Agata led the two into the home of her parents, on the eastern declivity of Epomeo; and immediately, amidst the loud, exulting welcome, cried out, quite as loudly: "Here are two fine gentlemen, who wish to come home with me." The father said, directly: "Welcome, your excellencies! 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[96] than this year? Your commands, excellencies!" Suddenly 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 old man would fain 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, when 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 blossoms; on the earth, on the sea, hovered hosts of lights; and in the depths of distance hung a clear flame steadily in the midst of heaven. A dream, of which the scene was unknown, confounded still the actual stage with one that had vanished; and Albano 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 sh.o.r.e-town stood full of burning lamps. He went up to the place whence the music proceeded, which was illuminated and surrounded with people, and found a chapel standing all in fires of joy. Before a Madonna and her child, in a niche, a night-music was playing, amidst the loquacious rustling of joy and devotion. Here he found again his hosts, who had all quite forgotten him 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 earnest," cried Dian, who plunged as deeply into the waves of joy as any Ischian. Albano looked over toward the flame, flickering high in the starry heaven, and, like a G.o.d, 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 itself in the 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 off sh.o.r.e. 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 G.o.ddess were coming, around whom the sea swims with enraptured flames, and who knows it not. All stepped out on sh.o.r.e 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-gla.s.s, 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 perhaps 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 virgins, who, neatly clad in silk, with gold-edged silken ap.r.o.ns, danced gracefully, with modestly drooping heads and downcast eyes, to the tambourine of a third; the two other virgins, whom the stranger had brought with her, and Agata, sang sweetly with Italian half-voice[97] 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 G.o.ddess of the sun-G.o.d, not pale, but fiery, as it were a thunder-G.o.ddess over the thunder of the mountain, and Albano cried, involuntarily, "G.o.d! 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 G.o.d, 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; delicate, maidenly colors, lovely lines and sweet fulness of youth played like a flower-garland about the brow of a G.o.ddess, with soft blossoms around 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-b.u.t.terflies 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 sh.o.r.es,--Epomeo hovered with his silvered woods, and with the hermitage of his summit high in the night blue,--near by stirred the life of the singing, dancing 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 herself, to the silent Albano, by way of answering his exclamation, 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, which 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[98] and the burning one,--all is at one, and therefore right and so G.o.dlike." 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-embarra.s.sed look of artists toward rank. She did not recognize him. "The Greek, Dian," said Albano, "n.o.ble 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 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 grat.i.tude 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 expectation 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 sublime coldness, a sublime pain, which with eagle's talon s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 Naples; 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 Pest.i.tz, though I cannot comprehend what such an extraordinary being would fain do there; that is 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 sensitiveness 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, consistent 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 powerful 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 Albano, "than they seem." She had, namely, she related, something of the ocular malady[99] of many Spanish women, of being infinitely short-sighted in the night. He begged to be permitted to accompany her, and it was 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 Albano, "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 magnet'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-tellings. 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 pa.s.s a severe judgment upon his previous deportment toward this n.o.ble 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 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 of the world, the sea, lay fast asleep in his bed that stretches from pole to pole,--the coasts and promontories glimmered only, like 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 sh.o.r.e 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 when life has its transit through a superterrestrial sun. Albano and Linda accompanied each other with holy eyes, and their looks softly disengaged 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 coming; I actually feel it; good night!" It was Agata. "G.o.d grant one," said Albano. "O why?" 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; 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 h.e.l.l 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, G.o.dlike 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-G.o.d 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; G.o.d was near him; he answered softly and firmly: "Linda, always!" "So have I!" said she, and inclined modestly her beautiful 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 pa.s.sage 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 Virgin took life beneath the radiance, and became more like Liana,--he knelt down, and ardently gave G.o.d his prayers of grat.i.tude 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.

After a long night, the fresh morning breathed when Albano was to find again the treasures of the most blessed dream, the flowers of fortune 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 peac.o.c.k 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 oiled paper streamed a wondrous morning light; on the wooden ceiling figures from Herculaneum were painted; in a Campanian vase stood yellow b.u.t.terfly 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 ghostly 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. "G.o.d!"

thought he, "what arm strikes again into my life?"

Just then the door was hastily opened, and the Princess Julienne entered hurriedly, smiling and weeping, and exclaimed, flying to him, "O 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, like 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 brother, Luigi writes me yesterday from Pest.i.tz 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 pa.s.s."

"Now, I know, the questioning begins," 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 G.o.d!"

"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 Melchisedec. Further,--I was indeed the sister in the apparition, 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 in the mirror was, as thou seest, made only by an artificial mirror."[100]

_Albano_. "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?"

_Albano_. "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."

_Albano_. "By heavens! I must ask what, then, is his object, who his leader, his manager?"

_Julienne_. "Probably the father of the Countess, for he 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 a.s.sured, are unravelling themselves so agreeably for us both, and await the October days."

_Albano_. "But one thing, beloved sister, deny me not, I pray thee,--a clear word about my and thy wonderful relation to the n.o.ble Countess!

Only that!"