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HARVARD COLLEGE
LIBRARY

FROM THE LIBRARY OF

MRS. ELLEN HAVEN ROSS

OF BOSTON
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 TITAN:
A ROMANCE.

FROM THE GERMAN OF

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

TRANSLATED BT

CHARLES T. BROOKS.

IM TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

BOSTON:
TIOKNOR AND FIELDS
1 8 6 .3 .
 HARVARD COLLEGE LI5RAG"
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
MRS. ELLr.N HAVEIJ ROS»
JUNE 28, 1938

Kutered according to Act of Congress, in tho year 184)2, by

TICK NOR AND ¥ 1KLDS,
in tlie Clerk's Office of toe Uistncc Court ol tne uistrict of Massachusetta.

SF.COSD KDITIOS.

UNirBRairr Pxmbhi
ll'u';a, Bioelow, add ('uiiunt,
Camrjudoe.
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

HE "Titan" is Jean Paul's longest —

and the author meant it, and held it, to
be his greatest and best — romance; and
lis public (including Mr. Carlyle) seems, on the
whole, to have sustained his opinion. He was ten
years about it, and his other works, written in the
interval, were preparatory and tributary to this.
As to the general meaning of the title there
can hardly, on the whole, be any doubt. It docs
not refer, as the division into Jubilees and Cycles
might, to be sure, suggest to one on first ap
proaching it, to the titanic scale and scope of the
work, but to the titanic violence against which it
is aimed.
It seems, indeed, from a letter of the author's,
that he thought at first of calling it " Anti-Titan."
The only question in regard to the applica
iv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

tion of the title seems to be, whether the cham

pion of truth and justice against the moral Ti
tans in this case was meant to be understood as
represented by the hero of the story, with his
friends, resisting the iniquity which moved earth
and hell to ruin him, or whether the book itself
is the Anti-Titan, and an age of extravagance the
Titan.
A French critic says of the " Titan " : —
" It is a poem, a romance ; a psychological rd-
sumS, a satire, an elegy, a drama, a fantasy ; hav
ing for theme and text the enigma of civilization
in the eighteenth century.
" How is it to end, this civilization which exag
gerates alike intellectual and industrial power at the
expense of the life of the soul, — wholly factitious,
theatrical, — intoxicating, consuming itself with
pleasure, seeking everywhere new enjoyments, —
exploring all the secrets of nature, without being
able to penetrate the first causes, the secrets of
God, — what will be the fate of these generations
supersaturated with romances, dramas, journals,
with science, ambition, with vehement aspirations
after the unknown and impossible ?
" In augmenting the sum of its desires, will
it augment the sum of its happiness? Is it not
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. v

going to increase immensely its capacity of suf

fering ?
" Will it not be the giant that scales heaven —
" And that falls crushed to death ?
" Titan 1 "
In giving his romance the title of " Titan," says
the same writer, " it is not Albano de Cesara the
author has in view, but his antipode, Captain Ro-
quairol, — that romantic being, that insatiable lover
of pleasure, that anticipated Byron, that scaler of
heaven, — who, after having piled mountain upon
mountain to attain his object, ends in finding him
self buried under the ruins
" Even while at work upon ' Hesperus,' he had
formed the resolution of placing a pure man, great
and noble, by the side of a reprobate, and of sur
rounding them both with a multitude of beings cor
responding to them. He wished to concentrate in
a single work all the ideas of high philosophy which
he had disseminated in his other creations, and to
show them followed by their natural consequences.
So strong a mind could not stop there : he resolved
to show the absurdity of exaggeration, whether in
good or in evil, in virtue or in vice.
" Hence those reproductions of the same types,
those satellites gravitating around their respective
vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

planets ; in fine, those parodies of the principal

personages of the' drama.
" By the side of the coldness and the vast plans
of Don Gaspard de Cesara, we have the no less
dangerous intrigues, though upon a less elevated
scale, of the Minister von Froulay ; by the side of
the ventriloquist Uncle, the lying Roquairol ; the
Princess Isabelle is opposed to Linda de Romeiro,
the aerial Liana to her physical counterpart, the
Princess Idoinc ; the comic vulgarity of Dr. Sphex
contrasts with the more elevated buffoonery of
Schoppe ; and if we have Bouverot, we have also
Dion, that Greek so elegant and so noble, happy
mixture of the antique and the modern, that artist
so sensible and so true
" The history of Albano, opposed to Roquairol, is
the history, taken from his tenderest childhood to
the epoch of his greatest development, of a being
who, as the strictest consequence of a quite special
education, goes through life, wounding himself with
all its griefs, drinking at the source of all its lawful
pleasures ; suffering with nobleness, tasting of hap
piness, but only the purest kind ; exposed every
instant to see himself drawn away by fallacious
principles, and nevertheless moving on with a
steady step towards the end which his reason has
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. vii

marked out for him ; sacrificing to the fulfilment of

his duties all the delights that a debauched court
can offer a young man entering into the world. While
all the personages who gravitate around him, and
who represent each a different aberration from the
fundamental principle of the work, fall successively
at his side, victims of the natural consequences of
their passions, he, strengthening himself by every
fall of which he is witness, ends by attaining the
loftiest position which the ambition of man can
desire, — a position which he could not have
expected, and for which, consequently, he had not
been able to make the sacrifices that, in the course
of the work, he does not cease to achieve."
The author whom we have thus copiously quoted
alludes to Jean Paul's having had the idea of " Ti
tan " while writing " Hesperus." This reminds us
of a Philistine disparagement of the " Titan," that
so many of the characters of the other work re
appear here under new names. There are some
critics who ought to object to the full moon, that
she is only the same old moon that we had, in her
first quarter or half, several nights ago. However,
as we have not yet had "Hesperus" in English, nor
are likely to for some time, this kind of objection
will not trouble English readers of " Titan."
viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Jean Paul has been justly praised for his success

in drawing and shading female characters. Our
French critic says : " Richter has the rare merit of
placing on the stage in the same work six female
personages, who have not a shadow of resemblance
to each other, and who, from the moment of their
appearance on the scene to that of their quitting it,
never deviate a single minute from the character
the author has given them."
The fate of his Titanide, Linda, created a loud
remonstrance in Germany ; and one can hardly,
indeed, help feeling as if poetic justice had been a
little caricatured, at least, in Richter's disposal of
that half strong-headed and half headstrong woman.
Painful, however, as her end is, the Translator
could not listen an instant to the suggestion of
omitting a line of the scenes in which that terrible
tragedy is brought to a close.
When the " Titan " first appeared, complaint was
made by some that there was too much of drollery,
by others that there was not enough ; some found
too much sentimentality, others too much philoso
phy ; the Translator has found it full, if not of that
brevity which is the soul of wit (not, however,
of humor), yet of that variety which is the spice
of life.
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix

