius, Herculaneum,
VOL. II. 12
 ;;

266 TITAN.

and Naples crowded into a few days." He wondered

afterwards himself at the sweetness of obedience under
commands of love, since he used once to say,
the fair
" Command me
to command, and I will not obey." " I

accompany my friend," said Linda, " glad as I should

have been to go to Greece, to which I am already, for the
second time, so near."
" This very night I fly away," said he ; "I will only
wake, see, live, and love." Julienne had already begun
to show a sister's concern about his health and his objects
divided between two brothers, gladly would she, had it

only been possible, have sacrificed herself to both. " The

good creature has not even yet enjoyed Ischia," said she
" he must have that to-day."
Albano felt, at the expression of this new female love,
that woman was the human heart in the fairest form.
Within him rang a glad melody, — " What a day lies

before thee, and what years !

" Sweetly entwined and
overspun with a canopy of double love-blossoms, he saw
life and earth full of fragrance and light ; over the morn-
ing dew of youth a sun had now been ushered up, and
the dark drops glistened up and down thi'ough all gardens.
He cast, at length, a glance at the place which sur-
rounded him. Niobe's group, the Genius of Turin, Cupid,
and Psyche, stood there in casts, borrowed from the cab-
inet of an artist in Naples. The walls were decorated
with rare pictures, among which was — Schoppe sneezing.
This alone rushed with the northern past mightily into his
softened heart, and he expressed his feeling to his be.
loved. " You," said she, " prefer friendship to art, fo
that portrait is the worst in my collection ; but the origin'
deserves, indeed, all regard."
She went into the cabinet, and brought out a miniatu
 SCHOPPE'S TWO PICTURES. 267

likeness of herself, which represented her, after the Turk-

ish fashion, veiled, and with only one eye uncovered.
How livingly beside the twilight of the veil did the open,
soul-speaking eye look and strike ! How did the flame of
its might burn through the covering of mildness ! Linda
named the master of the magnificent picture, that very
Schoppe, and added, he had said in this case the master
must, out of reciprocal complaisance, himself praise a work
which praised him more partially and powerfully than any
other work of his ever had. She explained this difference
of his pencil by another cause, which he had stated to her
almost in these words : he had, he said, in his earliest

youth, loved her mother as long as he had seen her, and

afterwards never any one again ; and therefore he had,
as she resembled her mother, painted her con amove, and
really striven to bring out something.
" 0, honest old man !
" said Albano, and could hardly
keep tears out of the eyes which so often were happy.
But it was only the holy pang of friendship ; for there

darted through him at last, likebeam of lightning

a
through the clearest sky, a presumption made certain by
everything, — by Schoppe's diary and Linda's words and
Rabette's letter, — Linda was
that the soul whom the sin-
gular being secretly loved. A sharp pain cut hastily but
deeply through his brow ; and he conquered himself only
by his present younger freshness of spirit, by newly gath-
ered power and force, and by the free thought that a
friend may well and easily give up and sacrifice to his
friend a loved one, but cannot or dares not so easily sur-
render one who loves Mm.
Julienne said, " The only wonder is that my brother,
between two such fantastical beings as this Schoppe
and Roquairol, ha- not himself become one of the same
268 TITAN.

feather." A running fire broke out. Linda said, " Schoppe

isonly a southern nature in conflict with a northern cli-
mate." " Properly with life itself," said Albano. Julienne
simply remarked, " I love always rules in life ; with nei-
ther of them is one ever tranquil and a son aise, but only
a leur aise^ She asked him at once about Roquairol.
" He was once my friend, and I speak of him no more,"
said Albano, whose tongue was tied by the ruined favor-
ite's torturing love for Linda, and even his relationship to
Liana. Linda glided over the subject with the mere ver-
dict that he was an overstrained weakling, and without
special mention of his love for her or of her abhorrence
of him. She quite as coldly forgot at a distance every
one who was repulsive to her inner being as she did
vehemently thrust him off when he was near.
Julienne withdrew to make arrangements for the Httle
day's journey over the island. Albano despatched a note
to Dian, containing the marche-route to Naples. Linda
said, in respect to Julienne, " A deeply and firmly grounded
character
!
" " The stem and twigs all buried in little

fragrant blossoms !
" he added. " And exactly what she
hates in books and conversations, — poesy, — that she
pursues right earnestly in action. Individuality is every-
where to be spared and respected, as the root of every-
thing good. You, too, are very good," she added, with
soft voice. " Truly, I am so at present," said he ;
" for I

love right heartily ; and only a complete being can one

really love, and with entire disinterestedness."
" So must the sun's image strike full and round, in
order to burn." " Or an image which one takes for it,"

said she ;
" I am what I am, and cannot easily become
anything else. If man has only a will once for all, which
goes through life, not alternating from minute to minute,
 A GLANCE AT LINDA'S LIBRARY. 269

from being to being, that is the main thing." " Linda,"

cried Albano, " I hear my own soul. There are words

which are actions ;
yours are." When she thus spoke
out her soul, her beautiful form vanished from before his
enchanted spirit, as the golden string vanishes when it

begins to sound. Wounded and punished by the past for

his often hard energy, he breathed only with a gentle
breath — although now life, the world, and the very
region made him bolder, brighter, firmer, and more ardent
— upon the unisonant -^olian strings of this many-toned
soul. But how must she have been charmed with a man
at once so mighty and so tender, —a soft constellation of
near suns, —a beautiful war-god with the lyre, — a storm-
cloud full of Aurora, —a spirited, ardent youth, whose
thought was so honest ! She said it not, however, but
simply loved, like him.
He threw an accidental glance at her little table-library.
" Nothing but French !
" said she. He found Montaigne^
the life of Guyon, the Contrat Social, and, last of all,

Madame de Stael sur V Influence des Passions. He had

read this, and said how infinitely pleased he had been
with the articles upon love, parties, and vanity, and, in
short, with her German or Spanish heart of fire, but not
with her bald French philosophy, least of all with her
immoral suicide-mania. " Good Heaven !
" cried Linda ;

" is not life itself a long suicide ? Albano, all men are
still somewhere or other pedants, the good in morality so
called, and you especially. Maxims of Kant, great, broad
classifications, principles, must they all have. You are
all born Germans, real Germans of the Germans, even
you, friend. Am I right ? " she added, softly, as if she

desired a " yes."

" No," said Albano, " so soon as a man once pursues
 !

270 TITAN.

and desires anything right earnestly and exclusively, then

he is called a coxcomb or a pedant." " O you everlasting
readers and readeresses !
" cried Julienne, stepping in
and seeing him with a book in his hand. " Never has
the Princess read preface or note," said Linda, "as I
have never yet let any one go." Women who read pref-
aces and notes are of some significance ; with men, at
most the opposite were true. " We can set out ; all is

ready," said Julienne.

1 12. CYCLE.

WHEN they came out into the festive world,

did the cool blue of heaven come floating, fan-
how

ning down upon them instead of earthly airs ! How

sparkled the world and the day — and the future ! How
brightly foamed over in the goblet of life the draught of
love made for each of the three beings out of two intox-
icating ingredients
They followed the path to the summit of Epomeo, but in
an elastic, yielding freedom, and in a rapid variety of na-
ture which is not to be matched anywhere upon the earth.
They met valleys with laurels and cherries, with roses

and primroses at once. There came cool defiles filled out

with ripe oranges and apples, beside high rocks of aloes
and pomegranates, and on the summits of the cherry and
apple tree stirred overhead the vine and orange blossoms.
In the blooming clefts warbled secure nightingales, and
out of the crevices poisonless serpents' heads darted to
the light, — sometimes appeared a cloister in a citron-
grove, sometimes a white house attached to a vine-garden,
now a cool grotto, now a kitchen garden near red clover,
now a little meadow full of white rose-flowers and nar-
 ASCENT OF P:P0ME0.
cissi, and at every turn a man, who went by singing,

dancing, and accosting them. Heights and gardens alter-

nately hid and revealed the land and the water, and often
for a long time the far-stretching sea and its cloud-coasts
glimmered after them like a second heaven through the
green twigs.
They drew nearer and nearer to the hermit's house on
the summit, rocking themselves upon the gay, golden flag-
feathers of life. They spoke to each other now and then
a word of joy, not, however, by way of communicating
each other, but because the heart could not help it, and a

word was nothing but a sigh of happiness. They stood

at last upon the throne of the earth, and looked down as

from the sun. Round about them the sea lay camped,
melting away into the blue of the horizon, — from Capua,
far in the depths of the distance, stretched the white
Apennines around Vesuvius and over on the long coast
of Sorrento still onward, — and from Posilippo the lands
pursued the sea even beyond Mola and Terracina, — on
the opened world-surface appeared everything, the prom-
ontories, the yellow crater-margins on the coasts and the
islands round about, which the terrible, veiled fire-god

under the sea had driven up out of his fiery realm to the
light of the sun, — and the lovely Ischia with its little

cities on the shores and with its little gardens and craters,
stood like a green blooming ship in the great sea, and
rested on innumerable waves.
Then vanished the greatnesses of the earth from below,
only the earth was great and the sun with his heavens. "

how happy we are!" said Albano. Yes, you were happy

there who will be so after you ?
; Cradling himself upon
the tree of life, at which his childish eye had already so
early and longingly gazed upward, he gave utterance to
 ;

272 TITAN.

all that exalted and possessed him. " Therein I recognize

the all-powerful mother ; angry and flaming, she comes
up from the bottom of the sea, plants a burning land, and
then does she again, smiling, distribute flowers among her
children ; so let man be, volcano — then flower." " What
in comparison with this," said Julienne, " are all the win-

ter amusements of the German Maj-moon ! Is not that

a smaller Switzerland only in a greater lake of Geneva?"
The Countess, who through her Spain was more initiated
in such charms, kept herself for the most part still.

" Man," said she, " is Oread and Hamadryad or some

the
other divinity, and inspires wood and vale, and man him-
self, again, is inspired by man."
The Hermit appeared, and said, their meal, w^hich was
sent up, had long since arrived ; he also took occasion to

praise his situation. " Often," said he, and made Julienne
laugh, " my mountain smokes like Vesuvius, and bathing-
guests look up, and apprehend something, but it is only
because I am baking my bread up here." They en-
camped themselves in the shady open air. They must
needs be ever looking down again upon the lovely, dimin-
ished island, which with its gardens planted within gar-
dens, with its springs intertwined with autumns, lay so
whole and so near, a great family garden, where the peo-
ple all dwell together, because there are no different lands
to become entangled with each other, and the bees and
the larks fly not far out over the garden of the sea. Like
still, open flowers were the three souls beside each other
fragrantly flies the flower-dust to and fro, to generate new
flowers. Linda sank away completely into her great
deep heart unused to love, she would fain gaze therein
;

and find joy, while no word of Albano's escaped her, for

it bespoke its birth of love in the heart. Overflowing
 AN EVENING SAIL WITH DIAN. 273

with mildness, and deep in tliought she sat there, with

her great eye half under the downcast eyehd, — after her
manner, always long silent as well as long speaking. As
the diamond sparkles just like the dewdrop, but only with
steady power and even without the sun, her heart resem-
bled the softest in all feminine mildness and purity, and
excelled it only in strength. With delight Julienne be-
"held, when, now and then, after a childlike forgetting
of Albano, (because her stream of speech had borne her
from one world to another,) suddenly and with unembar-
rassed joy, she replaced her finely formed hand in the
youth's, to whom a pressure of her hand was nothing less
than a tender embrace.
They took the nearest way down back to Albano's
residence, which was ever looking up to them from
its vine-shrubbery. They were ever so little with each
other, — in the morning Albano was to travel. He must
wi-ite from Portici, a messenger must come to take the
letter, — " And he brings me one, too," said he. " Cer-
!
tainly not " said Linda. Albano begged. " She will
soon change and write," said Juhenne. She said no.
By degrees furrows of shade stole down the mountain
along with the dark lava-streams, and in the poplars
nightingales began already their melodious twilight.
They drew near to Albano's house. Dian ran out with
delight to meet the Princess. Albano begged him, with-
out having asked either, to procure a bark, in order that
they might enjoy the evening. Compulsory proposals of
pleasure are precisely those to which maidens love best to
say yes. Dian was immediately at hand with a boat ; he
always and quickly joined his pleasure to that of others.
They all embarked and moved along among the sun-
flowers, which every ray of the sun planted thicker and
12* R
274 TITAN.

thicker upon the watery beds. Albano — in his present

glow, accustomed to the manners of the warm land where
the lover speaks before the mother and she speaks of him
with the daughter, where Love wears no veil, but only
hatred and the face, and where the myrtle, in every sense,
is the setting of the fields — forgot himself a moment
before Dian, and took Linda's hand ; she quickly snatched
it away from him, true to the manner of maidens, whicK
is lavish of the arm and chary of the finger and the thim-
ble. But she looked on him softly, when she had repelled
him.
They passed along again, on their passage from east to
north, before the rock with houses and before the streets

of the suburb town on the shore. All was glad and

friendly, — all sang that did not prattle, — the roofs were
occupied with looms of silk ribbons, and the websters
spoke and sang from roof to roof. Julienne could hardly
keep her eye away from this southern sociableness and
harmony. They put out farther into the sea, and the sun
went down nearer to it The waves and the breezes
played with one another, the former breathing, the latter

undulating, — sky and sea were arched into one blue con-
cave, and in its centre floated, free as a spirit in the
universe, the light skiff of love. The circle of the world
became a golden, swollen harvest-wreath full of glowing
coasts and islands, —
gondolas flew singing into the dis-
tance, and had torches already prepared for the night,
(sometimes a flying-fish traced his arc behind them in the
air,) and Dian responded to their familiar songs as they
glided along by. Yonder were seen great ships, proudly
and slowly sailing along, fluttering like the sky, with red
and blue plumes, and like conquerors bound to port.
Everywhere was the must of life poured out, and it
 "

SUNSET OVER THE PONTIAN ISLES. 275

worked impetuously. So played a divine world around

man !
" O here in Albano, " where
this great scene," said

everything finds place, Paradises and dark Orcus-coasts

of lava, and the yielding sea, and the gray Gorgon-
head of Vesuvius, and the playing children of men,
and the blossoms and all, —
here where one must glow
like a lava, — could not one, like the hot lava round about
him, bury himself in the waves, in all his glow, if one
knew that anything of this hour could pass away, even
so much as a remembrance thereof, or a throbbing of
the pulse for a loved heart ? Were not that better ?

" Perhaps," said Linda. J ulienne was carried in thought

by the softening pleasure to the distant sick-bed of her
brother, and said, smihng :
" Cannot one do like the fair

sun over yonder, and go under the waves and yet come
back again ? And yet, after all, if you look upon his
going down rightly, there is no such thing in reality."

The sun stood already big as a great golden shield held

from heaven above the Pontian islands, and gilded their

blue, — the white, rocky crown of thorns, Capri, lay in

glowing light, and from Sorrento's coasts to Gaeta's glim-

mering gold had shot up along the walls of the world, —

the earth rolled with her axis, as with a music-barrel, near
the sun, and struck from the great luminary rays and
tones, — sideward lay in ambush the giant messenger of
night, camped on the sea, the immense shadow of Epo-
meo.
At this moment the sun touched the sea, and a golden
lightning darted trembling round through the humid ether,
— and he cradled himself on a thousand fiery wave-wings,
and he quivered and hung, burning and glowing with love,
on the sea, and the sea, burning, drank all his glow. Then
it threw, as if he was about to pass away forever, the
276 TITAN.

veil of an infinite splendor over the pale-growing god.

Then it became still on the earth ; a floating evening
redness overflowed with rose-oil all the waves ; the holy
islands of sundown stood transfigured the remotest coasts ;

drew near and showed their redness of delight on all ;

heights hung rose-garlands Epomeo glowed upw^ard even

;

to the ether, and on the eternal cloud-tree, which grows

up out of the hollow Vesuvius, went out on the summit
the last thin glimmering of splendor.
Speechless, the companions turned from the west toward
the shore. The sailors began again to talk. " Make thy
brother," Linda softly begged her friend, " keep liimself
ahvays turned toward the west." She fulfilled the request
without immediately guessing its motive. Linda looked
continually into his beautifully irradiated face :
" Ask him
again," said she a second time, " the twilight is too deep,
and my weak eyes see so poorly without light." It was
not done, for they immediately went on shore. The earth
trembled beneath and after them as they trod upon it, as a
sounding-board of the blissful hour. Albano was fastened
in speechless emotion upon the beloved face, which he
must soon leave again. " I '11 write to you," said she, un-
asked, with so touching a recall of her former threat, that,
had he not been among strange eyes, he must have fallen,

intoxicated with gratitude upon her hand, upon her noble

heart. Hard was the parting, and the end of an harmo-
nious day in which the tone of every single minute had
been again a tri-clang. By this time Dian had already
departed. " Not even the roses of evening," said Julienne,
" are wdthout thorns." " An abrupt leave-taking is always
the best ; we will go home," said Linda. Albano begged
that he might be allowed to attend her. " Whither ? "

said Linda. Softly she added, for the sake of her eyes,
 " "
;

THE PARTING AT MOONRISE. 277

" I can hardly see you any longer ; however, only come,
I can hear, nevertheless." " Beautiful inconstant one !

said Julienne. " I change myself," said she, " but no other

does it ;
only as far as the chapel, Albano ; you sail

early in the morning." " Even earlier ; perhaps this very

night," said he.
While they thus more and more slowly descended
the mountain, and the nightingales warbled, and the
myrtle-blossoms breathed their perfume, and the tepid
breezes fluttered, and overhead the whole second world,
like a veiled nun, looked with a holy eye through the
silver-grating of the constellations, every heart overflowed
with faithful love, and the brother and the sister and the
beloved took alternately each other's hand.
At once Linda stood upon the spot of yesterday's union
and said, " Here he must go. Julienne " and swiftly !

drew her hand out of his, and smoothed lightly his locks
and cheek and then his eye, and asked, " How ? " in the
confusion of a dream. " Immediately," said Julienne
;

"one must, however, wait at least for the ItaHan winter,

for the moon, before one can even go home." Then the
brother fell upon the bosom of the tender sister, who
would fain hereby procure for him a longer tarrying, and
for her friend the privilege of seeing him again by a
stronger illumination, and he exclaimed, with tears, " O
sister ! how much hast thou done for me, before I could
do anything for thee, or even thank thee ! Thou givest
me, indeed, everything, — every joy, the highest felicity
O, what art thou like !
" " There is the moon !
" cried

she ;
" now farewell, and a happy journey !

Like a silvery day the moon had climbed the mountains,

and the transfigured beloved one saw again the blooming
face of her beloved. He took her hand and said, " Fare-
278 TITAN.

well, Linda " ! Long looked they upon each other, their
eyes full of soul, and they grew more strange and exalted
in each other's eyes. Then did he, without knowing how,
press to his heart the noble maiden, like a blessed spirit
embracing a spring sun, — and he touched her holy coun-
tenance with his, and like the red mornings of two worlds
their lips melted together. Linda closed her eyes, and
kissed with trembling, and only a single life and bliss

rolled and glowed between two hearts and lips. Julienne

gently enfolded the embrace with her own, and desired
no other bliss. Thereupon all parted, without speaking
again, or looking round.

1 13. CYCLE.
ALBANO, with the new haste which now reigned
in his actions, was already, beneath the cool morn-
ing star, flying from the happy soil. He told the archi-

tect, Dian, all his whole blessedness, because he knew

how very much of a youth the man still remained in
matters of love. " Bravo !
" answered Dian, " who can
escape without love in Italy ? At least none of us. It is

to be hoped your magnificent Juno is not so haughty

toward you as toward other people : then there may well
be for you a Hfe of the gods."
In the morning breezes, irradiated with sun and wave,
he swept gliding along on the blue, liquid mirror between
two heavens, and his eye was blest when it looked back
at the Olympus of Epomeo, and blest when it looked
back again on the coasts that gleamed up and down on
the long, outspread market-place of the earth.
When they came through the midst of those glimmer-
ing palaces, the ships, to the stationary ones, they found
 ALBANO WRITES TO LINDA. 279

the people in the ecstasy of a saint's festival. He was

compelled to bury the blue day and tlte sea in temples, in
picture-halls, in fourth stories, where, according to the
custom, several of the grandees dwelt, to whom he deliv-
ered letters from his father, and more beautifully in the
subterranean, gloomy street which arches itself through
the blooming Posilippo.
Only the prospect that, in the very next solitude, he
should converse with his distant heart quieted his spirit,

w^hich was always flying away from the present. At

evening they ascended the finest of the heights above
Naples, the cloister of Camaldole, where, among the pleas-
ures of the prospect, he saw, standing in gray distance
behind Posilippo, the lofty Epomeo. He could no longer
contain himself, but began, in a spot more thickly hidden
with blossoms than others, which he had sought out for
the purpose, the following letter to Linda :
—
" At last, noble soul, I can speak to thee, and behold
again thy island, although only as a sunny-red evening
cloud looming in the horizon. Linda, Linda, that I
have and have had thee ! Does, then, the two days'
divine dream last even over into the cold to-day ? Thou
art now so far off and dumb, and I hear no yes. When,
in Rome, on the dome of St. Peter's, I looked into the
blue morning heavens, and life swelled and sounded
around me as the breezes swept by, then it seemed to me
as if I must fling myself into a flying royal ship, and seek
a shore which grows green under the farthest constella-
tion as if I must flutter down, like a cascade, through
;

the heavens, and tear my way below there through this

stony life, pressing onward, and destroying and bearing

everything before me and with me. And so is it with me
zSo TITAN.

again at this moment, and still more emphatically. I

could fly over to tJiee, and say, ' Thou art my glory, my
laurel-wreath, my eternity, but I must deserve thee ; I
can do nothing for thee, except what I do for myself.' In
the olden time, beloved youths were great, deeds were
their graces, and tlie coat of mail their festal dress. To-
day, as I looked across on the Gulf of Baja, and on the
ruins where the gardens and palaces of the great Romans
still lie in ruins or names, and when I saw the old,

defying giants stand in the midst of flowers and oranges,

and in tepid, incense-breathing breezes, refreshed and
quickened by them, but not softened and subdued, — lifting

with the hand the heavy trident which moved three quar-
ters of the globe, and with sinewy breast going forth to
meet winter in the north, burning heat in Africa, and
every wound, —
then did my whole heart ask, Is it so '

with thee ? '

O Linda, can a man be otherwise ? The
lion roams over the earth, the eagle sweeps through the
heavens, and the king of these kings should have his
path on the earth and in the heavens at once. I have as
yet been and done nothing ; but when life is as yet an
empty mist, canst thou overcome it, or seize it fast and
dash it to pieces ? Wilt thou one day, thou Uranide, love
a man ? then will I shrink back from no one. But words
are to actions only the sawdust of the club of Hercules, as
Schoppe says. So soon as war and freedom cläsh against
each other, then will I deserve thee in the storm of the
times, and bring with me to thee actions and immortal
love.
"
Here I stand on the divine heights of the cloister-
garden, and look down into a green, heavenly realm which
knows no equal. The sun is already away over the gulf,
and flings his rose-fire among the ships, and a whole shore
 ALBANO'S CONFESSION TO LINDA. 281

full of palaces and full of men burns red. Through th«

long, wide-extending streets below me rolls up already the

din of the festival, and the roofs are full of decorated men
and women, and full of music. Balconies and gondolas
wait to welcome the divine night with songs. And here
am I alone, and am nevertheless so happy, and yearn
without pain. But had I been standing here four days
ago, Linda, when, as yet, I knew thee not and had thee
not, and had I been looking upon such an evening as this,

— upon the golden sea, — the gay Portici, upon which sun
and sea are rippling with flames, — the majestic Vesu-
vius, wound round with gold-green myrtles, and with his
gray, ashen head full of the glow of the sun, — and, be-
hind me, the green plain full of clouds of flower-dust,
which rise out of gardens and rain down in gardens again,
— and the whole busy, magic circle of glad energies, —a
world swimming in light and life, — then, Linda, without
thee, would a cold pang have darted through the warm
bliss, and remembrances with mourning masks would have
gone about in the golden light of evening.
" O Linda, how hast thou cleansed and widened my
world, and I am now happy everywhere ! Thou hast
transformed the heavy, sharp ploughshare of life, which
painfully toils at the harvest, into a light brush and pencil,
which plays about till it has wrought out a god's form.
Have I not seen to-day every temple and every hill more
glad, as if gilded by thee, and every beauty, whether it

bloomed on a statue, on canvas, on the singing lip, or on

the summits, wear a richer lustre, and felt it breathe a
richer fragrance ? and then did I not fly up from the
little flower to the blooming Linda ?

" How the dark Power holds sway behind the cloud !

It gives us sealed orders, that we may break them open

282 TITAN.

at a later time, upon a distant spot. God ! upon

Ischia's Eporaeo it was for me first to open mine. Then
rose a moment over life, and bore eternity ; the butterfly
brought the goddess !

" Evening goes down, and I must be silent. Might I

only know how thy evening is ! My life consists now of
two hours, thine and mine, and I can no longer live with
myself alone. May this day have stolen away from thee
richly and mildly, and thy evening have been like mine !

Only Vesuvius now reddens in the hngering sun. The

islands slowly fade away in the dark sea. I behold now,
without speaking to thee, the great evening, but, O God,
so otherwise than in Rome ! Blissfully shall I fix my
eye only on thy island as it is about to be extinguished in
the glittering din of the evening twilight, and yet long
shall I look thitherward, when already the summit of
Epomeo is dissolved in night ; and then shall I look
cheerfully down into the grave of colors encircled with

lights below me. Happy songs will steal through the

twilight ; the stars will glimmer affectionately ; and I
shall say, '
I am alone and still, but inexpressibly happy,
for Linda has my heart, and I weep only out of love,

because I think of her heart ' ; and then I shall go down

in blissful rapture through the blossom-smoke of the
mountain."

He came slowly back to Naples to his friend Dian ; all

the festive merriment which met him, the whole odeum of

joy, in which the ringing wheel of the hurdy-gurdy diz-

zily rolled round, seemed to him to be merely his echo ;

whereas, in general, not till the external, sensitive chords

of man are struck, do the inner ones sound after them.
All he wanted was to be ever hurrying onward, and — if
 TO LINDA FROM VESUVIUS. 283

it might be — to proceed this very night on his way to

Vesuvius. For him there was now only one season of
the day. The warmer climate, together with love and
May, seemed to awaken all the spring winds of his pow-
ers they blew with an impetuosity which made him con-
;

scious of them himself. Only before his beloved was he

— still sore from the wounds of the past merely a —
zephyr, which spares the dusting blossoms.
On the next day he proposed to ascend Vesuvius, and
on the morning after await his Dian in Portici, when he
had first seen from the top of the volcano the spectacle
of sunrise.

114. CYCLE.
E describes his journey to his beloved.
'y
J|"
" In the Hermit's Hut on Vesuvius.
" Why does not man fall on his knees and adore the
world, the mountains, the sea, the all ? How it exalts the
spirit to think that it is, and that it is conscious of the
immense world and of itself! O Linda, I am still full
of the morning I still sojourn even on the subhme hell.
;

Yesterday I rode in the morning with my Bartolomeo

through the rich, full garden avenue to the gay Portici,
which links Catana to ^tna. Ever
itself to the giant like

the same great epic Greek feature running through this

sublime land, —
the same blending of the monstrous with
the beautiful, of nature with men, of eternity with the
moment country-houses and a laughing plain opposite
;

to the eternal death-torch ; between old, holy temple-col-

umns goes a merry dance, the common monk and the
fisherman ; the glowing blocks of the mountain tower up
as a bulwark around vineyards, and beneath the living
284 TITAN.

Portici dwells the hollow, dead Herculaneum ; lava cliffs

have grown out into the sea, and dark battering-rams lie

cast among the flowers. The ascent was in the beginning

refreshment to my soul ; the long mountain was a con-
ductor to the full cloud. Late at night, after an eternal
ascent, without having enjoyed the evening sun, through
whose red glow upon the ashes we were obliged to wade
rapidly, we arrived here at the hermit's. The moon was
not yet up ;
thy island was still invisible. Often it thun-
dered under the floor of the apartment. Then was I
all at once pleasantly reminded by the hermit of my old
Schoppe, when he told me that a limping traveller with
a wolf-dog had once said up here, '
In Vesuvius was the
stall of the incessantly stamping thunder-steeds.' That
could certainly after all have been no one but Schoppe.
" 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 every-
where ; 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 Vesu-
vius streamed up into the pure air ; themoon 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 M^as 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
 SUNRISE FROM THE CRATER. 285

neither in the land of death nor of immortality ; the

countries became clouds Naples and Portici lay hid-
;

den the broad blue of heaven encompassed me a high

; ;

night-wind bent the smoke-column of Vesuvius down-

ward, and swept it on in long clouds, tinged with ever-

varying hues, through the pure ether. Then I looked

after Ischl a, and looked toward heaven. 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 everlast-
ingly 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 with-
in it, — a landscape of a workshop of the
craters, last

day, full of fragments of worlds, of frozen, burst hel^

floods, — an enormous potsherd of but inexhaust- time,
ible, 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 rollmore 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

286 TITAN.

Äpennine, and Sorama 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, ^tna, 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*
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.
" Linda, there sparkled thy outspread island, proud-
ly encamped in the sea, with the morning redness stream-
ing down over it, a high-masted war-ship ; and an eagle,
the bird of the thunder-god, flew into the blessed dis-
tance, as if he bore my heart in his breast away to thy

Epomeo. '
that I could follow him,' said my spirit.

The hot earth gave claps of thunder, and the smoke en-
veloped 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, stiU
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

* Campania Felice. — Tr.

 TO LINDA FROM PORTICI. 287

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 ; ivy, which hung from summits,
and the
swayed a Such shadowy twigs played once in
little.

Lilar in Chariton's chamber, when he was expecting

Liana, and then thought of Italy. The great, level, sim-

ple 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

va^t ! 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 meso 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

 :
;

288 TITAN.

draws, unconcerned what brows and joys his line of bliss

painfully cuts through ? If this line should one day go
tlirough our love —O forgive this premature pang ! in
this life, this alternation of transient showers and sun-
beams, 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 boldest 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 moun-
tains 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 ?

" Since the earthquake I have been somewhat ill. I

have, perhaps, not been accustomed to love, and so to die.
I take a philosophical book, — poets for just now take too
violent a hold of me, — and fancy I am still following it,
 LINDA'S HISTORY OF HERSELF. 289

when I have been long since flown away over the sea. I

am reading at this moment the hfe of the glorious Guyon.

She knows what love is, — that godlike affection for the
godlike, that losing of self in God, that eternal living
and abiding steadfast in one great idea, — that growing
sanctification through love, and that growing love through
sanctification ! The book falls out of my hands, I close
my eyes, I dream and weep and love thee. O Albano,
come earlier. What wilt thou now seek on mountains
and ruins ? we not come hither again ? But you
Shall
roving men Only women love, whether it be God, or
!

yourselves, alas Guyon, the holy Therese, the some-

!

what prosaic Bourignon, loved God as no man ever did

(except the holy Fenelon) ; man deals with the highest
being not much better than with the fairest. Albano, if

thou hast any other longing than I, if thou desirest more

on earth than me, more in Paradise than me, then say so,

that I may leave off and die. Truly, when thou em-
bracest thy sister, then I am jealous and long to be thy
sister, and thy friend Schoppe, and thy father, and every-
thing that thou lovest, and thy very self, if thou lovest it,

and thy whole heaven and thy whole thou in me, thy I
in thee.
" I will tell you something of my history. I went for
a long time in silence over the earth ; I saw courts, na-
tions, and lands, and found that most men are only people.
What did it concern me ? One must never say of any-
thing, that is bad, but only, that is stupid, and think no
more of it. What I do not love has for me no existence,
and instead of hating or despising it long, I have forgotten
it. I was scolded at as proud and fantastic, and could not
satisfy any one. But I kept and cherished my inner
being, for no ideal must be given up, else the holy fire of
VOL. II. 13 s
 ;

290 TITAN.

life goes out, and God dies without resurrection. I saw

men, and found always the simple distinction among them,
that some were fine, inteUigent, and delicate, without spirit

or enthusiasm, and the rest very hearty and enthusiastic

with shallow rudeness, but all selfish ;
although when
their heart is full, and not on the wane, they, even like
the full moon, show the fewest spots. Beside the teach-
ings of my great mother, beside your great father, no one
of them could hold up his head. Your Roquairol one
could neither love nor hate, nor respect nor fear, although
one could come very near to all these at once.
" It had a great effect, too, that I was always travel-
ling : travelling often keeps one colder. When I look
toward the coast, and think that a great Roman was now
in Baja, now
in Germany, now in Gaul, now in Rome,
and that him the earth was a great city, then I easily
to

comprehend how to him men became masses. Travelling

is an employment that we women always miss. Men
have always something to do, and send the soul outward
women must stay all day at home with their hearts. In
Switzerland I (as the Princess Idoine does) imposed upon
myself a little economy, and I know how by means of
little objects which one daily attains one consoles one's
self for the high one which lies, like a god's throne, on
an eminence.
" So I came just in this still week of life to the mer-de-
glace in Montanvert. Of picturesque mountains, plains,
dells, I had seen my fill in Spain, and of ice-mountains
in Switzerland. But a sea of ice at that height, a sol-
itary, primeval, blue-green sea surrounded with red rocks,
a broad waste full of restless, upheaving, tempestuous bil-

lows, which a sudden death, a Medusa's head, had so, in

the midst of life, frozen stiff and fast ! At that time a

 '

LINDA'S DEMANDS UPON LOVE. 291

storm, which at any other time would have been frightful

to me, swept up the mountain with flames ; 1 hardly no-
ticed it, my soul hung musingly on the stillness of a petri-
fied storm, on the repose of — ice ! I shuddered, wept
unusually all the way down the mountain, and the same
week laid my economical play-work aside and continued
my travels.
"I made, however, no storm-prayers, but dwelt down
below there without complaint in the rainy hollow of a
dark, cold existence. Then fate brought me to Epomeo,
and there the gods willed that the scene should be
changed.
" But now it must remain as it is. When a singular
being has said to a singular being, '
Thou art the one
!

then do they exist only through and for each other. The
Psyche with her lamp will not feel it, if the lamp catches
and consumes her locks and her hand and her heart,
while she blissfully gazes upon the slumbering Cupid ;

but when the hot drop of oil escapes from the lamp and
touches the god, and he awakes and angrily flies away
from her forever — forever — Ah, thou poor Psyche !

Of what avail to thee is death in the dissolved ice-sea ?

Has, then, no man ever yet experienced the pain of lost

love, that he may know what a thousand times harder
desolation it inflicts upon a woman ? Who of them has
fidelity, the genuine, which is neither a virtue nor a
sensation, but the very fire which eternally animates and
sustains the kernel of existence ?

" I am sick, Albano, else I know not how I come by

these gloomy ideas. I am so tranquil in my innermost
heart ; shown only the chords, not the tune. We
I have
must work and look, not upon the future, but upon the
next coming present. If the time should ever, ever ap-
292 TITAN.

pear — I have neither remorse nor patience — the time

when thou lovedst me no more, heartily — ah ! I should
be stiller, stronger, briefer than now : and what could
there be beyond, except to die either jTor the loved one or
— hy him ?

" Come soon, sweet one ! It is very beautiful around

us ; it has rained, all the world is in jubilee, and sees
the sun-drops, and has gathered itself a heavenly drink.
I, too, have set out in haste for thee dishes and vases.
Come ; I will bring thee the olive-leaf and the myrtle-
twig, and wind around thy head roses and violets. Come.
Once I little thought that I should look so often toward
Posilippo. L."
" P. S. — The rival also looks toward Posilippo, and
rejoices in the thought of thy return. Yet do not hurry
anything. Adio, caro. J."

Albano found in this character a silent justification and

satisfaction of all demands which at an earlier period,
when Liana was still living, he had always felt compelled
to make upon a loved being. He did not, however, per-
ceive, in the innocence of his love, that this was the very
being whom the longing after war and exploits that
reigned in his letter could not please.
He visited now the subterranean city in its church-
yard, near the Cestius' pyramid, as it were, of the volca-
no. Dian went through Herculaneum with him as an
antiquarian lexicon, in order to unroll before him the
whole domestic economy of the ancients, up to their very
painting ; but Albano was more moved than his friend by
this picture of the past dwelling in the midst of the pres-
ent, — by the still houses, and night-like streets, and by
the frequent traces of flying despair. " Would not all
 ALBANO AND LINDA MEET AGAIN. 293

these people, then, have been dead now, after all, if it

had not been for Vesuvius ? " asked Dian, gayly, in this

gay region. " I ask you, rather," he continued, " whether

an architect who comes out of this chamber or city of

art can take any longer much pleasure in sketching in

your Germany, after seeing these ruins of the earth, the

petty, pitiful ones for your princely gardens ? " They

saw in a dark vestibule one of those earthern masks
which they used to put into graves, with lamps like eyes
behind. at him staringly, and said,
Then Albano looked
"Are we not gleaming earth-masks on graves ? " " Fie !

what an odious idea " said Dian. !

Yet a long time, out there in the living sunshine, did

gloomy forms follow him. Near the shining Porti ci stood
Vesuvius, like a funeral pile, and on it the death-angel.
He thought of Hamilton's prediction, that the lovely
Ischia would one day perish over the mine of an earth-
quake. Even Linda's letter troubled him, with the bare
imagination of the possibility of losing her.
In Naples he examined a few more curiosities ; then
on the next morning he embarked for the Eden of the
waves.

115. CYCLE.

AND when they saw and embraced each other again,

they were even more enraptured and devoted to
each other than any happy heart could have foreseen.
Linda sat still and soft, looked upon the fair youth, and
let him and his sister tell their stories, the latter often in-

terrupting herself to kiss both. He spoke with great joy

about Linda's letter. Men always make more out of
what is written than women. Linda spoke indifferently :

" Ah, well, once written and read, let it be forgotten. In

294 TITAN.

yours, too, there is occasionally a northern faux hril-

lan€^ "The Countess," said Julienne, "never praises any

one to the face, but herself." Linda bore the joke with
characteristic good-nature. Albano, often pleasing and
often offending her when he was not conscious of it, for-

gave love ever so easily. Friendship finds it harder to

get forgiveness from offended vanity.
" Yes, indeed !
" cried Julienne, suddenly starting under
the veil of mirthfulness for a serious discourse ;
" thy

project of emigrating to France is a faux brillant. Canst

thou then believe that they will allow a princess-sister of
Hohenfliess to sign a pass to her brother for a democratic
campaign ? Never ! And nobody at all will do it who
loves thee Albano smiled, but at last grew serious.
!
"
Linda was silent, and cast down her eyes. " Can you
show me," said he, softly, as half in earnest and half in jest,
" a purer field of spurs on the whole map ? " "A poorer
field of spurge !
" * said she, playing on the words.
" Hardly, I should think !
" Now she began to shadow
forth, with aristocratic, feminine, and princely colors at
once, with tri-colored paints, all the flames, smoke-clouds,
and waves with which the Monte Nuovo of the Revolu-
tion had come up from the ground, and added, " Better
an idle count than that " He grew red. Always had
!

this womanly fettering of man's energy, this affectionate

fastening of one down to flowers, this unrighteous forging

over of the love-ring into a galley-ring, been to him a

* Spurge is a plant which has an emetic effect. If any reader will —
try his hand at improving this desperate imitation (or evasion) of an
untranslatable pun, of which (in the mouth of the witty Princesse
herself) the author might have said, with an equally noted artiste, in
a smaller sphere, —
" One of our failures," he Is informed that the —
German phi-ases are "Eine bessere Laufbahn" and "Einen bösem
Laufgraben." — Tr.
 THE BATTLE ABOUT THE WAR. 295

crying and odious thing. " In a world which is only a

fair- week and mask -ball, not to be able to maintain even
the freedom of fair and masquerade, is tough," Schoppe
had once said and he had never forgotten it, because it
;

came right out of his own soul back into it again. " Sis-
ter, either thou art not my brother, or I am not thy sis-

ter," said he, " else we should understand each other more
easily." Linda's hand quivered in his, and her eye rose
slowly towards him, and quickly sank again. Julienne
seemed to be touched with the reproach cast upon her
sex. Albano thought of the time when he had crushed
a heart of wax with one of iron, and said, more brightly
and coldly, " Juhenne, I should be very willing not to

say no to thee, if thou wouldst not take the absence of

a negative for an affirmative." He could, it occurred to
him, easily hide his contradiction behind the future, since
in fact no war was as yet decided upon in Europe ; but
he did not deem that honorable and dignified enough. " Do
not torment " said Linda to her.
!
" Certainly," said Ju-

lienne, with quickness, " I can, indeed, only think of this

and that ; what do I know ? " and looked very serious.
" Two days longer," she added, and sought to escape from
the serious mood, " can we spend like gods, yes, like god-
desses, upon the island, — although, at all events, I should
answer for a god, only not for a goddess ; that requires a
taller person. I am only a foil to the Countess out of in-
finite good-nature." For Julienne's stature lost by the
neighborhood of the majestic Linda.
The war of the loving beings had, however, not con-
cluded with a peace, and therefore remained an armistice.
As Vesuvius throws glowing stones, so does man throw
his objections up in himself, alternately flinging them aloft

and swallowing them again, till at last a more lucky direc-

tion sends them out over the brink.
296 TITAN.

In Albano, as may well be supposed, the question was

working, what Linda's silence in the little war imported
respecting and against the great one ; but he did not pro-
pose it. Conscious of the unchangeableness of his pur-
pose, he was milder toward his sister, whom he, as he
believed, should surely one day exceedingly -wound by it.
Thus had he become soft by the cold and warm alterna-
tion of life, as a precious stone, by rapid heating and
cooling, is transformed into medicine.
Swiftly and sweetly glided the last days of joy over the
island, which after the rain glistened in greenness like a

German garden. The soft, cool air, the fragrance of myr-

tles and oranges, single clouds of brightness in the warm
sky, the magic-smoke of the coasts, the golden sun at
morning and evening, and love and yourh decked and
crowned the rare season. High burned on the blooming
earth the sacrificial flame of love into the still, blue
heavens. As two mirrors stand before one another, and
one pictures the other and and the world, and the
itself

other represents all this and and the

also the pictures
painter, so tranquilly stood Albano and Linda before each
other, attracting and imaging soul within soul. As Mont
Blanc majestically mirrors himself down in the still lake

of Chede in a paler heaven, so stood Albano's whole,

sound, light spirit in Linda's. She said he was an honest
and an honorable man at once, and had, what was so rare,

a whole will ;
only, as is often the case with men, he
wanted to love still more than he did love, and therefore
did not sufficiently recognize his quiet, original sin, from
egotism. There was nothing against which he bristled
up more indignantly and excitedly than against this latter

charge, and he would not forgive it in any one save the

Countess. He refuted her as strongly as he could; but
 ;

ALBAXO AND HIS URANIDE. 297

lier opinion became, under the best annihilation, only a

mock corpse, and came back alive against him the very
next hour.
He became through her more nearly acquainted with
himself than even with her. He called her the Uranide,
because she seemed to him, like the heavens, at once so
near and so far off ; and she had no objection to this full

laurel-wreath. There is a heavenly unfathomableness,

which makes man godlike, and love toward him infinite

so did the ancients make Friendship the daughter of

Night and of Erebus. When Albano thus looked out
over the broad, rich spirit of Linda, — at once living for

her love, and harboring every other's love, and yet, as it

were, intoxicated with the thirst for knowledge ; at once

a child, a man, and a virgin ; often hard and bold with

the tongue for and against religion and womanhood, and
yet full of the tenderest, most childlike love toward both ;

melting in her glow before the beloved, and quickly stiff-

ening at a cold assault ; without any vanity, because she

always stood before the throne of a divine idea, and man
is never vain before God, but entirely confiding in herself
and submissive to no one, without, however, any compar-
ison of herself or others ; full of bold, manly uprightness,
and full of respect for talent and for shrewd understand-
ing of the world ; so perfectly free from selfishness, and
with such a childhke delight in others' gladness, without
special anxiety or respect for persons ; so inconstant and
inflexible, the one in wishing, the other in willing ; but
with her eye and life ever directed toward the sun and
moon of the spiritual kingdom, character and love, toward
her own and toward a beloved heart when Albano ; —
saw all this playing and flitting before him, then did he
live, as it were, on the single and yet immense, the mova-
13*
 TITAN.

ble and yet almighty sea, whose limit is only the clear
sky, which has itself none.
In the heaven of the three loving ones appeared at

length the dawn of the day of departure. It was deter-

mined by the two friends that Albano might accompany
them only as far as Naples, where their people waited for
them, then find them once in Rome accidentally, then on
Isola Bella for the last time accidentally, — a very un-
•friendly subjection to worldly appearance, upon which
Linda, however, insisted as strongly as Julienne, and to
which Albano himself, who by his birth was more har-
dened to the constraints of rank than a plebeian youth of
like soul, easily yielded up the bitter yes, under the
heavy veil which hung over all his connections. Julienne
decided upon all lesser ways and means ; she had been
during the whole tour the business-agent of the Countess,
who, as she said, had not head enough to buy herself a
hat for it, so impetuous, absent in money matters, and
dreamy was she. The sister was so lively, and entirely
restored, but said, all the five and thirty hot springs of the
island could not have done half so much for her recovery
as the same number of tears of joy which she had fortu-

nately shed.
Singular did all around them appear on the morning
of departure. A bright, warm cloud dropped silvery
drops ; the sun looked in between two mountains ; the
enraptured islanders sang a new popular song, amidst the
rain-harvest or drop-gleaning ; while their friends were
hastily borne away by the waves out of their circle of joy.
Agata stood, in order to cool herself, on the shore, with a
snake in her hand, and Albano felt a pain at the sight
which he knew not how to explain to himself* At this

* The reader, however, will know how to explain it who recalls the
 UNDER THE ARCH OF PEACE. 299

moment Epomeo parted the cloud-heaven, and shming

fragments of cloud sailed slowly along before them toward
the Apennine to the north, the heavenly dwelling-place
of the mist, and swiftly and lightly glided the shadows of
the sky over the swarming peaks of the waves.
" Ever mayest thou," said Albano, looking toward the
island, which was swimming backward to the west, " stand

fast with thy mountain ; never may a calamity tear the

fairest leaf out of the book of the blest !
" " How will it

be with us all," said Linda, " when we meet again, and

seek again the lovely soil ? " Just then they espied a
high-arched rainbow, that stood half on the island and
half on the waves, which seemed to fling it out as a gay,
arching water-column upon the shore. " We are going,"
said Julienne, delighted, " to pass under the arch of
peace." At this word the rain and the wreath of colors
disappeared, and the sun alone shone behind them.
The passage ran through the torch-dance of the waves.
The distances shone and smoked magnificently. "Why
do distances take so mighty a hold of the soul, although
painted with the same colors as what is nearer?" said
Albano. " That is the very question," said Dian. ^light-
ily lay the sea like a monster along the coasts stretched
out over their whole way to Rome, and tossed up and
down the scales of weaves. Albano said, " When I saw on
Vesuvius the mountain and the sea, I thought how pettily
and falsely narrow man sunders the two Colossi of the
earth into Httle, familiar members, and acts as if the same
sea did not stretch round the whole earth."
His friends were too deeply and sadly moved to make
any reply, and before strange eyes neither words nor
adventure which Roquairol told Albano of Linda with the snake, when
ßhü was a young girl. See Vol. I. p. 331. Tr. —
300 TITAN.

hardly looks were at their command. When Albane

saw again more nearly the battle-field of time, the ruin- —
coasts, which ever grasp and lift the man the old tem- ;

ples and Thermae, like old ships, dying on the land ; here
a crushed and crumbling giant temple, there a city street

down on the bottom of the sea ; * the holy memorial-

columns and light-houses of former greatness deserted
and extinguished amidst the eternally youthful beauty of
ancient nature, — he forgot the neighborhood of his own
transitoriness, and said to Linda, whose eye he saw di-

rected thither, " Perhaps I can guess what you are now
thinking of, — that the ruins of the two greatest times,
the Greek and the Roman, remind us only of a strange
past, whereas other ruins, like music, only admonish us
of our own. That was perhaps your thought." " We
think of nothing at all here," said JuUenne ;
" it is enough,
if we weep that we are obliged to go away." " Truly the
Princess is right," said Linda, and added, as if displeased
at Albano and everything, " and what is life, more than a
glass door to heaven ? It shows us what is fairest and
every joy, but it is, after all, not open."

By the accident of strangers' company they were com-

pelled to leave each other with cold show, and, according
to the custom of teasing, tantalizing fate, to conclude a
great past with a little present.
Albano travelled as hastily as his sensibility would allow
over the sublime world round about him. When he
arrived in Mola, he heard the singular intelKgence that
they had found in Gaeta a whole leathern dress, with a
mask, swimming far out to sea, which must have belonged
to the ascended monk, and in respect to which they found
nothing so inexplicable as the empty casing, without the
* At Baja.
 SUCH IS LIFE. 301

dead body. In Mola, the fair island of Ischia at lengtli

breathed out its last fragrance ; the high citadel of heaven

and the ascending pole hid among other southern constel-
lations this warm one also, which had so long gleamed
over him with suns of bliss ; and the last star of the short

spring went down.

Such is life ; such is bliss. Like the playing moon, it

consists of first and last quarters, and slowly waxes and

slowly wane?. In its hope, in its fear, a brief flash is

the moon of the deepest rapture a short invisibility

full ;

the new moon of the deepest desolateness and always ;

—
is the light game, like the moon, beginning its circle

anew.
 THIRTIETH JUBILEE.
Tivoli. — Quarrel. — Isola Bella. — Nursery of Childhood.
— Love. — Departure.
116. CYCLE.
LBANO alighted again at the Prince Lauria's,
who had hitherto swum in such a flood-tide of
new incidents, that he had hardly been con-
scious was disposed to
of the absence, and
wonder at Meanwhile the German war
the return.
against France had been settled upon. This news he
brought to his grandson, full of the joyful expectation
what great scenes such a struggle must unfold. Even
Albano was for a long time carried away with him by
this high stream, before he thought that this intelligence

would work otherwise and more dishearteningly on his

sister than on him. But the heroic fire, into which he

talked himself with the political Lauria, preluded to him
easy victory over a sister's affection.

He was going to announce his arrival to his two friends,

when he heard from the Prince that they had both, as he

had heard from the Princess Altieri, with whom they
resided, abeady gone to Tivoli. How happily he depart-
ed, guessing the friendly design of this episode journey,
out of Rome, radiant as it was with love and spring, and
looked quite as gayly towards the future, where his life
 THE xMYSTERIOUS MAN AT TIVOLI. 303

opened so bloomingly before him, as toward Tivoli, where

he hoped to press two hearts to one.

He found, when he arrived in the town of Tivoli, that

the ardent maidens had already stolen away to the cascade.
As a man in the Vale of Tempe, or before the Lake of
Geneva, passes along only in a careless dream over the
shore by the watery images of the heavens and the earth,
because the blooming originals round about seize and
kindle him, — even so the rocks of the thickly peopled
landscape, and the round Temple of Vesta, and the vales
dissolving into one another, from the Roman gate to the
temple, — this shining procession glided by only as dream-
and water-images before a heart, in which a living loved
one bloomed, and crowded out a world with a world's
fulness.

He roved around amidst the swarm of prospects, with-

out finding the fairest, when a short, pale-yellow, richly

dressed man eyed him with a shrivelled up face, and with

a silken arm pointed unasked the way to the falls, saying

if he were looking after the ladies, he would find them at

the great cascade.
Albano said nothing, went onward, saw two, and recog-
nized Linda by her tall form. At length the three friends
saw, found, embraced each other, and the magnificent
water-storm breathed into the delight. Linda spake tender
words of love, and felt as if she were dumb, for the beau-
tiful tempest of streams tore the tender syllables to pieces
like butterflies. They had not heard each other, and
stood before each other, pining for their sounds, encom-
passed with five thunders, with weeping eyes, full of love
and joy. Holy spot, where already so many thousand
hearts have sacredly burned and blissfully wept, and been
constrained to say, Life is great ! Serenely and steadily
 !

TITAN.

sparkles the city overhead in the sunshine down over the

watery crater ; proudly does the rent Temple of Vesta,
garlanded with almond-blossoms, look down from its rock
upon the whirlpools which undermine it and opposite to ;

it the tempestuous Anio preludes at once all that earth

and heaven have of greatness, —

the rainbow, the eternal
lightning and thunder, rain, cloud, and earthquake.
They gave each other signs to go, and to seek the more
quiet vale. How sounded to them therein the words,
brother, sister, Linda, like new human tones in Paradise
Here, before ascending the hill full of new waterfalls,
lightnings, and colors, they sought to report to each other
their journeys and their news. Julienne made the happy
report that her brother, the Prince, gave again hope of
recovery, since he had, with waking eyes, as he insisted,
seen his dead father, who had promised him a longer life.

The fair Linda bloomed in the Paradise like a veiled

goddess who had long been seeking and at last found

her beloved on the earth. She took his hand often, and
pressed it against her eyes and lips, and whispered, hardly
audibly, when he spoke to her or Julienne, " Dear ! friend-
ly man !
" As to the scenery she was silent, for she never
spoke of any till she had once come out of it.
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 littleman had seemed to
stout
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 hved in Tivoli, in the house
 THE WAR AGAIN.

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
Gardito^ and said, " It is a very beautiful, sound Corsi-
can (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 s^Dlit 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, wliich no human hand
 ;

3o6 TIT A Nr

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
and shall I go out of the world with a musty,
others,
mouldy Spanish or German Count's hfe? O my Linda,
"
do thou contend for me !

" I am not," said she, looking sharply toward the prin-

cipal 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 concen-
trated 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 eter-

nity of that elysium-life in Ischia as adequate to a man ?
 GREAT DEEDS OR A GREAT LIFE? 307

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 Ne-

apolitans, the people on the Apennines or the Pyrenees,
on the Ganges, in Otaheite, full of enjoyment and con-
templativeness, 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
show himself by this or that,
will

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 other-
wise, 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 feel-
ings 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
 ";

3o8 TITAN.

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 irre-

pressible fire, and though a goddess committed it out of
love, and offered him in compensation a world of para-
dises ; it is the robbery of his freedom and free develop-
ment. 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, " 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-constel-
lations 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.
" Certainly I will speak softly," said the Princess, who,
much more sensitive and resonant than Linda, had some
trouble in tuning her tone of speech to her promise
" nothing further is needed than the consideration that our
 ;

ALBANO AND THE MAIDENS PART. 309

quarrel is premature ; I make merely the request to

adjourn it till October, and the promise that then the issue
will be quite different." " O let it be !
" said Albano.
Linda nodded softly and slowly, and, contrary to expecta-

hand with both hers on her heart, and looked

tion, laid his

upon him weeping, with her large eyes, to which fire was
more usual than water. He was melted at beholding that
this powerful nature had only intensity without hate or
wrath, and infinitely was he refreshed by his former secret
suppression of his passionate flames.
The sister was softened by both, and a minute of the
tenderest love soon entwined the three beings in one em-
brace. The hyperboles of anger are never so serious
with man as those of love ; the former only the other
party must believe, the latter he believes himself. All
had been brightened and cleared up by this free ex-
pression.
If generally a cold past moment shuts up to lovers, as
a cold night does to bees, the flowers out of which they
take the honey, here, however, after the storm, the clear
blue air of heaven had become purer and stiller, and the
tranquillity became bliss, as the bliss tranquillity. Through
Albano, although rapidly, the Fury of fear had passed,
who holds an inverted telescope, and through it shows
man a very distant, empty heaven, without stars. But
not so through Linda ; she had throughout spoken in love
and hope, and for her glowing heart there were no icy
places. Therefore was he now so happy and so blessed
by the contemplation of that vigorous nature ! A long,
deep chain of valleys, wherein wine and oil flowed in the
fragrance of blossoms, led them all towards the great
Rome. For a space the youth could accompany them
at last, for a long separation, he must tear heart and eye
 TITAN.

away from the loved ones, when over the green, ghsten-
ing vales the mighty dome of St. Peter's already spar-
kled, and the cypresses, proudly encircled only with
cypresses, bore the gold of evening on their twigs with-
out stirring them. All had their eyes on the fair Rome,
but their hearts were only on Isola Bella, where they
promised to find each other again.

117. CYCLE.

ON the way to Isola Bella, he thought of

contention with the vehement Linda, and the char-
his hour of

acter of this war-goddess. He shuddered at the very

recollection of the steep precipice upon which, within a
few days, he had leaned so far over ; for Linda is so de-
cided, knows no alternative between passion and annihi-
lation. And yet, in this time of cool reflection, he felt

her imperious demand upon his liberty more severely

than ever, and said to himself, firmly, " Woman must
not be allowed to circumscribe or rule the holy domain of
man's development." On the other hand, it was, to be
sure, all love, and an excess of it ; and the longer he
journeyed and compared, so much the darker and lonelier
was it on that spot of his life upon which she alone cast
the great flame. She moved before him much more
clearly and nearly in spirit by his still contemplation of
her spirit, than in bodily presence, because the former
presented her at once in harmony, the latter with the in-
dividual dissonances without the solution. Her power of
all-sided impartiality towards all characters had appeared
to him, for a woman, quite as rare as it was great, espe-
cially as he himself let this power work more in the shape
of respect for her and in a glad, free appreciation of
 !

ALBAXO REVISITS ISOLA BELLA. 311

great, eccentric, poetical manifestations, but not of all,

even the flat and the worthless.

Ahke mighty and Love and Liberty
full-grown stood
within him, side by side. They were bound together and
reconciled only by a new resolution to be gentle, not
merely strong, to lay before her with all frankness his
right of freedom and his loving soul, and to be to her the
noble character which belonged to her. " Am I not such,
if I really will it ? " said he.

In the highest joy of life, in perfect oneness with him-

self and destiny, he made his journey to Isola Bella as
rapidly as if he were going to find there a beloved, in-
stead of merely awaiting one. How many a thing seemed
now smaller along his road, to which he applied the Ro-
man measure, and not the German, and before which he
now, as his father had foretold him, passed along flying
At last he saw the artificial Alp of Isola Bella standing
in the waves, and disembarked joyfully with his teacher,
Dian, in the garden of childhood, where he was to ex-
pect so much, and, with fresh Italian life-blossoms on his
heart, bid farewell to the land of promise.
He waited several long days, yearning and anxious for
his two friends, although his sunny companion was always
reminding him to make allowance for the rapidity of his
own journey. be gentle grew con-
His determination to

tinually more and more unnecessary and involuntary.

The very island itself, with its springs born of per-
fumes and with the distant garland of Alps, melted
his soul. In the former year he had seen it more in
leaves than in blossoms. It was, indeed, his land of
childhood. From many places on the lake stars glim-
mered up to him out of a deep, early, after-midnight
hour of life. Here had he for the first time found his
312 TITAN.

father, and for the first time seen Linda's form across the
waters ; here he finds and loses them again, after the
longest separation, for a still longer one ; and here he
stands in the gateway between north and south. The
free, fragrant land, full of islands, the Jacob's-ladder of
his life mounts back into the ether, and he goes down into
a cold region full of constraint and eyewitnesses ; his
love is judged by his father, it is assailed by the down-
fallen friend. " Ye days in Ischia," he sighed, " ye hours
in Vesuvius and in Tivoli, can you reverse your course ?

can you ever come back again and overflow anew the
insatiable heart, that it may drink, and say, '
It is
"
enough ' ?

To his Dian, as if by way of justifying himself and his

illimitable longing, he spoke frequently of Chariton and
their children, and asked him how it was with his heart

when he thought of them. " Don't talk to me so much

of them," said he, after his manner, feeling more than he
suspected or betrayed, " we are still so cruelly far off
from them ; one only spoils one's journey without cause.
But when I have them all ... . Well, ah God !
" Then
he paused, snatched the youth to his arms, and did not
kiss him.

On a fresh, blue morning Albano stood, before the res-

urrection of the sun in heaven, on the high, bloom-encir-
cled pyramid of terraces, where he had once, on awak-
ing, seen his dear father flee without farewell ; and he
gazed with emotion down into the vacant, broad lake,
and around on the summits of the glaciers, which already
bloomed in the reflection of Aurora riding down from on
high, — and no one was with him but the past. He looked
upon himself and into his breast, and thought :
" What a
long, heavy time has already passed through this bosom
 LINDA AND JULIENNE ARRIVE. 313

since that day ! A whole world has become a dream

within me ! And the heart still beats fresh and sound
within thee !
" All at once he saw, in the light morning-
smoke of the lake, a skiff rowing along. Slowly, lazily
it waded, for he saw it from a great distance. At last it

glided, it flew ; the sail bloomed up in the morning-blaze,

and the green waves became a wild-fire, playing around
it, as formerly in Ischia, on that evening, around Linda's
skiff.

Linda it was, and his sister. They looked up, and

motioned a greeting. He cried, in hasty joy, " Dian !

Dian !
" and ran down the long flight of steps, all aston-

ished and enraptured at the wide-spread splendor, be-

cause, on account of the glad apparition, he had not seen
the sun rise, for it was he who was strewing before the
loved one the fair flames, like morning flowers along the
path of the waters.
" Is it you again, ye divine ones ? O speak, weep for

joy, that I am blest and have you once more. Come ye

then again with your real old love ? " Thus he went on
speaking in eloquent ecstasy, born of his long-dreaming
expectation. Linda looked with secret angelic pleasure,
with lovely reflection into the high-playing flames of his
love ; and his sister enjoyed in a sweet emotion of sym-
pathy the beautiful mildness on both their countenances,
which, in union with energy, is as enchanting as moon-
light on a mountain. Descriptions of travels were begun
by both parties, but ended by neither ;
arrangements for
the day and plannings out of the island were projected,
but none chosen. Julienne held up before his heart his
own word and her stipulation, that at evening he must
pursue his journey, as a slight cooling against the fire of
joy that burned therein ;
sadly he looked up to the
VOL. 11. 14
 ;

3M TITAN.

friendly, serene morning sun, as if it were not mounting

higher, but already going downward.
They went now on a lovely stroll through the island
everywhere bloomed beside the present a still past, under
the rose a forget-me-not. Here, in this grotto before the

leaping waves, had he once played with his sister Seve-

rina, and on this island was her death announced to him.
" But, Julia, thou art my Severina, and more," said he.
" I think," said she, softly, " quite as much." Not far
from the arcade was it that he had for the first time gazed
into the face of his father. " But O when wilt thou find
thy father at last ? Speak about this, good Linda !
" said

he. She blushed, and said, " I shall find

him when fate
permits." " But when "I know nothing about
is that ? "

it," said she, with a soft hesitation. Then Julienne

touched him, nodding, and said, in as much French Latin
as she could muster together, but in an indifferent tone,
as if she were soliloquizing to the air, " Non earn inter-
roga ampUus, nam pater veniet {ut dicitur) die nuptia-
rumr * He looked at her with astonishment ; she nod-
ded repeatedly. " Julia," said Linda, smiling, " is like
women, as cunning in acting as she is open in speaking.
I could not have disguised myself from a brother so
long." " When the brother and sister," replied she, " do
not find each other till they are equally grown up and
with all perfections, they can easily become lovers of
each other, while other sisters have first for many years
to conquer the faults of the brother growing up."
Now they came upon the gallery, amid lemon-blossoms,
where Gaspard had let his son see so many veils and
masks hanging about the future ; then Albano said, with

* Question her no longer, for her father will come (it is said) on the
day of the nuptials.
 ALBANO'S NURSERY AND PLAY-ROOM. 315

displeasure, " Here I had to let many riddles be an-

nounced to me, — and there " — he meant the spot in the

sea where Linda's image had first appeared to him on

the waves — " even this precious form was mimicked.'*
" My God !
" said Linda, vehemently, " why speak any
more of it at all ? O it was so wicked to do it !
" " No
much by it," said Julienne, joking,
one, however, has lost
" except a couple who have lost their hearts, and I my

anonymousness!" "Could we not both answer, Albano?"

said Linda, softly, and raised her eyes. '^By Heaven,
that we !
could " said he, strongly, for without those prel-
udes they would have sought and found each other
earlier.

Amidst these lookings into a past so singularly inter-

woven with futurity, they had stepped into the Borromasan
palace, which to-day was fortunately without occupants ;

because Albano, at Linda's request, was to usher them

both into the chamber, where he and Severina were
brought up. The palace-keeper, supposing they were
only in quest of a prospect, — for the nursery apart-
ments were in the fifth — would
story, have led them
out on the roof; he insisted they were dusty children's-
chambers, and had been locked up from time immemorial.
With difficulty the man turned, with a rusty key, a rust-
eaten lock. They stepped into the bedusted, clear-ob-
scure, high, empty chamber, wherein a vacant cradle, a
flower-pot with a little Chinese rose-bush dried up like
its earth, a child's pewter watch, a girl's baby-kitchen
with old-fashioned utensils, a rolled-up shining harpsichord
string, a German almanack of 1772, many black seals
with bare antique heads, a dried-up twig of the liana, and
the like, lay as cast-off" lumber round about. Man looks
with emotion down into the far, low-lying time, M hen the
 "

3i6 TITAN.

spindle of his life ran round as yet almost naked without

threads ; for his beginning borders more nearly upon his

end than the middle, and the outward bound and the
homeward bound coasts of our life hang over into the
dark sea. Albano was touched with melancholy at the
scene around him, and at this glimpse of human life and
this out-look upon his own green fields yet standing in
wintry lowness, — and at the sight of the spot where he
had lived with a mother and a sister, who had vanished
from the earth, yes, even out of his imaginings. He took
up the pewter watch, and said, " Is there a better watch
for that age which knows no time but only eternity, than
this one with only an index and no wheel- work ?

Linda was surprised as she drew away a curtain from

a glass casket and a waxen child, of angelic beauty, lying

therein, caught the light in her clear eyes. " It is the

dead Severina," said Albano, hastily, with the harsh
adjective " dead," which Linda could not well endure.
It became more and more uncomfortable to him in the
clear-obscure chamber, — a streak of sunshine burned in
singularly down through the window, — animated
lofty
resurrection-dust played — the
therein, of the spirits sis-

ter and of Liana might at any moment flash across the

earthly light, — and the mountains out in real life re-

ceded into the distance. When he looked again upon the
blooming Linda, all at him changed,
once she appeared to

strange, supernatural, as if she appeared among spirits,

and was going hence again. She looked upon him signifi-
cantly, with the words, " One is not at home here, let us
go !
" " Woman !
" said he, with strong voice, in Ger-
man, making answer to an inward terror, and grasped
her hand, " we will hold together like a live heart, if one
should try to tear it asunder." Linda replied, " I cannot

stay longer, Julienne !

" and they went.
 TWO OLD WAXEN IMAGES. 317

On the threshold it occurred to the Count to look into

the next chamber ; he opened it and shrank back, but
cried, " You only go on," and he himself went in. He
had, namely, beheld himself twice imaged as in a mirror.
Within the chamber he found himself standing in wax in

a niche in French uniform, but as a youth still, and close

by, which the door had concealed, his father also as a
youth, dressed in the old fashion, but beautiful as a Gre-
cian god ; the warm, full, flowery face had not yet been
iced over in the winter of mature life, and still bloomed
with love. He plunged deep into the sea of the past.
The colossal statues out of doors, and the illuminated
mountain ridges had risen up out of the dark waves, and
stood in dripping splendor. There was a call from with-
out. He looked again into his face, but angrily. " Why
twice over ? " said he, and crushed his face, but it was to

him like suicide and laying hands upon his very self and
soul. The form of his father he still more begrudged to
the strange, unguarded place, but it was to him too holy
for the slightest touch.
He went back, and remained silent on the subject of
the images, in order not to ruffle the great, stubborn wings
of Linda's fancy. The green, glistening, blooming day
soon swallowed up the cold shadows which had fallen in
from the heights and grave-mounds of the past. " But
now," said Albano to Linda, " as you have just come out
of my nursery, lead me once into yours." " I will not

crown thee until we are at the right place," said she, and
broke off and bound together twigs of the laurel wood,
through whose swarm of light and dark waves they were
now passing, for a garland. Bodily activity gave to this
maiden, who, with more than common ease, knit together
tones and colors and ideas, a peculiai'ly touching aspect
3i8 TITAN.

of childlikeness and naive condescension. She braided

the wreath, but with difficulty, confounded once the arbu-
tus with the laurel that resembles it, put in one more
blooming myrtle-twig, and decked his curled hair with it,

but very seriously. " The garland becomes thee ; the

high laurels up on the summit thou wilt one day get for
thyself," said she. He thought she was playing behind
this seriousness ; but she looked joyfully and searchingly
and smilingly on the crowned one, but like a mother, and
said :
" It is right so ! What wilt thou more ? I will
bring it. Albano, I have at this hour a very peculiar and
new love for thee. I could do much for thee, endure
much. My heart moved with exceeding love. Kiss
is

me not. I will tell thee." The fair womanliness which

loves the beloved more ardently and intimately when it
has for the first time gone over his homestead, the scenes
of his childhood, his dwelling-places, unconsciously filled

her strong heart. He kissed her not ; he looked upon

her, and wept in the ecstasy of love. She inclined her
head towards him, and said, but cheerfully, " It is hard for
me to weep, dearest ! I will tell thee what thou desiredst
to know about my childhood. Of the first places of my
childhood but a very faint impression remains with me, —
perhaps because we were always travelling, and because
I look more for persons than for scenes, — except my
having stayed longest in Valencia. Probably from this

early travelling I derive my travelling mania. After all,

however, it lies in my nature. But you always believe,

like theGermans, that you learn that which you properly

inherit or create.By my mother I was more hated and
loved than by any one. I am now clear about her. She
was wholly born for art or for the arts, although I believe

that she was originally marked out by the gods for the
 ;;

LINDA'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 319

Stage. She was everything this minute, nothing the next

curses and prayers, belief and unbehef, hatred and love,

alternated in this epic nature. She could have lavished

a world, and she could have stolen one. She once pressed
me to her heart, and said, '
Wert thou not my daughter, I
would steal or kill thee out of mere love and that was ' ;

when I had said, '

I love Medea more than Creusa.'
" However, she was too inconsistent to be wholly loved
I loved my invisible father far more. I thought he was
God the Father. I once imagined he must dwell in the
Porta Cceli ; * for whole hours together I went round the
garden of the dead of the cloister, and looked longingly
through the palms over the roses of the graves ; I hung
on every living thing, even to pain. A dying canary-bird
once made me sick, and I thought the mass for the dead
was read for him. On God and spirits also I hung in a
sort of intoxication. They once flashed by before me in
the fire which I struck out of sugar in the dark. I never
played, but read early. As I was very serious, and my
form developed itself precociously, I was early treated as
a grown person, and I desired it too. No one was earnest
enough for me, except my guardian, who, with secret
hand, governed my development. Over books and in
travelling carriages my early life passed away. I envied
men, and their knowledge, and their freedom, but they
did not please me, still less did women. I passed for
proud — and at an earlier period I was so too — and for
fantastical. I took it not ill, and said, '
You have your
way, and I mine.'" The narrative was interrupted by
Dian and Julienne.

* A very beautiful Carthusian convent at Valencia.

320 TITAN.

118. CYCLE.

THE first

his sister
solitary
he devoted
minute which Albano found with
to an inquiry about her Latin
intelligence that Linda's father would appear precisely on
her marriage-day ; but she referred him to his own father,

who could tell him all about Linda's, and begged him " to

indulge Linda, not only in her tenderness, but also in her

characteristic shyness of marriage, which went very far.

She could not, upon one accompany a female

occasion,
friend to the nuptial altar," Julienne added " she called ;

it the place of execution of woman's liberty, the funeral

pile of the fairest, freest love, and said the heroic poem

of love became then, at the highest, the pastoral poem of

marriage. Of course she knows not whither such princi-
ples ultimately lead." " I hope, too, that thou trustest
her," said Albano, making other and higher deductions
from this singularity than his strict sister. She suddenly
broke off, to impart to him a piece of advice which he
was to take with him to Pestitz, —
namely, to shun the
Princess, who was, to the very core, cold, false, revengeful,
and "
She has something in view with thee, and,
selfish.

indeed, much and her hatred toward the Countess must

;

now be added. Linda clearly apprehends her, but yet

she lets herself, out of passionateness, be carried away
and made use of by all whom she foresees and sur-
veys." Albano adhered to his old, milder judgment of
the Princess, — so much the more, as he already knew
Julienne's moral severity towards every woman of genius,
from her misjudgment in the case of Liana, — but he
readily gave her his word to shun the Princess, without
telling her the reason, — namely, the love which the
woman had for him, and of which it was so hard to disen-
 DIAN AND ALBANO IMPROVISATE. 321

cliant her. To his tender feelings, there was no greater

rudeness than this public breaking open and reading of a
love-letter, this masculine catching and proclaiming of a
woman's sigh of love through a speaking-trumpet for the

people.
All came together again, encamped themselves upon a
spot which commanded the lake and the Alps, and the
shadows of the blossoms. The day cooled its glow, and
sank from beauty to beauty down into evening. " On
this exquisite island," said Dian, " already the Northern
nature begins, and we shall soon find ourselves at home
under a peaked roof." " Well, yes," said Julienne ;
" but,

after all, one is glad too, at last, when one sees again a
neat man, a blonde, and a shadow, and hears a bird or
two." * "I think not here of Tivoli and Ischia and
Posilippo," said Albano ;
" I think of my childhood and
of the Alps. Over on the shore of the long lake {Lago
Maggiore) of course the two sugar-loaves may not repre-
sent themselves to the best advantage, but, as a compen-
sation for that, here from the sugar-loaf the shore and
the lake appear so much the better, and for him who
stands on this alp of the lake, it is, after all, made." " All

is indifferent to me," said Linda ;

" for I find myself here
entirely well. Remarking upon fine landscapes is also a
Northern characteristic, because there one can become
acquainted with them only through books. The Italian,

who has them, enjoys them as he enjoys health, and is

conscious only of the deprivation of them ; for this reason

he is not even a great landscape-painter."
" One should," said Dian, " celebrate in song the mag-
nificent Italy, even upon the boundary-line, if one could
* Singing-birds are rare in Italy, because they are sold in the mar-
ket for the kitchen.
14* U
322 TITAN.

get a guitarre from the Castellain." He went and

brought one. He now began to improvisate in Italian.

He sang :
" Apollo felt his old love for his former pas-

toral land on the earth and for thelost, veiled Daphne,

wake again within him he came down from heaven to

;

find both. Jupiter had given him Momus as a compan-

ion of his journey, who should show him all that was
odious, that he might flee back. As a beautiful, smiling
youth he went over the islands, through the ruins of the
temples, through eternal blossoms ; he passed along before
divine paintings of an unknown, exalted virgin with a
child, and before new tones of music, and moved as over
the magic circle of a new and fairer earth. In vain did
Momus show him the monks and pirates, and his temples
prostrated by the hand of time, and quizzingly make him
take columns of thermae for temple-columns. The god
looked up at the high, cold Olympus, and looked down
upon this warm land, upon this great, golden sun, these
clear, blue nights, these ever-blooming perfumes, these
cypresses, these myrtle and laurel woods, and said,
' Here is elysium, not in the subterranean world, not on
Olympus.' Then Momus gave him a laurel-twig from
Virgil's grave,* and said, ' That is thy Daphne.' Now
did his great sister Diana grow indignant. She gave
Daphne her form and dress, as if she had come over out
of the woods of the Pyrenees ; but he recognized his
beloved, and went back with her into Olympus." As
Dian sang this, and let the strains fly with the tones of
the strings, there stood high over in heaven the eternal,
radiant mountains of ice ; from the mountains fluttered
streams and shadows into the bright lake, and the evening
bestirred itself with kindling and enchanted glow. Then
* Dian did not love Virgil.
 JULIENNE LEAVES THE LOVERS ALONE. 323

the silent Albano seized the strings, buried his eye in the
gleaming of the mountains, and blushing, began :
" Linger
awhile, O singer, among who marched,
the lofty spirits
killing, dying, over the battle-field, and who built up the

everlasting temples of humanity linger among the pure

;

diamonds that remained firm and bright under the ham-

mer of destiny linger in
;
the olden time, in the sea of
Eome, which bore upon its bosom one quarter of the
world, and undermined the others ; but flee before the
time which sank its own crater. Linger,
summit in its

singer, on the heights, and look down into the garden of

the world, which is the play of human life. The ruin
becomes a rock, and the rock a ruin ; on the high promon-
tory the blossom breathes fragrance, below lies the sea
with open jaws ; over Scylla gleam beautiful houses and
streets amidst the lair of frightful rocks. And the god
flies over the land and sees the child on the temple-
column by the shore, and the temples of the gods full

of monks, the marshes full of nameless ruins, and the

coasts full of blossoms and grottoes, and the blooming
myrtles and grapes, and the fire mountains and the
islands, and Ischia."
But the storm-swept guitarre sank from his hands,
and his voice died away ; his eye lost itself in the depths
of heaven and of human life, and he withdrew himself
to still his loud heart. In the cooling solitude he ob-
served how far already the sun had flown down, as on
Cupid's wings, through a colder heaven ; he speedily
turned back, and in the evening redness his parting-
hour struck.
When he came back, Linda was alone, for Julienne,
under the pretext of inspecting the picture cabipet, had
drawn away his Dian from the lovers, to whom, be-
 " "

324 TITAN.

sides, only the shortest day of bliss had been to-day

allotted, and his beloved looked on him significantly.
" Dian, strictly speaking, sang better," said she, " and
more epically, but your lyric nature I also hold very
dear." She looked at him again and again, then into
his eye then she embraced him impulsively, and not a
;

sound betrayed the sudden kiss. " We will go up on the

terrace," said she, softly. They mounted the lovely
height of the ten terraces, which fill the sight with
laurel and citron trees, and with pyramids and colossal
statues, and with the prospect of the distant shore sur-
rounded with villages and alps, and where once Albano
had seen his father flee. "Thou pleasest me more and
more, Albano," said Linda. " I almost believe thou canst

really love. Tell me thy first love ; I have told thee

my story." " O Linda," said he, " how much thou de-
sirest ! But I am true, and tell thee all. Thoii wilt love
her as she loved thee. See here thy picture, which with
her dying hand she made and gave me !

He handed her the little sketch, and her eye grew

moist. Thereupon he began, in a low and solemn tone,
the picture of his first love ; how he had reverenced and
sought her early, when she was yet unseen, and in the
first morning beams of and how he found her and
life, ;

how made him happy, and was not so herself; how

she
gentle she was, and he so wild and harsh how he de- ;

manded of her his own impetuosity of heart how bar- ;

barously he took her renunciation, and how she perished

through him. " O, I have dealt hardly, good Linda !

said he. " No," said she, " I weep for you both." " I

have great imperfections," said he. " I forgive thee all,"

said she, " if thou canst only love. But the lovely crea-
ture also committed many faults, and against love." She
 PAINFUL PRESENTIMENTS.

checked herself, then asked, in a low voice, " Albano, is

she still in thy heart ? " " Yes, Linda," said he. " O
thou honest and true man !
" cried she, with inspiration,
and laid her head upon his breast and prayed, " Holy
God, give thy immortals everything, only leave me for-

ever this man's breast, that he may be really loved, inex-

pressibly, and that I may not sink !
" " If thou wilt,

dear," she whispered suddenly, and raised herself up,

looking upon him with infinite love and resignation,
" that I dwell in Lilar, only command it."

This womanly, waiting submission of so free, mighty a

spirit, made him speechless. Like an eagle, the flame of
love seized him and bore him aloft. He glowed on her
blooming countenance, and the bridal torch of the setting
sun darted in with great flames between the two. " Lin-

da," he began at length, with trembling, solemn voice, " if

we could know that we should ever lose or forsake each

other ! O Linda," he continued, with difficulty, through

his tears and his kisses, " if that were possible, whether
through my fault or through cold fate, were it not then
better that we at this moment plunged into the lake and
died in our love ? " The glow of the sun burned in like
an aurora, snatching away youths and virgins to the gods,
and the twilight of life was kindled into a bright morning
redness. " If thou knowest that," said Linda, " then die

now with me !
" Just then Julienne's distant voice awoke
both ; at last she came herself with Dian, to take leave.
They looked round, awaking, dazzled with the sun and
with love, and all was changed. The sun had sunk, the
broad lake was overhung with misty shadows, and the
world was chilly ;
only the lofty glaciers blazed still with
rosy redness into the blue, like memorial pillars of the
flaming covenant-hour.
 "

326 TITAN.

Before Albano's soul stood even now the form of des-

tiny, so coldly dividing human beings, the veiled rocky
form, whose veil is also of stone, which no one raises. He
would now fain have burst through it, and directly, with-

out cowardly delay, dashed down into the midst of winter.

" O till Hesperus has gone down, pardon me !
" whispered
Linda. He stayed ; but neither had words any longer,
only eyes ; the reined-in eagles, which had formerly hur-
ried the celestial Venus-car through the heavens, fluttered
wildly in the traces. The evening star went down ; the
half-moon, in mid-heaven, touched the earth with her
beams, as with magic wands, and transformed it into a
pale, holy world of the heart. " Only let the great star
go down now," said she, and looked upon him longingly.
He did so. The nightingales skipped musically among
the silvery twigs ;
only the human beings had a voiceless
heaven and love.
" Only one little star more !
" she begged. He obeyed,
touched by the very expression, but she summoned up
her resolution, and said, " No, go !
" " We will, Dian !

said he. Dian, indulgent to love, led the way down the
terraces. Long and ardently lay the brother and sister
on each other's hearts, and wished each other a pleasant,
undisturbed reunion. Linda gave him only her hand, and
said not a word. As the still heaven of night covers its

hot sun, so was her flaming heart concealed ; and when

he went, without looking after him, she clasped his sister
to her heaving bosom.
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
 ;

ALBANO AND DIAN BOUND NORTH. 327

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, —

was veiled. He
at last all

turned himself round toward the pale-gUmmering gla-

ciers, 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.
LBANO and Dian flew joyfully over the German
Jr\. 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 shad-
ows, 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 be-
hind him, a northern unfolded itself before him ; and his
travelling-carriage stopped on the variegated avenue among
the blossom-shadows of a long garden.
 ;

328 TITAN.

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 uncov-
ered, 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 sub-
lime 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 * 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

* So heavily and slowly does the broad lava-stream

roll down, that

a man can travel on in advance of this glowing death-flood, which

swalloAvs lip, suffocates, and melts down everything it touches, and
can see the destruction behind him, without indulging an apprehen-
sion of danger to himself.
 " "

DIAN POINTS OUT GASPARD. 329

look backward, and he comes off unscathed. My beloved

teacher, so will I now do in my new and momentous rela-
tions ; 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 !
 THIRTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
Pestitz. — Schöpfe. — Dkead of Marriage. — Arcadia. — Ido-
INE. — Entanglement.

120. CYCLE.
ASPARD received his son with the usual state-
ly coldness of the first hour, as letters begin
more coldly than they end. Not until this
morning-frost had melted away and it grew
warmer around him, did Albano disclose to him, without
fear or pusillanimous blushing, and with matured manli-
ness, the bond which he had forever concluded with Linda
and with himself, and begged him for the third yes. " So
after all," replied the Knight, " the old enchanter has car-
ried it through at last ; of course under the reinforcement
of a young enchantress. That I shall never disturb thee
in anything which thou seizest upon with whole soul and
forever, that thou knowest already from a similar case in

the last year." Albano grew red at the bitter mention of

had gained strength within a half-year
his first love, but

to preserve amanly silence, in cases where he once spoke

out like a youth. Gaspard, more glad and warm than
usual towards him to-day, nevertheless went on, when he
perceived his sensitiveness :
" I pronounce it good ! As
the seal-engraver in the beginning stamps the arms in
wax, and then, and not till then, etches them on the pre-
 HOW GASPARD TAKES ALBANO'S NEWS. 331

cious stone, so does man essay to impress his upon more

than one heart, until he at last gets the firmest. It must
be owned thou hast not made the worst choice in my
ward, and I gladly give my word of assent to it."
Albano pressed the hand which drew the sweet knot
of love still tighter, and said, in the entrancement of grat-
itude :
" I found my sister, too, the Princess. I put no
question to her, however, as lately, but count upon time."
" Mocker !
" said Gaspard, and assumed, seemingly by
way of cooling him off, the cruel appearance of thinking
his pure, noble son had been disposed to retort upon him
the bantering allusion to having many love-affairs. " Only
be silent about all in thy innermost heart, as I myself
have hitherto been, and conceal thy knowledge from the
court. Give me thy word of honor."
Albano said he had already given it to Julienne also.

He was, however, driven back, by Gaspard's whole de-

portment, upon conclusions which placed moral garlands
neither upon his father nor upon Julienne's mother.
Gaspard added, furthermore, that it was a misfortune
for a man to be entangled with fantastic women, — as
Albano already knew his mother to have been, — and, in
fact, with three at once, and advised him to march on
boldly, as hitherto, through all riddles, and leave them to

solve themselves. Thereupon he proposed to him, as

a test of the third female fancy-monger, the question
whether he already knew that the Countess, notwithstand-
ing his guardianship, had still her living father, who would
appear for the first time on her wedding-day. He said,
" Yes." Gaspard then continued This reason, of itself, :

— in order that Linda might find her father, and all of

them the peace of clearness at last, — decided him for an
early, secret marriage of the two through the honorable
Spener.
332 TITAN.

Albano, really terrified at the prospect of the near and

speedy transformation of blissful hours into blissful years,
and no more able to think of his Titaness as wife than
to think of her as child, answered, modestly and with
disinterested reference to Linda's dread of wedlock, that,
as to the time of sealing his happiness, no one must or
could decide but Linda herself.
Gaspard was well content. " I only insist upon your
adjourning the matter awhile," he subjoined. " My friend
the Prince is again near his end ; the beneficial effect
which a spiritual apparition had wrought upon him has
gradually subsided, and he fears daily the return of the
phantom, which has promised to foretell him his last

hours. At such a time your festival does not serve my

purpose. To speak in confidence, the poor patient had
himself an eye to the fair bride. It is, after all, but fair

to spare him the highest certainty of his loss. On his

account I also postpone my departure."

As if a man should enter into the new-created par-
adise, and all birds at once — nightingales and eagles
and owls and birds-of-paradise and vultures and larks —
should beset him, so confusedly did Albano feel himself
excited by these mutually crossing prospects, and he per-
ceived that there could be no dependence nor defence
here, except in his own heart and Linda's.
Gaspard seemed to be impatient to see the Countess
again, whom he called his only friend. " Unfortunately,

I did not believe my brother in Rome," he added, " when

he insisted on having met both ladies in Naples. Apro-
pos, that brother passed through here some time ago, on
his way to Spain ; in Rome
he asserted he was travelling
to Greece. Thou seest with what poetic pleasure and
geniality he carries on pure lying."
 ALBANO PRESENTED AT COURT. 333

Gaspard parted from him very warmly, with the words,

" Albano, I am very well satisfied with thee ; I should be
infinitely so if the purity of the youth had passed over
into the man ; I have not yet found it so." Albano was
about to affirm and swear with emotion. " That is why,"
he continued, waving away the oath with a light motion
of the hand, " thou foundest me so glad about thy good
fortune, for the Princess's friend had already announced
to me thy love in the morning. Take heed to thyself

before her, for she hates thee without bounds."

With a hard and horrible aspect, like a new and
extraordinary beast of prey behind the grating, does a
real though unarmed hatred present itself for the first
time before a good heart. Albano demanded no confirma-
tion or explanation of this sad intelligence, for the love
and error of the Princess, her acquaintance with his for-
mer coldness toward Linda, her silent bitterness toward
Linda herself, were quite flames enough for her to cook
the strongest poison by.
He took up his residence again, at the request of his
father, at the house of Doctor Sphex, situated, unmean-
ingly to him, down in the valley ; and Gaspard resumed
The Knight
his abode in the palace, near his sick friend.
him to the court, which soon observed
speedily presented
and remarked the brown of travel, the sharper hghtning
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 Bouve-
rot. As a face upon which, in the late, gray years of hfe,
fair joyousness can still picture itself, announces a fair life
334 TITAN.

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 dai-k, manifold shadowy retinue of hard, old recol-
lections. 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 ^olian-harp in a dead calm — to his child-

hood'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.
was a fresh, blue, summer day when Albano went
ITto 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 every-
where, 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 eflfemi-
 ;

RABETTE AND ROQUAIROL. 335

nately 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 in-

troduced a festival into a festival, when he entered tlie

noisy paternal apartment, full of birthday electors, bloom-

mg, fully developed, erect, a confirmed man, with deter-
mined 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 ap-
peared 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 Neapoli-
tan nerved by daily bathing in the gulf. Roquairol had
his part immediately at command more easily than Al-

bano 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 stand-

336 TITAN.

ard 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 trag-
edy," 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 dis-
tance. Roq-üiairol 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 invi-

tation 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 bril-

liant 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,
 ;

RABETTE'S TALE OF GRIEF. 337

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 pro-

nounce Neapel, Baise, Cumae. 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 pol-

ished 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 she immediately began,
in,

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 wounds all the

of the past. She herself seized upon the remedy, name-
ly, the telling of her story, — however earnestly he per-
sisted 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 was no longer
debts, especially since there
any Liana silently to wipe them away borrowed ; that he
everywhere, only, however, he never would accept any-
thing from her; that he still continued to desire and
know nothing but the Countess, and that God knew what
'
VOL II. 15 V
 ;

338 TITAN.

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 pleas-
antly 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
impossibihty 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."
He
was silent, a little angry at the naughtiness of
women, which, under pretence of seeking advice, only
 ;

SCHOPPE'S LETTER IN THE STRONG BOX. 339

desires a hearing. " What is that ? " he asked, showing

her a leaf. " That is perfectly my hand, and I never
wrote it I " She looked at it, and said Charles was
often trying experiments with her in this way at hand-
writing. He wondered, and said :
" Nothing, but imitat-

ing and counterfeiting all the time ! But how canst

thou think of my forgiving him ? " Some descriptions
of travels on her table, formerly so poor in books, met his
eye. " I wanted to know, of course," said she, " how you
might probably be faring in this, that, and the other place,
and that is why I read the long stuff.^' " Thou art still

my sister
!
" said he, and kissed her heartily. She still

asked him much and urgently about his new connection

but chary of words with his full heart, he hastened down
stairs.