The Translator (or Transplanter, for he aspires

to the title) of this huge production, in his solici
tude to preserve the true German aroma of its
native earth, may have brought away some part
of the soil, and even stones, clinging to the roots
(stones of offence they may prove to many, stones
of stumbling to many more). He can only say,
that if he had made Jean Paul always talk in
ordinary, conventional, straightforward, instantly
intelligible prose, the reader would not have had
Jean Paul the Only.
And yet it is confidently claimed that, under all
the exuberance of metaphor and simile, and learned
technical illustrations and odd digressions, and gor
geous episodes and witching interludes, that char
acterizes Richter, every attentive and thoughtful
reader will find a broad and solid ground of real
good sense and good feeling, and that in this ex
traordinary man whom, at times, his best friends
were almost tempted to call a crazy giant, will be
found one whose heart (to use the homely phrase)
is ever in the right place.
It has seemed necessary to give a few notes, and
only a few. Properly to furnish such a work with
annotations would require Jean Paul's own volumi
nous un-commonplace-books of all out-of-the-way
X TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

knowledge, and that Dictionary to Jean Paid

which one of his countrymen began, but unfortu
nately carried only through one of his works, the
work on Education, Levana.
The Translator desires emphatically to express
his obligations to his friend, Rev. Dr. Furness, of
Philadelphia, and to his friend, the accomplished
scholar, Mr. Knorr, to whose kind and patient care
whatever of accuracy or felicity there may be in his
version of the first Jubilee is largely due ; also, to
Rev. Dr. Hedge, and all the friends who have
helped him with suggestion and encouragement in
this large and difficult undertaking, he makes his
warmest acknowledgments ; — and he closes by
commending the Titan to all lovers of the humani
ties, confident (in the words of Mrs. Lee, in her
Life of Jean Paul) that " the more it is read, the
more it will be acknowledged a work of exalted
genius, pure morality, and perennial beauty."

C. T. B.
Newport, R. I.
 THE FOUR LOVELY AND NOBLE

SISTERS
ON THE THRoNE.*

THE DREAM OF TRUTH.

PIIRODITE, Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia

once looked down into the clear-obscure of earth,
and, weary of the ever-bright but cold Olympus,
yearned to enter in beneath the clouds of our
world, where the Soul loves more because it suffers more,
and where it is sadder but more warm. They heard the
holy tones ascend, with which Polyhymnia passe9 invisibly
up and down the low, anxious earth, to cheer and lift our
hearts ; and they mourned that their throne stood so far from
the sighs of the helpless.
Then they determined to take the earthly veil, and to
clothe themselves in our mortal form. They came down from
Olympus ; Love and little loves and genii flew playfully after
them, and our nightingales fluttered to meet them out of the
bosom of May.

* The Titan was published during the years 1800-1803. The four
sisters were the four daughters of the Duke of Mecklenburg, viz. the
Duchess of Hildburghausen, the Princess von Sohns, the Princess of
Thun and Taxis, and the Louisa who afterward became Queen of
Prussia, and was so in the Liberation War. — Tr.
xii DEDICATION.

But, as they touched the first flowers of earth, and flung

only rays of light, and cast no shadows, then the earnest
Queen of gods and men, Fate, raised her eternal sceptre, and
said: " The immortal becomes mortal upon the earth, and
every spirit becomes a human being ! *
So they became human beings and sisters, and were called
Louisa, Charlotte, Theresa, Frederica; the little loves and
genii transformed themselves into their children, and flew
into their maternal arms, and the motherly and sisterly hearts
throbbed full of new love in a great embrace. And when the
white banner of the blooming spring fluttered abroad, and
more human thrones stood before them, — and when, blissfully
softened by love, the harmonica of life, they looked upon each
other and their happy children, and were speechless for love
and bliss, — then did Polyhymnia, invisible, float by over them,
and recognize them, and gave them the tones wherewith the
heart expresses and awakens love and joy.
And the dream was ended and fulfilled ; it had, as is always
the case, shaped itself after waking reality. Therefore, be it
consecrated to the four fair and noble sisters, and let all
which is like it in Titan be so consecrated too !

Juan Paul Fr. Richter.

 Contents of Vol. i.

FIRST JUBILEE.
Passage to Isola Bella. — First Dat of Joy in the Ti
tan. — The Pasquin-Idolater. — Integrity ok the Em
pire eulogized. — Effervescence of Youth. — Luxury
or Bleeding. — Recognition of a Father. — Grotesque
Testament. — German Predilection for Poems and the
Arts. — The Father of Death. — Ghost-Scene. — The
Bloody Dream. — The Swing of Fancy ....

SECOND JUBILEE.
The two Biographical Courts. — The Herdsman's Hut.
— The Flying. — The Sale of Hair. — The Dangerous
Bird-pole. — A Storm loceed up in a Coach. — Low
Mountain-Music. — The loving Child. — Mr. Von Fal-
teri.e from Vienna. — The Torture Soupe. — The Shat
tered Heart. — Wertiier without Beard, rut with
a Shot. — The Reconciliation 70

' THIRD JUBILEE.

Methods of the two Professional Gardeners in their
Pedagogical Graftino-Sciiool. — Vindication of Van
ity. — Dawn of Friendship. — Morning Star of Love . no

FOURTH JUBILEE.
High Style of Love. — The Gotha Pocket-Almanac. —
Dreams on the Tower. — The Sacrament and the
xiv CONTENTS.

THUNDER-STORM. — The Night-Journey into Elysium.

— New Actors anu Stages, and the Ultimatum of thk
School-Years 129

FIFTH JUBILEE.
Gaand-Entry. — Dr. Sphex. — The drumming Corpse. —
The Letter of the Knight. — Ketaooradation of the
Dyino-Day. — Julienne. — The still Good-Friday of
Old Aoe. — The healthy and rashful hereditary
l'rince. — roquairol. — the blindness. — sphex's pre
DILECTION for Tears. — The fatal Banquet. — The
Doloroso of Love 161

SIXTH JUBILEE.
The Ten Persf.cutions of the Reader. — Liana's East
ern Room. — Disputation uroN Patience. — The pic
turesque Cure . 197

SEVENTH JUBILEE.
Alrano's Peculiarity. — The intricate Intrklacings of
Politics. — The Heeostratus of Gaming-Tarles. — Pa
ternal " Mandatum sine Clausula." — Good Society.
— Mr. Von Bouveeot. — Liana's Spiritual and Bodily
Presence 216

EIGHTH JUBILEE.
I.f. petit Lever of Dr. Sphex. — Path to Lilar. — Wood
land-Bridge. — The Morning in Arcadia. — Chariton.
— Liana's Letter and Psalm of Gratitude. — Senti
mental Journey through a Garden. — The Flute-Dell.
— Concerning the Reality of the Ideal . . . 23S

NINTH JUBILEE.
Pleasure of Court- Mourning — The Burial. — Roquairol.
— Letter to niM. — The Seven last Words in the
Water. — The Swearing of Allegiance. — Masquerade.
— Puppet Masquerade. — The Head in the Air, Tar
tarus, the Spirit-Voice, the Friend, the Catacomr,
and the two united Men 268
 CONTENTS.

TENTH JUBILEE.
Roquairol's Advocatus Diaroli. — The Festival Day of
Friendship 310

ELEVENTH JUBILEE.
Emuhoidery. — Anglaise. — Ckreus Serpens. — Musical
Fantasies 834

TWELFTH JUBILEE.
Froulay's Birthday and Projects. — Extra-Leaf. — Ra-
rette. — The Harmonica. — Night. — The pious Father.
— The wondrous Stairway. — The Apparition . . 861

THIRTEENTH JUBILEE.
Roquairol's Love. — Philippic against Lovers. — Tub
Pictures. — Alrano Aliiani. — The Harmonic Tetk-a-
Tete. — The Ride to Blumenruhl 8B4

FOURTEENTH JUBILEE.
Alrano and Liana 400

FIFTEENTH JUBILEE.
Man and Woman 432

SIXTEENTH JUBILEE.
The Sorrows of a Daughter 481
 TITAN.