The first word down below to the Provincial Director

was a request for the "deposed letter of Schoppe's."
Wehrfritz brought the broad letter, which had been laid
up in the little iron box of bonds, and delivered it he
hoped, he said, in good order. Hardly could Albano
keep back his tears, when he held the crinkled but pre-
cious traces of the beloved hand, which certainly never
in its life had swerved or stained itself, in his own. As
he did not break the seal, they all began good-naturedly
to portray to him his friend Schoppe, according to the

presumptions and views which man so boldly and com-

placently indulges upon every higher spirit, with all his

actions or colors, as if actions or colors were strokes and

outlines. Wehrfritz and Wehmeier deplored that he was
growing mad, if not already so. The Magister held back
with his main-proof, till the Provincial Director should
have contributed the lesser auxihary ones.
His life beneath this palace-roof was uncovered and
 TITAN.
"
showed up, but in a friendly spirit. " He had hitherto
— so went the reports — " had no real or solid aim."
Wehrfritz swore he had himself seen him reading the
Literary Gazette, just as it was folded together half-

sheetwise, and said he of course ascribed it less to insan-

ity than to absence of mind, because he knew with what

pleasure the man always took into his hands and under-
standingly perused the Imperial Advertiser, which the
same declared to be the gate-key to the great imperial
city, Germany. In the midst of company the Librarian
had looked upon his hands with the words " There sits a :

gentleman here in bodily presence, and I in him, but who

is the same ? " Of work he had done very little, seldom
looked into a book of any importance, as Herr Wehmeier
knew, but got along more easily with the worst of all
stuff, for instance, whole volumes of dream-interpreta-
tions. His dearest society had been his wolf-dog, with

whom for whole hours he would carry on regular dis-

course, and of whose growling he seriously asserted it

sounded like a very distant thunder. He had been fond

of sitting before the looking-glass, and had entered into
a long conversation with himself. Sometimes he had
looked into the camera-obscura, then on a sudden out
into the landscape again, to compare the two, and had
asserted, unoptically enough, that the busy, gliding im-
ages of the camera were magnified by the outer world,
but deceptively imitated. " It was a shy bird," added
the Director, " for all that. Divers of my acquaintances
in the neighboring estates let him paint them, because he
did it cheap ; he always knew, however, how to slip

something into the face so that one's physiognomy should

appear quite ridiculous or simple, and that he called his

flattering. Of course after that, no one could expect in

the long run anything honnette from him."
 SCHOPPE'S NIGHT-SERMON TO HIMSELF. 341

Were it permitted me," Wehmeier began, I would

now communicate to Mr. Count a fact in regard to Mr.
Librarian, which, perhaps — such is at least my opinion
— is frappant as many another. The school-house,
as
as you certainly still well remember, stands close to the
church." Thereupon he related, in a long narrative, the
following :
" Once, at dead of night, he heard the organ

going. He listened at the church door, and distinctly

heard Schoppe sing and play a short stanza of a popular
hymn. Thereupon the said Schoppe came down, with a
loud noise, from the choir, and mounted the pulpit, and
commenced an occasional sermon to himself with the
words :
'
My devout hearer and friend in Christ.' In the
exordium he touched upon the silent, but unhappily so
fleeting bliss which one enjoyed before life, although not
according to correct Homiletic principles, since the second
part almost repeated the introduction. Thereupon he
sang a pulpit stanza to himself, and taking from the 3d
chapter of Job, where the writer shows the happiness of
non-existence, the 26th verse as his text, which reads
thus :
' Was
I not in safety, had I not rest, was I not
quiet ? Yet trouble came,' * —
he proposed to himself
as his theme the joys and sorrows of a Christian in the ;

first part the sorrows, in the second the joys. Thereupon

he crowded together concisely, but in a droll style and
speech, and yet with Scriptural expressions, too, all the
misery and distress on earth, — under which he enu-
merated singular things : long sermons, the two poles,
ugly faces, compliments, games, and the world's stu-
pidity. Thereupon he passed over abruptly to the con-

* Luther's version differs here (for the better) from ours, which
makes it a negative assertion instead of a negative question, — "I was
not in safety," &c. — Tr.
 '

342 TITAN.

solation in the second part, and described the future joys

of a Christian, which, as he blasphemously said, consisted
in a heavenly ascension into future nothingness, in the
death after death, in an eternal deliverance from self.

Then (shocking it was to hear it) he addressed the neigh-

boring dead down below under the church and in the
princely vault, and asked, whether they had aught to

complain of? 'Arise,' said he; 'seat yourselves in the

pews, and open your eyes, in case they are wet with
weeping. But they are drier than your dust. O how
still and lovely lies the infinite past world, swathed in its

own shadow, softly laid on the bed of its own ashes, with-
out a single remaining dream-limb upon which a wound
can be inflicted. Swift, old Swift, thou who once in thy
latter days wast not so very much in thy head, and didst
read tlirough, every birthday, the whole chapter from
which the text of our harvest sermon is taken, — Swift,
how contented thou now art and entirely restored, the
hatred of thy'bosom burnt out, the round pearl, thy Self,
eaten up, at last, and dissolved in the hot tear of life,

and the tear alone stands there spai'khng! And thou,

too, hadst once preached before the Sexton hke me !

Here Schoppe w^ept, and excused himself for his emotion,

God knows before whom. Thereupon he passed to the
practical improvement, and sharply insisted on both
hearer and preacher growing better ;
upon downright
honest truthfulness ;
fidelity of friends ; high-mindedness,
bitter hatred of suavity, snake-like movements, and weak
lasciviousness. Finally, he had concluded the devotions
with a prayer to God, that, if it should be his lot some
day to lose his health or understanding, or the like, he
w^ould still be pleased to let him die like a man, and
darted at once out of the church door. He put me,"
 THE LETTER FROM SCHÖPFE. 343

added Wehmeir, " almost out of my senses for terror,

when he all at once flew at me angrily Mock corpse, ;
'

why creepest thou about the grave ? and I, pale and '

hurried, made my way home without having made the

least reply to him. But what says Mr. Count ? "
Albano shook his head with vehemence without one
enlightening word, with pain and tears on his face. He
merely took a sudden leave of all, and begged them to par-

don his haste ; and sought the evening sun and freedom,
in order to read the letter of the noble man, and learn the
purpose of his journey. He struck into the old road to
Lilar, where he hoped to find, on the joyous southern
breast of his radiant Dian Southern gayety and Southern
ways again ; for his heart had been upheaved by an
earthquake, because, after all, many a wild sign in this
Schoppe, as it were an immoderate lightening and flashing
of this star, seemed to him to announce a setting and
doomsday, which to his extreme pain he was constrained
to ascribe to the rising of the new star of love, which had
kindled this world of his nature.

122. CYCLE.
E read the following letter from Schoppe :
—
J_J
" Thy letter, my dear youth, came duly to hand. I
praise thy tears and flames, which alternately sustain,
instead of extinguishing each other. Only become some-
thing, much, too, but not everything, in order that thou
mayest be able, in so extremely empty a thing as life is

— (I should be glad to know who invented it) — to hold

out for all the desolateness. A Homer, an Alexander,
who have at length vanquished the whole world and got
344 TITAN.

it under them, must needs be plagued often with the most

tiresome and annoying hours, because their Ufe, from
being a bride, has now become a wife. Much as I had
paUsaded and fortified myself against that, in order not
tomount over everybody's head, and sit up top as Facto-
tum of the world I nevertheless, after all, came out at
;

last, unobserved and all standing, on the summit, merely

because, under my long contemplation, the whole circle
of the earth, full of foam-mountains and cloud-giants,
had been melting down lower and lower and crawling
together and now I gazed alone and dry-shod down
;

from my mountain-peak, wholly possessed with the blood-

suckers of disgust at the world.
" Brother, it has changed, however, during this year,
and I am afloat. For that reason a long, and to me quite
tiresome, letter is written thee here in February, which
shall tell thee about my approaching grub- and chrysalis-
state, where and how ; for when I am once a shining
chrysalis, then I can only feebly stir and show myself
any longer.
"I will explain myself more clearly, — the Germans
add, when they have explained themselves clearly. It
fits and hits most luckily — which I prize as much as
another — that precisely the end of the year is the end
of the paternal property upon which I have thus far
lived, and consequently, if Amsterdam ceases to pay, I
also fail, and have nothing more on hand than weak,
Chiromantie prophecies, and nothing in my body except
my stomach. I would I could still live by my navel, as
in my earlier times, and make myself such a soft bed.
" What, then, shall I do ? As to accepting presents
from my lords, men, year out and year in, I do not re-
spect them enough for that ; and the few, whom one does
 SCHOPPE'S DILEMMA. 345

somewh<at respect upon occasions, must in their turn re-

spect me too highly to make such an offer. What ! shall
I be a flea, attached to the thinnest httle golden chain,
and a gentleman who has fastened me by it, that I may
spring with him but not away from him, shall draw me
up now and then upon his arm and say, Suck away, my '

little creature !
' Devil ! I will remain free upon so con-
temptible an earth, — no salary will I take, no orders in
this great servants' apartment, — sound to the core, so as

not to awaken any sympathy or any house-doctor, — yes,

if one should knock off to me the heart of the Countess
Romeiro on the condition of my kneeling down to it, I
would take the heart, indeed, and kiss it, but immediately
thereupon get up and run away (either into the new
world or the next) before she had time to recapitulate
the matter to herself and bring it before me.
" As to being something, and thereby earning in pro-
portion, that I could, if one should propose it to me, of
course undertake, without any special forfeiture of free-
dom and disparity. In fact, I see here from my centre
three hundred and sixty roads radiate, and I hardly know
how to choose among them, so that one would choose
rather to flatten out the centre into a circumference, or to
seek to draw the latter into the former, so as only to con-
tinue standing upon it. Serving, as the staff-ofiicers of
the regiments say, were, to be sure, next to commanding.
Thou wilt thyself, as thou writest, take the field. (I have
duly received thy letter, and found therein thy shyness
and passion all right and good, and thyself entire.) And,
in truth, if the Archangel Michael were to array a holy
legion, a legio fulminatrix of some weak Septuagints,
against the commonwealth of the world, were he to —
proclaim a giant war against the domineering populace,
15*
346 TITAN.

in order to drive four or five quarters of the world out

of the world or into prison by a sixth (on an island there
would be good room for it), and to make all spiritual

slaves bodily ones, — be assured, in that happy case I

would plant myself foremost in the van, and would bring
on the cannon, with the short, flying remark, that, as
Handel first introduced cannon into music, so here for
the first time, inversely, they were bringing music into
cannon. When we at length came back in a body, —
when the holy mihtia again swept hitherward, — then
would God's throne stand upon the earth, and holy men,
with lofty fires in their hands, should go up, much less to

rule therefrom the world's body than to sacrifice to the

soul of the worlds.

" With the flower of France, then, thou wilt, as thou
writest, for thy individual self, for one man, hereafter
stand up. Of course it is hard for me to think highly

of five and twenty millions, of which it is true the cubic

root must have grown and run up freely, but stem and
twig have, after all, for whole centuries, been drying and
withering in a slave's dungeon. He who was not, before

the Revolution, a silent Revolutionist, — somewhat as

Chamfort was, against whose fire-proof breast I once in
Paris struck fire with mine, or like Montesquieu and
J. J. Rousseau, — let him not, with his silly spatterings,

spread himself out far beyond his house-door. Freedom,

like everything godlike, is not learned and acquired, but
inborn. Of course, all over France and Germany there
sit young authors and sons of the muses, who admire and
proclaim their own sudden worth, only they are cursedly
astonished that they had not earlier felt their sense of
freedom, — soft, sickly knaves, who look upon themselves
as complete blowing whales, because they have found
 DIALOGUE OF THE TWO LIBRARIANS. 347

some bone or other of the said fish, and buckled it to

their ribs. I should always, in a war such as these dead

times can furnish, believe that I was fighting against fools,
indeed, but for fools too.
" The cynical, naive, free nature's-men of the present
day — Franks and Germans — are almost like the naked
honorables, whom I have seen bathing in the Pleisse,
Spree, and Saale. They were, as was said, very naked,
white, and natural, and savages, but the black cue-tail
of culture fell down over their white backs. Some
great, tall men, and fathers of their times, hke Rousseau,
Diderot, Sidney, Ferguson, Plato, have laid aside their
worn-out breeches, and their disciples have taken them
and worn them, and because they sat so wide, long, and
open upon their diminutive bodies, have called themselves
sansculottes (men without breeches).
" Truly, instead of the sword, I could also very well

grasp the penknife, and, as writing Caesar, rise, to better

the world, and be useful to it, and use it. I shall always
remember the conversation which I once held upon this

subject with a universal German librarian of Berlin,

as we walked quietly up and down in the menagerie.
*Every one should surely enrich his native land with
his talents, which else would lie buried,' said the German
librarian. ' To constitute a native land, it is necessary,
first and foremost, that there should be some land,^ said I.
* The Maltese librarian, however, who here speaks, first

saw the light at sea under a pitch-black storm. Of knowl-

edge I possess, of course, enough, and know that one has
it, like a glassful of cow-pock rationally taken, only to
inoculate one's self withal. The scholar, for his part,
only swallows it again, in order to give it out from him-
self, and so it goes on. Thus does the light, like the
348 TITAN.

glimmering brand in the game, " Kill the Fox, and Sell
the Skin," pass from hand to hand, until, however, to be
sure, the brand goes out in one, — mine, — and there
remains.'
" ' Droll enough
!
' said the universal German libra-

rian. '
With such a humor as this only connect the study
of bad men and good models, and then you create for us
a second Rabener, to scourge fools.' ^Sir,' replied I, in

a rage, '
I should prefer to transfer the first blow to the

backs of the wise ones and you. Philosophers suffer

themselves to be enlightened and washed, have always
their insight into things, and are good fools, and just my
people. Let a man like a universal German farrier, who
takes the pulse of the muses' horse, holds his out to me,
and I will feel it with great pleasure. But the rest and
refuse of the world, sir ? Who can skim off the world
sea, if he does not break away its banks ? Is it not a
sorrow and a shame that all men of genius, from Plato
even to Herder, have become noisy, and die printed, and
frequently read and studied by the learned rabble and
custom-house, without having the least power to change
them ? Librarian, call and whistle out, I pray you, all
that lies in the critical dog-kennels on the watch beside
those temples, and ask the whole body of greyhounds,
bulldogs, and boar-hounds whether anything else is stir-

ring in their souls than a potentiated maw, instead of a

poetic and holy heart ? In the mountain-cauldron they
see the pudding-pot and brewer's-kettle, in the leaves the
spades * on the play-cards, and the thunder has for them,
as a greater electric spark, a very sour taste, which it

afterward infuses into the March beer.'

* Schoppe says schellen (diamonds), but lavb means both leaves and
spade» (in cards), and therefore a liberty has been taken. Tr.—
 '
:

SCHOPPE'S SATIRICAL HORSETAIL. 349

" ' Do you mean any allusion ? ' he asked. ' Assuredly !

said 1. 'But further, Librarian, suppose we too were so

lucky as to turn on our heels, and, with one whirl of a
breath, to blow over all fools, as if they were infected
with an arsenical fume, and lay them dead as a mouse
I cannot see, for all that, where the blessing is coming
out, because, besides that we are still standing before each
other, and have to breathe on ourselves too, I see, in all

corners round about, women sitting, who will hatch the

slain world anew.

" '
My dear fellow, best pair of bellows,* full of fire,' I
continued, ' can this, however, call and stamp one very
strongly to be of the satirical handicraft ? O no ! This
is genuine humor with me, perhaps strange madness, also,

perhaps — but O, will not the rare joke-maker, even in

your uncommon library, resemble the porcupine-man in
London (the son) who had the office under the beast-
dealer. Brook, of acting as Cicerone to the stranger
among the wild stock and through the park of outlandish
beasts, and who commenced on the threshold with the
observation that he showed himself as one of the species
man ? Consider it coolly and first of all ! I still swing
my satirical horsetail loosely and merrily, and perhaps
against an occasional horse-fly ; but let a book be tied to
it, as in Poland they tie a cradle to the cow's tail, and the
beast shall rock the cradle of the readers and give pleas-
ure ; the tail, however, becomes a slave.'
" ' To such images,' said the Librarian, '
sure enough,
by any
the cultivated world could never be accustomed
Rabener or Voltaire, and I now perceive myself that

* Piisterich or Püster, the well-known old German idol, full of

holes, flames, and water.
 TITAN.

satire is not }'our department.' '

O, most true !
' replied
I, and we parted on very good terms.
" But to take things seriously, brother, what is there
now left for a man (in the shape of prospects as well as
of wishes) to whom the age is so over-salted and so bitter

and briny as it is to me, and to whom life is made so by

living — who annoyed death with the universal
men, is to

insipidhypocrisy and the of the most

glistening polish
poisonous wood, — and the horrible commonness of the
German and the
life-theatre, greater commonness of
still

the German — and the Pontine marshes of

theatre-life,

infamous and immoral Kotzebuean weakliness, which no

Holy Father can drain and make sound — and into land,
the murdered pride, together with the living vanity, that
stalk about, so that I, only for the sake of drawing
breath, can betake myself for whole hours to the plays of
children and of cattle, because there I am assured, at
least, that neither them are coquetting with me, that,
of
on the contrary, they have nothing in mind and are in
love with nothing but their work, what is there left, I—
asked at the top of this page, for one in whose nostrils, as
was said, so many sorts of things stink, and especially
this further particular, that improvement is hard, but

deterioration not so by any means, because even the best

do somewhat impose upon the worst, and thereby on
themselves too, and because with their secret cursings of

the age, and trimming and truckling to it, they dance at

least for gold and glory, and in consideration thereof will-
ingly let themselves be used by the more steady mass, as
wine-casks are used for meat-barrels, —
what is there,
friend, I say, for a man in times when, as now, one
makes in print, not lilack white, indeed, but yet gray, and
where one, as good catechists must, always avoids pre-
 ;

SCHOPPE'S CIRCULAR TO THE DOCTORS. 351

cisely the question, yes or no, — what remains except

hatred of tyrants and slaves at once, and indignation at
the maltreated no less than at the maltreatment ? And
what shall a man to whom the armor of Hfe in such situa-

tions is worked thin or worn thin, seriously resolve upon ?

" I, for my part, if the question is about myself, re-

solved, half in joke, upon inserting a fine-spun, lucid

demand in the Imperial Advertiser, which you perhaps
have already read in Rome, without even guessing the
author.

" ^
TO ALL VTHOM IT MAT CONCERN.
" ' It may well be taken for granted, that a sound
understanding and reason (mens sana in c. s.), next to
a clear conscience, holds among the prizeworthy goods
of life the highest place, —a proposition which I venture
to assume as an axiom with the readers of this paper.

As to what may further be said on the subject, as well

by as against Kantners, (so Campe writes it, and much
more correctly, instead of Kantians,) it does not certain-
ly belong to an entirely popular paper for the people like
this present. The undersigned is now in the sorry case

that he is obliged here to consult the physicians of Ger-

many and foreign parts. Have sympathy for suffering

send in your answers ; say when he is to be (out with it

before all Germany !

!) completely insane, for as to the
beginning thereof the fact has already answered.
" '
The when, but not the whether, it now lies with and
upon noble philanthropists to answer. Here are my rea-
sons, Germans ! Leaving out of sight that many a rea-
son might be deduced from the very publication of this
request, — which, to be sure, decides little, — the follow-
ing items are noticeable and sure : — 1. The motley style
352 TITAN.

of the author itself, which is to be known less from this

insertion (composed at very considerable intervals) than

from the similarity between his style and that of a very
favorite and tasteless writer,* which, denoting a gay exu-
berance of the most wild and strange images in the head,
betokens an approaching cracky as does a motley play of
colors upon glass ; 2. The prediction of a scamp,t of
which he is always thinking, —a circumstance which
must have bad effects ; 3. His love and study of Swift,
whose madness is no novelty to the learned ; 4. His com-
plete loss of memory ; 5. His frequent bad trick of con-
founding things dreamed of with thuigs really expe-
rienced, and vice versa ; 6. His misfortune not to know
what he writes till he has read it over afterward, because
he now leaves out something bearing upon his subject,

or again puts in something that has nothing to do with

it, as the crossed and blotted manuscript unfortunately
best proves ; 7. His whole previous life, all his thinking

and joking, the details under which head it would be

tedious here to specify; and, 8. His most unreasonable
dreams. Now the question is, when, in such circum-
stances (that is to say, if no fevers, or cases of love
intervene), complete distraction {idea fixa, mania, rap-
tus) comes on. With Swift it fell very late, in old age,

when he might already, besides, have been naturally half

foolish, and only showed it more afterward. When one
considers that Professor Busch once reckoned that his
weakness of sight might very well grow upon him from
year to year without any serious consequence, because
the period of complete blindness fell quite out beyond the

* Of course, Jean Paul himself, a great friend of Sclioppe's. Tr. —

t The Baldhead who prophesied that he would go mad in fourteen
months.
 —

THE WILD HUNTER OF THE BRAIN. 353

end of his whole hfe, merely upon his grave, so must I

assume that my infirmity might swell so gradually, that I

should have no occasion for any other petites maisons
than the coffin itself ; so that I might, in the mean time,
have married and held an office as well as any other
honest man.
" '
My object in this communication is simply to bring
myself into correspondence on the subject with some
philanthropist or other (he must be, however, a philosoph-
ical physician !). My address may be had at the office

of the Imperial Advertiser. I make myself, perhaps,

more clearly known, bodily and civilly, in this very .paper,
in the column where I inquire after a wife.
" '
Pestitz, February. S s, L d, L r,

G 1, S e.'
*

" Albano, thou knowest under what bush my serious

meaning lies hid. The Advertiser of the Empire and of
Schoppe has eight reasons for the thing, which are not
only my serious meaning, but my fun. Since the Bald-
head announced to me the rising of my mad-dog-star after
a year, I have always seen the aurora of this fixed star
before me, and seen myself thereupon blind and cowardly
at last ; I must speak it out. O I had in January,
brother, eight frightful dreams, one after another, accord-
ing to the number of reasons assigned in the Advertiser,
and themselves appertaining to the eighth, — dreams
wherein a Wild Huntsman of the brain went hunting
through the mind, and a stream full of worlds, full of faces,
and mountains and hands, billowed along, bearing all

before it. I will not distress thee with the details,

Dante and his head were heaven to it.

* These blanks will fill themselves out in the sequel. — Tr.

w
 —

354 TITAN.

" Then I grew sullen about the matter of cowardice,

and said to myself, * Hast thou hitherto lived so long, and
easily flung overboard the richest cargoes, even this world
and the next, and divested thyself so clean of everything,
even of glory and of books and of hearts, and kept
nothing but thyself, in order to stand up therewith free
and naked and cold on the ball of earth before the face of
the sun, and now must thou unexpectedly cringe before
the mere crazy fixed thought of a crazy fixed idea, which
any stroke of a fev erish pulse, any blow of a fist, any
grain of poison may stamp into thy head, and thus must
thou throw away at once thy old, godlike freedom ? —
Schoppe, I know not at all what I am to think of thee !

"Whoso still fears anything in the universe, and though it

were hell itself, he is still a slave !

" Then the man plucked up his manhood and said, '
I
will have what I feared ' ; and Schoppe stepped up nearer
to the broad, high cloud, and lo ! it was only (one would
gladly have put one's self to bed on the spot) the longest
dream of the last, long sleep, no more, — what they call

madness. Now if one should go for some time into a

mad-house, for example, by way of joke, then might one
have the dream, if all other things were as well suited to
keep the matter in countenance, as in the case of many a
one already. And now, thereinto will I gradually sink,
into the dream, where the point of the dagger is broken
off against the future, and the rust rubbed off against the

past, — where man, undisturbed and alone, is the reigning

House in the shadow-realm and Barataria-island of his

ideas, and the John Lackland, and, like a philosopher,

makes everything that he thinks, where he also draws —
his body out of the waves and surges of the external
world, and cold and heat and hunger and weak nerves
 WHAT SHALL BE THE FIXED IDEA? 355

and consumption and dropsy and poverty assail him no

more, and no fear, no sin, no error can come near the

mind in the mad-house where the three hundred and sixty-

five dreams of the nights in the year weave themselves

together into a single one, the flying clouds into one great
evening red.
" But here lurks something bad ! Man must be in a

condition to pick out for himself and appropriate with

understanding his dream, his good fixed idea, — for a high

ant-hill of the most grim and bewitching swims and

swarms before him, — otherwise he may fare as ill as if

he were still in his senses. I must now, in particular,

make my arrangements to find and recognize a good-
natured, favorable fixed conceit, which shall deal well with
me. If I can bring it about, to be, pt-rhaps, the first man
in the crazy house, or the second Momus, or the third
Schlegel, or the fourth grace, or the fifth king at cards, or
the sixth wise virgin, or the seventh worldly Electorate,
or the eighth Wise Man of Greece, or the ninth soul in
the ark, or the tenth muse, or the forty-first Academician,
or the seventy -first Translator,* or, in fact, the universe,
or, in fact, the universal spirit himself, — then, certainly,
my fortune is made, and life's scorpion robbed of his whole
sting. But what golden jewel of a fortune does not in
addition thereto still stand open ? Can I not be a very
highly-favored lover, who sees the sun of a beloved sail
all day long through heaven, and looks up and cries, '
I
see only thy sunny eye, but it contents me !
' Can I not
be a deceased person, who, full of disbelief in the next
world, has made the journey into it, and now does not
know at all which way to turn there for joy ? O can I
not — for the shorter dream and old age do indeed, of

* Of the Septuagint Old Testament. — Te.

356 TITAN.

themselves, make one childish — be an innocent child

again, that plays and knows nothing, that takes all men
for its parents, and that has now a tear-drop hanging be-
fore him, formed out of the collapsing gay bubble of life,

and again sends out the drop through the pipe, blown up
into a glimmering little world-globe of colors ?

" It is full midnight ; I must now go to church, to hold

my vesper-devotions.

" Three weeks later.

" Nota Bene !

" I had been, since thy departure, in a manner damna-

bly unlucky until about one o'clock this morning. At two
o'clock I took up ray resolution ; I have just (at five) taken
the pen ; and at six, when I have drunken myself full

and written myself empty, I take my travelling cane, the

point of which, after two months, shall stand sticking in
the Pyrenees. O heavens ! there must have been some-
thing thorny this long time standing by me, which I so
long took for a hedgehog, whereas it is the best musical
barrel full of pins, out of which I can get nothing less (I
turned it a few hours ago) than the best arrangement of
flute-pipes, unadulterated music of the spheres, and
rotatory music for the bravura-airs of the three men in the
furnace, a whole living Vaucanson's wooden flute-player,

and unheard-of things wherewith the machine blows till it

bursts — not itself, but certain knaves, whereof need I

particularly name the Baldhead ?

" listen, youth ! It concerns thee. I will now, for

thy sake, be what the world calls frank, namely, shame-
less, for verily I had rather uncover my haunch than my
heart, and am less red when I do so.
" There w^as, once on a time, in old times, a young time,
one full of fire and roses, when old Schoppe, for his part,
 ;

SCHÖPFE DESCRIBES ALBANO'S MOTHER. 357

was also young enough ; when the alert, contriving bird

easily nosed out where the hare lay, and the female hare,
too ; when the man could still put himself on good terms
with the w^ell-kuown four quarters of the world ; or else,
just as easily as a steer, thrust with his horn at every fly
w^hen he (now a silver pheasant of cool times) still strode
or flew up and down through all Italy as a warm gold
pheasant, perched now on Buanorotti's Moses, now on
the Colosseum, now on ^tna, now on the dome of St.
Peter's, and crowed for joy, flapped his wings, and soared
toward heaven.
" It was at this time that the still unpicked storm-bird,
hovering one day to and fro through the waterfalls of
Tivoli, preciously blest, saw there occasionally, suddenly,
overhead, in Vesta's temple, for the first time, nothing
more than — the Princess di Lauria, afterward, I con-
jecture, carried off by a Knight of the Fleece, as his
golden fleece. To see her, — to transform one's self from
a storm-bird into a cock-pigeon to the chariot of Venus ;

to tear one's self loose from team and bridle ; to fly before

that goddess ; to float round her in narrower and narrower

circles, — all this w^as not one thing, but three things. I
had first to grow and paint myself up into a bird of Para-
dise, in order to fly into a Paradise ; that is to say, I had
to learn painting, in order to be permitted her presence.
" When at length I had the portrait-pencil and profile- •

scissors in my power, and one morning appeared with

both before the Princess and the old Prince, I had to
paint and cut the Prince himself; his daughter had
already been married and secretly travelled off ; for thy
grandfather (unhke others who prophesy their movements
beforehand), prophesies his only afterward, and opens his
mouth merely to hear.
358 TITAN.

" I soon cut out the man, — packed up, — went out
into all the world. After nearly three years I stood again
on the tenth terrace of Isola Bella, quite unexpectedly,
before the Countess Cesara. Heaven and hell ! what a
woman was thy mother ! She threw everybody into both
of those places at once ; I know not whether she did thy
father, too. The writer of this stood in his last ornitho-
logical transformation before her, as silent pearl-cock
(guinea-peacock), (tears must be the pearls), and got a
likeness of her after a few weeks.
" She had two children, thee — I clearly remember thy
then abeady sharpened contour — and thy sister, the so-
called Severina. Thy father was not there, but his wax
image was, by which I instantly recognized him eighteen
years later in Rome. Thy sister, too, was repeated in
wax ;
only thou not. A wax figure, hke thee at a dis-
tance, which illusively prefigured thee as a man always
held up before thee, the brother of thy father, who was
there, too, as a file-leader of thy future, saying, Here
*

thou art, cubed beforehand, and already forced up into full

size, filled out from flask into cask,' — seeking thus to

enkindle thee, so that thou mightest grow up and be a
man. They had a uniform put on thee, like that which
the wax man wore, —
I know not of what sort. Then
didst thou, striding around thine own micromegas, boldly
call him out, out of the future into the present. Now
thou knowest what thou hast become, and mayst well, and
with more right, look down in thy turn as proudly upon
the little one, as the little one formerly looked up to the

great one. I could never approve in thy uncle this ma-

chine for spiritual ductility ; besides, I have for all wax
puppets such an abominating, shuddering dread.
" My only object on the beautiful island was to get
 SCHOPPE'S ASTOUNDING DISCLOSURE. 359

away from it, and from the fair islander, so soon as I had
painted her. '
Stupid century,' said I, '
do I then want
anything more of thee ? ' She sat to me gladly, as upon
a throne. I, half in tempest, half in rainbow, sketched
her, and naturally had to leave the picture uncopied.
But, young man, some which formed my name at
letters,

that time, and which I wrote and concealed on the picture

in the region of the heart under the water-colors, may
serve thee as a Tetragrammaton, eleven Dominical letters
and mothers of the reading {matres lectionis) of thy
existence, in case I reach Spain safely, and in Valencia
wash away on the likeness the coloring from my letters,

and can now read in its heart, Löiuenskiold, So was I

then called in Danish.
" Then is the Countess Linda de Romeiro, without
mercy, thy sister Severina. God grant only that thou
mayst not haply have seen and married her before the
receipt of this letter. She must, according to what I
heard yesterday, have set out for Italy.
"
For when I saw the Countess Linda here for the first
time,it was to me, in the market square of Pestitz, as if

I were standing up on the terrace of Isola Bella, and be-

holding the Alps, thy mother, my youth, hardly three
paces distant from me ! By Heaven, just as if in the pier-
mirror of time the white rosy image of thy buried mother
had been snatched at once out of the depths of distance,
and brought close to the glass, and now hung before it in

blooming redness, so stood Linda before For the me !

divine resemblance of the two is so great No Arian !

Homoiousion* wha.. ver, but a complete Orthodox Ho-

moousion * is to be believed here. Thus would I write
* Similarity of nature, identity of being. Terms of old theological
controversy. — Tr.
360 TITAN.

to thee, Lädst thou the necessary church-history at hand

for the understanding of such an allusion.
" I painted Linda, too, this winter. What she related
to me of the character of her mother was entirely the
same, as I had been able to report to her of the character
of the Princess di Lauria.
" Linda's father, or Herr von Romeiro, w^ould ne\ er
appear, and still, I hear, has not yet disappeared.
" Linda's mother called herself a Roman and a relative
of the Prince di Lauria.
" In Spain, where I have twice been and inquired, I
never could find a residence of a lady by the name of
Cesara.
" Trillion spiders'-strands of probability spin themselves

into an Ariadne's thread in the Labyrinth.

" A new, unknown sister is introduced to thee in the
Gothic house with veils and in mirrors.
" And indeed the illusion is produced upon thee through
real mirrors by the honest Baldhead, — who wants some-
thing more to be a Christ's-head than the locks, and whom
I in autumn called a dog.
" The aforesaid Baldhead, or head of Anubis, stood,
then, (Heaven and the Devil best know why, but I be-
lieve the fact,) as Father of Death on Isola Bella he lay ;

as travelling journeyman on the Prince's grave and in

every sort of ambush, to give thee thy sister for wife —
in case I suffered it ; but so soon as ever I have sealed
this, I sally forth to Spain, break into Linda's picture
cabinet, look after a certain likeness of her mother, the
place and chamber whereof I have taken pains clearly to
ascertain ; and if it is the picture by me, then all is right

and the thunder may strike into the midst of the whole
business.
 SCHÖPFE THINKS OF GOING MAD. 361

" The Baldliead himself is

•
a fifth cfuarter of a proof, —
he is one of the few men who, when hardly of a spi-
der's thickness, wickedly made water in their mothers*
womb.
" Perhaps I may find thy uncle, who knew me again
here, he said, and who has actually gone off to Valencia.*
" O Heavens ! if I should succeed (but why not, since

my tongue remains of iron and this leaf comes, in iron,

under charge of the honest Wehrfritz, whose heart is an
old German, and does not Germany rightly represent the
heart in the virgin Europa?) —
if, I write, I should succeed

in kindling a fire upon a cursed mystery of a straw-door,

tearing all up and down and away, blind gates and sacri-
ficial gates, and a strong light should fall in upon the
brave Linda and the brave youth, illuminating the neigh-
boring Baldhead (perhaps somebody else), who even in

the darkness will fain make a slanting thrust with two

grafting and slaughtering knives down into a brother and
sister
" If I should once succeed in this, that is to say, in the

harvest month, — for then I should come back again to

Pestitz and have the likeness in my pocket, — and I

should have boldly avenged myself and two innocent
beings upon guilty ones : then would I hold myself fully
at liberty to seize hold of my head and say, '
A has, gare,

heads offP To which, certainly, (since, indeed, the ques-

tion is not of any stupid packing off of the body by a
Werther-powder, but only of the purpose to lose, upon
occasion, what competent judges call my understanding,)
my friends must agree, because they would still have me
* The uncle had lied again, for he had previously, as we have seen,
gone to Rome, where he delivered to the knight and the Princess the
letters from Pestitz.
VOL. II. 16
362 TITAN.

(since in this case the body is still retained), although as

the night-piece of a man, because I would then carry on
a rational discourse upon any subject (only let no one
attack the fixed idea !) as well as another man, and cer-
tainly should not forget to sprinkle over it, now and then,
a good moral joke (verily the true spice), and because
the state should find me day and night equipped and sad-
dled to save it, after the example of the Berlin Bedlam-
ites, who once, upon a fire breaking out in the house, ex-
tinguished it and saved the house in the best style, and I
would come in at the gap and the breach, when the dark
intervals of its other civil servants could not otherwise be
filled up than with our lucid ones.
" Farewell ! I break off. The world smiles upon me
gayly. In Spain I shall find a bit of youth again — as
in this writing.
" Schöpfe.
" Apropos ! Has the Baldhead nowhere run against
thee ? I cannot tell thee how I labor now daily to im-
press upon myself and appropriate beforehand a real hor-
ror and dread at the wish of running him down hereafter
in my madness, in order that afterward the possible act
may not, as a late fruit of my previous rational, moral
state, be reckoned over against me into the other.
" Annihilate this letter "
!

When Albano raised his fiery eyes from the letter, he

stood before Lilar under a high triumphal arch, and the
sun went down in splendor behind Elysium. " Dost thou
not know me ? " asked Linda, in a low tone, who stood
beside him in travelling dress, weeping in bright love and
bliss ; and Julienne came flying out and making a sign
of caution to both, from the entrance thicket of the flute-
 LOVE, SUSPENSE, AND CURIOSITY. 363

dell, and cried, as a cunning pretext :

" Linda, Linda,

hearest thou not the flutes, then ? " And Albano had
forgotten the painful letter.

123. CYCLE.
IKE a concert that suddenly flutters up with a hun-
I J dred wings did the swift presence of old love and
joy break over the forsaken youth (so troubled about his
waves and smitten with delight, he
friend) in beautiful ;

saw Linda again as on Ischia but she saw him again as ;

in another Elysium she was more soft, tender, ardent,

;

remembering his past scenes in this garden. She would

not relate nor hear anything at all about her own travel-

hng adventures. Albano buried his mystery of Schoppe

in his mighty but trembling breast ;
only to his father he
burned to disclose it. He was incessantly representing to

himself the possibihty of a relationship, and the facility

with which Schoppe might confound the pretended sister
with the true one, Julienne ; this very evening he meant
to ask his father.
He imparted to her the paternal consent to their alli-

ance with great joy, but not with the greatest, because
Schoppe's letter echoed in his bosom. Julienne perceived
that only a cascade instead of a cataract came out of him
to-day, and sought with a sly pleasantry to draw him out,
by making him answer, which she easily did, through the
whole range of questions touching important personalities
of his and her acquaintance. She had some inchnation
to weave and to paint on the theatre curtain, or even to
pierce a prompter's-hole in it. She began the questions
at Idoine, — who shortly after his arrival had taken her

departure back again from the city, — and left off with
364 TITAN.

them at Schoppe, —
inquiring after the object of his jour-
ney but Albano had not seen the former, and as to the
;

latter, Schoj^pe, he said, had confided it to him alone. A

beautiful, inflexible marble vein of firmness ran through
his being. Linda's black eye was an open, true German
one, and looked upon him only to love him.

Out of the flute-dell came the rest of the company, the

Lector and others ; Julienne constrained the lovers to a
separation, saying :
" Here is no Ischia without me you
;

cannot see each other here in the palace at all ; I will

announce it to thee always through thy father, when I

am here."
When he stood alone in Lilar with the heavy thought
of Schoppe and Linda, and surveyed the lovely regions
and scenes of fair hours, then it seemed to him all at

once as if, in the twilight, Elysium, like a charming face,

distorted itself into an expression of scorn at him and
at life. Little malicious fays sit on the little children's
tables, as if they were tender children, and very much
loved to see men and human pleasure; anon they start

up as wild huntresses, and run through the blossoms ; a

thousand hands turn up the garden with its blossoming
trees, and point its black, gloomy thicket of roots like

summits up into heaven ;

Gorgon heads look out of the
twigs, and up in the thunder-house there is an incessant
weeping and laughing ; — nothing is fair and soft but the
great, daring Tartai'us.
However, as it was the shortest way to his father,
Albano went, stern and angry, through the garden, over
the swan bridge, along by the Temple of Dream, by
Chariton's little cottage, by the rose arbors, and over the
woodland bridge, and soon was in the princely palace
with his father, who had just come back from the sick
 GASPARD'S ANSWER ABOUT LINDA. 365

Luigi. With ironical expression of countenance, his

father related to him how the patient had begun to swell
again, merely because he feared that his dead father, who
had promised to appear to him a second time as a sign
of death, would give the sign and immediately call him
away. Then Albano related, without any introduction,
and without mention of Schoppe and of his connections,
the hypothesis of the most singular relationship, without
putting, out of respect for his father, any long, searching
questions, or even more than the short, swift one, " Is
Linda my sister ? " His father quietly heard him through.
" Every man," said he, angrily, " has a rainy corner of
his life, out of which foul weather proceeds, and follows
after him. Mine is the carrying about of mysteries with
me. From whom hast thou the latest ? " " On that
subject sacred duty bids me be silent," he replied. " In

that case," said Gaspard, " thou wouldst better have been
silent altogether : he who gives up the smallest part of a
secret, has the rest no longer in his power. How much
dost thou suppose that I know of the matter ? " " Ah,

what can I suppose ? " said Albano. " Didst thou think

upon my consent to thy union with the Countess ? " said

Gaspard, more angry. " Should I then keep silence ? and

did not sister Julienne in the end disentangle herself from
all mysteries ? " Here Gaspard looked at him sharply,
and asked, " Canst thou rely upon the earnest word of a
man, without wavering, swerving, however eloquently
appearances may discourse to the contrary ? " "I can,"
said Albano. " The Countess is not thy sister ; rely
"
upon my word !
" said Gaspard. " Father, I do so !

said Albano, full of joy ;

" and now not a word fui'ther

on the subject."
But the old man, now more composed, went on to say
366 TITAN.

that this new error gave him an occasion now earnestly

to insist upon Linda's consent to a speedy union, because
her father, perhaps himself the mysterious wonder-worker
who had hitherto baffled all attempts at detection, had
absolutely fixed, as the time of his appearance, the wed-
ding-day. He indicated yet once more to his son his

desire to know the way in which he had arrived at that

hypothesis ; but to no purpose : holy friendship could not
be desecrated or deserted, and his breast closed mightily
around his open heart, as the dark rock closes about the
bright crystal.
So he parted, warm and happy, from his silent father.
In the hard hour of the letter-reading, he had only climbed
an artificial, rocky region of life, and there lay the gay
gardens again, stretching away even to the horizon ;
yet,

after all, the vain, painful error of his Schoppe, and the
thought of that spirit so desolated by love and hatred,
which, even in the tone of the letter, seemed to bow itself
down, and the prospect of his madness, passed like a dis-
tant funeral chime dolefully through his fair landscape,

and the happy heart grew full and still.

124. CYCLE.

SOON after this, Albano's kind sister again let a Hes-

perian hour strike and play on the musical clock of
his happiness, whose keeper she was, — an hour with
which his whole life, up and down, sounded in unison,

and cleared away, and in which, as in Switzerland, when

a cloud opens, all at once heights, glaciers, mountain-
peaks, now look out from the sky. He saw his Linda
again, but in new light, glowing, but like a rose before the
blushing evening red. Her love was a soft, still flame,
 LINDA WILL NOT MARRY. 367

not a leaping of eccentric, stinging sparks. He concluded

that his father, who was a man of his word, had already
made his request to her for a priestly union, and even got
her consent. Julienne told him she wished to speak with
him the next evening, at six o'clock, in his father's cham-
ber ; that made him still more sure and glad. With new
and still more tenderly adoring emotions, he parted with
Linda : the goddess had become a saint.

When he came the next day into the paternal apart-

ment, he found no one there but Julienne. She gave him
a slight and almost imperceptible kiss, in order to be
speedily ready with her intelHgence, since her absence
was limited to so many minutes as the Princess needed
to go from the sick-bed of her husband to the apartment
of the Princesse. " She will not marry thee," she began,
softly, " notwithstanding that thy father expressed himself

so strongly and finely to her, at the first reception after

the journey, upon the new good fortune of his son, for
which he had now nothing more to desire, he said, than
the seal of perpetuity. It was still more finely silvered
and gilded ; I have forgotten the precise words. There-
upon she replied in her speech, which I never can retain,

that her will and thine were the real seal ; every other
seal of policy imposed chains and slavery upon the fair-

est life."

Deeply was Albano hurt by an open refusal, which

hitherto, coming upon him as a silent one and as philos-
ophy, had floated about untouched, as a mere unsubstan-
tial shadow. " That was not right; she might say a good
while hence, but not never, said he, sensitively. " Mod-
eration, friend !
" said Julienne ;
" thereupon thy father

reminded her, in a friendly manner, of the conditional

appearance of her own, by saying that he could not but
368 TITAN.

wish very much to transfer her fortunes out of his own

hands into nearer ones. No arbitrary condition could
compel or annihilate a will, she said. Thy father Avent
on calmly, and added, he had sketched, in that case, the

fairest plan of life for you two ; but, in the other case, his

approval of their love stood open only as long as his stny

here, which would end at his friend's death. Then he
went coolly and composedly out, as men are wont to do
when they have provoked us to a real rage."
" Hesperia, Hesperia !
" cried Albano, angrily. "But
did Linda really repeat her no ? " " O, too true ! But,
brother ? " asked Julienne, with astonishment. " Suffer

me," he replied ;
" for is it not unrighteous, this meddling
of parents with the fairest, teuderest strings, whose vibra-
tion and melody they at once kill, in order to call forth
from them a new tune ? Is it not, then, sinful to degrade
divine gifts into state-revenues and match-moneys, — yes,
match*-moneys indeed ? Good Linda, now we stand
again on the ground, where they set up the flowers of
love for sale as hay, and where there are no other trees
in paradise than boundary-trees. No, thou free being!
"
never through me shalt thou cease to be so !

JuHenne stepped back some paces, and said, " I will

only laugh at thee," which she did, and then added, in

earnest, " She, then, — is that thy will ? — shall appoint
"
thee the day when the old father is to become visible ?
" That does not follow by any means," said he. She
calmly remarked, that an excited person always com-
plained of the heat of another, and that Albano, in his
very calmness, insisted too sternly upon his own and
others' rights ; that such people went on to demand, in

* The German word parlie means a match in matrimony or in

cards. — Tr.
 PROPOSED VISIT TO ARCADIA. 369

passion, something beyond the right, as a pin, which fits

too nicely into the clock, when warmed stops it by its

size. Then she begged him affectionately just to leave

the disentangling of the " whole snarl " to her fingers, and
to remain mild and still, lest yet more people — perhaps,
in fact, her belle-sceur — might interfere with their union.
Albano took it in friendship, but begged her earnestly
only not to make any plans, because he should be too
honorable toward Linda for that, and should immediately
tell her the whole word of the charade.
She disclosed to him that she had made no other plan
whatever than a plan for a happy day to-morrow, namely,
to visit with Linda the Princess Idoine in Arcadia, to

whom she owed still greater things beside a visit, partic-

ularly half of her heart. " Thou wilt ride accidentally

after us, and find us in the midst of pastoral life," she
added, " and surprise thy Linda." He said very deci-
dedly, " No," both out of a shrinking from Idoine's re-
semblance to Liana, — although he only knew that Liana
had personated her in the Dream Temple, and not, also,

that Idoine had counterfeited her before his sick-bed, —

and because he disliked to come into the presence of the
Minister's lady, from a dread as well of bitter as of sweet
recollections, of both which, in such a case, Roquairol
would have brought up the rear. Julienne mischievously
objected " Only have no fear
: for the Princesse ; she
w^as obliged, in order only to rid herself of the detested
bridegroom, to engage with an oath to all her friends
never to choose one below her rank, — and that she will
keep, even with thee." He answered the joke merely
with the serious repetition of his no. Well, then she
should insist upon it, she replied, that he should at least
come to meet them half-way, and await them in the
16* X
370 TITAN.

" Prince's Garden," — a park which had been laid out by

Luigi as hereditary prince, and forgotten when he came
into the princely chair. He assented to this proposition
very joyfully.
She still asked, jocosely, as they parted, " Who has
been presenting thee with a new sister, lately ? " He
said, " That is what my draw from me."
father could not
" Brother," said she, softly, " it was a gentleman M ho

easily takes princesses for countesses, and who, in the

next place, thinks to be still more crazy than he already
is, — thy Schoppe," and flew off.

125. CYCLE.
N the morning after the two friends took their
journey to Arcadia, Julienne, although more trou-
bled on account of the increased illness of her sick broth-
er, cheered herself by her reliance upon a plan which, in
spite of her assurance, she had sketched for the good
fortune of the well one, and which she was to carry out
in Arcadia. She, unlike others who hide their heads
behind the dark, mourning-fan of sorrow and sensibil-
ity, oftener hid her head, with its designs, behind the gay
dress-fan of smiles, which turned to the spectators the
painted side ; amidst laughing and weeping she pursued
and pondered them. Thus she had made the request to
Albano to join in the visit to Idoine only for show, and in
the certainty that he would refuse, or in case he should
not, that then Idoine would ; for she knew, from Idoine's
visits in the previous winter, that she had frequently
thought in conversations of the fair fever-patient who had
been restored by her, and that she had just fled before

his ai'rival, in order not to overshadow his bright, loving

 LINDA'S EULOGY OF IDOINE.

present, which had become known to her in the easiest

manner through the Princess, by coming upon him like a
cloud out of the past full of melancholy resemblances.
Julienne had even ascertained that the Princess had
vainly wished to keep and reserve the Princesse longer,
in order, perhaps, by means of her, to remind, terrify,
change, or punish the youth. Julienne's love for the
Princesse would perhaps have been made as warm by
that tender flight from Albano, as her love towards Linda
was, had not this very love stood between ; at least, this

beautiful flight had given her an unhmited confidence

— which is exactly the true and only kind — in the
Princesse.
The day of the journey was a beautiful harvest morn-
ing, full of thickly-peopled cornfields, full of coolness and
dew and zest. Linda expressed a childlike joy in Idoine,

and gave the reasons in a glad tone. " First, because she
saved thy brother's life, — and because she knew, after
all, what she wanted, and insisted upon it with spirit, and
did not, like other Princesses, transform herself into a
victim to the Throne, — and because she is the most
German Frenchwoman that I know except Madame
Necker. Yes, in my eyes she belongs strictly, with all

her fair youth, among old ladies, and these I have always
sought out, for there is at least something to be learned
from them. She loves thee exceedingly, me, I believe,
less. To one who is such a charming medium between
the nun and the married woman, I seem too worldly,
though it is not the case."
The two companions ariived early in the beautiful,
enchanted village in the afternoon before dinner, just as
the neat children were already banding together to go to
gleaning, and the wagons were already going out to meet
 —

372 TITAN.

the gatherers of the sheaves. Idoine's brother, the future

hereditary Prince 'of Hohenfliess, — the Dwarf of Tivoli,
— looked out of the window, and Julienne almost regret-
ted the journey. Idoine flew to meet her, and clasped
her heartily to her breast. When Julienne had before
and upon her face that great blue eye and every trans-
figured feature of the form which once her brother had
so bUssfully and painfully loved, she fancied herself, now
that she had become his sister, to receive, as his repre-
sentative, the love of the representative of Liana ; and
she must needs, as she had done every time since that
death at the first reception, weep heartily.
Linda was received by the Princess with such a deep
tenderness that Julienne wondered, since the two gener-
ally lived in an alternation of coldness and love. There
stood the Minister's lady, Froulay, so old with mourning,
so cold, still, and courteous, so cold towards the occasion
and the company (except the fac-simile of her daughter),
particularly towards Linda, whose bold, decided, philo-
sophical tone seemed to her unwomanly, and like a trum-
pet on two female lips.

The future hereditary Prince of Hohenfliess fortunately

withdrew himself soon from so inconvenient a place,
where he navigated a shipw^reck plank instead of a
gondola. After inquiring of Julienne with interest about
the state of her brother, his present predecessor, and
reminding her and Linda of her and his Italian tour, he
became so fretful and out of tune at Julienne's frigidity,

and at the moral discourses of the women, and at a cer-

tain oppressiveness premonitory of a moral tempest,

which sensualists experience in the presence of women,
where everything rude, selfishness, arrogance, screams
like discord, — and at the general, plaguy hypocrisy, —
 ECONOMY OF ARCADIA. 373

which he could not but immediately take it all to be, —

that he was glad to break away, and relieve this pastoral

life of the only wolf who had crept into it. Voluptuaries
can never hold out long among many noble women, tor-
mented as they are by their many-sided, sharp observa-
tions, although they can more easily with one, because
they hope to ensnare her. What made him feel worst of

all was, that he was compelled to pronounce them all

hypocrites. He found no good women, because he had

faith in none ; since we must believe in them in order to
see them where they are, just as one must exercise virtue
in order to be acquainted with it, though not the reverse.
With him a black cloud seemed to draw off out of this
Eden and ether. The Minister's lady received a card
from her son Roquairol, who had just arrived, and she
went too, to the joy of Julienne, who found in her a little
obstacle to her plan of conversion for Linda, because the
latter looked upon the Minister's lady as a one-sided,
narrow, anxious, unyielding nature. Idoine begged the
two maidens to travel over her little kingdom with her.
They went down into the clean, wide village. On the
steps they were met by cheerful, obliging faces. From
the distant apartments of the palace was heard now sing-
ing, now blowing of wind instruments. As on the bird
the shining feathers shde swiftly and smoothly under
each other and out again, so did all occupations move
around Idoine ; her economical machine was no clumsy,
jarring steeple-clock, but a musical picture-watch, which
conceals the hours behind tones, the wheels behind
images.
In a meadow-garden the youngest children were play-
ing wildly with each other. Moravian and Dutch neat-
ness had scoured and painted the village to a sleek, bright
374 TITAN.

fancy-shop. New and shiny hung the bucket over the

well ; under the linden-rotunda of the village the earth-
floor was swept clean ;
everywhere were seen clean,
whole, fair clothes, and happy eyes ; and Idoine showed,
under the unusual gayety, an earnest meaning in the looks
with which she inspected her Arcadia, flower after flower.
She led her friends over the various Sunday dancing-
places of the different ages, atong before the house of the
steward, — wherein the Minister's lady resided, and now,
to Julienne's fear, her son was, — to the bright, plain
church. Soon came the parson and steward, for whom
her passing by had been a hint, following her into the
church, and received commissions from her. Both were
fair young men, with open brow and a little youthful
pride. When the party were out of the church, she said
through these young men she ruled over the place, and
them she guided gently that only young people were
;

furnished with hatred and spirit against conventionalism,

and with enthusiasm and faith. She added, jocosely, she
governed nothing but a school of girls, upon which she

laid more stress than upon the other, because education

was the formation of habits and manners, and these a girl
needed more than a boy, whom the world, after all, would
not allow to have any ; and she had, she said, some incli-

nation to be a la Bonne, because she had, even when a

girl, often been obliged to be one with her sisters.

Thereupon she introduced the two to several houses ;

everywhere they found well-whitened, neatly-ordered

apartments, flowers and vine-clusters over the windows,
fair women and children, and now a flute, now a violin,

and nowhere a' spinning child. In all she had charges to

give, and what seemed a mere walk was also business.

She showed a sharp insight through people, and their per-

 SUNSET IN ARCADIA. 375

verted, crooked ways, and a talent for business, which

possessed and united at once the universal and the partic-
ular. " I should be glad, of course," said she, " to have
only pleasures and amusements about me ; but without
labor and seriousness the best good of the world dies : not
so much as a real play is possible without real earnest-
ness." Linda commended her for training all to music, —
that real moonlight in every gloomy night of life. " With-
out poesy and art," she added, " the spirit grows mossy
and wooden in this earthly clime." " O what were mine
without tones !
" said Idoine, glowingly.

Linda inquired about the right of citizenship in this

pleasant state. " It is mostly possessed by Swiss families,"

said Idoine, " with whom I became acquainted at hearth
and home on my travels. Immediately after the French
women I rank my Swiss." Julienne replied, " You
repeat to me riddles." She solved them for her; and
Linda, who had been in France shortly after her, con-
firmed it, that there, among the women of a certain higher

tone, to whom no Crebillon had ever come up, a develop-

ment prevailed, unusual in Germany, of the most delicate
morality, almost holiness. " Only," added Linda, " they

had in morality, as in art, prejudices of fine taste, and

more delicacy than genius."
They went out through the village, toward the loveliest
evening sun ;
Alpine horns responded to each other on
the mountains, and in the vale gay old men went to light

employments. These Idoine greeted with peculiar love.

" Because," she said, " there was nothing more beautiful

than cheerfulness on an old face and among country ;

people it was always the sign of a well-regulated and

pious life."

Linda opened her heart to the golden scene before her,

 ;

370 TITAN.

and said : " How must all this delight in a poem ! But I
know not what I have to object to the fact that it now
exists so in the real reality."
" What has this same reality," said Idoine, plaj^ully,
" taken away from you or done to you ? I love it ; where
then are you to be found for us except in reality ? " " I,"

said Julienne, " am thinking of something quite different

one is ashamed here, that one has yet done so little with
all one's willing. From willing to doing is, however, to

be sure, a long step here," she subjoined, while she placed

her little finger on her heart, and stretched the fore-finger
as if vainly attempting to span from there to her head.
" Idoine, tell me, how then can one think of what is great
and what is little at once ? " " By thinking of the great-
est first/' said she ;
" when one looks into the sun, the
dust and the midges become most visible. God is, surely,
the sun of us all."

The earthly sun stood now looking toward them far

down on an immeasurable plain amid mild roses of
Heaven. A distant windmill flung its arms broadly
through the fair purple glow ; on the mountain decliv-
ities children sang near the pastured herds, and their
smaller brothers and sisters were playing under their eye ;

the evening bell, which in Arcadia was always tolled at

the farewell of the sun, rocked sun and earth to slumber
with its vibrations ; not only in youthful, but even in child-
like beauty lay the soft little village and its world round
about them. No storm, one said to one's self, can intrude
into this soft land, no winter stalk in in heavy panoply of
ice : here, one thought, only spring winds and rosy clouds
come and go : no rains fall, except early rains, and no
leaves, except those of the blossoms ; only dust from the
flowers rises here ; and the rainbow, — only forget-me-nots
 ;

THE GOD'S-ACRE IN ARCADIA. 377

and May-flowers hold it upon their little blue and white

leaves ; the landscape and life and all seemed here to be
only a continuous morning twilight, so fresh and new, full

of presentiment and contentment, without glow or glitter,

and with a few stars over the morning red.

Children with wreaths of grain in their hands sat on

other people's wagons full of sheaves, and rode proudly in.

Idoine hung with hearty love, as if this evening made

it all new, upon the double groups. " Only the country-
man is so fortunate," said she, " as to live on in all the
Arcadian relations of his childhood. The old man sees
nothing around him but implements and labors which as
a child he also saw and plied. At last he goes up into
that garden over yonder, and sleeps it out." She pointed
to the churchyard on the hill, which was a veritable gar-
den, with flower-beds and a wall of fruit-trees. Julienne
looked thither with agitation, — she saw the dark curtain
tremble behind which her sick brother was soon to be
borne.
Transparent evening gold-dust was wafted over the
garden ; the loud day was mufläed, and life peaceful
olive-branches and their blossoms sank slowly down out
of the quiet heavens. " There is the only place," said
Idoine, " where man concludes an eternal peace with him-
self and others, as a French clergyman so beautifully said
to me." " Such Christian-catholic night-thoughts," replied
Linda, " are as disagreeable to me as the clergymen them-
selves. , We can as little experience an immortality as an
annihilation." " I do not understand that," said Julienne.
" Ah, Idoine, if now there were no immortality, what
would you do ? " " J^aimerais" said she to her, in a low
voice.

Suddenly they heard some one singing before them, as

 ;

378 TITAN.

at a great distance :
" Taste " — then after some time
— " of life's " — at last — " pleasure." * " That is the
echo from the churchyard," said Idoine, and endeavored
to persuade the party to return. " Echo and moonshine
and churchyard together," she continued playfully, " may
well be too strong for female hearts." At the same time
she touched her eye, with a hint to Julienne, as much as
to say how sorry she was that the eyes of the Countess
could only see through a mist the beautiful evening
coming on afar off. " The singing voice sounds so
familiar to me," said Linda. " It 's Roquairol, that 's all

shall we go on ? " said Julienne. But Linda begged to

stay, and Idoine courteously agreed.

Now did the echo — the moonlight of sound — give
back tones like dirges from the funeral choir ; was
and it

as if the united shades of the departed sang them over in

their holy-week under the ground, — as if the corpse-veil
stirred on the white lip, and out of the last hollows
sounded again a hollow life. The singing ceased ;
Alpine
horns began on the mountains ; then the echo of the
concert came over again in enchanting tones, as if the

departed still played behind the breastwork of the grave-

mound, and rehabilitated themselves in echoed tones-t AH
men bear dead or dying ones in their breast ; so did the

* A familiar and favorite German song, " Freut euch des Lebens."
— Tb.
t This passage reminds the translator of a beautiful poem of Le-
nau's, in which the postilion passing a graveyard in the mountains at
night,where an old fellow-postilion lies buried, blows an air which
the deadman used to love and a passenger hearing the echo from the
;

mountain-churchyard, says :
—
" And a blast upon the air
From the heights oame flying :

Was the dead postilion there

To his strains replying ? Tr. —
 IDOINE NO SENTIMENTALIST. 379

three maidens. Tones are the garments of the past

fluttering back with a gUmmer, and thc}^ excite the heart
too much thereby.
They wept, and neither could say whether for sadness
or joy. The hitherto so moderate Idoine grasped Linda's
hand, and laid it softly on her heart, and let it sink again.

They turned round silently and with one accord. Idoine

held Linda by the hand. The subterranean waters of
the echoes of the dead and the Alpine horns murmured
after them, though more distantly. It did not escape
Julienne how Idoine continually turned her face, merely
in order to withdraw it from her, with the great drops in
her large eyes, towards the thickly-veiled Linda ; and
she inferred therefrom that Idoine knew and w^as ac-
quainted with much, and respected the bride of the
youth to whom she had by her fair resemblance given
back a happy life.

" What now do we get from all this ? " said Idoine,
by and by, and near the village. " We foresee that we
should be too tender, and yet we give ourselves up. For
that very reason men call us weak. They prepare them-
selves for their future by mere hardenings, and only we
do it with mere softening processes." " What shall one
do, then," said Julienne, — " leap into rivers, up mountains,
on horseback, and so on ? " " No," said Idoine. " For I
see it by my peasant-women : they suffer in their nerves,
with all their muscular labor, as well as others. With
the mind, I imagine, we must all do and seek more ; but
we always let only the fingers and eyes exercise and stir

themselves. The heart itself knows nothing thereof, and

does what it pleases the while : it dreams, weeps, bleeds,
dances. A little philosophizing w^ould be of service to us ;

but, as it is, we give ourselves up, bound, to aU feelings.

 ;

38o TITAN.

and if we think, it is merely to give them additional

aid."

They came back into the village ; it was full of busy

evening noise. Children came dancing to meet Idoine ;

alp-horns sounded in from the heights, and from the houses

flutes and songs. Idoine gave cheerfully evening com-
mands. " How easily, after all," said she, " outward tran-
quillity breaks up the internal. A busied heart is like a
vessel of waterswung round; hold it still, and it runs over."
Julienne had already several times, but in vain,
snatched at the helm of the hour and the conversation,
to carry out her plan now, when she observed Linda's
;

silence, emotion, and dreaminess, she fancied she had

hit upon the long-expected, favorable moment when
some words which Idoine let drop on the subject of
marriage would find in Linda a softened soil for their
roots. By the easy turn of a eulogy which she pro-
nounced upon Idoine for her spirited opposition against
launching into a hated princely marriage, and her gain
of a perpetual young life, she brought the Countess to
the point of expressing her heretical hatred of marriage,
and saying that it laid the flower painfully fastened with

a sharp iron ring frame that love without freedom,

to its ;

and from duty, was nothing but hypocrisy and hatred

and that acting according to morality, so called, was as
much as if one should choose to think or poetize accord-
ing to a system of logic which he had before him, and
that the energy, the will, the heart of love, was something
higher than morals and logic.

At this moment came a note from the Minister's lady,

wherein she excused her to-day's absence on the score of
the too sad farewell which her son had this evening so
strangely and as if forever bid her. However many
 IDOINE DEFENDS MARRIAGE. 381

silent thoughts this intelHgence left behind in Julienne

and Linda, Idoine was not drawn by it out of the lively
emotion into which the previous discourse had thrown
her ; but, with a noble indignation, which made out of
the beautiful maiden a beautiful youth, and put Minerva's
helmet on her head, she made to her lofty adversary, who
was less to be roused by others' passions than by oppos-
ing sentiments, this declaration of war : Certainly her
aversion to marriage was chargeable only upon her other
aversion to " priests " ; for was the marriage bond any-
thing else than eternal love, and did not every real love
hold itself for an eternal one ? A love which thinks to
die at some time or other was already dead, and that
which feared to live forever, feared in vain. If even
friends were joined at the altar, as is said to be some-
where or other the case,* they would at most only be
more sacredly attached to each other in love. One might
count quite as many if not more unhappy intrigues than
unhappy marriages. One might, indeed, be a mother, but
not a father, without marriage, and the latter must honor
the former and himself by a decent respect for morality.
" I am a German," she concluded, " and respect the old
knightly ladies, my ancestors, highly. Blessed is a wo-
man like Elizabeth and a man like Götz von Berlich-
ingen, in their holy wedlock." All at once she found her-
self surprised by her warmth and her fluency. " I have

really," she added, smiling, " become a pedantic parson's

widow. This comes of my being the highest authority
in the village, and from the fact that, as in almost every
cottage a happy refutation of single blessedness dwells,
I do not love to let other sentiments come up here."
" 0," said Julienne, pleasantly, because she saw Linda
* See Customs of the Morlacks. From the Italian. 1775.
382 TITAN.

serious, " girls always talk together about love and mar-
riage a little ; they love to draw flowers for themselves
out of a bride's bouquet."
" That, as you know, I could not well do," said Idoine,
alluding to the sworn promise which she had been obliged
to give her parents, who w^ere suspicious of her enthu-
siastic boldness, never to marry below her princely rank,
which, to her, according to her sharp propensities and
parts, amounted to as much as celibacy. " You were
right, however," pursued Julienne, and would fain con-
tinue in her mirthful mood ;
" love without marriage is

like a bird of passage, who seats himself upon a mast,

which itself moves along. I praise, for my part, a fine,

green-rooted tree, which stays there and admits a nest."

Contrary to her custom, Linda did not laugh at this,

but went alone, without saying a word, down into the

garden and the moonlight.
" The Countess," said Idoine to her friend, troubled
about the meaning of that silent seriousness, " has not, I
hope, misunderstood us." " No," said Julienne, with glad

looks at the thouglit of having gained her point so far

that the discourse had made an impression on Linda ;

" she has the rarest gift to understand, and the most com-

mon misfortune not to be understood." " The two things

always go together," said she, remained a moment in
thought, looked at Julienne, and at last said, " I must be
entirely true. I knew the Countess's relation through
my sister. Friend, is he entirely worthy of her ? " —a
question whose source the Princesse could seek only in
the supposition of revengeful insinuations on the part of
the Princess.
" Entirely !
" answered she, strongly. " I gladly be-

lieve you," replied Idoine, with rapidity in her tones, but

 ;

LINDA JEALOUS OF IDOINE. 383

tranquillity in her looks. She looked longer and longer

upon the sister of Albano ; her great, blue eyes gleamed
more and more strongly ; Minerva's helmet was removed
from the maidenly head ; the soft countenance appeared
lovely, tranquil, clear, not more strongly moved than a
prayer to God permits it to be, and with as little of pas-
sionate desire as a glorified saint has, and yet shining more
and more celestially. Julienne's fair heart leaped up
she saw Liana again, as if she had come from heaven to
press the beloved man with a blessing to a new heart
she said, with tears, "Thou, thou didst once give him
peace." Idoine was surprised ; two tears gushed from
"
her bright eyes ; with emphasis she answered, " Gave !

in an agitated and passionate manner pressed herself to

her friend, saying, " I loved you long ago," and they said
nothing further.
Quickly she collected herself, reminded Julienne of
Linda's night-blindness, and begged her to go directly
after her as her friend, although she herself would gladly
steal this service from her if she dared. Julienne has-
tened into the garden, but remembered with emotion that
Idoine had not reciprocated her thou ; Idoine avoided the
female thou. Unlike the Oriental women, who leave off

the veil before relations, she, like her fair French neigh-
bors, transferred the delicate laws of politesse into matters

of the heart.
Julienne found her friend in the garden in a dark
bower, still, with deep, sunken eyes, buried in dreams.
Linda started up :
" She loves him !
" said she, with pain

and heat. " Hear it. Julienne : she loves him !

" The
latter, upon this utterance of a truth with which she had
herself come directly from Idoine's arms, could do nothing
but express her terror ; but Linda took it for astonish-
 ;

384 TITAN.

ment, and went on :

" By Heaven ! my eye has detected
her. 0, once she was not by far so lively and earnest
and sensitive and soft. Her deep emotion at beholding
me, and her weeping at Roquairol's voice because it

resembles his, and her long and earnest marriage-sermon,

and her soul-like glances at me, — O, did she not see him
in the great, glorious moment when the blooming one
knelt weeping, and hfted his godlike head to heaven, and
called down the saint and peace ? O, that she should
have so much as ventured to personate either before him !

"
And can she forget that ?

Julienne at last got the word :

" Well, suppose it, then
is not Idoine, however, noble and good ? " "1 have
nothing to say against her or for her," answered Linda.
" But when he sees her now, when he finds the saintly
one once more like the departed, when his whole first love
returns and triumphs over the second . . . By Heaven !

No," she added, proudly and strongly, " no, that I cannot
brook ; I will not beg, will not weep nor resign, but I will

battle for him. AmI am more

not I, too, beautiful ?
so, and my
more boldly shaped for his. What
spirit is

can she give which I cannot offer him three times over ?
I will give it to him, — my fortune, my being, even my
liberty ; marry him as well as she I will
I can ; . . .

O speak. Julienne But thou art a cold German, and

!

secretly attached to her from like godliness. O God,

Julienne ! am I, then, beautiful ? Assure me of it, I pray.
Am I not at all like the glorified one ? Should I not
look exactly as he would wish ! Why was I not his first

love, and his Liana, and even dead too ? Good Julienne,
"
why dost thou not speak ?

" Only let me speak," said she, although not with entire
truth. She had been struck and punished by Linda's
 ;

JULIENNE SOOTHES LINDA.

home-coming truth, and by her own consciousness that

she had laid out a plan of doing awaj Linda's prejudices
against marriage, the very supports of which plan had
been anticipated and reckoned over by Linda as justifica-

tions of jealousy, and that she had set a rock in motion

on the point of a rock, and brought it to the point of

falling, which she could now no longer manage. She was

confounded, too, yes, angered, by what she felt to be a
strange impetuosity of love, before which she could not
at all speak out the Job's-comfort that Albano would
always act according to the obligations of fidelity. Beau-
tifullywas she surprised by the prospered conversion to
a readiness for marriage. With some uncertainty as to
the result, however, on the part of Linda, who by the
moonlight and the mild, distant mountain-music had only
been made more stormy, she continued :
" I would not
willingly interrupt thee with praise of thy marriage reso-
lution ; in all other particulars thou art wrong. To be
sure, she is now more serious ; but she stood at the death-
bed of her likeness, and saw herself grow pale in Liana
that does much to chasten. Touching him, had he seen
thee earlier ..."
" Did he not see early the image on Lago Maggiore,
"
but unlike, as he said ?

" I will, then, confess it to thee, wild one," replied

Julienne, " because one must not surprise thee, that I yes-
terday begged him to join us in our visit to the Princesse,
and that he, even out of regard and dislike to all resem-
blances, gave me a downright refusal ; but he awaits us
to-mon'ow in the Prince's garden."
Changed, softened, with transfigured eyes, and with
sinking voice, Linda said, " Does ray friend love me so
greatly ? But I love him exceedingly too, — the pure
VOL. II. 17 T
386 TITAN.

one. To-morrow will I say to him, take my freedom,

and stay forever with me. We will go from the altar,
my Julienne, —
thou and I and he, to Valencia, to —
Isola Bella, or whithersoever he will, and stay together.
Thanks, dear moon and music ! How childlike the tones
and the rays play with each other ! Embrace me, my
beloved forgive that Linda has been naughty " Here
!
;

the storm of her heart dissolved into sweet weeping. So,

in countries upon which the sun shines vertically down,
is the blue sky daily transformed into thunder, tempest,
and black rain, and daily the sun goes down again blue
and golden.
Juhenne only replied, "Beautiful! now will we go
up !
" — being less capable than Linda of swift transi-
tions. When they saw, above, the tranquil, bright, con-
tented Idoine again, — always and serenely steadfastly
active,— undisturbed by regret or — wear- expectation,
ing only harvest-wreath of
the never flowery action, the
bridal-wreath,— many white blossoms her
so at feet,

lying ungathered garland — her

for or festoon, pure, radi-
ant soul like a clear, bright tone, which bears the charm
of its melody through moist, cloudy air, undisturbed and
unbroken, — then did she feel that Idoine was connected
with her by a more sisterly tie than Linda. The former
was to her an ideal and a constellation in her heaven
above her ; the latter, an unknown one, which sparkles
far off and invisible in a second hemisphere of the heav-
ens ; but in her the womanly power of loving on, almost
even to the degree of hatred, worked on more intensely
than in any one woman, and she remained constant to her
old friend. Idoine was one of those female souls which
resemble the moon ;
pale and faint must she stand in the
magnificent evening sky, which splendor and burning
 NOTE FROM LINDA'S FATHER. 387

clouds adorn, and not a single shadow can she dislodge

on the earth, and mounts with invisible rays, but all other
hght grows pale, and hers grows out of the shadow, until
at last her supernatural radiance invests the earthly night,
and transforms it into a second world, and all hearts love
her, weeping, and the nightingales sing in her beams.
All was now settled and ended. Linda kept herself
reserved, and merely from respect to the law of social
propriety, which she never overstepped. Idoine, guess-
ing a change, softly drew herself back out of her former
familiarity. Early in the dark morning they parted, but
Juhenne told not her friend, how, when they left each
other, she had seen Idoine turn away with wet eyes.

126. CYCLE.
ALBANO had, during Linda's absence, received
from Roquairol a request not to travel long just

now, so that he might in a few days see his tragedy of

" The Tragedian." Gaspard, whom he found displeased
at Linda's shyness of marriage, gave him a singular note
on a card for Linda, containing nothing but this, from her
invisible father :
—
" I approve thy love. I wait for thee to seal it, that I
may at length embrace my daughter.
«The Future One."

So many weighty wishes of others concurring with his

own, took away now from his tender sense of honor the
suspicion of selfishness and importunity, if he should ask
of her the fairest festival of his life. He gave his father

great satisfaction by his resolution to do this. Gaspard

communicated to him private war intelligence, and told
 ;

388 TITAN.

him, jokingly, it would be soon time now, that he should

help fight for his friends, the modern French. Albano
Faid it was even He was glad to
his earnest purpose.

liear that from a youth, Gaspard said war trained one ;

to business, and the right or wrong of it had nothing to

do with the case, and concerned others, namely, those who

declared the war.
Albano took his journey, happy through remembrance,
still happier through hope. He had now courage to im-
agine to himself the day when Linda, a queen, should
entwine with the shining crown of her spirit the soft
bridal-wreath, — when this sun should rise as a Luna, —
when a father, whom his own father loved, should inter-
rupt the high festival by one of the highest, — and when
for once two beings might say to each other: Now we
love each other forever. So blest, and with an infinite

love and sunny-warm soul, he arrived at the Prince's

garden.
He always, in his passionate punctuality, came much
too early. No one was yet there but two — departing
ones, Roquairol and the Princess. These two were now
so often and so openly seen together, that the appearing
seemed intentional. Roquairol came courteously to meet
him and reminded him of the received billet. " This is
the theatre, dear friend," said he, " where I next play
most of the preparations I have already made, particu-
larly to-day. My excellent Princess has granted me
this spot." " You are surely coming, too," said that lady
in a friendly manner
to Albano. " I have ah-eady prom-

ised him as much," said Albano, who felt two ice-cellars

blowing upon him in the midst of his spring. Fraiilein
von Haltermann alone showed him great and decided
scorn. " Shall we go first to my sister's " asked Roquairol
 STORMY PARTING OF THE LOVERS. 389

of the Princess, as he escorted her away. Albano did

not understand that. The Princess nodded. They took
leave of him. Fraülein von Haltermann seemed to

forget him. They flew away, stopped up on a hill en-

circled by the whole blooming landscape, near a little

flower-garden, and then rolled along down.

The Charles's-wain with the beloved maidens came
now into the French princely garden. Ardently did
Albano and Linda press each other to their hearts, which
to-day, —
just as if those hearts had been a second time
created and adorned for each other by destiny, they —
would once more, with new hopes and worlds, give each
other in exchange ! All was so resplendent around them,
all new, rare, tranquil ; the whole world a garden full of
high, fluttering fountains, which, drunk with splendor,
flung their rainbows through each other in the sun. Ju-
lienne drew him aside to tell him of Linda's fair resolve ;

but he anticipated her with the intelligence of his. She

strengthened him with her intelligence, delighted at the
singular playing together of the wheels of fortune.
When Albano and the bride were together again, they
felt a new warmth of heart ; not such as comes from a
dull, consuming coal, which at last crumbles into black-
ness, but that of a higher sun, which out of loud flames
makes peaceful rays, and which surrounds men with a
warm, mild spring day. Albano neither delayed nor
introduced the matter, but gave her the note of her
father, and said during the reading, with trembling voice,
" Thy father begs with me and for me." Linda's tears
gushed, — the youth trembled, — Julienne cried :
" Linda,

see how he loves thee "

!
Albano took her to his heart,
— Linda stammered, " Take, then, my dear freedom,
and stay with me." " Till my last hour," said he. " And
 ;

TITAN.

till mine, and thou goest to no war," said she, with a ten-
derly low voice. He pressed her confusedly and ardently
to his heart. " Am I not right, thou promisest it, ray
dear?" she repeated.
" O thou divine one, think of something fairer now,"
said he. " Only yes ! Albano, yes ? " she continued.
" All will be solved by our " Yes ? Say
love," said he.
only yes!" She begged, — he was silent, she was ter- —
rified. " Yes ? " said she, more vehemently. " O Linda,
he stammered, — they sank
!
Linda " out of each other's
arms, — "I cannot," said he. " Human creatures, under-
stand each other !
" said Julienne. " Albano, speak thy
word," said Linda, severely. " I have none," said he.
Linda raised herself, offended, and said, "I, too, am
proud, — I am going now. Julienne." No prayer of the
sister could melt the astounded maiden or the astounded
youth. Anger, with its speaking-trumpet and ear-trum-
pet, spoke and heard everything too strongly.
The Countess went out, and commanded to harness the
horses. " ye people, and thou obstinate one," said Ju-
lienne ; '^go, I pray, after her, and appease her." But
the leaves of the sensitive-plant of his honor were now
crushed ; this (to him) new excitement, this shower of
indignation had agitated him ; he asked not after her.
" Look up at that garden," said his sister, beside herself
"
" there lies buried thy first bride ; O spare the second !

This worked exactly the opposite effect to what she had

intended. " Liana," said he, coldly, " would not have
been so ;
just go and attend the Countess "
!
" O ye
men !
" cried she, and went.
Soon after he saw the two drive away. Gradually the
wild horde of indignation scattered and vanished. But
he could not, he felt, have done otherwise. He had jour-
 ARTLING NOTE FROM SCHORFE. 39»

nejed to meet her and she him with such new tenderness,
— neither knew of it on the other's part, — and hence the
incomprehensible contrast enraged both so exceedingly.
He hated, even in other men, begging, how much more in

himself, and never was he capable of setting right a per-

son who misunderstood him. He looked now around
him ; all sparkling fountains of joy had suddenly sunk,
the skies were desolate, and the water murmured in its

depths. He rode up to the garden where Liana's grave

should be. Only flower-beds and a linden-tree with a cir-

cular bench did he see there, but no grave. Stunned and

confounded, he looked in and around over the shining
spaces. Obdurate, — tearless, — with a heart suffocated
in the regurgitating stream of love, — gazing out into the

wide future, which ran between mountains into crooked

valleys and hid itself, he rode gloomily home. Here he
lighted upon the following leaf from Schoppe, which the
uncle, hastening on in advance from Spain, had left for

him.

" It is all right, — I found the well-known portrait, —

I bring it along with me in my hunting-pouch, — I come
in a few days or weeks, — I have encountered the Bald-
head, and killed him dead enough, —I am very much in
my senses. Thy singular uncle travelled with me for a
long time. S."
 THIRTY-SECOND JUBILEE.
ROQUAIROL.

127. CYCLE.
INDA had spent the whole subsequent day in
silent anguish of spirit, thinking of the be-
loved, who seemed to her, as Liana had once
seemed to him, not to live in the whole living
lire of love, as she did, — she had been long besieged by
the Princess, and then robbed by her of Julienne, whom
she carried off on a pleasure-drive, and who could only
throw her the intelligence, that Albano had also made an
excursion to-day, in order the earlier to embrace Schoppe,
— she had remained quiet, according to her principle,
that female pride commands silence, calmness, and even
oblivion, — when at evening she received by the blind
maiden from Blumenbühl, whom she had taken into her
service, the following letter :
—
" Thou once mine ! Be so again ! I will still die, but
only for thee, not for a people on the battle-field. For-
give yesterday and bless to-day. I have given up again
my purpose of an excursion to meet a friend, in order to

throw myself upon thy heart this very day and draw out
of thy heaven and fill mine. I cannot wait until Julienne
comes back ;
my heai-t burns for thee. To-morrow I
 ;

EOQUAIROL FORGES ALBANO'S NAME. 393

must at all events be in the Prince's garden, where Ro-

quairol at last gives his Tragedian. Come this evening
— I implore thee by our love — at eight o'clock, either,
if it is clear, into the cavern of Tartarus, whose grave-
digger's finery and Orcus-furniture will certainly be only
ridiculous to thee, — or, if it is cloudy, to the end of the
flute-deU.

"Thou must take only thy blind maiden with thee.

Thou well knowest the espionage that besets us on all
sides. I expect and desire no answer from thee, but at
the stroke of eight, I steal through Elysium to see where
stands the goddess, my heaven, my sun,my bliss, thysehl
"Thy Albano."

As by a lightning beam from heaven, her whole being

was melted into a soft, blissful glow; for she believed
what the handwriting said, that the note was from Albano,
— however unexpected sudden a so conversion appeared
toher him — although
in ; was it really written by Ro-
quairol. Let us go back even to the gloomy source of
the rushing hell-flood which stretches out its ice-cold arm
after innocence and heaven.
Roquairol had remained through the winter, with all

the mortifications of his ungovernable wishes, tolerably

happy and good the evening star of love, although for
;

him it rather waned than waxed, stood, however, not yet

below the horizon, but only under clouds. But so soon
as Linda had travelled off with Julienne — and indeed as
he immediately guessed and early learned — to Italy
then did a new storm sweep through his life, which tore
off his last blossoms and beclouded him with the long-laid
dust ; for he now, as he had himself predicted to Albano,
saw the net coming up stream toward him and the Count-
17*
 ;

394 TITAN.

ess, which should take both prisoners. The eating poison

of his old passion for many gods and many mistresses ran
round again hotly in all the veins of his heart: — he fell

into extravagant expense, play, debts, as deeply as he

possibly could, — luck set and life at stake, — threw his

iron body jaws

into the of death, who could not immedi-
ately destroy — and
it, intoxicated himself with the sor-
row of a savage over his murdered life and hopes in the
funeral bowl of debauchery; a league which sensuality
and despair have often before this struck with each other
on earth, on theatres of war, and in great cities.

Only one thing still held the Captain upright, the ex-
pectation that Albano would keep his present distance
from Linda, and then, that she would come back. At
this stage the Princess returned, still keeping fresh all her
hatred of the cold Albano, whose " dupe '*
she held her-
self to be. Roquairol easily induced his father to bring
him nearer to her, as he hoped with her to find news
about Albano and everything else. He soon became of
consequence to her by the similarity of his voice and his
former friendship for her foe, and still more by his rare
tact of being to a woman always exactly what she de-

sired.

As she had already known long since all his earlier

connections and wishes, accordingly so soon as her tele-
graphs of Albano had given her the intelligence of his
new love, she readily dropped him a hint on the subject.

Despite the warm part which Roquairol had to play

toward her, he was nevertheless furiously pale in her
presence, breathless, alternately trembling and stiffening
" Is it so ? " he asked, in a low tone. She showed him a
letter. " Princess," said he, furiously pressing her hand
to his lips, " thou wast right ; forgive me all now."
 HORRID SUGGESTION OF THE PRINCESS. 395

How great an idea he had had of Albano he now for

the first time saw, by his astonishment at what was the

most natural thing in the world. Never does the heart
hate more bitterly than when it is compelled at length to

hate, without respecting, the object which it had formerly

been compelled to respect amidst its very hatred ; just as,
on the same ground, the bad man is much more deeply
and selfishly provoked by another's hypocrisy than the
good man. Roquairol fancied now he had leave to make
a real foe of the proud friend ; he became, instead of a
German ruin, an Italian one, full of scorpions. The Prin-
cess was the hot climate which makes the scorpions for
the first time really poisonous. She related to him how
Albano had so long sought to win her, and to decoy her
over his deep-laid mines, merely in order, at their explo-
sion, to have the enjoyment of coldness and contempt,
and how indifferently he had spoken of the Captain, with-
out condescending so much as to hate him.
The Princess allowed the Captain to mount up one step
after another on her throne, till not another remained
except her own person. him even the last
She offered
step on condition of avenging her. said he would He
avenge her and himself, for Albano had solemnly in Tar-
tarus resigned the Countess to him. Thus did both seem
to hide their real love under the mask of revenge the ;

Princess hers for the Captain, he his for Linda.

She brought closer and closer before his eye a plan
which he did not discern, however much she stimulated
him by the remark that Albano was and would be a greater
favorite with women than one had hitherto thought ; that
even her excellent, discreet sister Idoine, if one might
judge by her silent questions in letters, and other signs,

had almost lost through him both of the things which she
 ;

39^ TITAN.

had restored to him by his sick-bed, — health and peace

and that he must never hope to see or even to make the
Countess inconstant.
At last she said, slowly, the fearful words, " Roquairol,
you have his voice, and she has by night no eye."
" Heaven and hell !
" he exclaimed, turning alternately
red and pale, and looking at once into heaven and hell,

whose doors sprang open before him. " Val "* he added,
quickly, without having yet fathomed the black depth of
this white-foaming The Princess embraced him
sea.

ardently, he her more so. " In a poetic fiction," said

still

he, " thy thought would easily have come to me, but in
actual life I have no cunning " "0 knave " said she.! !

As soon and as long as he might venture, he said Thou,

because he knew the heart, especially woman's. Soon
after, when they had been still more frank towards each

other, said she :

" If she remains innocent with you, then
you have offended no one, and no one has lost ; if not,

then either she was not so, or she deserved the proof and
punishment of being deluded." " Yes, that is divine, —
that fits into the magnificent Tragedian, just before the

end," said he, but would not explain himself on the sub-
ject.

Now was an object and centre supplied to the wild cir-

cles of his action. He coldly dissected Albano's love-

letters into great and little characters, merely in order to
copy them faithfully ; hence it was that Albano once found
at Rabette's his handwriting without his thoughts. He
inquired of Rabette about all Albano's lesser relations, in
order to elaborate his parts, even to the smallest particular,
and even so he read all Italian tourists, in order to speak
freely with Linda about every beautiful spot, where he, as

* Go! (Done!) — Tr.

 "

ROQUAIROL'S DOUBLE TRAGEDY NEAR. 397

the sham-Albano, had enjoyed with her Hesperian hfe.

It tickled him that he could thus, with the flame in his

breast, and with the cold ice-light in his head, now for once

lay out and considerately manage, in real life, all theatri-

cal preparations and complications, just as he had once

done for the stage.

Hesaw Albano, whose haughty treatment he had expe-

rienced, come from his journey he saw the blooming ;

goddess walk in Lilar ; he heard, through the spies of the

Princess, of their engagement ; high heaved his dead sea
in heavy waves, and sought to drag down its victims from
their flight, even from heaven. Immediately after the
tragedy which he proposed to enact with Linda, his own
was to come in the Prince's garden, which he from time
to time promised and postponed ; he had to wait and spy
long till a time should appear into which so many teeth of
a double machinery might catch at once.
At length the time appeared, and he wrote the above-
exhibited letter to Linda. All was reckoned upon and
settled, and every assistance of accident woven in with the
plan. His tragedy had long been committed to memory
by his acquaintances, although never rehearsed, because
he, as he said, meant to surprise his fellow-players them-
selves with his part in the very midst of the play. The
pleasure which he always had in bidding farewell, — be-
cause here the emotion refreshed him at once by its short-
ness and by its strength, — he now gave himself with as
many as loved him. From Rabette he parted with so
tempestuous a tenderness that she said to him, with alarm,
" Charles, I hope this does not signify anything evil ?

" All is evil in me, just now," said he.

Through the intercession of the Princess the most im-
portant spectators were invited for the next day to his
398 TITAN.

tragedy, even Gaspard and Julienne, together with the

court. The mystery took. Even from the Princess his
part was concealed. Only his father, who would have
been glad to follow the court, he struck off the list by
putting him into a great rage, for he knew of no other way
of keeping him back than by this thorn-hedge. His
mother and Rabette he had conjured by their welfare, by
his welfare, not to be spectators of his play.
A new wind of fortune had come to help him raise his
flying-machine, through the singular brother of the Knight,
who heard with such joy of the Iron Mask of his tragic
mask, that he came to him with the proposal of introdu-
cing to him a new and wonderful player. " All the parts

are taken up," said the poet. " Make a chorus between
the acts, and give it to one," said the Spaniard. Roquairol
asked after the player's name. The Spaniard led him to

his hotel. No sooner had they entered, than a voice

from within his chamber called, in a guttural, animal's

voice, " Back again so soon, my master? " They found

within nothing but a black jay. " Post the bird on the

stage, let him be the Chorus ; let him repeat in half-song,*

mezza voce, only two or three lines ; the effect will be

felt," said the Spaniard.
Roquairol was astonished at the long recitations of the
jay. The Spaniard begged him to dictate a still longer
one, that he might with his own ears hear him drill it into
the bird. Roquairol gave him, "In life dwells deception,
not on the stage." The Spaniard gave out, at first, merely
a word to be repeated, then another, repeated it three
by way of incitement
times, then said, snapping his fingers
to the creature, AUons diahlesse ! " and the animal stut-
^'

tered out, in a deep, hollow tone, the whole line. Ro-

* Chant? — Tr.
 ALL READY FOR THE GREAT CRIME. 399

qnairol found in this comic bestial-mask something fright-

ful, and accepted the proposal to compose some lines of a
chorus and assign them to the bird, on one unique condi-
tion, namely, that the Spaniard would, the evening pre-
vious, draw away his nephew Albano from Pestitz, under
some pretext or other, and then appear with him in the

Prince's garden. The Spaniard said, " Sir Captain, I

need no pretext ; I have a true reason. I am to travel

with him to meet his friend Schoppe, who will come

to-morrow evening; he, too, will be one of your specta-
tors."

Albano, in his perplexed frame of mind toward Linda,

and in his impatient expectation of Schoppe, could not
have accepted anything so readily as a little plan for an
excursion, by which he might the earlier have this beloved
Schoppe on his breast. Julienne was entreated by the
Princess, in the presence of the sick Prince, to accompany
her to Idoine, who waited for her half-way at a frontier
castle, and to go back the next day into the Prince's gar-
den. She declined. The sick brother, according to con-

cert between him and the Princess, put in the petitions

which had been requested of him. The sister fulfilled

them.
And now all was arranged for the evening on which

Roquairol was to see Linda. So ghmmer by night in the

sheds of an innocent hamlet the inserted brands of the
incendiary ; the storm-wind roars around the weary, sleep-
ing inmates ; the robbers stand on the mountains in the
mists of evening, and look down in expectation of the
moment when the fiery swords of the flames shall gleam
out on all sides through the mist, and rob and murder
with them, as they rush down on the dismayed and de-
fenceless.
 TITAN.

128. CYCLE.
LINDA read the letter innumerable times over, wept
for sweet love, and never once thought of — for-

giving. This breeze of love, which bends all the flowers

and breaks none, she had herself so long wished ; and
now, all at once, after the foggy dead-calm of the heart, it

came fresh and living, through the garden of her life.

She could hardly wait for eight o'clock. She helped her-
self while away the time by selecting her dress, which at

last consisted of the veil, hat, and all the things which she
had worn when she found her lover for the first time on
the island of Ischia.
She placed upon her beating bosom the paradise, or
orange-blossoms, the indexes of that time and world, and
went at the appointed hour, with the blind maiden on her
arm, down into the garden. As well from hatred of Tar-
tarus as from compliance with the letter, she took the road
to the flute-dell. The night was obscure to her eye, and
the blind maiden acted as her guide.
Overhead, on the altar-mount of Lilar, hke the evil
spirit on the battlement of Paradise, stood Roquairol,
looking sharply down into the garden, to find Linda and
her path. His festive-steed had been fastened down
below in the deep thicket to some foreign shrubbery.
Full of fury he saw Dian and Chariton still walking in
the garden with the children, and up in the thunder-
house a little light. He cursed every disturbing soul,
for he was determined to murder this evening, in case

of necessity, every stormer of his heaven. At last he

saw Linda's tall, red-dressed form move toward the flute-
dell, go up to the threshold of bush-work, and disappear
behind it.
 THE SNAKE IN THE PAKADISE. 401

He hastened down the long, spiral mountain, warm as

a poisoned snake. He heard behind him some one

hurrying after in the long windings of the bushes. In
a fury he drew a sword-cane, which, with a pocket-pistol,
.he had by him. At last he saw an odious form, hke an
evil spirit, running after him; it attacked him. It was
the long-armed ape of the Princess. He run him through
on the spot, in order not to be followed by him.
Below, in the open garden, he went slowly, in order
not to awaken any suspicion. He stole softly as death,

when on the thunder-car of a cloud he sails unheard

through the air over a blossoming tree, beneath which a
virgin leans, and hid the murderous thunder-bolt in his

breast. He opened the high gate-shrubbery of the flute-

dell ; all was still within there and dark ; only in the
upper heavens a singular, roaring storm swept along and
chased the herd of clouds, but on the earth it sounded
low, and not a leaf stirred. " Is any one there ? " asked
the blind gate-keeper. " Good evening, maiden," said
Roquairol, in order by the tone of his speech to pass for
Albano.
Deep in the vale, which now grew narrower and more
leafy, Linda was singing softly an old Spanish melody of
her childhood's time. At last she was visible ; the giant-
snake made the poisonous spring at the sweet form, and
she was entwined in a thousand-fold embrace.
He hung on her speechless, breathless ; the cloud of
his life broke ;
burning tears of passion and pain and joy
gushed out ; all the arms into which the stream of his
love had hitherto run round in shallows, rushed together
roaring, and grasped and bore one form. " Weep not,
my good Albano ; we surely love each other again for-
ever," said Linda, and the tender, beautiful hp gave him
 " —

402 TITAN.

the first, fervent kiss. Then the fire-wheel of ecstasy

whirled round and bore him with it, and around the head
which hung lashed thereto the circling flames waved high.
From a dread of being seen, if he should look, and from
pleasure, he had closed his eyes; now he opened them,
and there, so near to him and in his arms, he beheld the
lofty form, the proud, blooming countenance and the
moist, warm eyes of love. " Thou heavenly one," said
he, " kill me in this hour, that so I may die in heaven.
How can I wish to live any longer after it ? O that I
could pour my soul into my tears and my life into thine,
and then be no more !