FIRST JUBILEE.
Passage to Ism. a Bella. — First Day or Joy in the Titan. —
The Pasquin-Idolater. — Integrity of the Empire eulo
gized. — Effervescence of Youth. — Luxury of Kim ding.
— Recognition of a Father. — Grotesque Testament. —
German Predilection for Poems and the Arts. — Tub
Father of Death. — Ghost-Scene. — The Bloody Dream. —
The Swing of Fancy.

1. CYCLE.

N a fine spring evening, the young Spanish

Count Cesara came, with his companions,
Schoppe and Dian, to Sesto, in order the
next morning to cross over to the Borro-
ma^an island, Isola Bella, in Lago Maggiore. The
proudly blooming youth glowed with the excitement
of travelling, and with thoughts of the coming morrow,
when he should see the isle, that gayly decorated throne
of Spring, and on it a man who had been promised
him for twenty years. This twofold glow exalted my
picturesque hero to the form of an angry god of the
Muses. His beauty made a more triumphal entry into
Italian eyes than into the narrow Northern ones from
the midst of which he had come ; in Milan many had
wished he were of marble, and stood with elder gods
of stone, either in the Farnese Palace or in the Clem
2 TITAN.

entine Museum, or in the Villa of Albani ; nay, had

not the Bishop of Novara, with his sword at his side,
a few hours before, asked Schoppe (riding behind) who
he was ? And had not the latter, with a droll squaring
of the wrinkle-circle round his lips, made this copious
answer (by way of enlightening his spiritual lordship) :
" It 's my Telemachus, and I am the Mentor. I am the
milling-machine and the die which coins him, — the wolfs
tooth and flattening mill which polishes him down, —
the man, in short, that regulates him " ?
The glowing form of the youthful Cesara was still
more ennobled by the earnestness of an eye always
buried in the future, and of a firmly shut, manly mouth,
and by the daring decision of young, fresh faculties ; he
seemed as yet to be a burning-glass in the moonlight, or
a dark precious stone of too much color, which the world,
as in the case of other jewels, can brighten and improve
only by cutting hollow.
As he drew nearer and nearer, the island attracted
him, as one world does another, more and more intensely.
His internal restlessness rose as the outward tranquillity
deepened. Beside all this, Dian, a Greek by birth and
an artist, who had often circumnavigated and sketched
Isola Bella and Isola Madre, brought these obelisks of
Nature still nearer to his soul in glowing pictures ; and
Schoppe often spoke of the great man whom the youth
was to see to-morrow for the first time. As the people
were carrying by, down below in the street, an old man
fast asleep, into whose strongly marked face the setting
sun cast fire and life, and who was, in short, a corpse
borne uncovered, after the Italian custom, suddenly, in a
wild and hurried tone, he asked his friends, " Does my
father look thus?"
 PASSAGE TO ISOLA BELLA. 3

But what impels him with such intense emotions to

wards the island is this : He had, on Isola Bella, with
his sister, who afterward went to Spain, and by the side
of his mother, who had since passed to the shadowy
land, sweetly toyed and dreamed away the first three
years of his life, lying in the bosom of the high flowers
of Nature ; the island had been, to the morning slumber
of life, to his childhood's hours, a Raphael's painted
sleeping-chamber. But he had retained nothing of it all
in his head and heart, save in the one a deep, sadly
sweet emotion at the name, and in the other the squirrel,
which, as the family scutcheon of the Borromaeans, stands
on the upper terrace of the island.
After the death of his mother his father transplanted
him from the garden-mould of Italy — some of which,
however, still adhered to the tap-roots — into the royal
forest of Germany ; namely, to Blumenbiihl, in the prin
cipality of Hohenfliess, which is as good as unknown to
the Germans ; there he had him educated in the house
of a worthy nobleman, or, to speak more meaningly
and allegorically, he caused the pedagogical profession
al gardeners to run round him with their water-pots,
grafting-knives, and pruning-shears, till the tall, slender
palm-tree, full of sago-pith and protecting thorns, out
grew them, and could no longer be reached by their pots
and shears.
And now, when he shall have returned from the island,
he is to pass from the field-bed of the country to the tan-
vat and hot-bed of the city, and to the trellises of the
court garden ; in a word, to Pestitz, the university and
chief city of Hohenfliess, even the sight of which, until
this time, his father had strictly forbidden him.
And to-morrow he sees that father for the first time !
4 TITAN.

He must have burned with desire, since his whole life

had been one preparation for this meeting, and his foster-
parents and teachers had been a sort of chalcographic
company, who had engraved in copper a portrait of the
author of his life-book so magnificently opposite the title-
page. His father, Gaspard de Cesara, Knight of the
Golden Fleece (whether Spanish or Austrian I should
be glad to be precisely informed myself), a spirit natu
rally three-edged, sharp, and brightly polished, had in his
youth wild energies, for whose play only a battle-field or
a kingdom would have been roomy enough, and which in
high life had as little power of motion as a sea-monster
in a harbor. He satisfied them by playing the guest
with all ranks in comedies and tragedies, by the prosecu
tion of all sciences, and by an eternal tour : he was in
timate and often involved with great and small men and
courts, yet always marched along as a stream with its
own waves through the sea of the world. And now,
after having completed his travels by land and sea round
the whole circumference of life, round its joys and capaci
ties and systems, he still continues (especially since the
Present, that ape of the Past, is always running after him)
to pursue his studies and geographical journeyings ; but
always for scientific purposes, just as he visits even the
European battle-fields. As for the rest, he is not at all
gloomy, still less gay, but composed and calm ; he does
not even hate and love, blame and praise other men any
more than he does himself, but values every one in his
kind, the dove in hers and the tiger in his. What often
seems vengeance is merely the determined, soldier-like
tread wherewith a man, who can never flee and fear, but
only knows how to advance and stand his ground, tram
ples down larks'-eggs and ears of corn.
 PASSAGE TO ISOLA BELLA. 5

I think that the corner which I have thus snipped off

from the Whistonian chart of this comet, for the benefit
of mankind, is broad enough. I will, before I discourse
further, reserve the privilege to myself, of sometimes
calling Don Gaspard the Knight, without appending to
him the Golden Fleece ; and, secondly, of not being
obliged by courtesy towards the short memory of readers
to steal from his son Cesara (under which designation the
old man will never appear) his Christian name, which, to
be sure, is Albano.
As Don Gaspard was about leaving Italy for Spain, he
had, through Schoppe, caused our Albano, or Cesara, to
be brought hither without any one's knowing why he did
it at so late a period. Was it his pleasure, perhaps, to
gaze into the full spring-time of the young twigs ? Did
he wish to unfold to the youth some rules for rustics in
the century-almanac of court life ? Would he imitate
the old Gauls, or the modern inhabitants of the Cape,
who never suffered their sons in their presence till they
were grown up and capable of bearing arms ? Was
nothing less than that his idea ? This much only I com
prehend, that I should be a very good-natured fool if I
were, in the very fore-court of the work, to suffer myself
to be burdened with the task of drawing and dotting out
from the few data that I now have, in the case of a man
so remarkable, and whose magnetic needle declines so
many degrees, — a Wilkes's magnetic table of inclinations ;
— he, not I, is the father of his son, to be sure, and he
knows of course why he did not send for him till his
beard was grown.
When it struck twenty-three o'clock (the hour before
sundown), and Albano would have counted up the tedi
ous strokes, he was so excited that he was not in a con
6 TITAN.

dition to ascend the long tone-ladder ; * he must away to

the shore of the Lago, in which the up-towering islands
rise like sceptred sea-gods. Here stood the noble youth,
his inspired countenance full of the evening glow, with
exalted emotions of heart, sighing for his veiled father,
who, hitherto, with an influence like that of the sun be
hind a bank of clouds, had made the day of his life warm
and light. This longing was not filial love, — that belonged
to his foster-parents, for childlike love can only spring
up toward a heart whereon we have long reposed, and
which has protected us, as it were, with the first heart's-
lcaves against cold nights and hot days, — his love was
higher or rarer. Across his soul had been cast a gigan
tic shadow of his father's image, which lost nothing by
Gaspard's coldness. Dian compared it to the repose on
the sublime countenance of the Juno Ludovici ; and the
enthusiastic son likened it to another sudden chill which
often comes into the heart in company with too great
warmth from another's heart, as burning-glasses burn fee
blest precisely in the hottest days. He even hoped he
might perchance melt off by his love this father's heart,
so painfully frozen to the glaciers of life : the youth com
prehended not how possible it was to resist a true, warm
heart, at least his.
Our hero, reared in the Carthusian monastery of rural
life, and more in past ages than his own, applied to every
subject antediluvian gigantic standards of measurement ;
the invisibility of the Knight constituted a part of his
greatness, and the Moses'-veil doubled the glory which
it concealed. Our youth had, in general, a singular lean
ing toward extraordinary men, of whom others stand in
dread. He read the eulogies of every great man with
• Scale. — Tr.
 PASSAGE TO ISOLA BELLA. J
as much delight as if they were meant for him ; and if
the mass of people consider uncommon spirits as, for that
very reason, bad, — just as they take all strange petrifac
tions to be Devil's bones, — in him the reverse was the
case : in him love dwelt a neighbor to wonder, and his
breast was always at the same time wide and warm. To
be sure, every young man and every great man who looks
upon another as great, considers him for that very reason
as too great. But in every noble heart burns a perpetual
thirst for a nobler, in the fair, for a fairer ; it wishes to
behold its ideal out of itself, in bodily presence, with glo
rified or adopted form, in order the more easily to attain
to it, because the lofty man can ripen only by a lofty one,
as diamond can be polished only by diamond. On the
other hand, does a litterateur, a cit, a newspaper carrier
or contributor wish to get a glimpse of a great head, —
and is he as greedy for a great head as for an abortion
with three heads, — or a Pope with as many caps, — or a
stuffed shark, — or a speaking-machine or a butter-ma
chine, — it is not because his inner man is burdened and
beset by the soul-inspiring ideal of a great man, pope,
shark, three-headed monster, or butter-model, but it is
because he thinks, in the morning, " I can't help wonder
ing how the creature looks," and because, in the evening,
he means to tell how he looks, over a glass of beer.
Albano looked from the shore with increasing restless
ness across the shining water toward the holy dwelling-
place of his past childhood, his departed mother, his ab
sent sister. The songs of gladness thrilled through him
as they came floating along on the distant boats ; every
running wave — the foaming surge — raised a higher in
his bosom ; the giant statue of St. Borromoeu.",* looking
* This statue, thirty-five ells high, on a pedestal of twenty-five ells,
8 TITAN.

away over the cities, embodied the exalted one (his

father) who stood erect in his heart, and the blooming
pyramid, the island, was the paternal throne ; the spar
kling chain of the mountains and glaciers wound itself
fast around his spirit, and lifted him up to lofty beings
and lofty thoughts.
The first journey, especially when Nature casts over
the long road nothing but white radiance and orange-
blossoms and chestnut-shadows, imparts to the youth what
the last journey often takes away from the man, — a
dreaming heart, wings for the ice-chasms of life, and
wide-open arms for every human breast.
He went back, and with his commanding eye begged
his friends to set sail this very evening, although Don
Gaspard was not to come to the island till to-morrow
morning. Often, what he wanted to do in a week, he
proposed to himself for the next day, and at last did it at
once. Dian tapped the impetuous Boreas on the head lov
ingly, and said : " Impatient being, thou hast here the wings
of a Mercury, and down there too (pointing to his feet) !
But just cool off ! In the pleasant after-midnight we
embark, and when the dawn reddens in the sky we land."
Dian had not merely an artistic eye to his well-formed
darling, but also a tender interest in him, because he had
often, in Blumenbuhl, where he had business as public
architect, been the friend and guide of his childhood and
youth, and because now on the island he must tear him
self from his arms for some time and be absent at Rome.
Since he (the public architect) considered the same ex-

in whose head twelve men can find room, stands near Arona, and is
exactly of a height with Isola Bella, which stands over against it, and
which rises on ten gardens or terraces built one upon another. —
Keysler'i Travels, tfc, Vol. I.
 PASSAGE TO ISOLA BELLA. 9
travagance which he would rebuke in an old man to be
no extravagance in a youth, — an inundation to be no in
undation in Egypt, though it would be in Holland, — and
since he assumed a different average temperature for
every individual, age, and people, and in holy human
nature found no string to be cut off, but only at most to
be tuned, surely Cesara must have cherished toward the
cheerful and indulgent teacher, on whose two tables of
laws stood only, Joy and moderation ! a right hearty at
tachment, even more hearty than for the laws them
selves.
The images of the present and of the near future and
of his father had so filled the breast of the Count with
greatness and immortality, that he could not comprehend
how any one could let himself be buried without having
achieved both, and that as often as the landlord brought
in anything, he pitied the man, particularly as he was al
ways singing, and, like the Neapolitans and Russians, in
the minor key, because he was never to be anything, cer
tainly not immortal. The latter is a mistake ; for he
gets his immortality here, and I take pleasure in giving
place and life to his name, Pippo (abbreviated from
Philippo). When, at last, they paid and were about to
go, and Pippo kissed a Kremnitz ducat, saying, " Praised
be the holy Virgin with the child on her right arm,"
Albano was pleased that the father took after his pious
little daughter, who had been all the evening rocking and
feeding an image of the child Jesus. To be sure, Schoppe
remarked, she would carry the child more lightly on her
left arm ; * but the error of the good youth is a merit in
him as well as the truth.
• The old Kremnitz ducats have the infant Jesus on the right ar"n;
but the new and lighter ones on the left.
1»
 IO TITAN.