" Albano," said she, " why art thou to-day so altered,
"
so sad, so tender ?

" Call me rather," said he, " by thy name, as lovers

exchange names in Otaheite. Perhaps I have drunk a
little, too ; but I truly repent of yesterday, and I truly
love thee anew. Ah, thou, dost thou, then, also love
"
my very innermost self, Linda ?

" Sweet youth, can I then, now, choose but love thee
eternally? I do, indeed, henceforth cleave to thee and
thou to me."
" Ah, thou dost not know me. When does man know,
then, that precisely he, this very I, is meant and loved ?
Only forms are embraced, only the fleshly covering is

enfolded in the arms; who, then, clasps a person to a

person ? Perchance God^
" And I do thee," said Linda.
" Linda, wilt thou still love me in my grave, when
the chaff" of hfe is flown away, — still love me in my hell,

when I have deceived thee out of love to thee ? Is love,

"
then, love's justification ?

" I love thee always, so long as thou lovest me. Art

 THE CRUCIBLE OF SIN.

thou the poison-flower ; then am I the bee, and die on

the sweet cup."
The bride sank on his neck. He clasped her passion-
ately, and grew more and more like the glacier, which by-

very warmth rolls further onward, and in melting deso-

lates. Around him danced the pleasures with heavenly
faces, but showed him in their hands the masks of furies.
" Thou wilt die of love ; I am already dead from love.
O, thou knowest not how long ago I loved thee !
" he
answered.
" Glowing heart," said she, " think of this night when
thou one day seest Idoine !
" " Then shall I see only my
risen sister" said he, but instantly trembled at the truth's
having escaped his lips. " One sees," he added, hastily,
" the risen Herculaneum, but one dwells overhead in the
blooming Portici. Thou and I saw in Baja's gold, under
the sea, the sunken arches and gates, and we sailed on
farther toward living cities. Is even Roquairol, I pray,
like me in so many things, and does he love thee so
much, and has he loved thee so long, and died once, too,
"
like Liana ?

" But that creature I had never loved, and now am I

thy eternal bride."

" Poor fellow ! But I did wrong, however, I think,
when I once, in the cavern of Tartarus, renounced thee,
the unseen, beforehand, out of love toward my friend."
" Certainly not. But how have we both fallen upon
the subject of this uncomfortable being ? " said she, kiss-

ing him.
" Uncomfortable* indeed," rephed he, with bitter em-
* Linda had called him unheimlich (" discomfortable," to use Shake-
speare's word); Roquairol, playing on the word, rephes, heimlich
(close, sly) I should rather say." But the conceit seems untranslat-
able. — Tr.
 TITAN.

phasis, blazing up in revengeful love, in a discord of rage

and lust, and determined now to weave the funeral veil
over her whole future. He beat his dark eagle's wings
about his victim, and stifled and awakened kisses ; he
tore the orange-blossoms from her bosom and threw
them behind him. " Love is living and dying and

heaven and hell," said he; "love is murder and fire

and death and pain and pleasure. Caligula would have
placed his Caesonia on the rack only for the sake of
."
learning from her why he so loved her. I could also . .

"Divine Albano, do not drink so any more! Thou

art too impetuous ; even thy eyebrows storm ! What
art thou like?"
"All things at once, like a tempest full of glowing
heat, — and my heaven is luminous with lightning, —
and I throw cold hail, and one destruction after an-
other ; and a warm rain falls upon the flowers, and a
stillbow of peace knits together heaven and earth."
At this moment he saw in heaven the storm-clouds,
like storm-birds, already flying more brightly between
the stars and near the angry, bloody eye of Mars the ;

moon, that came to scare and betray him, soon threw

upon him the judging eye of a god. In defiance of fate,
he tore open for his violent kisses the nun's veil and
saintly splendor of the virgin's bosom. Far off stood

the beacon-tower of conscience enveloped in thick clouds.

Linda wept, trembling and glowing, on his breast. " Be
my good genius, Albano," said she. " And thy evil one.
But call me only one single time Charles," said he, full

of passion. " O, be called Charles, but remain my for-

mer Albano, my holy Albano," said she.

Suddenly the flutes in the dell began, which the pious
father caused to play at his evening devotions. Like
 TPIE GOKGON HEAD LOOKS IN. 405

tones of music on the battle-field, they called down mur-

der. Then did Linda's golden throne of life and of hap-
piness melt away, and the white, bridal garment of her
innocence was rent and burnt to ashes.
" Now am I thine until my death !
" said she, softly,
with streams of tears. Only till mine " said he, and
" !

wept now softly with the weeping flutes. Upon the

golden ball on the mountain already glimmered the moon,
which, like an armed comet, like a one-eyed giant, pressed
on, to drive the sinner out of his Eden. " Stay till the
moon comes, that I may look into thy face," she begged.
" No, thou divine one, my festive steed already neighs ;

down into my hand," said he, in a

the death-torch burns
low, tragic tone. The storm had passed from heaven
down to the earth. She replied, " The storm is so loud,
what saidst thou, love ? " He wildly kissed again her
lips and her bosom. He could not go ; he could not stay.
" Go not to-morrow," said he, " to the Tragedian, I entreat
thee ; the end, I hear, is too agitating."
" Besides, I never like such things. O, stay, stay
longer ; I am sure I shall not see thee again to-morrow."
He pressed her to himself, closed her eyes with his face.
The moon had already reared its Gorgon head in the
east ; he would let go life when he let her go from his
arms ; and yet every stammered word of love consumed
the short moment. The storm labored in the torn trees,

and the flute-tones glided away like butterflies, like inno-

cent children beneath the great wing. Roquairol, as if

confounded by such a presence, was near upon the point

of saying, look at me, I am Roquairol ; but the thought
quickly placed itself between, she does not deserve that
of thee ;
no, let her learn it for the first time in that hour
when one forgives everything ! Yet once more he held
 ;

TITAN.

her passionately clasped to himself ; already the moon-

light fell in upon both ; he repeated a thousand words of
love and tenderness, thrust her back, turned swiftly round,
and stalked away in Albano's dress through the vale.
" Good night, maiden," said he to the blind girl, in
passing. Linda sang not again as before. The stars

looked down upon him ; the storm winds spake to him

the pleasures went along by him, but they had now the
masks of the furies An arm struck down
on their
faces.

from heaven, an arm grasped up from hell, and both

would seize him, to tear him asunder. "Well, well,"
said he, " I was fortunate indeed, but I might have been
still more so had I been her cursed Albano," and flung

himself upon his festive horse, and flew the same night
to the Prince's garden.

129. CYCLE.
LBANO and his uncle went on to meet the an-
Xjl nounced Schoppe from village to village. The
uncle continually pushed back the hope before them like
a horizon, farther and farther, as they advanced. Once,
at evening, the Count fancied he heard Schoppe's voice
close beside him ; in vain, the beloved man came not
yet to his heart, and with longing impatience Albano
saw the clouds in heaven sail along over the way which
his precious one was taking beneath them on the earth.
The uncle told him a long story of a secret trouble which
often weighed down the Librarian, and of his liability to
attacks of madness, which had some time ago repelled
him from him, because among all men there was none he
dreaded so much as the madman. Of Romeiro's portrait
he seemed to know nothing. Albano was silent with
 PLAYERS AND SPECTATORS ASSEMBLE. 407

vexation, for the Spaniard was one of those insufferable

men who, with sleek, steady face, and with screwed-up
and helmed soul, can let another's contradiction flutter
around them without any contradiction on their part,

without echo, without a reflection or alteration, and to

whom another's discourse is only a still dew, the fall of
which wears away no stone. To this was added Albano's
exasperation against his new falsehood about Schoppe's
nearness, and against his own incapacity of listening for
a good, long hour incredulously to what a liar is saying.
" Schoppe is, upon my word, already arrived at the
Prince's garden by another route," said the Spaniard at
last, in quite a lively mood, and advised turning back, in

the comfortable enjoyment of that cool, impudent faculty

he had of jamming up every one who did not do homage
to him, between sharp, tedious ice-fields.

They arrived before the princely garden in the midst

of nothing but carriages, out of which were alighting the
spectators of to-day's dramatic festival. Albano found
among them already his father, the Princess, and Julienne,
and, among the actors, Bouverot, his old exercise-master
Falterle, and the yellow-dressed merchant's lady in the
red shawl, who had once been less in than on Roquairol's
heart,and finally Roquairol himself. The Captain stepped
up immediately, first and foremost, to the well-known
Albano, and said, with elaborate ease, the play would
begin soon, only Dian with his wife was still expected.
Dian, always easily moved, most of all by an invitation,
could least of all resist one when art was the occasion ;

through him Chariton also was soon gained for the play,
but not without one condition, — that she was to play in
the piece the part of a beloved to no one but her spouse.
When Roquairol spoke with Albano, he found it hard
 "

4o8 TITAN.

to laugh easily, or to raise his eyelids, as if his face were

frozen or swollen ; and an avenging, humihating spirit
inwardly weighed his down to the earth before the pure
and happy friend out of whose spring he had torn and
castaway the bright sun, and over whose life he had hung
an eternal plague-cloud.
Amidst the tumult of garden talk, and in the fruitless
wish to impart to his sister Julienne three soft words for
the Linda of whose presence he had been so long de-
prived, Albano saw the carriage of the Countess roll
along on the heights up to Liana's last garden, there stop,
and her and Dian and Chariton alight from it.

Then he thought of nothing but to fly to the long-

missed loved one, — an act which, before the many eyes,
easilyassumed the appearance of a longing for Dian ;

and at this moment, in the thirst of love, he, in fact,

asked no question about eyes. "Ah, here I am, after
!
all " said Linda, and came to meet him, interweaving
the delicate vine-tendrils of soft glances with his, so shy-
ly and so lovingly ; and the evening blush of bashful-
ness, like a spring-redness in the night, mantled her
heaven, and the white moon of innocence stood in the
midst of it. Albano was dissolved with the melting wind
of this forgiveness, reproached himself with his sweet
joy at her conversion, as if it were a selfish pride in his

victory, and could hardly, in the fair confusion of good

fortune, command his sweet astonishment and his melting
heart, which would fain dissipate itself before her like a

tempest into evening dew. He threw his soul into his

eye, and gave it to his beloved. Before Chariton he felt

that he must veil himself. To Dian and Linda he said,

as they looked into the setting sun, only the word,

" Ischia !
 THE BLINDED LOVERS. '
409

" There lies dear Anastasius," said Chariton to Dian,

" my good friend Liana buried, and one knows not prop-
erly whereabouts in tlie garden, for one sees really nothing
but flowers and flowers however, she so ordered it."

—
;

" That is very sad and fine," said Dian ; " but let it be,

gone is gone, Chariton !

" and led her aside, out of indul-

gence to the lovers. Albano, who overlooked nothing,

and overheard everything, showed plainly enough how
much he had been agitated by Chariton's words. Linda,
too, perceived it. " Only speak out thy sadness," said
she ; " I do truly love her too." " I am thinking upon
the living," said he, collecting himself, and looked timidly,
not upon the flower-garden, but upon the sun-enchanted *
evening landscape ;
" can one, then, suflSciently forgive,

and think no evil upon the earth ? Linda, O how thou

"
forgivest me to-day !

" Friend," said she, " when you sin you shall receive
forgiveness ; but until then, I pray you be quiet " He !

looked upon her significantly. " Hast thou not already

forgiven, and have not I too? But couldst thou have
known how intimately I lived with thee during these days
on the way to my Schoppe, and brought over the divine
past into the future — ah, can I then tell thee all in this

place ? " Fortunately she — like other women, attending

less to words than to looks, gestures, and actions heard —
more with the spiritual than the bodily ear, and stepped
not over the brink of the abyss which his words laid open
so near her. Thus did these two now play, like children,
near the cold thunder-charged lightning-rod, out of which
at the smallest nearer approach must dart the flashing
scythe of death.

* The German sonnentrunhen (sun-drunken) is somewhat strong for

our English speech. Tk. —
VOL. II. 18
 "

TITAN.

Both went on with their illusions near the hghtning.

The sun went down with his flames by the little moun-

tain and the smooth flowery grave over into the distant
plains. Out of came
the depths of the princely garden
tones fluttering up through the long evening rays and
deified the golden landscape. The rays were solitary
wings, that sought their heart, and joined it, and then flew
onward —
and the loving hearts became full of wings.
The rays sank, the tones soared. Around Linda and
Albano lay a golden circle of gardens and mountains and
green valleys, and every flower rocked with its riches
under the last lingering gold, and became the cradle of
the eye, the cradle of the heart. The lovers looked at
each other, and upon the earth, with inspired looks ; the
shining world appeared to them only in the magic mirror
of their hearts, and they were, themselves, both, only
floatinpj images therein.
" Linda, I will be more gentle," said he. " I swear it

by the saint in whose garden we stand !

" " Be so, dear
one ; in Lilar thou wast not so " said she.
!
He under-
stood it of his stormmess toward Liana. "Bury this

recollection in thy love !

" said he, reddening. She
looked upon him like a virgin, — her inner being had
remained virginal and innocent, — as the peach turns its

red and glowing side toward the sun, but keeps under
the leaves the tender white. Her eye drank from his,

his drank from hers ; the heavens mingled with her

heaven, the purple sun glimmered back out of the warm
dew of loving eyes. " O that I might now kiss thee
!

said Albano. " Ah, that thou mightest

!
" said Linda.
" So goldenly did the sun once go down into the sea !

said he. " And afterward we gave each other the first

kiss
!
" said she. " We \vill see each other now much
 SATAN IN PARADISE AGAIN. 411

oftener," said he. " Yes, indeed, and longer by day ; by

night I, poor one, have, indeed, no eye. Even now is

my eye akeady going down yonder," said she, as the

sun sank from sight.

It was a good, gentle spirit, or Liana's own, — that

spirit wliich conducts man by the gradual transition of
twilight over into night, wliich pours soothing tears into
sorrow and into ecstasy, and which suffers not the short
path of love's evening star to be overcast with clouds, —
this spirit it was which saved their tongues and ears from
the terrible sound which would at once have torn up the
golden magic circle of evenmg into an all-surrounding
blaze of hell.

Who is that coming so hastily yonder ? " said Linda.

" My foe," said AJbano. Roquairol had missed him, and

had heard of Linda's arrival ; in the hell-torment of
anxiety, lest what had happened the night before might
reveal itself before them this evening, he hurried, under
the pretext of going to get Dian andas a performer
Albano as a hearer, up the mountain. Like a centaur,
half man, half wild beast, he broke in upon the melodious
souls and joys with the hollow, confused war of his whole
being. But hardly had he perceived in their looks the
consecration of rapture, and seen that the black curtain
still lay fast upon his murder, when the grim spirit of
jealousy reared itself within him. " She is now my
betrothed," he said to himself ; and the solar eclipse of
confused repentance was eclipsed by the tempest of cha-
grin. Linda, kindling into anger from an inward shudder
at his similarity of voice, stood before him like a dia-
mond, clear, sparkling, hard and cutting ; but Albano,
amidst the echoes of the harmony, stood gently on the
churchyard of the sister of this brother, and not without
412 TITAN.

some confusion. Roquairol was haunted again by yester-

day's unclean suspicion, that perhaps Albano and Linda
were no longer innocent.
Angrily, he now invited Linda to make one of the
spectators at his tragedy. " You told me," said she to
Albano, " it concluded so tragically ; I am no friend of
that." " He is not at all said Ro-
acquainted with it,"

quairol. "No," said Albano. As the serpent looked

down upon the paradise of the first pair, so looked he
with the pleasing consciousness that he could hand them
the apple from the tree of knowledge which should im-
mediately drive them out from theirs. " Besides," she

subjoined, "I see badly in the evening, or not at all."

Roquairol affected to be surprised at that, joked upon the

gain which it would be to him as first lover in the play,
if she only heard him, and begged Dian to unite in en-
treating her. Not inborn, but acquired coldness, has at
command the highest falsehood ; the former is capable
only of dissimulation, the latter of simulation also, be-
cause it knows and uses all ways and means
at once
of kindling a fire, and keeps its firm standing on slippery
ice by the ashes of former heat. When Albano himself
at length advised her to take part in the tragic enjoy-
ment, and grant her friends of both sexes below there the
fair, pure enjoyment of her presence, then she consented,
not without wondering at his retraction.
She took Chariton into her carriage. The men walked
on ahead. On the way E-oquairol said to Dian, who had
to play the character of Albano in the piece, " So soon
as I have said, in the fourth act, ' Even spiritual love
goes to meet sensual, and, after all, like a seafarer on his
way eastward, arrives at last in the lands of sundown,'
then you fall in." Dian laughed, and said, " I '11 fall in.
 SCENE OF ROQUAIROL'S TRAGEDY. 413

In Italy, however, the passage begins at once as a south-

erly and westerly one." Albano was silent for vexation,

and repented having helped persuade Linda to this doubt-

ful festival. The Princess cast sundry rapid glances of
contempt at the cheated Linda, and she answered them
with the like ;
distinguished women betray their sex most
in hostile contact with distinguished ones.

130. CYCLE.

MOST
more
of the spectators had in the beginning
for the sake of the spectators
come
and perform-
ers than of the play ; but soon they were attracted by
the mystery and by the extraordinary stage itself The
scene was laid on the so-called Island of Slumber in the
Prince's garden, which was covered with a wild, thick
tangle of flowers, bushes, and high trees. Its eastern

side showed an open, free foreground, on which the per-

formance was to take place, with a white Sphinx on an
empty tomb farther in among the green. The wings of
the scenes were the dark leafy parts ; pit and boxes the
shore opposite, which was separated from the island by a
lake, about as broad as a moderate-sized ship. From two
trees of the two opposite shores hung down like a lantern

out over the middle of the lake the cage of the jay or
chorus, suspended there by way of bringing her deep,
dull voice nearer to the spectators. "I am, to tell the
truth, curious," said the Knight to his son, "to know
whence you will draw the tragical." " Leave me alone
for that !
" said Roquairol, who had hitherto been walking
backward and forward silently and uneasily, with his eyes
on the ground ;
" only Imust make a general request of
the company to be pardoned the delay. When I address
4H TITAN.

the moon in the fifth act, I can very well use the real
one, if I only begin just so that her rising shall coincide
with the last scene."

At length he embarked, with a face that was growing

pale, in the Charon's boat, as he said, and ferried over
alone. Then the other players sailed over one after
another. All were lost behind the trees ; and now, from
behind in the embowered western parts of the island,
the immortal overture from Mozart's Don Juan rose
like an invisible spirit-realm slowly and grandly into the
air.

^^Diahlessef' cried thereupon the brother of the Knight

to the jay, and clapped his hands at the same time as a
signal.

"Open the coffin," the creature began, in a hollow

voice, accompanied by single, lugubrious tones of the
orchestra, — " open the coffin in the churchyard, and
show for the last time the breast of the corpse and his
dry eyelid, and then shut it to forever."

At this moment Lilia (Chariton) and Carlos (Dian)

stepped forth, — two lovers yet in the earliest time of
the first love. No sad rain of tears yet swept away the
golden morning dew, they are so true to each other.
Lilia rejoices with him that her brother Hiort is just
coming back from his travels to find his youthful friend
Carlos her eternal one. " Perhaps he, too, is right for-

tunate," said Lilia. " O, certainly so," said Carlos ;

" he
is indeed that, and everything else." At times both were
silent inhappy contemplation of each other then tones ;

went up out of the veiled west of the island and bore the
mute joy into the ether, and showed it to them hovering
and glorified. A sweet sympathy diff'used itself among
the spectators for Dian's and Chariton's imitation of their
 "

RÜQUAIROL, AS HIORT, ACTS HIMSELF. 415

own fair reality, so delicate, yet mingled with southern

glow ;
they heard and saw Greeks. All at once Liha
fled behind the flower-bushes, for her enemy, Solera^
Carlos's father, came, personated by Bouverot.
Salera angrily announced to his son the arrival of his
bride, Athenais. Carlos made known to him now the
mystery of his earlier love, and showed himself armed
against a whole future. Salera cried, with exasperation,
" "Would that she were not, as she is, beautiful, so that I

might have the pleasant duty of forcing and punishing

thee ! But thou wilt see her, and obey me, and yet I
shall hate thee." Carlos replied, " Father, I have already
seen Liha." Salera went oflf with angry repetitions, and
Carlos wished now still more ardently for Hiort's return,

in order with him more easily to abduct his sister through

his persuasion and attendance. Here closed the first act.

The brother of the Knight called to the jay, Dia-

hlesse / " and scraped with his foot, as a signal.
" Appear, pale man " spake the creature " the clock
! ;

vibrates the hour man of sorrow, land upon the still

;

!
island
Hiort stepped forth, with his cheeks painted pale, with
open breast, looked upon the tomb, and said, from his
innermost soul, " At last " The music played a dance.
!

"Yes, indeed, island of slumber thou may'st well be

called; our days end with a sleep," he added. Now
came his Carlos. " Hiort, art thou dead ? " cried he, in

terror, over the corpse. "I am only pale," said he. " 0,

how dost thou come back so out of the beautiful, gay

earth ? " said Carlos. " Exhausted, Charles, with still-

born hopes ;
my present is disinherited by the past ; the
fohage of the sensual is fallen off ; not even beautiful
nature do I longer fancy, and clouds hke mountains are
 "

4i6 TITAN.

more dear to me than real mountains. I have truly-

reaped the bitter weeds of life, and yet must I, in this

empty breast, carry about with me a destroying angel,

who eternally digs and writes, and every letter is a
wound. No advice ! You call it conscience. But bring
me a little sleep-draught hither on the island of sleep,
!
Charles
They brought wine. He now gave his friend an ac-
count of his life, — his faults, among which he adduced
the very one in which he was just persisting, namely,
drinking ; his self-reproducing vanity, even with its self-

acknowledgment ; his conquests of women, which made

him a magnetic mountain, full of the attracted nails from
ships that had thereby fallen to pieces ; his propensity, like
Cardan, to offend his friends, to break in upon his own or
another's good fortune, as, even when a child, he longed
to interrupt the preacher,* or in the midst of the finest
tune to smash the harpsichord, and in a fit of enthusiasm
to think the most licentious thoughts.
" Once I had still, after all, two distinct and different

selves, — one that promised and lied, and one that be-
lieved the other ; now they both lie to each other, and
neither believes." Carlos answered, " Horrible ! But
thy sorrow is verily itself a help and a gift." "Ah,
what !
" he replied. " Man condemns less his iniquity
than the past situation wherein he committed it, while, in
a fresh situation, he finds it new and sweet again, and

* Kichter represents the hero of one of his shorter works as being,

when a child, afflicted with such sensitive nerves, that when, during
the Sunday sermon, some passage of peculiar eloquence startled the
congregation into silence, the awful pause would so oppress and tempt
him with the thought, " Supposing thou shouldst cry out, I 'm here '

too, Mr. Parson! " that he absolutely had to run out of the church.
'

— Tb.
 "

COMMENTS OF TWO SPECTATORS. 417

loves it as much as ever. What lies cold yonder, that is

my image [pointing to the Sphinx], that stirs itself, living,

in my bloody breast. Help me ! draw out the rending

!
monster
Albano fired with rage in his innermost soul at the
guilty repetition of that tender confessional night with
him.* He is bold enough," said Gaspard, in a whisper
"

to Albano, " because, as I hear, he is really to personate

himself ; but when he sees himself so, he is surely better
than he sees himself." " O," said Albano, " so I thought

once ! But is, then, the contemplation of a bad condition

itself a good condition ? Is he not so much the worse
that he bears this consciousness, and so much the weaker
that he sees an incurable cancer-sore grooving upon him ?

The highest thing he has, at all events, lost, — innocence."

" A fleeting cradle virtue ! He has, after all, a bright,
bold, reflecting faculty," said Gaspard. " Only effeminate,
shameless, double-meaning, many-sided debility of heart
he has ; talks of power, and cannot tear through the thin-
nest mesh of pleasure," said Albano.
" Charles," said Hiort, tenderly, as if answering him,
" yes, there is yet one help. When on the ground of life

one fresh color after another fades, — when existence is

now nothing, neither comedy nor tragedy, only a stale

show-piece, — still is there one heaven open to man,

which shall receive him, — love. Let this close against

him, and he is damned forever. Carlos, my Carlos, I

could still be happy, for I have seen Athenais ; but I can
be still more unhappy than I am, for she loves me not.

In my heart lies this blazing, but continually sharp-cutting

diamond, upon which it bleeds as often as it beats."
Eveiywhere now did Roquairol let Linda's image play in.

* See Vol. I. p. 328.

18* AA
4i8 TITAN.

At this crisis, Carlos at first threw his friend into an

internal uproar, with the intelligence that Athenais had
been selected by his father for his bride, and was coming
soon but he calmed him, when his sister Lilia appeared,
;

by quickly taking her hand, and saying, " This one only
do I love." They spoke of the obstacles on the part of
old Salera, whom Carlos called a glacier, which bore
fruitunder no sun, and could not be built upon. " Stand
by me, Charles," said Hiort " think what thou wrotest to
;

me Like two streams will we blend together, and grow,

:
'

and bear, and dry up together.' " * Thus did the three
beings mutually understand, bind, elevate each other ; all

had one end, — their common welfare. Carlos swore

eternal rebellion against his father ; Hiort, to protect his
sister, and cried, " At last the empty cornucopia of Time,
which hitherto has given out nothing but hollow sounds,
pours out flowers again. " O, the women How com- !

mon ^nd commonplace are almost all men But almost !

every woman is new." Gaspard said, with a smile,

"Women say the reverse of us and themselves." The
second act closed in gladness and peace.
" Diahlesse 1 " cried the Spaniard, and stretched his
right hand high in the air.
" Fleeting," began the black jay, amid tones of music,
" is man, more fleeting is his bliss, but earher than all dies

the friend with his word."

The upon the heels of
third act followed immediately
the preceding, and broke up, by the uninterrupted contin-
uance of the artistic enchantment, which should belong
to every play and every work of art that is to be read,

all cold, prosaic astonishment, even that which arose from

the wonderful speaking of the jay on the lake. A great,

* A passage from Albano's letter to Roquairol, Vol. I. p. 280.
 " !

ENTEANCE OF ATHENAIS.
beautiful, proud lady appeared, — Athenais (personated
hj the merchant's wife, Roquairol's bj-mistress), full of
hope in her old friend Lilia, who called herself " the little

Athenais," and, sweetly dreaming over the dream of

former days, Lilia sinks into her arms with twofold
tears ; Athenais does indeed bear in her hand three heav-
ens and three hells. " How beautiful thou returnest
My poor brother " said Lilia softly. " Name him not,"
!

said she proudly, " he can die for me, but I cannot live
for him." Here Carlos flies in to his Liha, — stops and
stiffens in his flight, — collects himself, and approaches
Lilia. She says, " Count Salera, — Athenais — " He
grew pale, she red. A constraining, painful confusion en-
tangled them all three ;
every honey drop was taken from
a thorn-hedge. with a shudder, is made more and
Lilia,

more strongly aware of Athenais's sudden victory over her

fortune and love. Athenais went away. The tw^o lovers
look upon each other for a long time with trembling.
" Am I right ? " asked Liha. " Am I in fault ? " said Car-
los. " No," said she, " for thou art a mortal, and, what is

still worse, a man." "What shall I do, then?" replied

Carlos. "Thou shalt," said she, solemnly, "after one year
go into a garden on a hill, and look around thee and seek
me in the garden, — the garden — under the
in — beds,
•
deep below one, — I know not how deep." She hastened
away, as if frantic, and sang, "All over, all over wdth
!
loving and living
Carlos stood some minutes with his wild look on the
ground, and said, in a low, hollow tone, " God, it is

thy work!" and went off, — met his friend, who called
out impetuously and joyfully, " She
!
is here " but he
hastened on proudly, and only called back, "Not now,
Hiort "
!
To him came Lilia, weeping, and led him on-
420 TITAN.

ward. " Come," said she, " do not look upon the tomb ;

we are both too unhappy."

Then came out old Salera with Athenais, — seized on
ice for fire,and took his cold coin for warm, — praised
her like a man, and his son hke a father, and — said, as in

a play. There comes himself. "Here, son," said he, "I set
before thee thy happiness, if thou canst deserve it." Car-
los had lost Liha's heart, — his father's wish, the might
of beauty, the omnipotence of loving beauty, stood before
him, his longing and the thought of cruelty toward this
goddess, and finally a world within him, which stood so
near to her sun, prevailed over a double fidelity; — he
sank on his knee before her, and said, " I am guiltless,

if I am happy." The pair go off on one side Salera on ;

the other, and encounters Lilia, whose hand he takes, with

the words, " You, as a friend of my house and son, cer-
tainly take the deepest interest in his latest happiness as
the possessor of Athenais." So ended the third act, which,

by its unjust, all-distorting allusions, filled and fired

Albano with an exasperated desire for the end, merely

that he might call Roquairol to account for this assassin-
like brandishing of the tragic dagger. '
" The old fel-

low,"* said Gaspard, laughing, "fancies he is painting

me too herein ; I wish, however, he would take stronger
colors."
Before the fourth act commenced, the Spaniard threw
up his left hand, and the black jay spoke immediately:
" Sin punishes sin, and the foe the foe ; untamable is

love, untamable also vengeance. See, now comes the

man whom they no more love, and brings with him his
wounds and his wrath." There stood Hiort, as if before
his grave, which drew down his head, weeping and —
* Patron in German. — Tu.
 ;

WEDDING MUSIC FROM DON JUAN. 421

drinking enormously, — soft evening tones of music melt-

ed away with his dissolving life. " Ah, so it is," cried he,
out of a deep, agonized breast, them away — " only throw

at length, the two last roses of life * too many bees and :

thorns lurk in them they draw thy blood and give thee
;

poison —
O, how I loved thou Almighty One on high, !

how — but
I loved ! ah, not thee ! And so now I stand
empty and poor and old: nothing, nothing is left me, — not
a —
single heart, no, not my own ; that is already gone
down into the grave. The wick is drawn out of my life,

and it runs away in darkness. O ye children of men ! ye

stupid children of men why do ye
! then believe that there
is still any love here below ? Look at me, I have none.
An airy colored ribbon of love, a rainbow, draws itself
out and winds itself around under us shifting clouds, as
if it would bind the clouds and bear them. Ridiculous !

it is itself cloud and mere falling weather, — in the begin-

ning glisten gay drops of gladness, then dash down black
'*
drops of rain !

He was silent, — went slowly up and down, looked —

seriously at a war-dance and masquerade of internal spec-
tres, — then stopped. The shadows of dark deeds played
through each other around him : suddenly he started up ;

a lightning-flash of a thought had darted into his heart

he ran to and fro, cried, " Music ! let me have horrible
!
music " and the wedding music from Don Juan, which
had hitherto accompanied him, raised the murder-cry of
terror. " Divine " said he !
; and only single words, only
tiger spots, appeared and vanished on the monster as he
passed by. " DeviHsh the rose's being, the blossom's
!

being, — aye, well ! I will bury myself in the avalanche,

and roll down ; and then I die beautifully on my slumber-
island," he concluded, in a soft, faint voice.

* Love and friendship.

 " ";

422 TITAN.

" O Lilia ! insure me !

one prayer " cried he, going to
meet his approaching sister. "Any one which hinders
not my dying," said she. He laid before her the prayer,
that she would this very night persuade her friend Athe-
nais into the " night-arbor " of the island, under the pre-
text that her bridegroom, Carlos, wished to show her
to-day two mysteries about Lilia. "I have," he added,
" Carlos's voice ; with it I can declare to her my loving
heart, and then, if she loves me, I will call myself Hiort."
"Is thy request sincere?" asked the sister. "As true
as that I will be still alive to-morrow," said he. " Then
is it soon fulfilled, for Athenais expects me even in the
night-arbor ;
only follow me after seven minutes." She
went ; he looked after her, and said to himself, " Hasten,
arrange the heaven ! Fair slumber-island, at once the
sleeping-place for the bridal-chamber and for the eternal
sleep. O, how few minutes stand between me and her
!
heart
" Thou art still here, surely ? " said he, and looked for
his pistol. " Now," cried he, solemnly, in departing, " is

the time for the clear-obscure deed, then the bier-cloth is

thrown over it," and went swiftly into the arbor.

The Spaniard threw a twig into the water, and the
black jay spake, in a low tone, " Silent is bhss ; silent

is death."
" The man," said Gaspard, " has something through the
whole play hke real earnest. I will not answer that he
!
does not shoot himself dead before us all." "Impossible
said Albano, alarmed ;
" he has not the force for such ä

reality." Nevertheless, he could not, after all, properly

free himself from the anxious thought of this possibility.

Disturbed, impetuous, with dishevelled hair, Hiort came

back, and said, in a low voice, " It is done ; I was blest
 ";

THE DESERTER FROM LIFE. 423

no one will be so after me." " With that yellow one,*

and now in the night-hour, I will answer for nothing,"
said Gaspard. Albano reddened with shame at the im-
pudent presumption, and still more at Roquairol's crime
of dishonoring and seducing, even in the play, his holy
beloved. " Music, but tender and good !
" he cried, and
let himself be fanned by the zephyr of harmony, and
drank incessantly " funeral draughts," or wine, — both to

the annoyance of the Knight, who abhorred drinking,

and shunned music, because this or both made one
weak.
He laid himself down on the turf, and the pistol beside
him, and said, stammering, " So, then, I lie in the warm
ashes of my burnt-out life, and my cold ashes will be
added soon." He put his double opera-glass close to his
eyes, and cast sparkling looks over at Linda. " I have

had her on my heart, the divine beauty, my eternal love,

— my tulip, which at evening closes at length over the
bee, that he may die in the flower-cup. On the roses of my
life I rest and die ; I still look with bliss on the sweet one
I cannot repent. Only forgive, poor Carlos ; I wipe away
the crime with blood, but with tears of penitence I can-
not. Should that which time has washed away from this

shore cleave again to the shore of eternity, then it must

fare badly with me there : I can change there as little as
here."
At this moment a cannon-shot was fired in the city to

announce a deserter. He took his pistol into his hand.

" Yes, yes, a shot signifies a fugitive, —a fugitive out of

the world, too. 0, when shall the sharp sickle lift itself

in the east, and cut life in twain ? I am so weary !

* He means the yellow-dressed Athenais, enacted by his quondam

whose dress was described in Vol. I. p. 322.
mistress, Tk. —
 "
;

TITAN.

He looked toward the eastern heavens, but a cloud, which

already faintly thundered, overcast the gateway of the
moon. He smiled bitterly.
" Even this little, last joy also destiny begrudges me !

I shall see the moon no more. Well, I shall, perhaps,

mount higher than it or its storm-cloud, — only my dear
spectators and auditors of my death ai'e driven away from
me by the rain. Yes, if thou art out, then am I out
!

He pointed to the flask.

" Wild, awful tones, come up from the deep ! Bring
me my bloody bridal dress ! It is time ;
declining joy casts
behind a long, lengthening shadow." Albano and Julienne
recognized with a shudder, in the little coat which they
brought him, the blood-sprinkled one which he had worn
at the masquerade, when, as a boy, he had meant to mur-
der himself before Linda. " You must lay it on my cold
breast," said he, as he received it from Falterle. The
thunder rolled nearer, the lightnings became more glow-
ing, and one cloud after another swelled the tempest.
He drank the glasses fast. " Nothing can now harm me,"
said he ; even the lightning not specially, although I

lie under trees ; in this tube there is a lightning that

defies all lightnings, —a real lightning-rod." The hasten-
ing storm drove him, on the spectators' account, to the
conclusion, and he was roused to indignation at the mock-
ery of Providence over his theatrical preparations.
" Nothing is more pleasant and timely than this tem-
pest," said Gaspard " however, talking and waiting seem
;

to him tolerably." The other spectators were

gratify
agonized by the scene, and yet not one tore himself away.
Orders had been given to the fellow-performers to take
the shot as the signal-word, and not to come before it.
He said, " The death-snake rattles in the neighborhood
 :

DEATH ENDS TWO DRAMAS. 42^

yonder, on the wave of the future, the corpse conies

swimming on." They perceived that he spoke at random
and extempore, vexed by the storm. He looked upon the
pistol. " A glance at thee ! So is the look at life taken,
and again hidden under the eyelid. A spark, a single
spark, and the theatre-curtain blazes up, and I see the
spectators stand, spirits, or even nothing at all, and the
eternal, heavy cloud fills the wide ether of the world.
So stand I, then, by the dead sea of eternity ; so black,
still, wide, deep it lies below me ; one step, and I am in
there, and sink forever. Let it come ! I swam therein
even before my birth. Now, now," said he, while it

sprinkled, and he took the last glass, " the rain will chill
the poor wretch already sinking into the chill of death.
Play now something soft and beautiful, good people " !

Thereupon he cocked his weapon, stood up, said, weep-

ing, " Farewell, beautiful and hard life ! Ye two fair
stars, ye that still look down from above, may I come
nearer to you ? Thou holy earth, thou wilt still often
quake, but no more shall he quake with thee who sleeps
in thy bosom ; and ye good, far-off beings who loved me,
and ye near ones whom I so loved, may you fare better
than I, and condemn me not too harshly ! I do verily
punish myself, and God immediately judges me. Fare-
well, my dear, olFended, but very hard Albano, and thou,
thou even unto death ardently loved Liana, forgive me,
and weep for me Liana, if thou still livest, then stand
!

by thy brother in the last hour, and pray for me before

God " Here he suddenly pointed the weapon at his
!

forehead, fired, and fell headlong some blood flowed ;

from the cloven skull, and he breathed yet once, and then
no more.
Bouverot flew out, according to his part, and began it
426 TITAN.

" Even now, my dear Hiort, my Carlos bethinks him-

self" ; but he started back before the corpse, stammering,
*'
Mais ! mon Dieu ! il s'est tue re vera ! Diahle 1 il est
mort ! Oh ! qui me payera f " Linda sank powerless
on Julienne's bosom, and the latter stammered, " O, the
sinner and suicide !
" The Princess exclaimed, indig-
nantly, " Oh, le traitre ! " Albano cried, " Ah, Charles !

!
Charles " and plunged into the lake, and swam over,
threw himself upon the shattered form, and groaned,
weeping, " O, had I known this ! Brother and sister

dead ! and I am to blame ! O, had I remained unsuc-

cessful ! Ah,my Charles, Charles, forgive ! I was not
thy foe. How deplorably shattered it lies there, — the
great temple !
" " Be more calm, I pray," said Gaspard,
w^ho had at last come over in the boat, and who bore
every mutilation with an anatomical coldness and curi-
osity ;
" he had his regiment debts also, and feared the
investigation which a new administration would bring
about. Now, one can, after all, have respect for him ;

he has actually carried through his character."

Albano raised himself up erect, and said, in the deaf-

ness of anguish, " Who spake that ? you, miserable Bou-

verot ? you know nothing but debts !
" " Monsieur le

Comte !
" said he, defyingly. " I said it," said Gaspard
to his son. " my Dian !
" cried Albano, and stretched
out his hand tow^ard hun, who, himself weeping, held his
weeping Chariton, " come thou hither ; let us bandage
him ; there may yet be help for it."

The Counsellor of Arts Fraischdörfer stepped up to

the astounded Princess, who remained upon her side of
the lake, with the words, by way of diverting her atten-
tion, " Viewed on the side of art merely, it were a ques-
tion whether this situation was not borrowed with effect.
 "

LAST SPEECH OF THE JAY-CHORUS. 427

One must, as in that wonderful creation of Hamlet, weave

a play into the play, and in that make the pretended
death a real one ; of course it were then only a show of
show, playing reality in real play, and thousand-fold, won-
derful reflex ! But how it rains now !
" Something was
whispered in the ear of the Princess by her Haltermann.
She flung up her arms, and cried, " 0, monster ! homi-
cide ! My poor, innocent Gibbon ! Thou monster !

She had heard of the ape's murder, and departed incon-

solable.

All at once the naked moon emerged into the deep blue,
and every one remarked it ; but the rain previous no one
but Fraischdorfer had been aware of. Albano saw now
full clearly the dead eyes and white, stiff lips. " No, they

stir not," said he. Then it sounded as if out of Ro-

quairol's breast and iron mouth, " Be still I am judged! " ;

And immediately began the jay, as concluding chorus of

the last act, " The poor man now lies fast asleep, and you
"
can cover him up !

Gaspard looked very earnestly at his brother. " By

heavens !
" replied the latter, " it is written so in his
part."
The whole starry sky cleared up. The company went
homeward. Albano and Dian, with Chariton, stayed by
the corpse.
 THIRTY-THIRD JUBILEE.
Albano and Linda. — Schöpfe and the Portrait. The Wax —
Cabinet. — —
The Duel. The Madhouse. Leibgeber. —
131. CYCLE.
LBANO meant to incarcerate himself the next
day, weep bitterly, and do penance, and not
cheer himself with the sunshine of love ; but
he found at evening the following billet, writ-

ten by an unknown hand, on his table :

—
" Sir Count : You are hereby informed, that on Fri-
day night, when you were gone journeying, the deceased
Captain R. von Froulay played your part with the
Countess Romeiro through all the acts, in the flute-

dell. You must, for the sake of rivals, get yourself

another voice, and the Countess eyes to use by night, al-

though to her it may not be altogether disagreeable to be

often 'deceived respecting you in this manner. Farewell,
**
and be in future a little more discreet !

With pale face he stared at the skeleton which two

giant hands forcibly heldup before him, drawn out all at
But the
once from the flesh of blooming, youthful limbs.
fire of pain speedily shot up again and illumined the

whole circle of woe. With the might of agony, with

bloody arms, must his spirit hurl back and forth the
 ! —

BILLET FROM LINDA.

thought, heavy as a rock, the tombstone of his life, in

order to prove whether it fitted into the burial vault ;
—
the dreadful thought fell in so completely with Roquairol's
whole play and end and life, — but not, on the other hand,
with Linda's character, and with the divine moment which
he had spent with her in Liana's last garden, — and yet
it did, again, very much with her sudden reconciliation
and with single, detached words, — and yet, perhaps, after

all, this poisoned letter was only a fruit of the vengeance

of the Princess, of whose indignation at Roquairol's
murder of himself and the ape Dian had told him.
So painfully did he move himself on his wounds to and
fro, and at last he resolved, this very evening to seek out

Linda, wherever she might be, when he received from her

the following billet :

" Come to me, I pray, this evening, to Elysium ; it will

certainly be fair. I give the invitation now, as thou didst

lately. Thou shalt leadme upon the fair mountains, and
it shall be enough me if only thou canst see and
for

enjoy. Julienne we need less and less. Thy father urges

our union with proposals which you shall this evening hear
and weigh. Come without fail ! In my heart there are
still standing so many sharp tears about the evil tragedy.
Thou must change them into tears of another kind, my
beloved
"The Blind One."

He laughed at the changing. " Into frozen ones,

rather," said he. Hot love was to him a passionate kiss
into his wound. He went to Lilar gloomily and hastily,
deeply enveloped in a red cloak, as if against foul weather,
— blind and deaf to himself and the world, — and like a
dying man who awaits the moment when he either shall
430 TITAN.

vanish in smoke and be annihilated, or soar away reani-

mated into divine worlds.

When he entered the precincts of Lilar, the garden did

not distort itself as lately, but it merely disappeared from
him. He went along close by some disguised people, who
seemed to be making a grave. " It 's wrong, I vow," said
one of them ;
" he ought to be buried out in the meadow,
like other cattle." Albano looked that way, saw a covered
corpse, and thought with a shudder it was the suicide,

until he heard the second grave-digger say, " An ape,

Peter, if he is kept with distinction, in clothes, looks more
reputable than many a man, and I believe he, too, would
rise again from the dead, if he were only regularly bap-
tized."

Just as this Gibbon of the Princess, 'whom they were

burying here, recalled before his soul that stormy Friday,
he espied Linda, not far from the Dream-temple, on the
arm of a seeing gentlewoman. She gave him, according
to her manner before others, only a slight greeting, and

said to the woman, " Justa, stay here in the Dream-

temple I am going to walk up and down here."
;

By this limitation of herself to the visual range of the

Dream-temple she excluded every fair, visible sign of love,
and Albano knew already that silent contentment of hers,
with the mere presence of the beloved one, just as he did
sometimes the wildness of her sweet lips. When he
touched her with trembling, and saw her again near him,
then did this powerful being come back to him with the
whole divine past. But he deferred not the infernal ques-
"
tion, " Linda, who was with thee on Friday evening ?

" No one, dearest ; where ? " replied she. " In the flute-

dell," he stammered. " My blind maiden," she answered,

calmly. " Who else ? " he asked. " God ! thy tone dis-
 THE HORRIBLE WIDOWHOOD REVEALED. 431

tresses me," said she. " Roquairol killed the ape that
"
night. Did he meet thee ?