Beneath the splendor of a full moon they went on

board the bark, and glided away over the gleaming
waters. Schoppe shipped some wines with them, "not
so much," said he, " that there is nothing to be had on the
island, as for this reavon, that if the vessel should leak,
then there would be no need of pumping out anything but
the flagons,* and she would float again.
Cesara sank, silently, deeper and deeper into the glim
mering beauties of the shore and of the night. The
nightingales warbled as if inspired on the triumphal gate
of spring. His heart grew in his breast like a melon
under its glass-bell, and his breast heaved higher and
higher over the swelling fruit. All at once he reflected
that he should in this way see the tulip-tree of the spark
ling morn and the garlands of the island put together
only like an artificial, Italian silk-flower, stamen by sta
men, leaf by leaf; then was he seized with his old thirst
for one single draining draught from Nature's horn of
plenty ; he shut his eyes, not to open them again, till he
should stand upon the highest terrace of the island before
the morning sun. Schoppe thought he was asleep ; but
the Greek smilingly guessed the epicurism of this arti
ficial blindness, and bound, himself, before those great
insatiable eyes the broad, black taffeta-ribbon, which, like
a woman's ribbon or lace mask, contrasted singularly and
sweetly with his blooming but manly face.
Now the two began to tease and tantalize him in a
friendly way with oral night-pictures of the magnificent
adornments of the shores between which they passed.
" How proudly," said Dian to Schoppe, " rises yonder the
• Franklin advised the preserving and corking up of vessels from
which nil the liquor had been drunk, iu order thereby to keep the ship
afloat.
 PASSAGE TO ISOLA BELLA. II
castle of Lizanza, and its mountain, like a Hercules, with
twelvefold girdles of vine-clusters ! " " The Count," said
Schoppe in a lower tone to Dian, " loses a vast deal by
this bandaging of his eyes. See you not, architect, to
speak poetically, the glimmer of the city of Arona ?
How beautifully she lays on Luna's blanc d'Espagne, and
seems to be setting herself out and prinking up for to
morrow in the powder-mantle of moonshine which is flung
around her ! But that is nothing ; still better looks St.
Borroma:us yonder, who has the moon on his head like a
freshly-washed nightcap ; stands not the giant there like
the Micromegas of the German body politic, just as high,
just as stiff and stark?"
The happy youth was silent, and returned for answer
a hand-pressure of love ; — he only dreamed of the pres
ent, and signified he could wait and deny himself. With
the heart of a child from whom the curtains and the
after-midnight hide the approaching Christmas present
of the morrow, he was borne along in the pleasure-boat,
with tightly bandaged eyes, toward the approaching
heavenly kingdom. Dian drew, as well as the double
light of the moonshine and the aurora permitted, a sketch
of the veiled dreamer in his scrap-book. I wish I had
it here, and could see in it how my darling, with the optic
nerves tied up, strains at once the eye of dream directed
toward the inner world, and the ear of attention so
sharply set toward the outer. How beautiful is such a
thing, painted, — how much more beautiful realized in
life !
The mantle of night grew thinner and cooler, — the
morning air fanned livingly against the breast, — the
larks mingled with the nightingales and with the singing
boatmen, — and he heard, beneath his bandage, which was
12 TITAN.

growing lighter and lighter, the joyful discoveries of his

friends, who saw in the open cities along the shore the
reviving stir of human life, and on the waterfalls of the
mountains the alternate reflections of clouds and ruddy
sky. At last the breaking splendors of morn hung like
a festoon of Hesperides-apples around the distant tops
of the chestnut-trees ; and now they disembarked upon
Isola Bella.
The veiled dreamer heard, as they ascended with him
the ten terraces of the garden, the deep-drawn sigh and
shudder of joy close beside him, and all the quick en
treaties of astonishment ; but he held the bandage fast,
and went blindfold from terrace to terrace, thrilled with
orange-fragrance, refreshed by higher, freer breezes,
fanned by laurel-foliage, — and when they had gained at
last the highest terrace, and looked down upon the lake,
heaving its green waters sixty ells below, then Schoppe
cried, "Now! now!" But Cesara said, "No! the sun
first!" and at that moment the morning wind flung up
the sunlight gleaming through the dark twigs, and it
flamed free on the summits, — and Dian snatched off the
bandage, and said, " Look round ! " "O God ! " cried ho
with a shriek of ecstasy, as all the gates of the new
heaven flew open, and the Olympus of nature, with its
thousand reposing gods, stood around him. What a
world ! There stood the Alps, like brother giants of the
Old World, linked together, far away in the past, holding
high up over against the sun the shining shields of the
glaciers. The giants wore blue girdles of forest, and
at their feet lay hills and vineyards, and through the
aisles and arches of grape-clusters the morning winds
played with cascades as with watered-silk ribbons, and
the liquid brimming mirror of the lake hung down by
 PASSAGE TO ISOLA BELLA. 13

the ribbons from the mountains, and they fluttered down

into the mirror, and a carved work of chestnut woods
formed its frame. . . . Albano turned slowly round and
round, looked into the heights, into the depths, into the
sun, into the blossoms ; and on all summits burned the
alarm-fires of mighty Nature, and in all depths their
reflections, — a creative earthquake beat like a heart
under the earth and sent forth mountains and seas. . . .
O then, when he saw on the bosom of the infinite mother
the little swarming children, as they darted by under
every wave and under every cloud, — and when the
morning breeze drove distant ships in between the Alps,
— and when hola Madre towered up opposite to him,
with her seven gardens, and tempted him to lean upon the
air and be wafted over on level sweep from his summit to
her own, — and when he saw the pheasants darting down
from the Madre into the waves, — then did he seem to
stand like a storm-bird with ruffled plumage on his
blooming nest, his arms were lifted like wings by the
morning wind, and he longed to cast himself over the
terrace after the pheasants, and cool his heart in the tide
of Nature.
Ashamed, he took, without looking round him, the
hands of his friends and pressed them to their breasts,
that he might not be obliged to speak. The magnificent
universe had painfully expanded, and then blissfully over
flowed his great breast; and now, when he opened his
eyes, like an eagle, wide and full upon the sun, and when
the blinding brightness hid the earth, and he began to be
lonely, and the earth became smoke and the sun a soft,
white world, which gleamed only around the margin, —
then did his whole, full soul, like a thunder-cloud, burst
asunder and burn and weep, and from the pure, white
 1+ TITAN.

sun hia mother looked upon him, and in the fire and
smoke of the earth his father and his life stood veiled.
Silently he went down the terraces, often passing his
hand across his moist eyes to wipe away the dazzling
shadow which danced on all the summits and all the steps.
Exalted Nature ! when we see and love thee, we love
our fellow-men more warmly ; and when we must pity
or forget them, thou still remainest with us, reposing be
fore the moist eye like a verdant chain of mountains in
the evening red. Ah, before the soul in whose sight the
morning dew of its ideals has faded to a cold, gray driz
zle, — and before the heart, which, in the subterranean
passages of this life, meets no longer men, but only dry,
crooked-up mummies on crutches in catacombs, — and
before the eye which is impoverished and forsaken, and
which no human creature will any longer gladden, —
and before the proud son of the gods whom his unbelief
and his lonely bosom, emptied of humanity, rivet down to
an eternal, unchangeable anguish, — before all these thou
remainest, quickening Nature, with thy flowers and moun
tains and cataracts, a faithful comforter; and the bleeding
son of the gods, cold and speechless, dashes the drop of
anguish from his eyes, that they may rest, far and clear,
on thy volcanoes, and on thy Springs, and on thy suns I

2. CYCLE.
1 COULD wish nothing finer for one whom I held
dear, than a mother, — a sister, — three years of liv
ing together on Isola Bella, — and then in the twentieth,
a morning hour when he should land on the Edcn-island,
and, enjoying all this with the eye and memory at once,
clasp and strain it to his open soul. O thou all too
 FIRST DAY OF JOY IN TITAN. IJ

happy Albano, on the rose-parterre of childhood, — un

der the deep, blue sky of Italy, — in the midst of luxu
riant, blossom-laden citron-foliage, — in the bosom of
beautiful nature, who caresses and holds thee like a
mother, and in the presence of sublime nature, which
stands like a father in the distance, and with a heart
which expects its own father to-day !
The three now roamed with slow, unsteady steps
through the swimming paradise. Although both of the
others had often trodden it before, still their silver age
became a golden age, by sympathy with Albano's ec
stasy ; the sight of another's rapture wakes the old im
pression of our own.. As people who live near breakers
and cataracts speak louder than others, so did the majes
tic sounding of the swollen sea of life impart to them all,
even Schoppe, a stronger language ; only he never could
hit upon such imposing words, at least gestures, as an
other man.
Schoppe, who must needs fling a farewell kiss back to
dear Italy, would gladly still have conserved the last
scattered drops that hung around the cup of joy, which
were sweet as Italian wines, full of German fire without
the German acid. By acid he meant leave-taking and
emotion. " If fate," said he, " fires a single retreating
shot, by Heaven, I quietly turn my nag and ride whis
tling back. The deuce must be in the beast (or on him)
if a clever jockey could not so break his mourning steed
that the creature should cany himself very well as a
companion-horse to the festive steed.* I school my sun-
horse as well as my sumpter-horse far otherwise."
First of all, now, they took possession of this Otaheite-
• The horse, in the funeral procession of a prince, that comes last,
and is decked out gayly for the successor of the deceased. — Te.
16 TITAN.

island by marches, and every one of its provinces must

pay them, as a Persian province does its emperor, a
different pleasure. " The lower terraces," said Schoppe,
" must deliver to us squatter-sovereigns the tithe of fruit
and sack, in citron and orange fragrance, — the upper
pays off the imperial tax in prospects, — the Grotto down
below there will pay, I hope, Jews-scot in the muemur of
waters, and the cypress-wood up yonder its princess's trib
ute in coolness, — the ships will not defraud us of their
Rhine and Neckar toll, but pay that down by showing
themselves in the distance."
It is not difficult for me to perceive that Schoppe, by
these quizzical sallies, aimed to allay the violent commo
tions of Cesara's brain and heart ; for the splendor of the
morning enchantment, although the youth spoke com
posedly of lesser things, bad not yet gone from his sight.
In him every excitement vibrated long afier (one in the
morning lasted the whole day), for the same reason that
an alarm-bell keeps on humming longer than a sheep-
bell ; although such a continuing echo could neither dis
tract his attention nor disturb his actions or his words.
The Knight was to come at noon. Meanwhile they
roamed and revelled and went humming about in stiller
enjoyment with bees-wings and bees-probosces through
the richly-honeyed Flora of the island ; and they had
that serene naturalness of children, artists, and Southern
people, which sips only from the honey-cup of the mo
ment ; and, accordingly, they found in every dashing
wave, in every citron-frame, in every statue among blos
soms, in every dancing reflection, in every darting ship,
more than one flower which opened its full cup wider
under the warm sky, whereas, with us, under our cold
one, it fares as with the bees, against whom the frosts of

-
 FIRST DAY OF JOY IN TITAN. 17

May shut the flowers up. O, the islanders are right!

Our greatest and most lasting error is, that we look for
life, that is, its happiness, as the materialists look for the
soul, in the combination of parts, as if the whole or the
relation of its component parts could give us anything
which each individual part had not already. Does then
the heaven of our existence, like the blue one over our
heads, consist of mere empty air, which, when near to,
and in little, is only a transparent nothing, and which
only in the distance and in gross becomes blue ether ?
The century casts the flower-seeds of thy joy only from
the porous sowing-machine of minutes, or rather, to the
blest eternity itself there is no other handle than the
instant. It is not that life consists of seventy years,
but the seventy years consist of a continuous life, and
one has lived, at all events, and lived enough, die when
one may.
3. CYCLE.

WHEN, at length, the three sons of joy were about

to seat themselves in the dining-hall of a laurel
grove before their meat-and-drink offering, which Schoppe
had stored away in the provision ship at Sesto, at that
moment, a genteel stranger, elegantly dressed in one color,
came through the twigs, with slow, stately steps, up to the
reclining company, and addressed himself, forthwith, with
out inquiry, to Cesara, in slow, soft, and precisely pro
nounced German : "I am intrusted with an apology to
Sir Count Cesara." — " From my father ? " asked he
quickly. "Beg pardon, — from my prince," replied the
stranger; "he forbade your noble father, who arose ill,
to travel in the cool of the morning, but towards evening
he will meet you. In the mean time," he added, with a
B
18 TITAN.

gracious smile and a slight bow, " I sacrifice something on

the noble Knight's account, in commencing the pleasure
of being longer with you hereafter, Sir Count, by bring
ing you disappointment." Schoppe, who was neater at
guessing than at speaking, immediately broke out, — for
he never let himself be imposed upon by any man : " We
are then pedagogic copartners and confederates. Wel
come, dear Gray-leaguesman ! " * " It gives me pleasure,"
said the stranger, coldly, who was dressed in gray.
But Schoppe had hit it ; the stranger was hereafter to
occupy the place of chief tutor to Cesara, and Schoppe
was collaborator. To me this seems judicious ; the elec
tric-sparkling Schoppe could serve as the cat's-skin,
the fox-tail, the glass cylinder, which should completely
charge our youth, composed as he was of conductors and
non-conductors ; the chief tutor, as principal, being the
operator and spark-taker, who should discharge him with
his Franklin's-points.
The man was named Von Augusti, was Lector to the
prince, and had lived much in the great world ; he
seemed, as is the case with all of this court-stamp, ten
years older than he really was, for he was in fact only
just thirty-seven.
One would have to suffer for it from the inverted ink
pots of the reviewing Xanthippes, if one should leave the
reviewers or Xanthippes in any uncertainty as to who the
prince really was of whom we have all made mention above.
It was the hereditary Prince of Ilohenfliess, in whose vil
lage of Blumenbiihl the Count had been brought up, and
into whose chief city he was next to remove. The Ilohen
fliess Infante was hurrying back, in a great dust and all
* Gray-league (Grau-biinden), the Swiss Canton of the Grisons. —
Tr.
 AUGUSTTS DINNER-DISCOURSE. 19