" O horrible murderer ! Me ? " he cried ;

"I was trav-
elling all night long ; I was not with thee in any flute-
dell." " Speak out, man," cried Linda, grasping him
^
violently with both hands ;
" didst thou not write to me
of having given up thy journey, and then didst thou not
come ? " " No, nothing like it," said he ;
" all infernal

lies. The dead monster Roquairol used my voice, — thy

eyes, — and so it was, — tell the rest." " Jesu Maria !
"

screamed she, struck by the dashing flood into which the

black cloud burst, and grasped with both arms through
the leafy branches of the wooded avenue, and pressed
them to her, and said supplicatingly, " Ah, Albano, thou
wast certainly with me."
" No, by the Almighty, not ! Tell the rest," said he.
" Fly from me forever ; I am his widow !
" said she,
solemnly. "That thou remainest," said he, severely,
and called J usta out of the temple of dream.
" So it must live on, — thy pain, my pain : I see thee
nevermore. I wilL say a farewell to thee. Say thou
none to me !
" said he. She was silent, and he went.
Justa came, and he still heard her praying in the arbor :

" Leave me, O God, this eclipse to-morrow spare the ;

gloomy widow thy daylight " The maiden roused her, !

took her by the hand, and she rejoiced, when hanging on

her arm, in her night-blindness.
Albano went out into the night. All at once he stood
as if he had been carried up on a jagged, rocky peak,
below which dashed a foaming stream. He turned back
and said, " Thou mistakest, evil genius ; I loathe suicide ;

it is too easy, and belongs to ape-murderers, — but there

is something better, and thou shalt attend me."
 ;

432 TITAN.

He lost himself, — could not find his way to the city,

— thought he was in Lilar again, and ran round anxiously
without any way of egress, until at last he sank ex-
hausted, and as if drawn down
into the arms of slumber.
"When he awoke in the morning, he was in the Prince's
garden, and the slumber island waved with its tree-tops
before him. A jagged rocky peak over a rushing stream
there was not in the whole landscape.
He looked upon the heavens, and the day, and his heart.
" Yes, such, then, is life and love," said he. " A good,
true fire-work, especially when one is to have a Linda
after many preparations ! Long it stands there with a
gay, high scaffolding, full of statues, with smaller edifices,
columns, and wondrous is it, and promises still more than
it hides and betrays. Then comes the night in Ischia
a spark darts, the moulds burst, white, shining palaces
and pyramids and a hanging city of the sun hover in
heaven, — in the night-air a busy, flying world unfolds
itself majestically between the stars, and fills the eye and
the poor heart, and the happy spirit, itself a fire between
heaven and earth, hovers too, — a whole
for the space of

instant ; then it becomes night again and a blank waste,

and in the morning there stands the scaffolding dull and
black."

132. CYCLE
" TAR," — this word alone gave Albano peace;
VV science and poetry only thrust their flowers
into his deep wounds. He made himself ready for a
journey to France. Only one thing still delayed his
breaking up, — Schoppe's non-appearance, whom he with
his riddles must await and, if possible, induce to go away
with him. He kept himself in the woods all day so as
 ALBANO'S FEELINGS ABOUT LINDA. 433

to avoid his fatherand Juhenne and everybody. Linda's

unhappy night had sunk deep into his breast, and only he
alone saw down into it, no stranger. He hoped that she
herself would keep silent toward Julienne, because the
latter, according to the sacred, womanly rules of her

order, knew no indulgence for this sin. His first jealous

ebullition had now given place to a painful sympathy for
the deceived Linda, whose holy temple had been ritled.
What pained him insufferably was the feeling of humilia-
tion with which the proud fair one must now, as he im-
agined, think of him, and which he, with his present
bitter contempt of Roquairol, entertained so much the
more strongly. "Never, never, though she were my
sister, can we see each other more I can well see her
;

bleeding before me, but not bowed down," he said to him-

self. Sometimes there came over him a cold fury against
a destiny, which always swept with a sudden whirlwind
through his embraces, and forced all asunder, — then an
indignation against Linda, who had not acted like a
Liana, and who was herself partly guilty of the error of
the substitution by her principle of forgiving love every-
thing, — then again deep sympathy, since she could not
have confounded persons without any spiritual resem-
blances, as the secret tribunal of conscience told him, and
since she now alone was atoning for it, that she was will-

ing to sacrifice herself to him, even to him.

Inexpressibly did he hate the dead seducer, because
by his act his death had become only a cowardly flight.

The poor deserter, whose escape had been reported dur-

ing the tragedy, he saw led along as a prisoner before
him ; but his captain had escaped the hand of vengeance
forever. After some days papers of the dead were put
into his hands ;
but, full of abhorrence, he could not look
VOL. II. 19 BB
4-34 TITAN.

on them. They contained justification?, and at the same

time additional sins. Eoquairol had, after the pleasure-
night, spent the whole morning in the Prince's garden
writing, in order to color the remembrance, which alone
(so he wrote) had rewarded and satisfied him, that he
had not that very night played out the fifth act of the
drama of life.

The Lector delivered in Albano's absence short letters

from Julienne, wherein she begged him to make his ap-

pearance, and appointed him place and time at the castle,

whither she had gone from Lilar. He went not. Some-
times it seemed to him as if distant men tracking him
stoleround him in wide circles.
Once at evening he was still standing at the foot of
a woody hill, when he espied overhead a wolf stalk out
of the thicket the wolf saw him, sprang down upon him,
;

and changed into Schoppe's wolf-dog. Soon his friend

himself, with an old man, stepped out from the trees
above, saw him, hurriedly gave the man money, and came
down to him slower than he went up to him. " Ah, a
good evening, Albano," said Schoppe, with the old cold-
ness with which he spoke, when he did not write, and
smiled at the same time with so manyand wrinkles
lines

that he appeared to Albano altogether strange. Albano

pressed him tightly to his heart, and transformed the hot
words which his friend did not love into hot tears. It

was an old star out of the spring morning when his

Liana still Hved and loved ; it had gone down before him
on a grave in that night of journey now it rose, and
his ;

Albano was again unhappy.

Schoppe surveyed with visible complacency Albano's
ripened form, and drew asunder, as it were, the young
man's shining wings. " Thou hast," said he, " spread out
 SCHÖPFE GIVES ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. 435

and colored thyself right well, — hast May and August

on one bough, like an orange-tree." Albano took no
pleasure in this. " Only relate to me thy life, my
brother," said he. " Thou shouldst tell thine first, me-
thinks ; I am tired even to stupidity," said Schoppe,
seating himself and unbuckling his hunting-pouch.
" Hereafter," replied Albano, " what thou hast occasion
for I will tell thee. I got thy letters, —I really loved
the well-known one, —a misfortune divided us, —I am
innocent and she is great; —O God, be satisfied with
this for to-day
!
" Never could he complain of misfor-
tunes to his friends ; still less now expose the misery of
a beloved. " And still longer," replied Schoppe ;
" only

say, does it add new misery if I bring with me from

Spain and proceed to unpack proofs of your being related
as brother and sister ? " " No," .said Albano, " I need
"
tremble at no past." " Thou art still going to France ?

asked Schoppe. " To-morrow, if thou wilt go too," re-

phed Albano.
" By all means, as thy regiment chaplaincy. Not for
want of the spirit of art, as thou writest from Rome, but
from a superfluity of it, thou goest among soldiers. I
should see it with pleasure, if thou wert to consider that
even Dante, Caesar, Cervantes, Horace, served before
they wrote so preciously, — only students invert it, and
compose something short and sweet, and take up service
afterward. To come to my travels, — it costs me much,
namely, time, merely to tell thee that I caught thy absurd
uncle with a carriage full of baggage in the little nest of

Ondres, a. post and a half from Bayonne. I owned to

him I was going to Valencia to dissect the silk-stocking-
weavers' looms in that place, to enjoy, at the same time,
my drop of ice and a waistcoat-pocket full of Valencia
 "

436 TITAN.

almonds, and to visit the few professors who had produced

the best coinpends for three thousand reals.* He should
certainly arrive before me, he said. We arranged to put
up at the same inn in Valencia. I found my account in
him, as he could most easily introduce me to Romeiro's
house. But I waited and Avatched there for him fourteen
days in vain. With the steward of the house I found no
hearing, although I cut out his stupid profile five times,
with the request that he would unlock to a travelling
painter the picture cabinet, where I wished to find the

maternal picture of the Countess.

" Now was I half and half resolvedto become preg-

nant, and in this guise to demand everything for my satis-

faction, which even the Spanish King refuses to no preg-
nant woman.f In Italy they carry the child on the arm,
in order to beg ; in Spain it needs not so much as this
visibleness. But fortunately thy uncle came. The pic-
ture-gallery door was thrown open. I set myself to
copying a stupid kitchen-piece, and looked everywhere
after my island portrait. But nothing was to be seen."
(Here he drew a wooden case out of his hunting-bag, and
laid it before him and went on.) " Until at last I saw it,

—a picture leaned on the floor against the wall, turn-

ing toward me its back- and wintry-side, — it was the
child of my pencil, and I was touched by the neglect it

had suffered, — inwardly vexed, but outwardly calm, I

put it by, — and snapped off short in the kitchen-piece in

the middle of a half-finished pole-cat. Look at the like-

ness !

* So much prize-money does every professor get for every best

grammar and every best compend ; so for every dissertation fifty
ducats, &c. — Tychse's Supplement to Bourgoing^s Travels, Vol. II.

t One such, e. g. desired to see the king; he appeared on the bal-

cony, and stayed till she was satisfied.
SCHOPPE'S PICTURE OF ALBANO'S MOTHER. 437

He took off the box-cover, and Linda beamed upon

his friend with a stream of mind and charms, only dressed
in older fashion. Albano could scarcely stammer for
emotion. " That were my father's spouse and my dear
mother ? And thou knowest assuredly that this picture
"
here is the one you made of her on Isola Bella ?

"I '11 just make it manifest," said he, and scoured away
at a rose in the picture about the region of the heart.
My then Paphos-name Loewenskiould lies suh rosa and
will be immediately forthcoming. Had I already scraped
it open on the road, then you would have believed I had
on the road for the first written myself in." As from a
ghostly writing hand Albano started back shuddering,
when actually an L and an O came forth from under the
rose :
'"^
I shall clear away no further now," said Schoppe,
" the rest I keep for her." Albano now poured out his
heart before his honest heart's-friend ; to him he could
say and object that Julienne was his sister, — " against

which I have nothing at all to say," said Schoppe, — and

that Gaspard had approved an intended marriage between
him and Linda. " There is no getting away from it," he
added; "if she is his daughter, then I am not his son, —I
cannot possibly make his sacred word of honor a lie —
and, God ! into what a monstrous pit and pool of crime

must one then look down !

" " Touching the word and
the pool," said Schoppe, quite coldly, " there are specious
proofs to be adduced (although, to be sure, I have before
this spoken superfluously on the subject with thy father,
and with the Countess), that the Baldhead, who, as he
confessed to me, has been thy father's mass-assistant,
groomsman, and bear-leader, was not a man of the fresh-
est morals, but that he — although otherwise upright in
many saddles except the moral — had hours and cen-
his
 :

438 TITAN.

turies when he acted as such a dog and highwayman, that

my hound there is a calendar-saint and father of the
Church to him. Only I ought not to have blown out the
lamp of his life, which of course stank more than it
shone."
Albano could not disguise from him his horror at the
deed. " I cannot repent it ;
listen," said Schoppe, and
gave this account :
" Even in Valencia thy uncle told me
that he had met in Madrid such and such a fellow, — ex-
actly like the Baldhead, — who carried round for show
a wax-figure-cabinet of nothing but crazy creatures ; of-

ten the whole cabinet would speak, and he himself would

sit therein too, and help discourse ; thy superstitious uncle
procured and lent him spirits, too, and made evil and
frightful things out of it all.

Once in a Posada * I heard in a sleeping chamber

"

near mine all sorts of voices murmuring through each

other and saying, '
Schoppe also is coming to us.' I rose ;

the strange chamber was shut. I listen and hear it again,

the devilish cry, '
Schoppe comes in also.' My room
had a balcony out of which I could, through the neigh-
boring window, see by the moonlight into the noisy cham-
ber. In hon-ible, frizzled shapes sat a mass of wax
therein and spake, the waxen baldhead in the midst but ;

I sought the living one. The wax beasts exchange with

one another their fixed ideas and slip me in among them
'There is our honorary fellow-member peeping in,' said
the wax baldhead. By Heaven ! I must be short, my
blood boils and burns again through my heart. I grow
furious, take my weapon, and petition God for a peaceable,

forbearing disposition. Unfortunately I observe, in a

back corner not lighted by the moon, near a father of
* A Spanish inn.
 SCHÖPFE SHOOTS THE BALDHEAD. 439

death and a pregnant woman of wax, a black cloak which

stirs, and out of which peeps the living tone-leader, the
Baldhead. '
Black master of ventriloquism,' cried I, hold '

thy tongue for God's sake ; I see thee behind there and
fire in.' I took it for ventriloquism.
" Now for the first time the crazy-house properly be-
gan ; I heard it laugh, — call me in and dub me a com-
rade and member of the club. * ProRseSy said I, ' I am
notoriously a man, and see thee quite distinctly.' It
availed nothing ; the waxen baldhead so much the more
replied, '
Yes, there sits brother Schoppe already,' and I
actually saw myself also embossed and modelled on the
spot. '
He is to be had here also,' cried I, grimly, and
fired away at the master of the lodge, who tumbled bleed-
ing to the floor.

made off with myself in the same hour. As to the

" I

came across his track afterward for a short time.

uncle, I
He dreads madmen, and would not have me long with
him, for fear I myself should strike up a bargain with the
aforesaid set. He asked me whether the director of the
wax-figure travelling madhouse had encountered me. I
could not place much confidence in him ; I have the secret
alone."
" Thou art a wild, true man," said Albano, with such
an intense desire to embrace him ;
" thou dost much for
others, and art, after all, much for thyself. now
I can
leave thee no more. My former life-island, with all its

flowers, lies deep under water, and I must cast myself

into the infinite sea of the world. Give me thy hand,
and swim with me. We travel to-morrow to France."
" To-morrow ? " said Schoppe. " Well, yes ! then I
go this evening to the Countess, and then to Don Cesara."
" Tell her," begged Albano, " that I would not visit her
 TITAN.

even as a brother, if I were such, not from coldness, but

because I revere her great spirit ; say that to her, and
God help thee "
!
Albano was about to go, and leave him
to wander alone into the neighboring Lilar. " No, ac-
company me, my master," said Schoppe, vehemently ; " I

have discharged the old churl over there in the woods by

fair payment of escort-money, and should now be alone
vis-a-vis de moir " I do not understand thee," said Al-

bano ;
" what art thou afraid of ? " " Albano," said he, in

a low and important tone, and his generally direct looks

glanced shyly sidewise, and innumerable great wrinkles en-
circled his smihng mouth, "the 'I' might come ; yes, yes!"
Wondering, and asking who that might be, Albano
looked into his face. " Plague take it !
" said Schoppe ;

" I apprehend you you hold me to be not one

full well ;

eighth as rational as yourself, but mad. Wolf, come up !

Thou, beast, wast frequently, on lonely roads and lanes,

my exorcist and devil-catcher, against the 'I.* Sir, he
who has read Fichte, and his vicar-general and brain-
servant Schelling, out of sport as often as I, will make

serious work enough out of it at last. The thing called

* I' presupposes itself, and the person called T,' together '

with that remainder which most call the world. When

philosophers deduce anything — for example, an idea or
themselves — out of themselves, so do they also deduce
whatever else there is about them — the remaining uni-
verse — in the same manner. They are exactly that
drunken churl who made water into a fountain, and stood
there all night before it, because he heard no cessation,
and of course set down all the subsequent continuing
sound to his own account. The '
I ' conceives itself ; it is

therefore ob-subject, and at the same time the residing-

place of both. Gadzooks ! there is an empiric and a
 SCHOPPE'S DREAD OF HIS "ME." 441

pure ' L' The last phrase which the crazy Swift, accord-
ing to Sheridan and Oxford, uttered, shortly before his
"
death, was, '
I am 1/ Philosophical enough !

" And what fearful conclusion dost thou draw from it

all ? " said Albano, with the deepest sorrow. " I can

bear anything and everything," said Schoppe, " only not

the me, — the pure, intellectual me, — the god of gods.
How often have I not already changed my name, like my
namesake and cousin in renown, Scioppius, or Schoppe,
and become every year another person but still the pure !

* I * perceptibly runs after me and besets me. One sees

this best on journeys, when one looks at one's legs, and
sees them stride along, and then asks, Who in the world is

that marching along so with me down below there ? I tell

you he is eternally talking with me if he were once to
;

start up in bodily presence before me, I should not be the

last to grow weak and deadly pale. To be sure, no dog
has occasion to use tooth-powder ; but children one should
paint up, it stands to reason and propriety. For my part,

I have observed the age so so, and smile, because I say

nothing. Men, like napkins, are broken up into the finest

and greatest variety of forms, — into night-caps, pyra-

mids, cross-bills — zounds, Albano into what shape are

!

they not folded ? But the consequence, brother, O —

heavens, the consequence ! I say nothing : curse it, I
am still as a mouse, — few as much so ; but times may
come when a gentleman shall haply remark. Men and
music-notes, music-notes and men ; short and sweet and
plain, with both it is now heads up, now tails, — that is

to say, when it has to go quick. These are similes,

I am well aware, best friend ; but the bakers announce

a slack batch by a stony or clayey one in the shop,
whereas men announce their hardest things, among which
19*
 "

442 TITAN.

belongs the heart, by their softest, to which appertain

words."
Speechless with astonishment at these effusions, Albauo
led him by the hand to Lilar before Linda's residence.

All was dark therein ; not a light was stirring. " Speak
thy word softly up there, my Schoppe, and to-morrow we
journey farther !
" said Albano below, in a soft tone at

parting, and left him to go up alone into the gloomy castle

of mourning. " What a meeting !

" said Albano, on his
way back through the garden.

133. CYCLE.
ONG did Albano wait for his friend on the following
I J day ; no one appeared, no man knew anything of
him. On the second morning a report got wind that the
Countess in the night, and Gaspard in the morning, had
travelled off. " Has Schoppe driven both away by the
truth ? " he asked himself, forsaken and alone. In vain
did he try to track Schoppe for several days after ; not
once had he been seen. " Thou, too, dear Schoppe !

said he, and shuddered at the barbarity of fate toward

himself. As he thus surveyed himself, and looked out
over the still, dark waste of his life, all at once it seemed
to him as if his life suddenly lighted up, and a sun-glance
fell upon the whole liquid mirror of the dark time which
had elapsed. A voice spake within him :
" What has
there been then ? Men, dreams, blue days, black nights,
have flown hither without me, without me flown away
again, like the flitting summer, which the hand of man
can neither weave nor hold fast. What is there left ? A
wide woe over the whole heart ; but the heart, too, re-
mains, — empty, of course, but firm, sound, hot. Loved
 JULIENNE'S LAST NEWS OF LINDA. 443

ones are lost, not love itself ; the blossoms are fallen, not
the branches. Verily, I still wish ; I still will ; the past
has not stolen from me the future. Arms have to
I still

embrace withal, and a hand to lay upon the sword, and

an eye to survey the world. But what has gone down
will come again, and flee again, and only that will remain
true to thee which is forsaken, — thyself alone. Freedom
is the glad eternity ; calamity is for the slave the break-
ing out of a fire in the prison. No ; I will be, not have.
What ! can the holy storm of tones only stir a particle of
dust, while the rude, agitated air displaces mountains of
ashes ? Only where hke tones and strings and hearts
dwell, there do they move softly and invisibly. Only
sound on, then, sacred string-music of the heart, but wish
not to change anything in the rough, hard world, which
owns and obeys only the winds, not tones."
At this moment, he was found by the Lector Augusti,
who brought, by word of mouth, instant entreaties from
the Princesse Julienne to go with him to Gaspard's cham-
ber, where she had the weightiest words to say to him
about Schoppe. He complied readily ; he expected, first

and chiefly, to find with her a key to his Schoppe's cov-

ered fate ; he saw, too, from the bold choice of a mes-
senger, how important to his poor sister his appearance
must be.
In Gaspard's apartment Augusti suddenly left him to

announce him, and — leave him alone. Through his life

rolled now a slow thunder ; whether it came from heaven,
from ß. stream, or only from a mill, as yet he knew not.

Julienne burst in, weeping, unable to speak for the violent

beating of her heart. " Thou art going away ? " asked

she. " Yes !

" said he, and besought her to be less pas-

sionate ; for he knew how easily another's impetuosity set

444 TITAN.

him on fire, as he could not even play chess or fence, for

any length of time, without becoming angry. She en-
treated him still more passionately only to stay till Gas-
pard came back. " Is he coming back ? " asked Albano.
" How otherwise ? But not the unworthy bride," said
she. " Julienne," replied he, seriously, " O, be not as
'*
hard against her as fate has been, and let me be silent !

" I hate now all men, and thee, too," said she. " That
comes of your poetical souls. O, what honest bride
would have let herself so easily be blinded by such a
suicide? Who? But I see thou dost not know all."

" But is it of any use ? " h*e asked.

Surprised at this question, she began without reply the

narration :
—
On the day when Albano found Schoppe, Julienne
would Linda whom she had not
fain visit again her friend
seen since the evening of the tragedy. All apartments
in Lilar were closely curtained against daylight. Juli-
enne found her sitting in darkness, with downcast, half-
open eyehds, outwardly very tranquil, only at long inter-
vals a little tear stole out from her eyes. The sweeping
stream went high over the wheels of her life and they
stood far under it and still. " Is it thou, Julienne ? " she

said, softly. " Pardon the darkness ; night is green now,

to my eyes. It pains me to see anything." The bridal
torch of her existence was quenched ; she wished now
night for night.
Julienne put anxious questions of astonishment; she
gave no answer to them. " Is there any trouble between
thee and my brother ? " asked Julienne, in whom relation-
ship always created a warmer concern than friendship.
" Only wait for the Knight," answered she ; "I have sent
an entreaty to him to come hither."
 GASPARD LEARNS LINDA'S FATE. 445

Just at that moment he entered. She begged him to

accommodate himself to this short night. After some
silence, she rose proudly from her seat; her black-dressed,
tall form raised, in the presence of the Knight, whom she
saw not, its great eyes to heaven, her proud life, hitherto
enveloped in the winding-sheet, flung back the cloth and
rose, blooming, from the dead, and she addressed the
Knight :
" Respected Gaspard, you promised me, as also

did my father, that he would appear to me on my mar-

riage day. The day is gone by. I am a widow now :

let him appear to me."

Here the Knight interrupted her " Gone by ? quite :

right Is he, then, anything more discreet and moral

!

than a man?" and jested, contrary to his usual man-

ner, with a glow of indignation, because he supposed it

was of Albano, whom he had so long trusted, that she

was speaking.
" You misunderstand me," said Linda ;
" I speak of a

deceased one." Suddenly before Julienne Roquairol's

shadow passed ; distant according tones from the Princess
had ushered it in. "Almighty God!" she screamed, "the
cursed suicide's, play is true?" " He played what actu-
ally occurred," said Linda calmly. " We separate. I
travel. I desire nothing but Here Gaspard my father."
held out toward the Countess an arm petrified by palsy,
as if armed with a drawn dagger, the darkness made —
the apparition blacker and wilder, but he broke the ice —
of death asunder again with cold hands, and stirred and
answered with lamed tongue " God and the Devil Thy : !

father is at hand. He will take it all — as it is. Does

he know it?" "Who?" asked Linda. "And what did
he determine ? Heavens ! I mean Albano." Gaspard
had, in a passion, at once Cromwell's imbecility of tongue
 "

446 TITAN.

and ingenuity of action ; and remained therefore as averse

and as far from every ebullition, even of love, as from
lameness, which was to him (as he said) "even more
odious than downright crime."
"I know not," said Linda. " I belong to the dead one
alone, who has twice died for me. Say that to my father.

O, I would have followed him long ago, the monster, into

the deep realm ; I would not stand here before the cold
reproach of malice or Christian amazement, for there are
still daggers to be used against life ! — But I am a mother,
and therefore I live !

" I will see you again this evening," said Gaspard com-
posedly, and hurried away. " I believe, dear Julienne,"

said Linda, " we now no longer quite understand each

other, at least not to the highest point, just as we earlier
differed about your helle-soeur, and you thought her co-
quetry, but I precisely her prudery, great and immoral."
" That may well be true," said Julienne, coldly ;
" you
are so truly poetic, I am so prosaic and old-maidishly
pious and orthodox. To love a monster for this, be-
cause he cheats me as horribly as he does his regiment-
treasury, or because he generally allows himself as much
freedom as his regiment, or because after his death he
still leaves parts for the remaining players, or letters to
me, deceived one —
" " Did he so ? " asked Albano. " She

praised it even as a sign of genius in him," replied Ju-

lienne. " To love such a one, said I, or such people as
love him, I cannot find it in my heart to do that. Fare
you then as well as may be." Linda answered, " I hate

all wishes " ; gave her her hand, pressed not hers, and
remained in profound silence, looking into her night.
She knew little of the easy and careless departure of her
lost friend.
 JULIENNE'S SAD NEWS OF SCHÖPFE. 447

That same night Linda, after a long private talk with

the Knight, travelled off entirely alone, wrapped in her

veil, in a carriage without torches, and no one knew
whether she had wept or not. —
When Albano had heard his sister out, he said, with a
soft voice of emotion :
" Make peace with the past ; man
cannot assail it. Leave unhappy one the
to the great
night into which she of herself has been drawn. But
why were you so eager to have me with you ? Particu-
larly if thou knowest aught of my Schoppe, I entreat
thee to impart it." " I will answer thee," said she, weep-
ing and wondering ;
" but, brother, assure me that thy
silence is not again the curtain of a new misfortune. I
recognize you men by that, one must hate you all, and I
do so, too." "I have nothing sad in my mind; before
God I affirm it. You women, you who will only quench
your hell with tears, and kindle it with the breath of
sighs, comprehend not, that often a single hour's thinking
can give a man a staff or wings, which shall lift him at

once out of hell, and then it may burn on for all him."
" Show me, then," said she, in a tearfully comic manner,
" thy wing." " This," rephed he, " that I build not upon
man, but upon God in me and above me. The foreign
ivy winds around us, runs up on us, stands as a second
summit beside ours, and it is thereby withered. Spirits
should grow beside each other, not upon each other.
We should, like God, as imperishable ones, love the per-
ishable."
" Very good," said she, " if it only insures thee peace.
As touching thy poor Schoppe, he has been thrust into
the madhouse by way of punishment ; but first let me
give you a regular account. He dressed up a story about
a second sister of thine before thy already so much ex-
448 TITAN.

cited father. One could have let this new distraction of

intellect pass ; but thy uncle was called, who told him to
his face he had murdered the Baldhead ; and the choice
was haughtily left him between imprisonment and the
madhouse ; so he betook himself to the latter. Stay,
stay I The weightiest is to Whatever I may
come.
think of him, I see he is thy honest friend and to speak;

out freely, even Linda, before her departure, inserted in

her last letter to me an intercession for him. He not
only made the farcical journey to Spain for thee, he also
effected thy cure ; perhaps thou owest him thy life. I
wonder that I, or somebody or other, has never before
mentioned it to thee."

She began now upon Idoine's sound and generous

character, her Arcadia, and the last day she had spent
with her and looked into her clear soul. She passed on
to his bed of fever and his mourning beside Liana's bier,

and old Schoppe's talks and runnings to and fro, and his
noble victory, when he had brought at length the glorified
Liana, in Idoine's form, before his eye, that she might
"
pronounce the healing words :
" Have peace !

Now was he in a storm, and Julienne at peace.

" Therefore," she continued, " I hold it to be my duty to
interest myself a little in thy friend. The poor devil is
innocent, — through stingings of conscience and even by
his present situation he may completely lose what under-
standing he still has, — altogether innocent, I say ; for thy
uncle, whom I have long hated, and who only a short
time ago for the first time, but in vain, sought to come as
a ghostly and murderous apparition to my sick brother,
— he would also have probably done the same with
Liana, if she had lived to admit of it, — this man is —
(why may I not make it notorious, now that all has
 "!

DUEL BETWEEN ALBANO AND HIS UNCLE. 449

changed and revolutionized itself?) one and the pelf- —

same person with the Baldhead, and is a ventriloquist
Brother?"
But Albano had already flown from her.

134. CYCLE.
ALBANO would fain set his friend free before
avenging him ; therefore he would hasten first

to Schoppe and then to his uncle. But as he passed by

the lighted apartments of the latter, a sudden indignation
seized him, and he must needs go up. The tall, haggard
uncle came slowly to meet the excited youth, with the
jay on his hand. Albano, without any circumstances,
with flaming eyes, charged him with his double part, his
heaven-crying destruction of Schoppe, and the illusory
operations against himself, and demanded answer and
satisfaction. Yes, yes," said the Spaniard, stroking his
diablesse ; "I have the pistols : I have no time, — no
time for talking." ''You must have it," said Albano.
" I have none, Deo patre et filio et spiritu sancto testihus ;
it will soon be between eleven and twelve, and the
gloomy one stands here." " Heavens why this silly,
!

tragic scenery ? O God, is it not possible, then, that you

are even a man," — looking with horror at the skin of his
face, which absolutely could not look joyful or loving, —
" so that you can tremble, blush, repent, exult ? What
knew you of my Schoppe, when you once in Ratto's cellar
made believe as if you knew a Frightful deed of his ?
" No one needs know anything," he replied " one says to ;

a man, '
I am acquainted with thy villanous deed ' ; the
man sends his thoughts back, he finds such a one." "But
what had he done to you ? " asked Albano, with agitation.
CO
 —

TITAN.

Dryly he replied, " He said to me, ' Thou hound !

' It
strikes eleven o'clock ; I say nothing more than what
I will."
Here the Spaniard brought two pistols and a bag,
showed him that they were not loaded, asked him to load

one (giving him powder and lead), but not the other.
" Into the bag, each into the bag," said he ;
" we draw
lots!" The bolder, the better, thought Albano. The
Spaniard shook both up, and requested Albano to tread

upon one of them, as a sign of his choice. He did so.

" We shoot at the same time," said the uncle, " as soon as
it has struck the two quarters." "No," said Albano,
" you fire at the first stroke, I at the second." " Why
not ? " replied he.

They posted themselves over against each other in

opposite corners of the chamber, with the pistols in their
hands, awaiting the stroke of half past eleven. The Span-
iard closed his eyes in dumb listening. As Albano looked
into this blind, bust-like face, it seemed to him as if no
sin at all could be committed upon such a being, least of

all a death-stroke. Suddenly there was a murmuring in

the still chamber of five voices among each other, as if

they came from the old philosophers' busts on the walls ;

the father of death, the Baldhead, the jay seemed to

speak, and an unknown voice, as if it were the so-called

Gloomy One. They said to one another, " Gloomy One,
is it not so, have I told any falsehood? I bring five tears,
but cold ones, — I bear the wheels of the hearse on my
head, — I lead the panther by the noose, — I cut him free,

— I point with white finger at him, — I bring the mist,

I bring the coldest frost, — I bring the terrible thing !

"

Here the bell sounded the first stroke, and the Spaniard
fired, — at the second Albano blazed away ; — both stood
 SCHÖPFE IN THE MADHOUSE.

there without a wound ;

powder-smoke floated round, but
nowhere was there any appearance of a spHntering, as if
the ball had been only a glass ball filled with quicksilver.
With grim contempt, Albano looked at him on account of
the previous voices. " I was forced to," said the uncle.

Suddenly the Lector broke in, breathless, whom

Julienne had despatched to hinder a probable duel.
" Count " "
! he stammered, " has anything happened ?

" Something," replied the uncle, " must have happened

in the neighborhood, the smoke came in ; we were just
on the point of embracing and bidding each other good
night." He rang, and commanded the servant to ask the
host who was firing so late at night. Albano was as-

tounded, and could only say in parting, " So be it! Bat

"
fear the madman, whom I unchain !
" " Ah, do it not !

said the Spaniard, and seemed to fear.

Augusti waited upon him down to the street, nor did

he let him go till after he had given his word of honor
not to go up there again. But Albano flew, even at this

late hour of the night, to the house of woe and to the

tormented heart.

135. CYCLE.

HARDLY had Albano made known to the overseer

of the madhouse, a young, sleek, rosy little man,

his name, which the little man already knew, and his
petition for Schoppe's liberty, together with his security
for him, when the overseer smiled upon him with uncom-
mon complacency, and said, " I have quietly watched the
whole house for years. I seize greedily the minutest
traits for a future, philosophical public ; and so also did I
apply myself very seriously to Mr. Schoppe. But never,
 "

452 TITAN.

Sir Count, never have I detected in him a trait or trick

which would have promised insanity on the contrary, he ;

reads all my English and German works on the subject,

and converses with me upon the modes of treatment in
hospitals for the insane. A disciple of Fichte he may be
(I infer it from his 'I'), and a humorist, too; now if
each of these is, of itself, hard to distinguish from crazi-
ness, how much more their union ! with what joyful anti-
cipation of the coincidence of our observations I give you
!
here the key to his chamber, conceive for yourself
" If he is not a fool," said his wife, " why then does he
smash all the looking-glasses ? " " For that very reason,"
replied the overseer ;
" but if he is a fool, then is thy hus-
band a still greater."
Never did Albano open a door with heavier heart than
this to Schoppe's little chamber. " I am come to take

thee away, my brother," he cried immediately, by way of

sparing himself and him the redness of shame. But
when he looked at the old lion more nearly, he found him
in this trap quite altered, — not tame, creeping, wagging,
but broken in two, and with shattered claws weighed down
to the earth. The charge of murder, which he had hon-
estly admitted, united to Gaspard's unmerciful sentence,
had filled and eaten up his proud, free breast with poison-

ous shame. " I fare well here, only I feel symptoms of ill
health," said Schoppe, with lustreless eye and toneless
voice. Albano could not hide his tears he clung around ;

the sick man, and said, "Magnanimous man, thou gavest

me once in my sickness, health and salvation again, and I
knew it not, and thanked thee not. Go with me I must ;

nurse thee in this thy sickness, heal and comfort thee as I

can ; then we travel."
" Dost thou imagine, my Criton," he repUed, strength-
 SCHÖPFE FINDS HIS KEEPER CRAZY. 453

ened by the balsam of his wounded pride, " that I am not

a sort of Socrates, but will really go out of my torre del

ßlosopho ? A word of honor is a thick chain." " Tell

me all, spare no one ; but I will tell thee thereafter a piece

'*
of news, at which thy chain shall instantly melt down !

said Albano.
" Ha ! Meanwhile, this place here, for its part, is well

enough, as aforesaid, a torre del ßlosopho^ quai de Voltaire,

and Shakespeare's street, and whatever else one might,
could, would, or should name. Moreover, I always hear
by night one or another man speak close by me, and so I
have no fear at all that the ' I ' will come. I throw every
day five little bread-balls : if they form a cross, then it

signifies (think what thou wilt) that I do not yet appear

to myself. But they always make one. I have been, in
this Anticyra here, so quieted about so many a phantom,
even by those books, — look at them, nothing but treatises

on madness, — that I, although it touches my Mordian *

quite as little as it does me, am glad to have been here.
My intercourse is not the safest, I own, though I talk with
the keeper and wife alone (a rhyme), both of whom clev-
erly understand the prison-fever that prevails here. The
man has got the fixed idea into his head, and his wife
thereby into hers, that he is our present overseer, and has
to assist, oversee, and read excellent books which fall in

with his office. Those treatises are by the fool. It is to

be presumed he has let his overseeing idea peep out too

broadly in the city, and the medical college clapped him
in with his serviceable idea; because, in the end, to be
sure, every overseer must have it in order to exercise his

office, whether he is mad or not. Amongst all here in the

house, we two please each other most. He sounded me
* His dog.
454 TITAN.

to my advantage, and I can make great use of him for

my liberty, only I must not attack his foul, fixed spot.

Only I often improvisate for them an evening blessing, —

because they have no prayer-book, — and weave in with
the blessing hints which might be of medical service to
the pair, if they chose. So we two wander round in the

mazes of this labyrinth along before the patients, — be-

hind him, the incurable hub of the whole wheel, I walk
quite tolerant. In the club, universal polemics and scep-
ti(iism reign as in no other university hall. '
It is a thing
to make one become crazy,' he says to me, in a low tone.
*
To make one he crazy,* they say in this palais d^ega-

lite' I reply. I cut him out the profiles of the patients

for his manuscript. As children still have something

which appears to them childish, so have madmen some-
thing which seems even to them madness. But I never
become any more pointed with him, and keep sharper
jokes to myself. Ah, what is man, especially a discreet
one, and how thin are his sticks and staves ! Is there

anything about me that moves thee, Albano ? My dull,

"
pale face, perhaps ?

But Albano could not possibly confess to him, that this

wreck of a noble man, with his delusions, and even with
his style, whose wings had also wheels on them, brought

the tears into his eyes, but he said merely, " Ah, I think
of many things, but now, at last, I pray, to thy story, dear
friend!" But Schoppe had already forgotten again what
he was to tell.Albano named the issue of the portrait-
affair with the Countess, and Schoppe began :
—
" The Princess Julienne was just jumping into her
carriage, when I led the blind maiden up the steps, to let

* Es ist zum Tollwerden and es ist zum Tollsein are the two German
phrases. — Tk.
 SCIIOPPE'S REVELATION TO LINDA. 455

it be said, the Librarian Schoppe was here from Spain.

I was ushered into a darkened apartment, wherein I
walked quietly up and down waiting or watching for

people, until the Countess greeted me out of the gloom.

*
This darkness,' said I, ' is justwhat I hke for the light
which I have to give, only I would rather speak Irish or
Lettonian * or Spanish, because I don't know who may
be eavesdropping about here.' ' Spanish !
' said she, se-

riously. I related to her how I had known thy mother,

and painted her, and so forth, and inserted my name
indehbly into the likeness ; after a long time, had met her
in the market-place of this city, and taken her for the

looking-glass image of thy mother, so like was she to her

own. '
I know not,' said she, breaking in here with heat-
ed pride upon the midst of my narrative, ' how far your
secrets can become mine.' '
You may,' said I, seriously,
' by letting me ring for a light ; for I hold here in my
hand the Frau von Cesara and von Ro-
portrait of the
meiro, two names of one person.' She comprehended
nothing of it, wanted to know nothing of it, and I must
not ring. I acknowledged to her that I saw myself ne-
cessitated to adorn myself with the rhetorical chessman,
generally called repetition of the narrative, and proceeded
to move the piece. But as soon as in so doing I came
upon thy name again, she said I had probably in my mind
relations now entirely done away. '
No,' said I, '
I have
an eternal and restored relation in my mind, and bring
with me his greeting, full of the most profound regard.'
The greeting seemed to touch her sensibilities, just as if
one held her to be in need of such an assurance, and she
begged me rather to leave thee out. '
Heavens ! he is

your brother, and here I have about me the portrait of

* Livonian ? — Tr.
456 TITAN.

3'our mother, stolen from Valencia, and only no light to

show it by.'
" Light was then ordered. As the flame set the tall,

imposing form in gold, I said right out to myself, she w^as

fully as deserving as her brother that one should make

that long pilgrimage to the family tree of both, for she is

not without her charms. Albano, were I her brother, as

thou hast the honor to be, and had she a gondola, but no
river of paradise for it, my blood would have to be made
navigable for her ; I would bear her up not only in my
hands, but, like an aequilibrist, on my nose and mouth, the
unfortunate one ! She no sooner saw the portrait than
!
she cried, ' Mother, mother and kept passing her hand
'

over her eyes, complaining that they were now still worse
than ever. I resumed my scraping, and at last dug out
before her eyes my whole name, Loewenskiould, even with
the addition, which had escaped me, " Loves much."
" '
Was that the painter's name ? '
she asked. '
Are
you he? You loved her too?' 'Beauty is a cliff,' re-

plied I, seriously, ' on which one and another man seeks

to shipwTCck himself, because it lies full of pearls and
oysters.' She begged of me, in a friendly manner, the
most distinct repetition of the repetition ; she wished to
attend better ;
hearing and thinking were as hard and
heavy for her now as living. Albano, you should have
despatched me to her with more preparatory information.
As it was, I was half confused and cloudy, and when,
during my picture of the Long Lake Isle,* something
moist sprang from her eyes, I sank in the drops, and al-

most drowned therein, and not till after some time could
I rub myself to life. At the end of my discourse, she

stood up, folded her hands, and prayed, with weeping, as

* Isola Bella in Lago Maggiore (literally, greater ZaÄ;e). — Tk.

 '

GASPARD'S RAGE AT SCHOrPE. 457

if she gave thanks :

'
God, O God ! thou hast spared
me !
' — which I, after all, do not wholly understand."
Albano understood it well, — namely, that she thanked
fate for the accidental delay of Schoppe's arrival, which
had spared her the short but fearful transformation of
Roquairol into a brother.
" Thereupon she broke out into too many thanks to
the painter, robbers and purveyors of the painted birth-
certificate. He whose heart has gone to sleep like an
arm, and is feelingless and hard to move, finds a some-
thing very droll run through and over the awaking mem-
ber when he stirs it. '
I could not do less,' said I, ' for
your holy brother ; the sunny side is, then, the moon-side.'
She turned suddenly to the subject of thy father, and
asked, as he was immediately coming, whether she or I
should propose to him these riddles. '
Or rather both !

I had hardly replied, when he stepped wildly in.

" Now, Gaspard is, to be sure and decidedly, thy own
and thy sister's natural father, and filial love toward him
is never to be set down against thee as a fault ; but if I
chose to tell thee he was no bear, no rhinoceros, no were-
wolf or other kind of wolf, I should do it more from
singular politeness than from any other cause. He snorted
to me a good evening ; so did I to him. Many men re-
semble glass, — smooth and slippery and flat so long as
one does not break them, but then cursedly cutting, and
every splinter stings. The matter was laid before him
with the accompanying frontispiece of the portrait. Wert
thou more distantly related to him, I would let myself
out on this subject ; for his face was overspread with the
northern light of grim fury ; out of his eyes yellow wasps
flew at me ; straight lines shot up on his tempestuous
brow like electrical lances, particularly two perpendicular
VOL. II. 20
458 TITAN.

lines of discomfort. But, as was said, thou art, to my

knowledge, his son. 'My friend,' he thundered away,
'
with what right do you steal pictures, then ? ' *
That
ought to be a hard question for me to answer,' replied I,

gently ;
' but I have an inability to look at an unrighteous
deception ; I march right in.' '
Countess,' said he, gasp-
ing, ' in three minutes you shall know this gentleman well
enough.' O no, no ! he used another word than gentleman,
but I w^ill one day clasp him to my breast for it, and
though we stood on the highest steps of God's throne, and
wrestled in the glory." " Schoppe !
" said Albauo. " Don't

excite me !
" replied Schoppe, and went on.
" He rang ; a servant flew in with a card ; we all were
silent. ' Indulgence, Countess,' said he, ' only for the
space of one minute.' He thereupon gave her some mis-
erable court-news, but she looked silently on the ground.
Then came thy tall uncle, nodded sixteen times with his

little head, for that he takes to be an obeisance, and

stepped far off from me. ' Brother, simply 'Say, what has
this gentleman here done back of Valencia Mur- ? ' '

dered, murdered !
' said he, rapidly. '
Under what cir-
cumstances ? ' asked thy father. Here he began to depose
the minutest particulars of my shot of distress at the
Baldhead with such an incomprehensible sharpness that
I said, '
That is true !
' and went on myself, and kept ask-
ing, '
Is it not so ? *
and he hurriedly nodded, till I had
come to the end. Then I asked, ' But, Spaniard, tell me,
by Heaven ! whence have you, then, derived this knowl-
edge ? ' ' From me !
' answered a strange, hollow voice,
exactly like the Baldhead's.
" My heart grew cold as a dog's nose, and my tongue
full of stone. *As convictus and confessus,' began thy
father, '
you can now prophesy your fate.' ' To be sure,'
 -

THE BOMB-SHELL OF CONSCIENCE. 459

murmured the uncle, pulling out and putting back his

handkerchief, taking the picture up and laying it away, —
'
prophesy, prophesy !
'
' Meanwhile,' thy father continued,
' it is freely left with you whether you w^ill, until a nearer
investigation, choose, instead of the prison, which belongs
to you in consideration of the murder and theft, a milder
place, the madhouse, which befits you in consideration of

your journey ; if you do not choose, then I choose for

you.' '
To the madhouse, to the madhouse !
' cried I,
'
for the sake of true sociability, on my honor. But I
make no questions about anything ; on the washing-bill
of my conscience stands no murder. Do you only burn
yourselves white and clean. Your chariot of the sun
and triumphal car goes up to the very hub in dung.
Countess, let, I pray, everything be cleared up by you in
the best manner, and think unceasingly of me, in order
to get a father, like the students' father of his country, to
be sure, who consists in a hole through the hat.' * '
Step
farther back !
' said thy father to thy uncle, '
the madness
is broken out.' Upon that the hare made eighteen springs
down over thresholds and steps. I executed my own
orders of march and halt. Thy father still crawled after
me with a licking, flamy look. I charged my eye with
poison, and saw him, down below at the door, fall head-
long at the stroke."
Albano shuddered, and inquired about the how. Then
Schoppe was silent, buried in thought, for a long time,
and said, in a troubled tone, " That, to be sure, was only
a dream of mine ; but so do I now confound dream with

* See in Howitt's " Student Life in Germany," p. 301, &c., an ac-

count of the ceremony at the singing of the " Landesvater," or conse-
cration song, the most impressive part of which is that every student
pierces his cap with his sword. — Tr.
 ;

460 TITAN.

reality, and the reverse. I ought to be more moved about

Schoppe ; he is, after all, an old man, and old men weep
like the jester, when it goes down hill." " I will comfort

thee now, my friend," said Albano, with distracted breast

" I will remove an error from thy faithful heart, and then
thou wilt certainly go with me. This Baldhead, our
mocker and juggler, is, according to the holy word of my
sister, one and the same persQn with my uncle, and is a

ventriloquist."
Schoppe stood for a long time like one dead, as if he
had not heard a word. Suddenly, with radiant face and
sparkUng eye, he threw himself on his knee, and stam-
mered, " Heaven, Heaven make me mad The rest I
! !

will do." Here he made a wicked neck-wringing motion

with his hands, and said, in a tone of restored strength,
" I can follow thee." He really could now, but before he
had hardly been able to stand. And so Albano led the
unhappy, excited friend with heavy heart to his own
lodgings.