out of breath, from Italy, wherein he had left much spare

coin and land-scrip, to Germany, in order there to coin,
upon his own account, allegiance-medals, because his
reigning father was going down the steps into the hered
itary sepulchre, and was even now within a few paces
of his coffin.
During dinner the Lector Augusti spoke of the lovely
scenery with true taste, but with little warmth and im
pulse, preferring it by far to some Tempestas* in the
Boiromacan palace. Thence he passed on, in order to
have occasion of mentioning the Knight as often as pos
sible, to the personalities of the Court, and confessed
that the German gentleman, M. de Bouverot, stood in
especial favor, — for with courtiers and saints everything
goes by grace, — and that the Prince was uncommonly
afflicted in his nerves, Sec. Courtiers, who, for the most
part, cut their very souls according to the pattern of an
other's, do, however, draw up their ministerial reports of
court so copiously and seriously for the uninitiated, that
the reader of their gazettes must needs either laugh or
go to sleep ; a court-man and the book Des Erreurs et de
la Verite call the general of the Jesuits God, the Jesuits
men, and the non-Jesuits beasts. Schoppe listened with
a dreadful pucker and twist of feature ; he hated courts
bitterly. Young Albano thought not much better of
them ; nay, as he was fond of venture, and liked much
better to work and fight with the arm than with the fin
gers of the inner man, and delighted in tackling to the
snow-plough and harrow and sowing-machine of life war-
horses and thunder-steeds, instead of a team of clever
home- and field-horses, of course people who went care-
* Pictures by Peter Molyn, who, on account of his fine storms, was
called only Tempesta.
20 TITAN.

fully and considerately to work, and would rather do

light, lacquered work, and delicate ladies' work, than Her-
cules'-labors, he did not particularly fancy. However
he could not but feel a respect for the modesty of Au-
gusti, (based as it was upon a noble self-reliance,) which
never let him say a word about himself, as well as for the
knowledge he had gained by travel.
Cesara, — by the way I shall continue through this
Cycle to write it with a C, agreeably to the Spanish or
thography ; but in and after the 4th, since I am not
used to that letter in my orthography, and cannot be for
ever misrepresenting myself through a long book, it will
be written with a Z, — Cesara could not hear enough
from the Lector about his father. He related to him the
last act of the Knight in Rome, but with an irreligious
coldness which produced in the youth a chill of a differ
ent kind. Don Gaspard, namely, had laid a wager with
a German Nuncius, picture against picture, that he would
take a certain German (Augusti would not name him),
whose life was only one prolonged, moral filth-month in
the princely stable of Epicurus, and in two days, without
seeing him, would convert him for as long a time as the
Nuncio should desire. The latter accepted the wager,
but caused the German to be secretly watched. After
two days the German locked himself up, became devout,
pale, still, bed-ridden, and in conduct came near to a
true Christian. The Nuncio watched the mischief for a
week, then demanded the sudden retransformation, or the
Circe's wand, which should bring back again the beastly
shape. The Knight touched Ihe German with the wand,
and the Epicurean swine stood there perfectly sound and
well. I know not which is the more inexplicable, the
miracle, or the cold-bloodedness of the thing. But the
 SCHOPPE'S TABLE-TALK. zi

Lector could not say with what menstrua Gaspard forced

these rapid solutions and evaporations and precipitations.
At length the Lector, who had long been frappi with
the vocation and the collaboratorship of the singular
Schoppe, came, by polite circumlocutions, upon the ques
tion, how the Knight had become acquainted with him.
" Through the Pasquino," he replied. " Pie was just
stepping round the corner of the Palazzo degli Ursini,
when he saw some Romans and our hereditary prince
standing round a man who was on his knees (they were
my knees) before the statues of Pasquino and Marforio,
and offering to them the following prayer : Dear Castor
and Pollux ! why do ye not secularize yourselves out of
the ecclesiastical estate, and travel through my Germany
in partibus infidelium, or as two diligent vicars ? Could
you not go round among the cities of the empire as mis
sionary preachers and referendaries, or post yourselves
as chevaliers d'honneur and armorial bearers on either
side of a throne ? Would to God they might at least
vote thee, Pasquino, royal high-chaplain and master of
ceremonies in the court chapels, or let thee clown from
the roof by a rope at the christening as baptismal angel !
Say, could not you twins, now, once come forward and
speak as petition-masters-general in the halls of the Diet,
or, as magistri sententiarum, oppugn one another within
the walls of the universities on Commencement days ?
Pasquino, can no Delia Porta * restore thee, were it only
so far that thou mightest, at least, at Congresses and
treaty-makings of the diplomatic corps, play the si/hottet-
teur like the figure-head of the stove, or must you serve
at the highest only in university libraries, as the busts of
• The Pasquino is notoriously mutilated. — Delia Porta was a great
restorer of old statues.
22 TITAN.

critical editors ? Ah, gay pair, would that Chigi, who

stands here beside me, might only model you into a
portable pocket edition for ladies, I would put you by,
and not take you out of my pocket till I reached Ger
many ! I can, however, do it even here on the island,"
said Schoppe ; whereupon he drew forth the satirical work
of art ; for the renowned architect and modeller, Chigi,
who heard him, had really cast a copy of it. Schoppe
went on to tell how Don Gaspard then seriously stepped
up to him, and asked him, in Spanish, who he was. " I
am (he answered also in Spanish) actual Titular libra
rian to the Grand Master at Malta, and a descendant of
the so-called grammatical dog, the toothed humanist,
Scioppius (German Schoppe) ; my baptismal name is
Pero, Piero, Pietro (Peter). But many here call me, by
mistake, Sciupio or Sciopio (extravagance)."
Gaspard had an impartial, deep-reaching eye for every
spirit, even though it were most unlike his own ; and,
least of all, did he seek a repetition of himself. He
therefore took the librarian home with him. Since, now,
the latter seemed to live solely by portrait-painting, and
was besides just meaning to go back to Germany, he ac
cordingly proposed to this rich, many-eyed, rough spirit,
Albano's society, which only the present fellow-laborer,
Augusti, was to share with him. But there were four
things which the librarian demanded beforehand, as pre
liminaries, — a sitting from the Count, his profile, and —
when both these had been granted — yet a third and a
fourth, in the following terms : " Must I suffer myself to
be calendered * by the three estates, and forced to take
on gloss and smoothness by polishing-presses ? I will
not ; whithersoever else, be it to heaven or hell, I will
• 1. 8. to bo pressed between two wooden cylinders and a metallio one.
 SCHOPPE'S CONTRACT. 23

accompany your son, but not into the stamping-wash-

ing-roasting-melting-and-forcing-works of great houses."
This was granted easiest of all ; besides, the second Im
perial vicegerent of the paternal supremacy, Augusti,
was appointed to the business in question. But upon the
fourth point they came near fulling out. Schoppe, who
would rather be an outlaw than a slave or a freedman,
and whose ground, no less imperially free than fruitful,
would not endure a hedge, could accommodate himself
only to accidental, undetermined services, and felt obliged
to decline the fixum of a salary. " I will," said he, " de
liver occasional sermons, but none of your weekly ser
mons ; nay, it may be, oftentimes, I shall not enter the
desk for a half-year together." The Knight considered
it beneath him to be under obligations, and drew back,
till Schoppe hit upon the diagonal road, and said he
would give his society as a don gratuit, .and should ex
pect of the Knight, from time to time, a considerable don
gratuit in return. As for the rest, Schoppe was now full
as dear to the Knight as the first-best Turk of the Court
who had ever helped him up his carriage-steps ; his trial
of a man was like a post-mortem examination, and after
the trial he neither loved nor hated more cordially ; to
him, as he looked into the show-piece of blustering life,
the manager and the first and second mistresses, and the
Lears and Iphigenias and heroes were no friends, nor
were the Kasperls and the tyrants and supernumeraries
foes, but they were simply different actors in different
parts. Ah, Gaspard, standest thou, then, in the front box,
and not also on the stage of life itself? And dost thou
not in the great drama recognize, like Hamlet, a lesser
one ? Ay, does not every stage imply, after all, a two
fold life, — a copying and a copied ?
24 TITAN.