136. CYCLE.

ALBANO now left no stone unturned which friend-

ship could lift, for the sake of setting the noble

patient to rights again, and renewing his youth, inwardly

and outwardly. Especially did he seek to set up again
the bridge over which all his strings were drawn, and
which the Knight and his brother had overturned in the

presence of Linda, namely, his pride of character, which

had been brought so very low by this barbarous humilia-
tion. As only pure brotherly respect and holy worship
of a divine relic can softly warm and reanimate a wound-
ed pride, the faithful Albano took this course. But with-
out satisfaction from the Spaniard, the contriver of the
 DANGER OF LEAVING SCHÖPFE ALONE. 461

mischief and the raisleader of the Knight, his backbone,

Schoppe said, would never run perpendicular again, and
his spinal marrow would remain bent. Only Albano's
duel with the uncle was a fresh draught of cool water to
him he had to have it told over to him several times.
;

His thirsty wish was to be as well as he needed to be in

order to fight with the Spaniard, and then, as a madman,
to extort from him on a death-bed, whereupon he thought
to lay him, the confession of all his tricks and juggleries.
" Then," he added, all the time smiling, " it can well be
egal to me whether the world is round or angular, and
to France is my first step."
Albano had to let this Greek fire of wrath, which in
the end worked as a strengthening cure to a body frozen
by humiliation, burn deeper and deeper under itself, since
every attempt to extinguish merely fed it ;
only he had
to watch, that he did not get a free, solitary moment, to

fly off in a blaze and seek out the Spaniard. Albano

stirred not day nor night from his sofa-bed, and that for
other reasons also. For if Schoppe should be left alone,

and his Mordian fall asleep (whom he never woke, be-

cause the dog, he said, evidently dreamed, and then went
flying and nosing about in ideal worlds, snuffing things
whereof in the streets of the actual hardly a trace of a
shadow was to be scented), if, then, he should be alone
with the quiet animal (for when was awake he had
it

society enough), and his eye should accidentally fall upon

his legs or hands, then would his cold fear creep over him
that he might appear to himself as his own apparition,
and see his own " I." The lookino^-orlass had to be over-
hung, that he might not come across himself.
His nights were sleepless, but dreams moved nakedly
and boldly round him. Albano readily devoted to him
 ;

TITAN.

his own well nights, yet could not drive away any of
his friend's dreams, those spectres which generally flee

or sink before the living. They crept and peeped about

in the shadows of the corners of the room. Once toward
midnight Albano had gone out, and on returning found
him just in the act of grasping one hand with the other,
and exclaiming, " Whom have I here, man ? " " O good,
best Schopps," cried Albano, half in anger, " such irra-
tional plays ! Quite as well might one finger catch the
other " ! " Yes, to be sure," replied he. " But listen,"
said he softly, and squatted, ducked his head, and pointed
with the right index-finger up over his nose into the air,

" thou calledst me Schoppe ; that is not my name : but I

may not utter my real name ; the I who has been so
'
'

long seeking me would hear it, and come stalking along,

—a long gravestone lies on the name. Schoppe or
Scioppius I could very well call myself, because my
many-named namesake and name-father (it is all found
in Bayle) called himself, now so, now so, now Junipere
d'Amone, now Denig Bargas, or Grosippe, or Krigsöder,
Sotelo, and now Hay. I must appear to have wholly
forgotten that the man was, after all, veritable Titular
Prince of Athens and Duke of Thebes by Ottoman chan-
cery and grace, if I should choose to remain Maltese
Librarian. In fact, I used to go from one hotel to another
with many a name, which magnificently played with and
played upon the '
I,' that forever hunted and haunted me
for example, Löwenskiould, Leibgeber, Graul, Schoppe,
too, Mordian (which I afterward gave my dog), Sacra-
mentierer, and once huleu, — many I may have entirely
forgotten. The true one," said he, shyly whispering, " is

a ss or S — — give
s,* me a third hand here. The
* S — s means Siebenkäs. It is known — from the Flower-, Fruit-,
 ;

SCHÖPFE REFUSES MEDICINE. 463

name is cut out of grave-clothes, and I lie therein already

buried in the ground. '
I am L' Such were the last

words of the fine old Swift, who otherwise said little in

his long madness. I might not venture, however, to

be so much myself as that. Well, courage ! Infinite

Wisdom has created all, madness, too, —

in the lump. —
Only God grant, that God may never say to himself,
'
I
!
The universe would tremble to pieces, I believe
'

for God finds no third hand."

Albano shuddered at the sense of this nonsense.
Schoppe seemed ice; then he threw himself suddenly
on the brotherly bosom ; neither said aught upon the
subject, and Albano began sunny descriptions of the
happy Hesperia.
Thus patiently and solitarily did he spend with his sick

friend, in nursing, indulging, caressing, the days which he

would gladly have made use of for his flight out of Ger-
many and loved him more and more passionately, the
;

more he did and endured in his behalf. He absolutely

would not suffer it at the hand of fate, that such a world
full of ideas should approach its conflagration, and so free
a heart, full of honesty, its last beating. Schoppe had in
the youth's heart even a greater realm than Dian ; for he
took life more freely, deeply, greatly, bravely ; and if the
law of Dian's life was beauty, his was freedom, and
he tended, like our solar system, to the constellation
Hercules.
Notwithstanding all entreaties, he took no medicines
from Dr. Sphex ; for he had already, he said, committed
and Thorn-pieces — that Schoppe at an earlier period called himself
Siebenkäs, — then gave this name away to his friend Liebgeber, who
resembled him even to the face, and from whom he had taken his,
— and that the friend for show had a gravestone made and marked
" Siebenkäs."
464 TITAN.

his case to an old, well-known practitioner and circuit-

physician, Time. He readily allowed Sphex to draw up

a recipe, to bring it ;
willingly looked it through, disputed
about the contents, remarked it was easier to he sanitary-
counsel than to give it, and he saw, indeed, that he hit
his case, because he pursued a weakening treatment,
which was the first thing with crazy people ; he added,
however, that reason was not just the thing he desired,
but only a couple of valiant shanks to walk with and
stand upon, and a couple of arms well filled out to strike
home withal ; and for the rest, he told him he did not like

him, because he cut up dogs. Albano, too, at last, took

the position, that, if Schoppe could only get muscular

strength again for a social journey with him, then the
frenzy-dream into which the wTisocial one had thrown him
would readily fly away of itself.

Schoppe was always flying out at the Doctor partic-

ularly. Once the latter said :
" Follow, if not me, at
least your second self," and pointed to Albano. " To the
Devil," he replied, " with my second self, — that may be
you : I feel shy enough of you to make it probable, —
but he, there, is certainly, I have every reason to hope,

hardly my sixth, twentieth self, or the like."

Meanwhile Sphex stuck to his opinion, that his sthenic

sleeplessness, which was alternately the daughter and the
mother of his fever-visions, especially of the Baldhead,
barred up the way to relief, and must be conquered by
weakening processes. When one day Dian, who often
visited his friend Albano, heard this, he asked, why one
would not deceive and cure him directly with the tidings
of the Spaniard having travelled off for fear of him, say
to France. Albano replied :
" Truly I should be glad to

say it, but I cannot ; I could as soon will to tell a He to

 !

SPHEX ADMINISTERS AN OPIATE. 465

God or myself." " Whims !

" said Dian ;
" I '11 tell liira

myself." " Just what I had expected of that Spaniard,"

repliedSchoppe to the official recipe-falsehood. When
Dian had gone out, he asked Albano " Do I not : sit now
much cooler and more icy here ? And, truly, since hear-

ing that the Baldhead is in France, I have become almost

a new man. Of course I am lying, but Dian lied first."
At last the physician resolved to mix at once a sleep-
ing potion in his drink. Albano allowed it. Schoppe
got it ; glowed and phantasied for a space of some min-
utes ; at last the mist of sleep came up and soon covered
the patient over.
Albano, then, after so long a time, visited again the
green of the earth and the blue of heaven, and his Dian
in Lilar. What a transformation had taken place in the
interval ; how had things been confounded, and changed
places, with each other ! How many leaves had become
budgeons again ! And many a foam of life which had
once gladdened him with its whiteness and delicacy and
lightsomeness, now chilled his bosom like gray, heavy
water, and he had retained almost nothing except his
courage to meet life. At Dian's he heard of new
changes, of the Prince's approaching death, of Idoine's
approaching visit to her sister in anticipation of the be-

reavement. In what a strange bewilderment did his soul

open its eyes out of its winter-sleep into the warm sun-
shine which this image of Liana diffused over his life

In many a still night by Schoppe's ghostly tent had he

already, since Julienne for the first time let him see the
apparition of this peace-angel without the veil, beheld
the olden time and former love come up again like a
heaven of distant stars, and in the clear-obscure of
dreams disrobed of sleep he saw on the sea of time a
20* DD
466 TITAN.

far, far-off island, — whether behind him or before him,

he knew not, — where a white, averted form, resembUng
or suggesting Liana's, hovered and sang as an echo of the
olden strain. Now close upon the death-month of the
brother followed the death-month of the sister Liana.
"Were it possible that the celestial one would step out
again from the still mirror of the second world and out
of its immeasurable distances, into this earthly atmos-
phere, and after her transfiguration again walk embodied
here below ?

But friendship demanded room for its sorrows, and

these cloud-images were soon covered over or destroyed
by it. He could not find courage in his heart, however
much he wished it, to demand of Schoppe, or even to
receive from him, a description of that healing-night, in
which Idoine had been Liana ; and yet this form was the
only live-playing jewel in the death-ring on the skeleton
of stern time, which stood before him. What days !

What the graves had not stolen from him and swallowed
up, the earth had snatched away, and Gaspard, once his
exalted father on a serene throne of the heavens, had now
appeared to his fancy with frightful hell-powers and weap-
ons down below, sitting on a throne of the abyss.
So much the more mildly did he feel, flowing around
him, when he was in Dian's house, the stiller presence,
the thought of the reposing friend, the sight of the neigh-
boring Dream-temple, where Liana had once been Idoine,
and the annunciation that the living image of the loved
one was drawing near. He portrayed to himself the sweet
and bitter terror of her apparition before him ; for as in the
stream the bending flower sketches not only its form, but
its shadow also, so is she Liana's beautiful form and shad-
ow at once, and in the living one would a lost and a glori-
fied appear to him at the same time.
 SCHÖPFE ESCAPES. 467

In tliis dreamy chiaroscuro and evening twilight, made

up of past and future flowing together, he came back to
his house. A sharp hghtning-flash darted white across
the dreamy redness. His Schoppe had, after a few min-
utes of forced sleep, wildly started up and madly sprung
out, nobody knew whither. The doctor came, and said
decisively, either he had thrown himself overboard or
everybody else ; he had run wildly away, and had taken
his sword-cane with him, too.
 THIRTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
ScHOPPE's Discoveries. —
Liana. — The Chapel of the Cross.
— Schöpfe and the "I" and the Uncle.

137. CYCLE.
S Schoppe had taken with him his great sword-
cane, Albano presumed he had gone after the
Spaniard, as destroying-angel. He hurried to
his uncle's hotel. A servant told him a red
cloak with a thick cane had been there, and desired to be
admitted to the gentleman, but that they had despatched
him, according to the directions of the latter, to the pal-
ace, and meanwhile the gentleman had posted off to the

Prince's garden to meet his strong brother. Albano asked,

" Who is the strong brother ? " " His Excellency your
father," replied the servant. Albano hastened to the
palace. Here all was haste and confusion about the sick-
bed of the Prince, who threatened soon to exchange it
for the bed of state. Hurrying servants met him. One
could tell him he had seen a red mantle go into the grÄ;
mirror-room. Albano stepped in it was empty, but full
;

of strange traces. A great mirror lay on the floor, an

arras door behind stood open, an open souvenir, wheels,
and articles of female apparel, were scattered about an
old waxen head. It seemed to him he saw something he
had seen before, and yet could not name to himself. Sud-
 ALBANO IN QUEST OF SCHÖPFE. 469

denly fee beheld in a corner-mirror a second reflection of

himself far in behind the image of his youthful face, but
covered with age, and similar to the waxen head. He
looked round him, a relieved cylindrical mirror unlocked
to him, as it were, time itself, and he saw in its depths his

gray old age.

Shuddering, he left the singular apartment. A gentle-
woman of Julienne came across his way. She could tell

him that she had seen the " Profile-cutter," in a red man-
tle, with a pocket spy-glass in his hand, go out across the
castle yard. He hastened after, when Augusti came to

meet him below the gate, with the request of the Prince,
that he would visit him once more. " Cannot possibly

now I must first have my crazy Schoppe again," replied

;

he. In his bosom no one lived but his friend ; moreover,

he took the Prince, in this case, to be only the mask of his
talkative sister. " I saw him on the Avay to Blumenbühl,"

said the Lector. He darted off. At the gate, Augusti's

intelligencewas confirmed by the guard.
On the road to Blumenbühl he was met by the carriage
of the court chaplain, Spener, who was on his way to the
Prince. Albano asked after Schoppe. Spener informed
him he had talked with him for some time before a solitary
house, where he had stopped an hour for the sake of a
sick old penitent daughter had found him well, uncom-
;

monly sensible, only older and more reserved than usual.

To the question as to his route, the court chaplain replied
he had gone toward the city. This appeared to him im-
possible, but Spener's people confirmed the story, and
spoke of the man as wearing a green coat. Albano spoke
of a red cloak ;
Spener and all the rest stuck to the green
coat.

He turned back to his own house, where, perhaps, he

470 TITAN.

thought, Schoppe might be seeking and awaiting him.

The bondman of the Doctor, the lank Malt, ran to meet
him with the intelligence that Herr von Augusti had just
been looking for him, and that the sick gentleman had
gone out at the old gate in a new green coat. It was the
street to the Prince's garden, which, according to Albano's
presumption, he had certainly taken, so soon as he had
been informed of the Spaniard's having taken the same.
Out of doors it was confirmed by Falterle, who related
how he had, in his way out, overtaken him, and immedi-
ately inquired :
"
Whither so fast, Mr. Librarian ?
whereupon he had stood still, looked at him seriously, and
given the answer, " Who are you ? You are mad," and
then hastened on. Albano inquired about the dress. " In
green," replied Falterle. Now his way was decided. The
loitering rider could even avouch that the uncle had pre-
viously taken the same.
Late in the evening Albano arrived at the Prince's gar-
den. He saw some carriages at the yard of the little

garden castle. At last people of his father's met him,

who could him Sclioppe had walked about, tranquil
tell

and some time in the garden, with a Mr. von

cheerful, for
Hafenreffer of Haarhaar, and had gone with him to the
city. " With a man he has, to be sure, a guardian genius

and keeper again," thought Albano, and the cold rain

which had hitherto annoyed him passed away, although
the heavens still remained dull. With his agitated heart,

surrounded as was in it this landscape only by a dark

horizon, he shunned all society, and therefore now the
pleasure-castle. Passing by at a distance, he ventured to
cast a mournful glance at the island of slumber, where
Roquairol's grave-hill, like a burnt-out volcano, was to be
seen near the white Sphinx. " There, at last, lies the un-
 ALBANO AT LIANA'S GKAVE.
governable balance-wheel, broken and still, lifted out of
the stream of time ; only with the grave closed the Janus-
temple of thy life, thou tormented and tormenting spirit,"

thought Albano^ full of pity, for he had once loved the

dead one so much. Over on the garden-mountain, with
the linden-tree, reposed the gentle sister, the friendly,
lovely angel of peace, amidst the war-din of life, — she,
eternal peace, as he, eternal war. He determined to go
up thither, and to be alone with the bride of heaven, and
to seek out, on the soil consecrated to flowers, the bed be-
neath which her flower-ashes lay covered up from storms.
At mere thought of such a purpose, streams of tears,
the
like sorrows, burst from his eyes for he had been dis- ;

solved into dreaminess by his previous night-vigils and

anxieties, and by so many a misfortune, too, which in so
short a time had pierced through his fair, firm life, from
one end to the other, with poisonous sting and tooth.
As he went up the hill in the yet moonless, but richly
starred twilight, wherein the evening star was the only
moon, as it were a smaller mirror of the sun, he saw a
couple of gray-clad persons make earnest signs out of the
Prince's garden, as if they would forbid his proceeding.
He went on unconcerned ;
indeed, he did not even know
whether his brain, glowing from its vigils and agitated by
the shocks of life, did not cause these forms to flutter
before him, as out of a concave mirror.
As if he were entering a roofless, Grecian temple, so
did he step into the holy cloister-garden of the still nun,
wherein the linden-tree spoke loud, and the silent flowers,

like children, played above the reposing one, and nodded

and rocked. High and far stretched the starry arches,
like glimmering triumphal arches, over the little spot of
earth, over the hallowed spot, where Liana's mortal veil.
472 TITAN.

the little luminous and rosy cloud, had sunk down, when
it had no longer to bear the angel, who had gone up into
the ether, and needed no cloud any more. Suddenly the
shuddering Albano beheld the w^iite form of Liana lean-
ing against the linden, and turned toward the evening
star and the ruddy evening glow. Long did he contem-
plate, in the averted form, the heavenly descending facial

line with which Liana had so often unconsciously stood

as a saint beside him. He still believed some dream, the
Proteus of man's past, had drawn down the airy image
from heaven, and made it play before him, and he ex-
pected to see it pass away. It lingered, though quiet and
mute. Kneeling down, as before the open gate of the
wide, long heaven full of transfiguration and divinity, and
as if he had been caught up out of these earthly vales, he
exclaimed, " Apparition, comest thou from God ? art thou
Liana ? " and it seemed to him as if he were dying.
Quickly the white form looked round, and saw the
youth. She rose slowly, and said, " My name is Idoine ;

I am innocent of the cruel deception, most unhappy

youth." Then he covered bis eyes, from a sudden, sharp
pang at the return of the cold, heavy reality. There-
upon he looked at the fair maiden again, and his whole
being trembled at her glorified resemblance to the de-

parted. So smiled once Liana's delicate mouth in love

and sorrow ;so opened her mild eye so fell her fine hair
;

around a dazzling-white, sweet face ; so was her whole

beautiful soul and life painted upon her countenance.
Only Idoine stood there greater, like a risen one, prouder
and taller her stature, paler her complexion, more thought-
ful the maidenly brow. She could not, wdien he looked
upon her so silently and comparingly, repress her sympa-
thy for the deceived and unhappy one, and she wept, and
he too.
 LIANA REAPPEARS IN IDOINE. 473

" Do I, too, distress you ? " said he, in the highest

emotion. With the tone of the virgin who lay beneath
the flowers, Idoine innocently said, " I only weep that I
am not Liana." Quickly she added, " Ah, this place i

so holy, and yet the human heart is not enough so." He

understood not her self-reproach. Keverence and open-
heartedness and inspiration mastered him ; life stood up
and stood out shining from the narrow bounds of troublous
reality, as out of a coffin ; heaven came down nearer with
its lofty stars, and the two stood in the midst of them.
"Noble Princess," said he, "we have neither of us any
apology to make here ; the holy spot, like a second world,
takes away all sense of mutual strangeness. Idoine, I
know that you once gave me peace ;
and, before the hid-
den tabernacle of the spirit in whose sense you spoke, I
here thank you."
Idoine answered, " I did it without knowing you, and
therefore I could allow myself the short use or abuse of
a fleeting resemblance. Had it depended upon me, I
certainly never would have so painfully awakened your
recollections with so insignificant a resemblance as an
external one is. But her heai't deserves your remem-
brance and your sorrow. They wrote me you were no
longer in the linden city." She sought now to hasten her
departure. " In a few days," he answered, " I, too, shall
travel. I seek comfort in war from the peace of the
grave, and the solitude which makes my life still." " Ear-
nest activity, believe me, always reconciles one with life

at last," said Idoine ; but the tranquil words were borne

by a trembling voice, for, by help of her sister, she had
got a sight of the whole gray, rainy land of his present
existence, and her heart was full of deep sympathy for
her kind.
474 TITAN.

Here he looked at her sharply; her nun-like eyelids,

which always, during her speaking, drooped over the
whole of her large eyes, made her so like a slumbering
saint. He was reminded by her last words of her be-
neficent life in Arcadia, where the gay flower-dust of her
ideas and dreams, unlike the heavy, dead gold-dust of mere
riches, lightly fluttering round in cheerful life, enlivening
all with unobserved influence, at length displayed its fruit

in firm woods and gardens on the earth. Everything

within him loved her, and cried, " She only could be thy
last as well as thy first love " ; and his whole heart, opened
by wounds, was unfolded to the still soul. But a serious,
severe spirit closed it again :
" Unhappy one, love no one
again ; for a dark, destroying angel goes behind thy love
with a sword, and whatever rosy lip thou pressest to thine
he touches with the sharp edge or poisoned point, and it
"
withers or bleeds to death !

He saw already the glitter of this sword glide through

the long darkness ; for Idoine had made a vow never to

stretch out her hand in the covenant of love below her

princely rank. So stood the two beside each other, sep-
arate in one heaven, a sun and a moon, divided by an
earth. She hastened her departure. Albano thought it

not right to accompany her, as he now divined that the

gray-clad persons who had beckoned him back were her
She offered
servants, placed there to guard her solitude.
him her hand at the garden-gate, and said, " May you
live to be more happy, dear Count one day I hope to ;

find you again as happy as you ought to make yourself."

The touch of the hand, like that of a heavenly one offer-
ing itself out of the clouds, streamed through him with a
glorified fire from that world where risen ones hover, light

and luminous, and the lofty, awe-awakening form inspired

 ALBANO'S VOW REGARDING IDOINE. 475

his heart. He could not say what he subdued and buried

within him, but neither could he say any other cold, dis-
guised word. He knelt down, pressed her hand to his
bosom, looked with tears to the starry heaven, and only
said, " Peace, all-gracious one !
" Idoine turned hastily
away, and, after a few swift steps, passed slowly down the

little hill into the Prince's garden.

A few minutes after, he saw the torches of her carriage

fly through the night, in which she loved to brave the
danger of travelling. Around the hill itwas dark the ;

evening redness and the evening star had gone down ;

the earth was a smoke and rubbish-heap of night ; a

mausoleum of clouds reared itself on the horizon. But
inAlbano there was a certain incomprehensible gladness,
a luminous point in the darkness of the heart ;
and, as he
looked upon the gleaming atom, it spread itself out, be-
came a splendor, a world, a boundless and endless sun.
Now he recognized it it was the real infinite and divine
;

love, which can be still and suffer, because it knows only

one good, but not its own.
He was rejoiced at having veiled his breast, and at his
resolve not to see her again in the city. " So silently,"

he said, half praying, half aloud, " will I love her forever.
Her peace, her bliss, her fair aspiration, shall be ever holy
to me, and her form hidden from me, and remote as that
of her heavenly sister ; but when the battle for right
begins, and the tones of music flutter with the banners
in the air, and the heart beats more eagerly, to bleed
more profusely, then let thy form, O Idoine, hover be-
fore me in the heavens, and I will fight for thee ; and
if, in the tumult, an unknown destroying angel draws
the poisoned edge across my breast, then will I hold
thee fast in my fainting heart till the earth is to me
no more."
476 TITAN.

He looked round serenely, after this prayer, at the

churchyard of the virgin heart ; he felt that Ljana
alone might be permitted to know, and that she ^yould
bless it.

138. CYCLE.
ALBANO could not spend a night in a region where
the single columns and arches of the ruined sun-
temple of his youth lay scattered round ; but he betook
himself, in a mournfully dreamy mood, toward the city.

On the road he found the Provincial Director Wehrfritz

on horseback, who was in quest of him. " Respected son,"
said he, " there have come to my hands the weightest
things from thy intimate friend Mr. Schoppe, which I, in
turn, have to deliver only into thine own, which I accord-
ingly hereby make haste to do for, by Heaven, I have
;

little spare time. The Prince has dropped off this even-
ing, from fright, because somebody said his old father,
who had promised to appear to him a second time as a
sign of his death, was to be seen in the mirror-room,
which, however, I hear, turned out to be only something
of wax. The articles which I have to deliver up are,

first, a perspective-glass, wherewith thou wilt see thy

mother and sister painted (I use carefully Mr. Schoppe's
own expressions) ;
secondly, a written packet addressed
to 'Albane, foster-son of Wehrfritz,' half of which is

still enclosed in a black, broken marble slab ;

and, thirdly,
thy portrait." The portrait resembled Albano at his
present age, it was discovered, — so far as the stars per-
mitted one to see, — though, in fact, he had never let

himself be painted. The black marble slab and the per-

spective-glass brought before his soul his father's prophecy
 THE TWO MEDALLIONS. 477

on Isola Bella,* — that a female form would step toward

liira out of the wall of a picture-gallery, and describe to
him a place where he was to find the black slab, having
previously shown him one where he should find the tele-
scope, of which the eye-glass would make for him, out of
the old image of his sister, a young recognizable one, and
the object-glass, out of the young image of his mother, an
old recognizable one.
Albano put anxious questions about Schoppe and the
history of the finding of the rare freight. " With Herr
Schoppe it fares well enough," said "Wehrfritz ;
" he must
be somewhere in the neighborhood with a strange gentle-
man." Albano inquired after his dress ; this, to his
astonishment, hadgrown out of a green into a red again.
Hardly had Wehrfritz begun giving the wonderful his-
tory how Schoppe came by those wonderful things, when
Albano, who gathered therefrom the solution of the pa-
ternal prophecy, in the eagerness of his expectation inter-
rupted the intelligence with the request that he would
accompany him to the neighboring Chapel of the Cross,
around which several lanterns stood. He had both me-
dallions always with him, and was now so curious to see
the face of his mother through the object-glass, as well
as to read the paper.
At the outermost lantern they stopped. Albano took
out the medallion of the decrepit form, under which was
inscribed, " Nous nous verrons un jour, mon frere "
; he
surveyed it through the eye-glass ; behold, the old face
was the young one of his Julienne. Confidently he held
the age-imparting glass to the young image, under which
was inscribed, " Nous ne nous verrons jamais, mon ßls "
;

there appeared a friendly old face, smiling across out of a

* See Vol. I. p. 35.

478 TITAN.

long life, whose original lay, as having been seen by him,

in a deep, dark memory, but nameless ; of Linda's mother
it had, however, no feature.
All at once he heard a familiar voice :
" Ecco, ecco ! *

my nephew, sir !
" It was Albano's uncle, v/ho seemed
to drag along the black-dressed, wailing Schoppe, and
weepingly addressed his nephew :
" Ah, neveu ! O, I
speak the truth, only truth pour jamais" He looked
laughing, and thought he wept. The black coat stepped
nearer, become a green coat, and said, " Sir Count, don't
let yourself be deceived a minute ; pur acquaintance
begins with a mutual loss." " My Schoppe," said Albano,
agitated, " knowest thou me no more ? " " O that I were
he now ! My name is Siebenkäs," replied the green coat,
and threw up his hands into the air in token of lamenta-

tion. " He lies there, however, in the chapel," said the

Spaniard ;
" I will relate all so truly that it is beautiful."
Albano cast a glance into the chapel, and, with a cry of
pain, fell headlong.

139. CYCLE.
SCHOPPE'S history was, according to Wehrfritz's
and the uncle's telHng, this : He had started up
glowing out of the constrained slumber ; the snorting
war-steed of vindictive fury against the Spaniard had
hurried him away. In the hotel-yard of the latter the

servant had directed him with a lie to the castle. Here,

amidst the confused tumult about the suffering Prince, he
had reached, unasked, unseen, the mirror-room where he
had once begged of the Countess Linda Idoine's word of
peace for his distracted friend. When the cylindrical

* Look! look!
 SCHOPl'E FINDS THE BLACK BIBLE. 479

mirror which graves the long years of age on the young

face, and shakes thereon the moss and rubbish of time,
threw out at him his image wasted with madness, said he,
" Ho, ho ! the old /
somewhere in the neighbor-
lurks
hood," and looked grimly round. Out of the mirrors of
the mirrors he saw a whole people of /'s looking at him.
He sprang upon a chair, to unhang a long mirror. While
he was starting the nail of the same, a clock in the wall
struck twelve times. Here the prediction of Gaspard
came into his head, which his friend had confided to him,
and all the rules which the latter had prescribed to him
for the solution of the riddles. The prediction mentioned,
indeed, a picture-gallery, but a mirror-room is itself one,

only more vacillating, and deeper in behind the wall. He

took down the mirror, according to the rules given by
Gaspard, found and opened the arras-door corresponding
to the size of the mirror ; the wooden female form, with
the open souvenir in her left hand and the crayon in her
right, sat behind there. He pressed, according to the
prescription, the ring on the left middle finger ; the form
stood up, with the rolling of an inward machinery, stepped
out into the apartment, stopped at the opposite wall, drew
a line down thereon with the crayon in its hand. He
drew up the border of the wall-hanging the perspective- ;

glass and the waxen impression of the coffin-key lay in a

compartment behind there. Now he pressed the ring-
finger the figure set the crayon upon the souvenir, and
;

wrote, " Son, go into the princely vault in the Blumenbühl

church, and open the coffin of the Princess Eleonore, and
thou wilt find the black slab."
When that was done (the Knight had told Albano), if

the marble slab, nevertheless, was not found in the coffin,

then he must press the third ring on the little finger,
 —

480 TITAN.

whereupon something would appear which he himself did

not foreknow. Schoppe tried the pressure of this finger
before going into the Blumenbühl Church, the figure —
remained standing, — but something began to roll inside,
— the arms stretched themselves out and fell down,
wheels rolled out, — the whole form
at last dismembered
itself by a mechanical suicide, and there appeared an old
head of wax.
Here Schoppe went off, to run to Blumenbühl and
fetch out of the vault the light required for this night-
piece. Though it w^as noonday, church and vault were
left open, — perhaps because they were
making room for
the new cavern-guest who was just dying. Without
stopping to transform the waxen key into an iron one, he
violently broke open the coffin with an iron tool, and
quickly snatched out the marble slab and Albano's por-
trait. He broke the slab behind a bush. When he read
the superscription, he examined no farther ; he hastened
to Albano's house to deliver all. But the two were si-
multaneously seeking each other in vain. Meanwhile he
lighted upon the honest Wehrfritz, through whom alone
he could despatch such important booty ; he himself was
now on the scent after his deadly foe, the Spaniard, and
no power could drive him off the hunting-ground of his
wrath.
At sundown Schoppe espied the Spaniard, who, flying
out of the Prince's Garden to escape the fac-simile. Sie-
benkäs, came running into his hands. He stiffened at the

sight of the madman, cried, " Lord and God, are you
behind me and before me, are you red and green ? " and
rushed sidewards into the old Chapel of the Cross, to fall

on his knees and invoke the Holy Virgin. Schoppe

stretched out his condor wings, shot off and dropped them
 " !

SCHÖPFE DEALS WITH THE BALDHEAD. 481

together before the chapel. " Turn thyself round, Span-

iard, I '11 devour thee from top to toe," said he. " Holy
mother of God, help me, — good, bad spirit, stand by me,
O !
gloomy one " prayed the Baldhead. " Step round,

knave, without further trick," said Schoppe, describing

from behind with his sword a horse-shoe in the air. He
turned round piteously on his knees, and his head hung
slackly down from his neck. Schoppe began :
" Now
I 've got thee, villain ! thou prayest to me to no purpose
on thy knees ; I hold the sword of judgment, — mad am
I, too, — in a few minutes, when we have said our say, I
stick this present cane-sword into thee, — for I am a mad-
man, full of fixed ideas." " Ah, sir," replied the Bald-
head, " you are certainly entirely rational and in your
head and yourself ; I beg to live ;
kilUng is so great a
deadly sin." Schoppe replied: "As to my understand-
ing, of that another time ! I have already shot thee in
effigy, now will I not carry round in vain the deadly sin
and the sting of conscience, but set myself about it in
natura, thou hangman of souls, thou trepan of hearts
!

!
" Schoppe, Schoppe " cried at this moment, several
times over, at great distances, a something with Albano's
voice. He looked swiftly round; nothing was to be seen.
" Good Schoppe," it continued, "let my uncle go! " Now
Schoppe blazed up, and raised his dagger for a thrust.
" Thou absolutely too abominably petrified ventriloquist

Should not one immediately stick the trumpery here as

they do a wounded horse? Seest thou not, then, the
hellish, cursed murder- and death-stroke before thy nose,
thy pest-cart already tackled up, the stuffed-out skeleton
of death cased in this flesh of mine, and just lifting
the scythe? Confess, Spaniard, for Jesus' sake, confess!
Fly, ere I stick, spit thee ! Thou wilt thereby have some
VOL. II. 21 EE
 "

4^2 TITAN.

plea with the devils in hell ; otherwise thou art, even

down below there, an utterly ruined man."
" Where sits the Pater ? I will confess, indeed," said
the Spaniard.
"Here stands thy gallows-Pater; behold the shorn poll,"
said Schoppe, shaking off the hat from his bending, close-
shaven head.
" Hear my confession ! But by night the gloomy one
suffers me not to tell the truth, — he comes certainly,
he comes to take me. Pater ! fumigate me, baptize me
"
against the devil !

" Step-penitent and thief, am I not father-confessor and

Pater enough for thee, who wall soon baptize thee ? Just
say all, hound, I absolve thee, and then strike thee dead
for penitence. Say on, thou coronation-mint of the Devil,
art thou not the Baldhead, and the Father of Death, and
the monk at the same time, whose figure full of gas
went up toward heaven in Mola, and hadst ventrilo-
quism and wax-moulding and considerable knavery at

hand?"
"Yes, father, ventriloquism and wax-images and the
knave. But the evil spirit was always by ; often I said
nothing, and yet it was said, and the figures ran."
"Mordian," said Schoppe, waxing furious upon this

subject, "seize the hound! Dost thou still lie, — thou

cloaca dug in Paradise! — into the ear of the great Fatal

Sister, thou mimic mummery? Does thy death's head

without lip and tongue still bestir itself to lie ? O God,
what are thy human creatures !

" O Pater, they are no lies ! but the gloomy one wills
them by night I have made a league with him,
; I —
have seen him this evening he looked like you, and was
;

in green. Holy Mary, O Pater, I have spoken the

 " "

SCHOPPE'S DUPLICATE AND DEATH. 483

truth ; there he comes in green, —O Pater, O Mary,

and has your form and a fiery eye in his hand — "

" No one has my form," said Schoppe, agitated, " but

the 'I.'"
" O glance round ! The evil spirit comes to me — ab-
solve — stab — I will die off
!

Schoppe at last looked behind him. The striding cast

of his form came moving along towards him, the fiery —
eye in the hand ascended into the face, the mask of the —
/ was clad in green. " Evil spirit, I am just in the act
of auricular confession ; thou canst not come hither ; I
am holy," cried the Spaniard, and grasped Schoppe.
The dog seized him. Schoppe stared at the green
form, — the sword fell from his hand. " My Schoppe,"
it cried, " I seek thee, dost thou not know me ? "
" Long enough ! Thou art the old I, — only bring
thy face along hither and put it to mine, and make this

stupid existence cold," cried Schoppe, with a last effort

of manly force. " I am Siebenkäs," said the Fac-simile,
tenderly, and stepped quite near. " So am I ; I resemble
I," said he once more, in a low tone ; but at that moment
the overpowered man collapsed, and this cleansing storm
became a sighing, still breath of air. With a face gi'ow-
ing white, spasmodically shutting-to his stiff eyes, he
fell ; the playing fingers seemed still to be calling the
dog, and the lips were just making themselves up for a
joke which they did not utter. His friend Siebenkäs,
who could not guess anything of the matter, raised,
weeping, the cold, fast-closed hand to his heart, to his
mouth, and cried :
" Brother, look up, thy old friend from
Baduz stands verily beside thee, and sees thee in the
pangs of death ; he bids thee a thousand times farewell,
— farewell
!
484 TITAN.

This seemed to convey into the breaking heart, through

the ears still open to life, sweet tones of the dear old times
and pleasant dreams of eternal love ;
— the mouth began
a faint smile, traced at once by pleasure and death, — the
broad breast filled, and heaved once more for a sigh of
pleasure ; it was the last sigh of life, and the dead one
sank back, smiling, on the earth.
Now hast thou ended thy course here below, stern,
steadfast spirit ! and into the last evening-tempest on thy
bosom there still streamed a soft, playing sun, and filled

it with roses and gold. The earth-ball, and all the earthly
stuff out of which the fleeting worlds are formed, was in-
deed far too small and light for thee. For thou soughtest
behind, beneath, and beyond life, something higher than
life ; not thy self, thy I, — no mortal, not an immortal,
but the Eternal, the Original One, God ! This present
seeming was so indifferent to thee, the evil as well as the

good. Now thou art reposing in real being, — death has

swept away from the dark heart the whole sultry cloud of
life, and the eternal light stands uncovered which thou
didst so long seek, and thou, its beam, dwellest again in
the fire.
 THIRTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.
Siebenkäs. —
Confession of the Uncle. Letter from Aiv- —
BANO's Mother. —
The Race for the Crown. Echo and —
Swan-song of the Story.

140. CYCLE.
ONG lay Albano in the solitary, dark abyss,
till at length light illuminated the depths and
the green height from which he had been
precipitated. The once life-colored, manly
face of his friend lay white before him ; the red mantle
only heightened the snow of the corpse. The dog lay
with his head on his breast, as if he would warm and
protect it. When Albano saw the naked blade, he looked
round him on all sides, shuddered at the cold uncle, at the
living brotherly image of the dead, and at the first shadow
of a doubt whether it had been murder or suicide, and
asked in a low tone, " How did he die ? " By me,"
said Siebenkäs ;
" our similarity killed him ; he thought
he saw himself, as this gentleman here will assure you."
The uncle related several particulars. Albano turned eye
and ear away from him, but he buried in the warm re-
flection of the friend's face that look to which the day-
light of friendship had sunk below the horizon of earth.
Siebenkäs seemed by a rare manly bear-
to assert himself

ing. Even Albano, the younger friend, concealed his

 ! ;

486 TITAN.

anguish that he had lost so much, and that his orphan-

heart was now exposed, hke a helpless child, in the wil-
derness of life.

Wehrfritz asked him whether he should still send him a

horse to ride into the city. " Me ! I ever go into the
city again ? " asked Albano. " No, good father ; Schoppe
and I go to-day into the Prince's garden." He was terri-
fied at the mere black churchyard-landscape of the city,
wehere once had bloomed for him a golden sunshine, and
leafy avenues and heaven's-gates full of flowery festoons.
O, the young honey of love, the old wine of friendship
both were indeed poured by fate into graves
The dead man was carried into the new castle of the

Prince's garden. Only Albano and Siebenkäs followed

him. When they were alone, Albano saw for the first
time that the friend of his friend trembled and wavered,
and that until now only the spirit had sustained the body.
" Now can we both," said Albano, " mourn before each
other but only in you do I believe.
; God, how then was
his end ? " Siebenkäs described to him the last looks and
tones of the poor man. " O God !
" said Albano, " he

died not easily ; when the madness of months became one

minute, — rending must have been the hell-flood which
snatched away so firm a life." Siebenkäs could with dif-

ficulty admit the belief of his madness, because the

deceased had so often, in his best moments, been similarly
misapprehended ; but Albano at last convinced him. He
related further, that on his journey home he had been
startled, when the repeated mistaking of his person for
the deceased led him to the presumption that his long
separated Leibgeber must be sojourning here, although
he could not but dread to think of the first appearing and
comparison. " For, Sir Count," said he, " years and busi-
 SIEBENKÄS'S ACCOUNT OF SCHÖPFE. 487

ness, particularly juristical, ah ! and life itself, always

draw man farther down, — at first out of ether into air,

then out of the air on to the earth. * Will he know me ?

'

said I. I am truly no more the man that I was, and the

physiognomical likeness might well have still remained
the only and strongest one. But this, too, had passed
away ; the blessed one there looks still as he did ten
years ago. O, only a free soul never grows old ! Sir
Count, I was once a man, who played one and another
joke with life, and with death too, and I would cry out,
*Heavens if hell should get loose
! and more of the !
'

like. Ah, Leibgeber, Leibgeber Time has dehcate !

waves, but the sharpest-cornered pebble, after

little all,

becomes smooth and blunt therein at last." *

" Enumerate to me every trifle of his former days,"
begged Albauo, — " every dew-drop out of his morning
redness : he was so chary of his dark history !
" " And
that to every one," said the stranger. " This much will I
one day prove to you, from dates gathered on the spot,

that he is a Dutchman, like Hemsterhuis, and properly

named Kees^ like Vaillant's ape, to which he prefixed Sie-
ben, or seven ; for Siebenkäs is his first name. He drew
his income out of the Bank of Amsterdam. Every New
Year's night he burnt up the papers of the preceding
year ; and how his Glavis Leihgeriana t has become known
I do not yet comprehend." Thereupon he related his first

change of name, when Schoppe took from him the name

Leibgeber ; then every hour and act of his true heart
tow^ard the (former) poor-man's-attorney ; then their second
exchange of names, when Siebenkäs let himself nominally

* This and what follows will be remembered by the reader of the

" Flowei-, Fruit-, and Thorn-Pieces." Tk. —
t Or
" Clavis Fichtiana," a little work of Jean Paul's. Tb. —
 " ;

488 TITAN.

be buried, and went on as Leibgeber, and their eternal

farewell in a village of Voigtland.
As Siebenkäs here stopped in his narrative, he grasped
the cold hand, with the words :
" Schoppe, I thought I
should not find thee till I found thee with God !
" and
bent weeping over the dead. Albano let his tears stream
down, and took the other dead hand and said :
" We grasp
true, pure, vahant hands." " True, pure, vaHant," repeat-

ed Siebenkäs, and said, with a Schoppeish smile, " His dog

looks on and testifies as much." But he became pale with
emotion, and looked now exactly like the dead. Then
did he and Albano, sinking, touch the cold face to theirs,
and Albano said, " Be thou, too, my friend, Leibgeber
we can love each other, because he loved us. Pale
one, let thy form be the seal of my love toward thy old
friend !

Albano now pushed up the window, and showed him a

grave in the east, and one in the south, near the third
open one, out there in the night, and said, " Thus have I
thrice wept over life." Siebenkäs pressed his hand, and
only said, " The Fates, and Furies, too, glide with linked
hands over life, as well as the Graces and Sirens." He
looked upon the singular, beautiful, fiery youth with the
most hearty love ; but Albano, who always imagined him-
self to be loved but little, and whom the fiery meteors of a
Dian and a Roquairol had accustomed to bad habits of
thinking, knew not how very much he had won this more
tranquil heart.
 THE UNCLE PROFESSES PENITENCE. 489

141. CYCLE.

ON to
themorrow more sunshine and strength returned
He had now himself to heave
Albano's breast.
up the mountain in the flat-pressed plahi of his life. Onlj
to see Pestitz again, where all the tournament-pleasures
of his shining days had vanished, except the single Dian,
— he abhorred the thought. " When this friend has once
his grave-mound over his breast, then I go, and take leave
of no one," said he.
Just then the hated uncle arrived, with the carriages
full of magic wands, and said, weepingly, he was going
to the Carthusian cloister, to atone for many sins, and he
would first willingly explain to his nephew, as well with
words as by the carriages, all that he desired. " I believe
nothing you say," said Albano. " I can now tell the
whole truth, for the gloomy one has nothing more to do
with me, I think, cousin," replied the Spaniard. " Is not

that," he added, in a low tone, with a shy look at Sieben-

käs, " the gloomy one, cousin ? " Albano would not know
nor hear anything. Siebenkäs asked him who the gloomy
one was. It was the infinite man, he began, very black
and gloomy, and had for the first time stalked over
toward him across the sea, when he stood on the coast
before a fog. At night he had often heard him call, and
sometimes had repeated his ventriloquial speeches. He
had immediately appeared to him, with a handful of
threatenings, whenever he had told many truths after
sundown. Therefore had he feared exceedingly before
the present gentleman in the Chapel of the Cross ; but
now, since he had been converted without suffering any
harm in the chapel, he would tell truths all day long, and
in the Carthusian convent he intended to do so still more.
21*
 TITAN.

" Cloisters are the very places where they do not gener-
ally dwell ; for this reason, I suppose, the vow of silence
is required, the observance of which is always more favor-
able to truth than its breach is," replied Siebenkäs. " O
heretic, heretic !
" cried the Spaniard, with such an unex-
pected anger that Albano at once received, through this
isign of human feeling, pledges of his present sincerity, as

well as of his narrower spiritual circumference. Now,

for the first time, he asked him outright about the soil
and the seed which he had hitherto used, in order to force
the swift flowers of his miracles.
At this question he caused a casket to be brought up.
" Ask," said he. " How did Romeiro's form rise out of
Lago Maggiore f " said Albano. The uncle unlocked the
casket,showed a wax figure, and said, " It was only her
mother." Albano shuddered before this near mock-sun of
his sunken one, and at the presumption of relationship
with which Schoppe had inspired him. " Am I related to
her ? " he quickly asked. The uncle replied, with confu-
sion, " It may haply be otherwise." Aftano asked about
the monk who made the heavenly ascension in Mola.
" He stood overhead filled with gas ;
* I down below on
the wall," said the uncle. Albano would hear no fur-

ther. The casket contained, besides, ear-trumpets and

speaking-trumpets, a face-skin, blue glass, through which
landscapes appeared snowed over, silk flowers, with pow-
der of an endormeur, &c. Albano would not see any-
thing more.
" Evil being ! who set thee on to this ? " asked Albano.
" My strong brother," said the uncle, for so he usually
called the Knight. " He gave me my living, and he
* One edition has glas (glass) instead of gas, — palpably a blunder.
— Tk.
 !

THE UNCLE CONFESSES. 491

would fain shoot me dead ; for he laughs very much

when men are very finely cheated." " O, not a syllable
!
of that " cried Albano, painfully, whose anger against the
Knight made all his veins spirt out fiery tears and poison.
*'
Wretch ! how didst thou become what thou art ? " " So
a wretch am I ? " he asked, with icy coldness. He then
stated — but in an abrupt and confused manner, which
attended him in every language in his own part, whereas
in a strange name (for instance, the Baldhead's) he could
speak long and well — that he had a dark-gray and a
blue eye, a hidden bald head, and a remarkable memory
since coming to manhood, and had therefore wished to

become an actor, because he had nothing to do, for he

had never been in love but, so long as he did not impro-
;

visate, it had not gone well with him. He had always

had in his mind Joseph Clark, who could counterfeit any
grown person, and the deceiver Price, who went round
in a threefold character. Then the gloomy one had again
come over him one evening in a shore fog across the
to

water, and had murmured, as out of a belly, "Pepjoo,

Peppo,* swallow back the true word I will directly utter ;

another " and from that hour forth he had had the fac-
;

ulty of ventriloquizing. He had thereby caused dead

and dumb persons, and speaking-machines, and parrots,
and sleepers, and strange people in the theatre, to speak
well, but never any one in church, and that was indeed

a satisfaction to him. He had often given an unceasing

echo to rocks, so that men did not know at all when to

go away. He had also once caused a whole battle-field

full of dead men to talk with itself, in all languages, to

the astonishment of the old general.
" Where was that ? " asked Siebenkäs. The Spaniard
* Josey! Josey!
 ;

492 TITAN.

came to himself, and replied, " I don't know ; is it true,

then ? ' Omnes homines sunt mendaces^ says the Holy
Scripture." " As little true," said Albano, " as your
gloomy ghost !
" "0 Mary, no !
" said he, decidedly
" when I predicted anything, he caused it indeed, after
all, to turn out true. Then he appeared to me, and said,
* Dost thou see, Peppo, mind and only never speak a
truth !
' And in the night, when I went by your side to
Lilar, he went down in the valley as a man through the
air." "I saw that too," said Albano ;
" he floated onward
without stirring." " That was one," said Siebenkäs, smil-
ing, " who stood, with his legs hidden, in a boat that glided
onward, and nothing more." Then the Spaniard looked
at this fac-simile of the corpse with the old horror with
which he had hitherto secretly taken it for the gloomy
spirit himself, murmured in Albano's ear, " See, this being

knows it," and said, in justification of his truths, " The

sun is not yet gone down," and, without listening to human
entreaties, whose power had never been known to him,

without sorrow or joy, hurried off to enter before sun-

down into the neighboring Carthusian monastery. All
the implements of deception he had left where they were.
" A frightful man !
" said Siebenkäs. " Some time ago,
when he would fain rejoice at something, he looked as if

a pang seized upon his face. And that he should stand

there so thin and haggard, and look down sidewise, and

swallow his syllables ! I am certain he could kill without
changing his look, even to anger." " O, he is the gloomy
spirit that he sees ; don't call him up !
" said Albano,

hurrying away into a wholly new world, which had now

suddenly risen before his spirit.
 ;

ALBANO'S MOTHER AND HISTORY. 493

142. CYCLE.

HE thought, namely, of the paper, hitherto hidden

the cloud of sorrow, which Schoppe had brought
by

out of the princely vault, and of the maternal image

which he was to have found under the ocular glass.

Before he began to read, he held the image under the

glass before the stranger, to see if by any accident he
might know it. " Very well ! It is the deceased Princess
Eleonore, so far as a frontispiece engraving to the provin-
cial hymn-book allows one to presume upon resemblances
for the Princess herself I never saw."
With emotion, Albano drew the paper out of the
cracked marble capsule but he was still more moved
;

when he read the signature, "Eleonore," and then the

following in French :
—
" My Son : To-day have I seen thee again,* after long
times in thy B. (Blumenbühl); my heart is full of joy and
anxiety, and thy beautiful image floats before my weeping
eyes. Why can I not have thee about me and in my
daily sight ? How am I bound and distressed ! But
always did I forge for myself fetters, and beg others to
them upon me.
fasten Hear thine own history from the
mouth of thy mother ; from no other will it come to thee

more acceptably and truly.

" The Prince and I lived long in an unfruitful mar-
riage, which flattered our cousin Hh. (Haarhaar) with
more and more lively hopes of the succession. At a late
period thy brother L. (Luigi) annihilated them. One
could hardly forgive us that. The Count C. (Cesara)
retains the proofs of some dark actions {de quelques

* Vol. I. pp. 145, 146.

494 TITAN.

noirceurs) which were to cost thy poor brother, otherwise

weakly, his life. Thy father was with me in Rome just
as we learned it. ' They will surely get the better of us
at last,' said thy father. In Rome we made the acquaint-
ance of the Prince di Lauria, who would not give his
beautiful daughter to the Count C. (Cesara) till he should
have become Knight of the Golden Fleece. The Prince
procured this order for him at the Imperial Court.
" For this Madam Cesara thought she ought to be very
grateful to me, une femme fort decidee, se repliant sur
elle-meme, son individualite exageratrice perca a travers
ses vertus et ses vices et son sexe. We learned to love
each other. Her romantic spirit communicated with
mine, particularly in the Land of Romance. This result
was helped by the fact that she and I found ourselves at
the same time in the right condition of female enthusiasm,
namely, the hope of being mothers. She was confined
with an exquisitely beautiful girl, exactly like her, Seve-
rina, or as she was called afterward, Linda. Here we
made the singular contract, that, if I bore a son, we would
exchange ; I could educate a daughter without hazard,
and with her my son could grow up without incurring
that danger which had always threatened thy brother in
my house. She said, too, I could better guide a daughter,
she a son, as she had little respect for her sex. The
Count was well satisfied with the plan ; the Hh. Court had
just before refused him the oldest princess, for whom he
had been a suitor, under the ironical and insulting pretext
of her yet childish youth, and he for the sake of avenging
offended honor and injured vanity, for he was a very —
handsome man, and used only to victory, was ready for —
any measures and contests against the haughty court.
Only the Prince did not approve of it he considered an ;
 PLAN MADE FOE LINDA. 495

education abroad, &c., quite ambiguous and But

crrtical.

we women interwove ourselves so much the more deeply

into our romantic idea.
*'
Two days after I brought forth thee and — Julienne
at a birth. On this rich emergency no one had reckoned.
Here much turned up quite otherwise and more easily
than had been expected. '
I keep/ said I to the Countess,
* my daughter, thou keepest thine ; as to Albano (so shall
he be called), let the Prince decide.' Thy father allowed
that thou shouldst be brought up as son of the Count,
indeed, but under his eye, with the honest W. (Wehr-
fritz). Meanwhile he made provisions whose solid value

I then, in the fanciful enthusiasm of friendship, was not

in a condition Avholly to weigh. At present I only won-
der that I was then so full of spirit. The documents of
thy genealogy were not only thrice made out, I, the —
Count, and the Court Chaplain Spener, were put in pos-
session of them, — but subsequently thou wast presented
even to the Emperor Joseph II. as our princely son, and
his gracious letter, which I shall one day commit to thy
brothers and sisters, is of itself sufficiently decisive.
" The Count himself now took an active part in the
mystery, — whether out of love for his daughter or from
spite against the H. — by
court, demanding, as a reward
for his participation, that one day thou and Linda should
. make a match. Here the Countess stepped in again w^ith
her wonders and fancies. ' Linda will certainly resemble
me in soul as she now does in form, — force can then
never move her, — but magic of the heart, of the fairy-

world, the charm of wonder, may draw and melt and

bind her.' I know her very words. A singular plan of
enchantment was then sketched, whose limits the Count,

through the submissiveness with which his brother, adept

496 TITAN.

in a thousand arts, let himself be hired for everything,

extended still further, beside making the plan thereby
more agreeable. Linda will, long before thou hast read
this, have appeared to thee ; her name will have been
named ;
thy birth mysteriously announced. May thy
spirit, may it be happily reconciled to it all, and may
the difficult play pour winnings into thy lap when the
cards are turned up. I am anxious ; how can I be other-
wise? O what tidings have I not received even from
Italy through the Count, before which now all the hopes
I have set upon my
Lewis (Luigi) are at once extin-
guished ! Now would Hh. (Haarhaar) have conquered
through the wicked B. (Bouverot), had it not been that
thou livest. And I cannot but be so happy, that thou
livest clear of his poisonous influences. Yes, it seems as
if the Count had intentionally and gladly let the destruc-
tion of thy brother take place in order to strike so much
the stronger terror with thy resurrection. Yet I will
not do him injustice. But whom shall a mother trust,

whom mistrust, at court ? And which danger is the

greater ?

" For the space of three years thou wast obliged, for
appearance' sake, to stay on Isola Bella with thy pretend-
ed twin-sister, Severina, although under the eye of the
Prince, while I, with Julienne, went back to Germany.
Longer, however, it could not last,much as thy foster-
mother wished it ; thou wast too much like thy father.
This resemblance cost me many tears, — for on this ac-

count thou couldst never go from B. to P. (Pestitz) so

long as the Prince still wore youthful features, — even
the portraits of his youthful form I had, therefore,
gradually to steal away and give in charge to the faithful
Spener. Yes, this learned man told me that a convex
 ELEONORE'S DYING ANXIETY. 497

mirror, which transformed young faces into old ones, had

to be put aside, because thou immediately stoodst there
as the old Prince when thou didst look into it. O, when
my good, pious prince in his feeble days unconsciously
prattled all sorts of things, and made me more and more
anxious about the fate of the weighty secret, how I trem-
bled, when he one morning (fortunately only Spener and
a certain daughter of the Minister von Fr., a gentle, pure
spirit, were by), said right out and joyfully, '
Our dear
son, Eleonore, was up at the altar last evening he is cer- ;

tainly a good young man, he knelt down and prayed

beautifully, and I said to him only, for I would not dis-
cover myself. Go home, go home, my friend ; the thunder
is already near.'* I know that several individuals have
already let fall hints about a natural son of the Prince.
" The Countess C. (Cesara) went off with S. (Severi-
na) to V. (Valencia) ; previously, however, giving herself
the name R. (Romeiro), and her daughter the name L.
(Linda). The Prince di Lauria had to be drawn into
this game, and his consent obtained, for the sake of the
inheritance. By this change of names all could be cov-
ered up as closely as it now Nine years after, the
stands.
noble R. (Romeiro) died, and the Count had, under the
prerogative of a guardian, the daughter in his sole protec-
tion and care.
" I saw her here shortly after the death of her mother.f

When the flower has entirely unfolded itself out of this

full bud, it belongs, as the fullest rose, to thy heart ; only
may the ghostly game, which I have too light-mindedly
sworn to the Countess, pass over without mishap ! Should
I come to my death-bed before the Prince, I must also
draw thy sister and thy brother into thy secret, so as to
* Vol. I. p. 143. t Vol. I. p. 103.
 !

498 TITAN.

close my eyes in perfect assurance. Ah, I shall not

live to be permitted openly to clasp my son in my
arms ! The symptoms of my decline come more and
more frequent. May it go well with thee, dearest child !

Grow up to be holy and honest as thy father ! God guide

all our weak expedients for the best
" Thy faithful mother,
" Eleonore.
" P. S. Certain other very weighty secrets I cannot
trust to paper, but my dying lips shall let them sink into
the heart of thy sister. Farewell ! Farewell " !

143. CYCLE.
ALBANO stood for a long time speechless, looked
to heaven, let the leaf fall, and folded his hands,
and said, " Thou sendest peace, — I must not choose
war, —
well, my lot is fixed " Joy of life, new powers
!

and plans, delight in the prospect of the throne, where

only mental effort tells, as rather physical does on the
battle-field, the images of new parents and relations, and
displeasure at the past, stormed through each other in his
spirit. He tore himself loose from his whole former life,

the ropes of the whole previous death-chime were broken,

he must, in order to win Eurydice out of Orcus, like Or-
pheus, shun looking back upon the way which he had
past. He unveiled all to his new friend, for he battled, he
said, now at length, on a free open field for his hitherto

concealed right, and should set out immediately for the

city. During the recital, the long and daring game which
had been played with his holiest rights and relations in-
censed him still more, and his mistrust of his powers and
weapons against the adversaries to whom Luigi fell a vie-
 ALBANO'S NAME PROPHETIC. 499

tim, and that very brother himself, who could hitherto

embrace him in so hard and unbrotherly a mask. " How

different was the true sister !

" said he. Why," he went
"

on, " did they oblige me to owe so many thanks to so

many a proud, stern spirit for my mere — birthright ?

Why did they not trust my silence quite as well ? O,

thus was I forced to misinterpret the poor dead one over
yonder,* because she, in that hostile night, at the altar
sacrificed her fair heart to my revealed rank ! Thus was
I compelled by presumptions and purposes to injure so
many a genuine soul ! How innocent might I be but for
all this !
" " Calm yourself," said Siebenkäs, with keen
resentment, " the strength of the foe is driven to resist-
ance, and drawn off from the defeat ; and what would a
"
victory have been on an empty battle-field ?

Siebenkäs had, at the revelation of Iiis friend's illus-

trious rank, and at seeing the fire of his passionateness,
which he knew only in common, not in noble manifes-
tations, stepped back some paces,movement which —a
Albano did not observe, because he had not presumed
upon it. Siebenkäs sought as well as he could, for his —
inner man was gradually unfolding again its limbs, which
had been frozen stiff in the grave of his friend, — to win
back his gentle mirthfulness, and with these flowery chains
to bind the impetuous youth. " I rejoice," said he, " that

I am the first to offer you wishes on your birth- and coro-

nation-day, all which, however, merge in the single one
that you may always assert your baptismal name, — for
Alban is the well-known patron saint of the peasants.
Except the Haarhaar Prince, whom the Knight truly hits

* He means Liana, whom Spener, by the solemn revelation of Alba-

no's birth and destiny, forced to renounce a love which had grown up
among nothing but poisonous flowers.
500 TITAN.

off with the device of the founder of his order, Philip :

ante ferit quam flamma micet, * no one, perhaps, is to be

pitied in this connection but the financial stamp-cutter,
who now receives nothing new to cut, as the old Hne
continues in power." He added lightly, because he had
never seen the heavy wooded and cloud-bearing rock,
Gaspard :
" What a singular game of names, which few
Gavalleros del Tuzone have ever played, it is, that he
happens to call himself De Cesara, since, as you know,
the Spaniards, like the old Romans, often appropriate
to themselves the names of their actions or accidents.
Thus it is everywhere known from the Pieces Interas-
santes, Tom. I., that Orendayn, for example, took the
name La Pas, because he, in 1725, signed the peace
between Austria and Spain, — he baptized himself with
a third name. Transport Peal, in order to remember and
remark that he had carried away the Infante to Italy.

Cesara is of course more accidental."

Albano was, for the first time, by such resemblances of
spirit to the free Schoppe, really drawn to his heart. He
took leave of him, and said, " Friend of our friend, will
we keep together ?" " Verily, the doubt which rests upon
the decision of your fate. Prince," replied Siebenkäs,
" were alone sufficient to settle that, if only my heart alone
had the business of settling it ; but — " Albano shrugged
his shoulders, as if irritated, but meanwhile was silent ;
"

I will remain more softly,

here," the other continued,
" until the earth rests on the deceased then I set up the ;

black wooden cross over it, and write all his names there-
upon." " Well, so be it " said Albano. !
" But his dog

I take, because he has been longer acquainted with me.

* He strikes before the iron is hot, makes it hot by striking, — seizes
opportunity by the forelock. — Tk.
 ALBANO OVER HIS DEAD SCHÖPFE. 501

I am a young man, still young in lost years, but already

very old in lost times, and understand as well as many
another who is bent by age what it is to lose fellow-crea-
tures. Singular it is, that I always find on graves mir-
rors wherein the dead walk and look, alive again. Thus
I found on Liana's grave her living image and echo ; my
old prostrate Schoppe I found, also, as you know, erect
and stirring, behind a looking-glass, which my hand could
as little break through. I assure you, even my parents
were conjured before me ;
my father I can see in a cylin-
drical mirror, and my mother through an object-glass.
Here, now, there is nothing to do, when one stands in a
night, where all stars of life move downward, but stand
very firm therein. But to my old humorist must I still

say Adio"
He went into the chamber of death. Silently Sieben-
käs followed him, struck with the unwonted quaintness of
his — grief With dry eyes, Albano drew the white cloth
from the earnest face, whose fixed eyebrows no longer
shaped themselves for any joke, and which slept away in
an iron sleep without time. The dog seemed to be shy
of the cold man. Albano sought, by sharp, vehement,
dry looks, to imprint the dead face, even to every wrinkle,
deeply on his brain, as in plaster, especially as the most
living copy, the friend, had escaped him. Then he lifted

the heavy hand, and placed it on the brow which was to

wear the princely hat, as if therewith to bless and conse-
crate it. At last he bent down to the face, and lay for a
long time on the cold mouth ;
but, when he finally raised

himself up, his eyes were weeping, and his whole heart,
and he tremblingly held out his hand to the spectator,

and said, "Well, so mayest thou, too, fare well !

" "No,"
cried Siebenkäs ;
" I cannot do that, if I go. Schoppe !

"
I stay with thy Albano !
502 TITAN.

Just then came Wehrfritz and Augusti, and interrupted

the weeping solemnity of the threefold love with gay
looks and words.

144. CYCLE.

THE old foster-father called

no longer thou;
him Prince,
but, in patriotic rapture,
indeed, and
he fer-

vently pressed the nursling of his house to his heart.

Augusti handed him, with grave courtliness and a brief
congratulation, the following epistle from Juhenne: —
" Deakest Brother : Now, at length, I can, for
the first time, call thee rightly brother. I have in one
eye tears of mourning, and yet in the other tears of glad-

ness, now that all clouds are taken from thy birth ; and
in Haarhaar, too, all goes tolerably well. The Lector is

despatched to where should I find time ?

tell thee all :

He must also tell thee of Herr von Bouverot, whose red

nose and bent-up chin, and greedy barbarity toward his
few people and many creditors, and whose grossness and
sensuality and dry malice I hate to such a degree. How-
ever, he is now so properly punished by thy manifestation.
Of course all is, like myself, in disorder and confusion.
Ludwig's testament was opened this morning, according
to his will, and he gave thee thy whole right. I will not
be angry about this, brother, in the midst of weeping.
He was properly hard toward his brother and sister, —
toward me exceedingly so ; for he hated all women, even
to his wife, who is only of some use when it goes well
with her, and works of art themselves really hardened him
against men. But let him rest in his peace, of which,
indeed, he has found little ! He must this very evening,
on account of the nature of his complaint, and on account
 NEWS OF LIANA'S MINIATURE. 503

of the length of the way to Blumenbühl, be interred

temporarily. Here am I now with thy foster-parents, in
the neighborhood of our buried parents. On this account,

come without fail ! Thou art my only solace in the night

of sadness. I must hold thee again to my heart, which
will beat hard against thine, and weep and speak, if it

only can. Do come ! Now, at length, surely, as all

stands ready in the hall for the dance, God will let no
cold spectres or frightful masks creep in, I pray. Ah,
only on thy account am I so happy, and weep enough.
" Julia."

Hardly had Albano given his foster-father the joyful

promise to be this evening at his house, when the latter,

without further words, hastened off to prepare his " folks "
for the joy of the twofold visit.

The Lector was now entreated for his news, with which
he seemed to hesitate cautiously on account of Siebenkäs,
tillAlbano begged him freely to impart all to him and
his new friend. His account, including some interpola-
tions which came to Albano afterward, was this :
—
Bouverot (with whom he began at the questioning of

Albano, whose curiosity was excited) had been hitherto

in secret league with the aspiring Prince of Haarhaar,
and had, in the confident calculation of making through
him his permanent fortune, and even an unexpected mar-
riage, upon his word unhung his order-cross of a German
Herr^ linked at once to infamy and income, and caused to
be delivered to the sister of this Prince, Idoine, through
the Prince himself, who stood pledged to him for the
repeal of her similar vow,* a miniature of her, which he
insisted that he had stolen in his flight, together with half

* Never to marry beneath her rank.

 !

TITAN.

a picture-gallery, and with many fine allusions to his

adopted name Zefisio, as that of a Romish Arcadian, and
to the name of her Arcadia. " Oh la difference de cet

homme au diahle, comme est-elle petite ! " said Augusti,

with quite an unexpected vehemence. Albano must needs
ask why. " He passed off an entirely different picture
for that of the Princess," said the Lector. Of course it

was Liana's own, Albano concluded, and had easily, by a

few questions, drawn out that mournful history of the
blind Liana chased by the tiger Bouverot.
" O wretched me !
" cried Albano, half in fury, and
half in pain. It distressed him to think of the sufferings

wherewith the holy heart had had to pay for its short,
pure, chary love toward him, — who became blind the
first time because she so loved his father,* and the second
time because the son misunderstood and loved her. But
he restrained himself, and spoke not on the subject ; the
past was to him, as echo is to bees, hurtful. . Siebenkäs
testified his joy at Bouverot's punishment through the
miscarriage of all his plans.
Albano heard that even Luigi had assumed the ap-
pearance of supporting Bouverot's connubial intentions,
merely for the sake of seeing him fall from so much the
higher elevation. "With what a long, cold, bitter, ma-
licious pleasure," thought Albano, " could my brother, in
the hope of the ditch which his death would dig for the
hostile court and its adherents, look upon all their expec-
tations,and graciously accept all their measures, from the
marriage of the Princess even to the congratulations
thereto appertaining, while he hated the Princess and all

* Liana became, as is well known, when her brother held his dis-
course upon the breast without a heart beside the old Prince, sick and
blind.
 GASPARD FINDS HIMSELF OUTWITTED. 505

And how could he maintain that life-long silent coldness

toward me ? " But Albano neglected to consider two
reasons, — his own proud deportment toward the Prince,
and the customary avarice of princes, which is shy of
apanage * moneys.
Gaspard's transactions in Haarhaar, which the Lector
gave, only with some omissions enjoined by Julienne,
were these :
—
With characteristic pleasure and silence had the Knight
looked, of old, upon the intricacies of human relations,
and given them over to their own disentanglement or
dilaceration. Here he let all the dreams of others grow
more and more lively and wild, until, with one snatch at
the breast, he swept them all from the sleeper at once.
His old indignation at the proud refusal of the princely
bride was appeased, when he could show them, below the
glittering triumphal gate of their wishes and efforts, the
documents of Albano's birth, from the hand of the old
Prince down even to that of the brother Luigi, as just
the same number of armed guards, who should drive
them back again out of the gate of victory. A sympa-
thetic astonishment was expressed nothing w^as agreed
;

to. Albano had neither been presented to the country

nor the empire. Gaspard brought on very calmly an
early acknowledgment from Joseph II. This, too, was
found out of rule and invaUd. Thereupon he confessed,
with the determined anger with whose lightning-sparks
he so often suddenly pierced through men and relations,
that he was going to unveil, without further ceremony,
the whole conduct of the court toward Luigi in his eighth
year and in his travelling years to all the courts of Europe.

* Portion settled on a younger son in royal families, or on a prince

foregoing the succession. —
Tr.
VOL. II. 22
5o6 TITAN.

Here they broke off in terror the forenoon's negotiations,

to prepare themselves for new ones in the afternoon. In
these— which Lector was ordered
the to conceal from
Albano — wish a continued nearer
the of union between
the two houses was shown at a distance. By the union
was meant Idoine, whose resemblance to Liana, and there-
by Albano's love for the latter, had long been known as
gossip. But the involving of this guiltless angel ran
counter to Gaspard's whole plan of his complete satisfac-
tion ; he — who with his high, jagged antlers easily flew
through the confused low brush-wood of worldly life —
pushed against the barriers of his complete power, gave a
downright No ! and they broke off in a rage, with the
courtly reminder that Herr von Hafenreffer was to ac-

company liim as plenipotentiary and transact the rest of

the business in Pestitz.
So both arrived. Hafenreffer, quite as fine and cold as
he was honest, easily searched out all the real relations of
the case. Gaspard imparted to Julienne — still fancying
that she retained her old love for his daughter Linda —
the wish of the rival Court ; but he was astounded at her
disclosures, which spoke as much for Idoine as her former
secret influences upon Albano. In addition to this, she
further provoked him, in the confused twilight of her
by the well-meant offer to make good to him in
situation,

some measure his paternal outlays upon Albano. " The

Spaniard reads no household accounts, he merely pays
them," said he, and sensitively took leave forever, in order
to travel over all the islands of the earth. Albano he
wished not to see any more, from chagrin at the accident
that he had been cheated out of the enjoyment, by
Schoppe's church- and grave-robbery, of punishing and
humbling Albano, by the disclosure that he was only
 ANGEL AND DEVIL.
Linda's father and not his, for cherishing bold doubts of
his worth. Whither Linda had gone on that night of his
discovery as father, he coldly concealed from all.

Thereupon he took also solemn leave of his former

bride, the Prince's widow. " He held it as his bounden
duty," he said to her, " to let her into the secret of the
newest succession, since he had in some measure let him-
self be entangled in the progress of the business." Never
was her look more proud and poisonous. " You seem,"
said she, composedly, "tohave been led off into more
than one error. If it so interests you, as you seem upon
the whole to be interested for this land, then I take pleas-
ure in telling you, that I dare no longer hesitate about
making known the good fortune which I anticipate, of
sparing the country, perhaps, by a son of their beloved,
deceased Prince, the necessity of any change. At least,

we cannot, before time has decided the thing, admit any

foreign admixture." Gaspard, enraged at what he had ex-
pected, spoke in reply merely an infinitely impudent word
— because he had a faculty of more easily forgetting and
violating sex than ra7ik, — and thereupon took his courte-
ous leave of her, with the assurance that he w^as certain,
wherever he might be, to receive confirmation of this al-
ready so agreeable intelligence, and that it would then
pain him to be obliged, out of love for the truth, to make
public against her some extraordinary — judicial papers,
which he would not gladly put in circulation. " You are
a real devil," said the Princess, beside herself. " Vis-a-

vis d'un ange ? Mais pourquoi non ? " replied he, and
departed with the old ceremonies. —
Albano, whose heart had in all these depths and abysses
naked, wounded roots and fibres, could not say a w^ord.
But his friend Siebenkäs declared, without further cere-
5o8 TITAN.

mony, that " Gaspard, at every step, and with his everlast-
ing, fine dallying and hesitating, — as, for example, about
the marriage of his daughter, and other things, — had be-
trayed nothing but the incarnate Spaniard, as Gundling,
in the" first part of his Otia, so well portrays him." Au-
gust! wondered at this openness, while it seemed to him
more tolerable and decorous than Schoppe's roughness.
" What would strike me most," added Siebenkäs, who, as
it seemed, had taken the world's history as a subordinate
department, " would be the long concealment of so weighty
a pedigree among so many partakers of the secret, if I
did not know too well from Hume, that the Gunpowder
Plot, under Charles I., had been kept secret for a whole
year and a half by more than twenty conspirators."
Much wounded, and yet thoroughly cleansed, Albano
departed, in the afternoon after these narrations, into the
discordant kingdom, but with cheerful, holy boldness. He
was conscious to himself of higher aims and powers than
any of the hard souls would dispute with him ; from the
serene, free, ethereal sphere of eternal good he would not
let himself be drawn down into the dirty isthmus of com-
mon existence ; a higher realm than what a metallic
sceptre sways, one which man first creates, in order to
govern it, opened itself before him ; in every, even the
smallest country, was something great, — not population,
but prosperity ; the highest justice was his determination,
and the promotion of old foes, particularly of the sensible
Froulay. Thus did he now, full of confidence, leap out
of his former slender vessel, propelled only by strange
hands, on to a free earth, where he can move himself
alone without strange rudder, and instead of the empty,
bare watery way, find a firm, blooming land and object.
And with this consolation ho parted from the dead Schoppe
and the living friend.
 ALBANO REVISITS OLD SCENES.

145. CYCLE.
the twilight he came upon the mountain, whence he
INcould overlook, but with other eyes than once, the
city, which was to be the circus and the theatre of his
powers. He belongs now to a German house, — the peo-
ple around him are his kinsmen, — the prefiguring ideals,
which he had once sketched to himself at the coronation
of his brother, of the warm rays wherewith a prince as
a constellation can enlighten and enrich lands, were now
put into his hands for fulfilment. His pious father, still
blessed by the grandchildren of the country, pointed to
him the pure sun-track of his princely duty : only actions
give life strength, only moderation gives it a charm.
He thought of the beings who lay sunk in graves around
him, hard and barren indeed as rocks, but high as rocks,
too, — of the beings whom fate had sacrificed, who would
fain have used the milky-way of infinity and the rainbow
of fancy as a bow in the hand, without ever being able to
draw a string across it. " Why did not, then, I, too, go
down like those whom I esteemed? Did not, in me
also, that scum of excess boil up and overspread the
"
clearness ?

Fate now carried on again games of repetition with

him ; a flaming carriage rolled away on a road leading
off sidewise from the Prince's garden ;
slowly moved the
hearse of the brother with dead lights up the Blumen-
bühl mountain. " The slow carriage I know ; whose is

the swift one ? " asked Albano of the Lector. " Herr
von Cesara has Albano was silent,
left us," replied he.
but he experienced the pang which the Knight would
last

give him. He begged the Lector earnestly to let him go

alone on the way to Blumenbühl, because he should take
altogether circuitous routes.
 "; '

TITAN.

He wished to visit in Tartarus the grave of the pater-

nal heart without a breast. As he passed through the
noisy suburbs, an old man stared at him for a long time,
suddenly away with terror, and cried to a woman,
fled

who met him, " The old man is walking round " The !

man had been in his youth a servant of the Prince, had

become blind and had recovered again a short time since
therefore he took the son for the father whom he so re-
sembled. In the city the usual public joy at change was
making itself heard. In one house was a children's ball,

in another a group of players at proverbs; while the

pubhc mourning shut up every dancing-hall and every
theatre. Strange, merry sons of the muses were looking
out of Roquairol's chamber. In the hotel of the Spaniard
a boy had the jay by a string. He heard some people
say in passing, " Who would have dreamed of it ?
" Quite natural," replied the other ;
" I was helping make,
at the very time, a wall to the princely vault, and saw
him as I see thee." In the upper city all the rows of
windows in the palace of mourning were brightly illumi-
nated, as if there were a happier festival. In the house
of the Minister all were dark ; overhead among the
statues on the roof a single little light crept round.
" No," thought Albano, " I need not reflect, why I, too,

sank not with them. O enough, enough has fallen from

me into graves. I must surely yearn forever after all the
beings who have flown from me ; like divers, the dead
swim along with me below, and hold my life-bark or bear
the anchor." He saw the old corpse-seeress standing out
there on the Blumenbühl road, who once met him in the
company of the Baldhead she stared up after the lighted
;

hearse and fancied she was seeing dreams and the future,
when she was looking at reality. Everywhere in his
 ALBÄNO IN TARTARUS.
path lay the quivering spider-feet which had been torn
out from the crushed Tarantula of the past. He saw life

through a veil, though not a black but a green one.

Passing through Tartarus, he longingly, but with a
shudder, because the past with its spirits glided after hira,
arrived at the Moravian churchyard, where, in a gar-
den without flowers, surrounded by sunken, slumbering
mourning-birches, the white altar with the paternal heart
and the golden inscription glimmered :
" Take my last

offering, all-gracious one " ! Before the heart shut up in

a breast of stone, in which nothing stirred, not even a
particle of dust, he made his childlike prayer to God, and
felt that he would have loved his parents, and swore to

himself to please them, if their lofty eyes still looked

down into the low vale of. life. He pressed the cold stone
like a breast to himself; and went away with soft steps,

as if the old man were walking along beside him in this

his own form, so like his.

He looked up from his road to the mountain where his

father had found him at evening on "Whitsuntide and
Sacrament day, as to a Tabor of the past ; and in his
walk through the little birch wood he still recollected well
the spot* where once two voices (his parents) had pro-
nounced his name. Thus consecrated by the holy past,
he arrived in the village of his childhood, and saw the
church, as well as the house of Wehrfritz, filled with
hghts, the former, however, for a mournful object, and
the latter for the glad one of welcoming of guests.

* Vol. I. p. 82.
 ;

512 TITAN.

146. CYCLE.
ALBANO found in the glorification, wherein Heav-
en was to him only the magnifying mirror of a
glimmering earth, and the past only the fatherland and
mother-country of holy parents, — in this splendor of the

soul he found the house of his boyhood, into which he

entered, festal and like a temple, and everything common
and clumsy refined or only represented as upon a stage.
His mother Albina and his sister Rabette came with
their glad looks as higher beings to his moved heart.
They drew hastily back, Julienne flew down stairs and
kissed her brother, for the first time openly, in a silent
blending of pleasure and sadness. When she released
him, the tolling began out of the gloom of the church-
tower, as a signal that the dead brother was passing into
the church ; then she rushed back upon Albano, and
wept infinitely. She went up with him, without saying
whom he should find up there with his foster-father. An
whose laborious music was offered from
old flute-clock,
time immemorial to rare guests, welled out to welcome
him, as he opened the door, with the resonances of the
days of his childhood.
A tall, black-dressed female form, with a veil falling
down sidewise, who sat talking with his foster-father,
turned round towards him as he entered. It was Idoine
but the old magic semblance passed again over his to-day
so excited soul, as if it were Liana from heaven, arrayed
in immortality, prouder and bolder in the possession of
unearthly powers, retaining nothing more of her former
earth than goodness and charms. Both met each other
again here with mutual astonishment. Julienne — con-
scious to herself of her little concealments and arrange-
 IDOINE IN ALBANO'S OLD HOME. 513

ments — saw a little red cloud of displeasure flit across

Idoine's mild face ; it was, however, gone below the hori-
zon, so soon as Idoine perceived that the sister during the
tolling for her brother's funeral could not restrain her
tears, and she went kindly to meet her, seeking her
hand. Idoine, easily inclined by her severity to fits of
vexation, that little skirmish of wrath, had freed herself
by long, sharp exercise from this finest, but strongest
poison of the soul's happiness, till she at last stood in her
heaven as a pure, light moon, without a rainy and cloudy
atmosphere of earth.
Albano, to whom the earth, filled with the past and the
dead, had become an air-globe that soared into the ether,
felt himself free amidst his stars, and without earthly
anxiety. He approached Idoine, — although with the
consciousness of the conflicting relations of his and her
house, yet with holy courage. " Her last wish in the

last garden," he said, "had been heard by Heaven.'*

With maiden-like decision of perception she went through
the wilderness wherein she had to bend aside, now flow-
ers, now thorns, in order to be neither embarrassed nor
injured. She answered him, " I rejoice from my heart
that you have found your faithful sister forever." Wehr-
fritz was quite as much delighted as astonished at the
frankness with which she honestly spoke the truth against
all family relations. " So must one always lose much on
the earth," Albano replied to her, " in order to gain much,"
and turned to his sister, as if he would thereby guard this

word against a more ambiguous sense.

The funeral bell tolled on. The strange, happy and

sad mingling of earthly lots gave all a solemn and free
töne of spirit. Albina and Rabette came up, arrayed in
festive dark dresses, for the procession to the burial
22* GO
 ;

5H TITAN.

church. Julienne divided herself between two brothers,

and never did her heart, which stood at once in tears and
flames, swell more romantically. She guessed how her
friend Idoine thought respecting her brother Albano, for
she knew her to have a steadier voice than to-day's was,
and her sweet confusion was most easily evident to her
from the short report which the open soul had made to

her of meeting Albano again in Liana's garden ; the slight

maidenly recoil, too, of her pride to-day, when she was
embarrassed to find herself taken everywhere for a risen
Liana, that beloved of the youth, made Julienne not more
doubtful, but more sure.
" On a fine evening," said Albano to Idoine, " I once
looked down into your lovely Arcadia, but I was not in

Arcadia." " The name," replied she, and her clear eyes
sank again to the earth, " is nothing more than play
properly it is an alp, and yet only with herdsmen's huts
in a vale." She raised not again her large eyes, when
Julienne silently took her hand and drew her away, be-
cause now the funeral bell sounded out with single, sad
strokes, as a sign that the funeral ceremony was coming
on, in which Julienne could not possibly deny her sisterly
heart the comfort of participating. " We are going to
the church,-" said Idoine to the company. " So are we all,

indeed," replied Wehrfritz, quickly. As the two maidens

passed by Albano, he observed for the first time on Idoine
three little freckles, as it were traces of earth and life,

which made her a mortal. He looked after the lofty,

noble form, with the long floating veil, who, beside his
sister, appeared like Linda, quite as majestically, only
more delicately built, and whose holy gait announced a
priestess, who had been wont to walk in temples before
gods.
 OLD HOME-FEELINGS BREAK OUT. 515

Hardly had the two disappeared, when Albano'3 old

acquaintances, especially the women, to whom Julienne's
presence had always held near in view Albano's family-
tree, crowded on his heart with all signs of long-repressed
cordiality, full of wishes, joys, and tears. " Be my parents
still," said Albano. " Bravery is everything in this world,"
said the Director. " I did my part like a mother," said
Albina, "but who could have this!'* known
Rabette
said nothing ; her joy and love were overpowering as her
recollections. " My sister Rabette," said Albano, " gave

me, when I first went to Italy, thewords embroidered on a

purse, ' Think of us.' This prayer I will fulfil for you all
in every vicissitude of fortune"; — and here, although too
modest to say it, he thought of things which he might
perhaps do, as Prince, for his foster-father, among which
came first the restoration of his reverting male fee.
" Thus, then, is many a former sorrow of the heart, for
us — ^' began Albina. " 0, what 's to do with hearts ?

what 's to do with sorrows ? " said Wehrfritz ; " to-day all

is right and smooth." But Rabette understood her mother

very well.
All betook themselves on their way to the temple of
mourning. They heard as they approached the church
the music of the hymn, " How softly they rest " ; at a
considerable distance bugles were essaying gladder tones.
Rabette pressed Albano's hand and said, very softly, " It

has been well with me, because I have learned all." She
had, since hearing how Roquairol had murdered a mani-
fold happiness and himself, cast all her love after the
wretched man into his grave to moulder with him, without
shedding a tear as she did it. Her heart leaped at the
thought of Idoine's goodness, of her resemblance, with
the mention of which her father had to-day made the
 ;

5i6 TITAN.

angel blush, and of her beautiful comforting of Julienne,

who had wept incessantly before Albano's arrival. Albina
praised Julienne more on account of her sisterly affection.
Rabette was silent about her ; the two were sisterly rivals
moreover. Julienne had, according to her sharp, inexora-
ble system, looked upon her very coldly as a victim of the
Roquairol whom she so despised ; whereas Idoine, who,
by her greater knowledge of human nature, had learned
to unite mildness toward female errors of the heart and
moment with severity toward men, had only been gentle
and just.

When they stepped into the church full of mourning

lamps, Albano stole away into an unlighted corner, so as
neither to disturb nor be disturbed. At the bright altar
stood the serene and venerable Spener, with his uncov-
ered head full of silver locks ; the long coffin of the
brother stood before the altar between rows of lights. In
the arch of the church hung night, and forms were l©st in

the gloom ; below rays and bright shadows and people

crossed each other. Albano saw the iron-grated door of
the hereditary sepulchre, through which his blessed par-
ents had gone down, standing open like a gate of death;
and it was to him as if once more Schoppe's tumultuous
spirit stalked in, to break into the last house of man.
The thought of his brother affected him but little, but the
neighborhood of his still parents, who had so long watched
for him, and whom he had never thanked, and the inces-
sant tears of his sister, whom he saw in the gallery over
the gate of death, took mighty hold of his heart, out of
which the deep, eternal tones of lamentation drew tears,

like the warm blood of sorrow and of love. He saw

Idoine, with her half red, half white Lancaster rose on the
black silk, standing beside his sister, drawing the veil over
 ;
:

SPENER'S FUNERAL DISCOURSE. 517

her eyes against many a comparing look. Here, near

such altar-lights, had once the oppressed Liana knelt
while swearing the renunciation of her love. The whole
constellation of his shining past, of his lofty beings, had
gone down below the horizon, and only one bright star of
all the group stood glimmering still above the earth
Idoine.
Just then the youth was seen by his friend Dian, who
came hastening towards him. Without much ceremony,
the Greek embraced him, and said, " Hail, hail to the
beautiful transformation There stands my Chariton
!

she, too, would greet thee after the manner of her

speech." * But Chariton was looking continually at
Idoine, on account of her resemblance. "Well, my
good Dian, I have paid many a heart and fortune for
it, and I wonder that fate has spared me thee," said
Albano. Thereupon he asked him, as architect of the
church, about the condition of the hereditary sepulchre,
because he wished afterward to have the ashes of his
parents upcovered, in order at least to kneel down before
them in silent gratitude. " Of that," said Dian, surprised,
"I know very little; but it is a shocking purpose, and
what good is to come of it ? "
The music ceased ; Spener, in a low tone, began his
discourse. He spoke not, however, of the Prince at his

feet, nor yet of his loved ones in the hereditary tomb, but
of the real life that knows no death, and which man must
beget in himself. He said that, for himself, though an
old man, he wished neither to die nor to live, because one
could already, even here, be with God, so soon as one
only had God within him, and that we ought to be able
to see without grief our holiest wishes wither like sun-
* Namely, rejoice 1
5i8 TITAN.

flowers, because, after all, the lofty sun still beams on,

which forever raises and nourishes new ones, and that a

man must not so much prepare himself for eternity as
plant in himself the eternity which is still, pure, light,
deep, and everything.
Many a human breast in the church felt the poisonous
point of the past broken off by this discourse. On Al-
bano's rising sea had poured smooth oil, and all about
it

his life was even and radiant. Julienne's eyes had grown
dry and full of serene light, and Idoine's had filled with
glimmering moisture, for her heart had to-day been stirred

weep in
too often not to this sweet, devout, and exalting
emotion. Once it seemed to Albano, as he looked towards
her, as if she shone supernaturally, and as if, just as the
sun from under the earth beams upon a moon, so Liana
from the other world were beaming upon her countenance,
and adorning this likeness of herself with a holiness be-
yond the reach of earth.
At the close of the discourse, Albano went quietly to
the two friends, pressed his sister's hand, and begged her
not to wait for the end of the sad festival. She was
comforted and willing. As they stepped out of the
church, a wondrous bright moonlight was spread over
earth, like a sweet morning light of the higher world.
Julienne begged them, instead of going in between four
walls, into the prison of eyes and words, and the midst
of all the din, rather to behold first the still, bright land-
scape.
All of them bore in their breasts the holy world of the
serene old man out into the fair night. Not a speck of
cloud, not a breath of air, stirred through the wide heaven;
the stars reigned alone ; earthly distances were lost in the
depth of white shadows ; and all mountains stood in the
 NIGHT-BLOOM OF LOVE.
silvery fire of the moon. " 0, how I love your serene,
holy old man !
" said Idoine to Albano, when she had
already often pressed Julienne's hand. " How happy I
am ! Ah, life, like the water of the sea, is not quite
sweet till it rises towards heaven." Suddenly distant
bugle-tones came pealing out to them, which well-mean-
ing country-folk sounded as a greeting before Albano's
foster-home. " How comes it," said Julienne, " that in
the open air and at night even the most insignificant
music is pleasant and stirring ? " " Perhaps because our
inner music harmonizes with it more cleai'ly and purely,"
said Idoine. " And because, before the spheral music of
the universe, human art and human simplicity are, at last,
equally great !
" added Albano. " That is just what I
meant, for that is also, after all, only within ourselves,"
said Idoine, and looked lovingly and frankly into his eyes,
which sank before hers, as if the moon, the mild after-

summer of the sun, now dazzled him with its splendor.

Since the church festival, she had addressed herself to
him oftener her sweet voice was more tender, though
;

more tremulous her maidenly shyness of the resem-

;

blance to Liana seemed conquered or forgotten, as on that

evening in the last garden. During Spener's discourse,
her existence had decided itself within her, and on her
virgin love, as on a spring soil by one warm evening rain,

all buds had been opened into bloom. As he now looked

upon this clear, mild eye, under the pure, cloudless brow,
and the fine mouth, with inexhaustible good-will towards
every living thing breathing over it, he could hardly con-
ceive that this delicate lily, this light incense exhaled
from morning redness and morning flowers, was the ha,b-

itation of that firm spirit which could rule life, just as the
tender cloud or the little nightingale's breast contains the
thrilhng peal of sound.
520 TITAN.

They stood now on the bright mountain, covered with

the evergreen of youthful remembrance, where Albano
had once slumbered in dreams of the future, as on a light
and lofty island in the midst of the shadow-sea of two
vales. The mountain-ridges of the linden city, the eter-

nal goal of his youthful days, were snowed overby the

moon, and the constellations stood upon them gleaming
and great. He looked now upon Idoine : how truly did
this soul belong among the stars !
" When the world is

purged from this low day ; when heaven, with its holiest,

farthest suns, looks upon this earthly land ; when the

heart and the nightingale alone speak, — then only does
her holy time come up in heaven ; then is her lofty, tran-

quil spirit seen and understood, and by day only her

charms," thought Albano.
" How many a time, my good Albano," said the sister,

"hast thou here, in thy long-left youthful years, looked

toward the mountains for thine own ones, — for thy hid-

den parents and brothers and sisters, — for thou hadst

always a good heart " Here Idoine unconsciously looked

!

at him with inexpressible love, and his eye met hers.

" Idoine," said he, — and their souls gazed into each
other, as into suddenly rising heavens, and he took the
maiden's hand, — "I have that heart still ; it is unhappy,
but unstained." Then Idoine hid herself quickly and
passionately in Julienne's bosom, and said, scarce audibly,
" Julienne, if Albano rightly knows me, then be my
"
sister !

" I do know thee, holy being "

!
said Albano, and
clasped to onebosom sister and bride and from all of ;

them there wept but one joy-enraptured heart. " O ye

parents," prayed the sister, " O thou God, bless, then,
both of them and me, that so it may be forever !
" And
 "

MIRTH IN HEAVEN. 521

as she lifted her eyes to heaven, while the lovers lingered

in the short, holy elysium of the first kiss, innumerable
immortals looked down out of the deep-blue eternity, the
distant tones and the mild rays were blended together,
and the slumbering realm of the moon resounded. " Look
up to the fair heaven !
" cried the sister to the lovers, in

the ecstasy of her joy ;

" the rainbow of eternal peace

blooms there, and the tempests are over, and the world
is all so bright and green. Wake up, my brother and
!
sister

THE END.

Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

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