Either the glass or two (or more) of wine, or else his an

noying contrast to the elegant, sedate Lector, set Schoppe's
winnowing-mill with all its wheels in motion, though this
humor of his found small scope on the enchanting island ;
and when Augusti expressed a wish that Schoppe might
go to Germany under happier auspices than other painters,
the latter drew forth a pack of gilded pictures of German
patron saints, and said, shuffling them : " Many a one
would here lay a papal miserere on the desk and sing it
off, particularly if, like me, he had to go into winter quar
ters among the German ice and fog-banks in the middle
of spring ; — and it is with reluctance, I am free to con
fess, I leave the Harlequin and Pulzinella and Scapin,
and the whole comedia deW arte behind. But the gentle
men saints whom I here shuffle have brought the lands
under their charge into high and dry condition, and one
passes through them with comfort. Mr. Architect, you
laugh, but you know altogether too little of what these
painted heavenly advowees hourly undertake in behalf
of the German circles. Mr. Architect, show me, after
all, a country anywhere, in which so many cudgels, pro
grammes, professors, Perukes-allongees, learned advertise
ments, imperial notices, cits and surburbans, ceremonies,
coronations, and Heidelberg tubs, but without indwelling
Diogeneses, are to be mustered together as in the afore
mentioned ? Or I appeal to you, Mr. Von Augusti ! Point
out to me, I pray, one single territory which is provided
with such a Long Parliament, namely, a most lengthy
Diet of the Empire, as it were, an extraordinarily whole
some pillala perpetua * which the patient is incessantly
• This pill consists of Antimonia Regia, and by reason of its hard
ness may be swallowed over and over again with tho same effect each
time; only a little wino is sprinkled on it before each repetition of the
experiment.
 ALBANO'S FEELINGS. 25

swallowing, and which as incessantly purges him ; and

who is not reminded, as well as myself, in this connec
tion, of the capitvlatio perpetua, and in general of the
body politic of the Empire, that perpetuum immobile to
the very foundations ? " Here Schoppe drank. " The
body of the Empire becomes thereby, like the first prin
ciple of morals, or like virgin earth, altogether insoluble ;
nay, supposing one of us were to take an electoral sword,
and cut it in two therewith, as if it were an earwig, still the
half with the teeth would, like the cloven earwig, turn
round and eat the latter half clean up, — and then there
would be the whole continuous earwig re-joined and well
fed into the bargain. It is not by any means to be re
gretted as a consequence of this close nexus of the Empire,
that the corpus can devour and digest its own limbs, as the
brook-crab does its stomach, without any real harm to
itself, so that the corpus, like a Homeric god, can only be
wounded, but not killed. Take this bunchy polypus-stalk,
I often say, mash it to a pulp with Ro-el, — turn it wrong
side outward like a glove, — like Lichtenberg, cut the
polypus in two dexterously with a hair, — like Tremb-
ley, stick and incorporate several severed limbs into one
another, as other naturalists do imperial cities, abbeys,
small provinces into greater, or the reverse, — and then
examine after some days ; verily, magnificent and whole
and well, thy polypus will be found sitting there again,
or my name is not Schoppe."
The Count had heard him again and again on this sub
ject, and could therefore more easily and properly smile ;
the Lector, however, was learning all this for the first
time, and even the comic actor is not such to his new
hearers. But amidst all these diversions there still sound
ed on in Albano's soul a confused tumult, like the mur
3
26 TITAN.

muring of the waterfall of the coming times. He peered

longingly through the wavering seams of the laurel-fo
liage, out toward the shining hills, when Dian said, in his
painter's-language : " Is it not as if all the gods stood, with
thousands of cornucopias, on the mountains around Lago
Maggiore, and poured down wine and cascades, till the
lake, like a goblet of joy, foams over and gushes down
with the brimming juice?" Schoppe replied: "Pleas
ures of exceeding flavor, like pineapples, have the mis
fortune, that, like pineapples, they make the gums bleed."
" I think," said Augusti, " that one ought not to reflect
much upon the pleasures of life, any more than upon the
beauties of a good poem ; one enjoys both better without
counting or dissecting them." " And I," said Ccsara,
" would calculate and dissect from very pride ; whatever
came of it I would abide, and I should be ashamed to be
unhappy about it. If life, like the olive, is a bitter fruit,
then grasp both with the press, and they will afford the
sweetest oil." Here he rose to remain alone on the island
till evening ; he asked indulgence, but gave no excuse.
His lofty, ambitious soul was incapable of descending to
the smallest lie, even towards an animal. In IJlumen-
biihl he used daily to entice the wild pigeons near him
by holding out food ; and his foster-sister often begged
him to catch one ; but he always said, " No," for he would
not betray the confidence even of a brute creature.
While they followed him with their eyes, as he slowly
retired through the laurel shades, with the shadows dan
cing after him and stray sunbeams gliding down over him,
and, as in a dream, gently bent the branches apart with
his hands extended before him, Dian broke forth : " What
a statue of Jupiter ! " " And the ancients," said Schoppe,
joining in, " believed, moreover, that every god dwelt in
 EFFERVESCENCE OF YOUTII. 27

his own statue." " A magnificent, threefold breadth of

brow, nasal bridge, and breast ! " continued Dian. " A
Hercules planting olive-trees on Olympus ! " " It struck
me very much," said the Lector, " that, after considerable
study, I could read in his countenance what I wished and
what was mutually contradictory, — coldness, warmth, in
nocence and gentleness, most readily defiance and force."
Schoppe added: "It may be still harder for himself to
compel such a congress of warring powers within him to
become a peace-congress." " How beautifully," said the
humanly feeling Dian, " must love sit upon so mighty a
form, and how sublimely must anger ! " " Those are two
poetic beauties," replied Schoppe, " out of which two
Pedagogiarchs and Zenophons, like us, can make little
with their Cyrus in their Cyropaedia."

4. CYCLE.

ZESARA had tasted only three glasses of wine ; but

the must of his thick, hot blood fermented under it
mightily. The day grew more and more into a Daphnian
and Delphic grove, in whose whispering and steamy thicket
he lost himself deeper and deeper, — the sun hung in the
blue like a white glistening snow-ball, — the glaciers cast
their silvery glances down into the green, — from distant
clouds it thundered occasionally,* as if spring were rolling
along in his triumphal chariot far away towards us at the
north, — the living glow of the climate and the hour, and
the holy fire of two raptures-, the remembered and the ex
pected, warmed to life all his powers. And now that fever
of young health seized upon him, in which it always seemed
• Tirare di primavere, the people call it; nnd Peter Schoppe trans
lated it grandly enough, Electrical pitiol-Jiring of spring.
28 TITAN.

to him as if a particular heart beat in every limb, — the

lungs and the heart are heavy and full of blood, — the
breath is hot as a Harmattan wind, — and the eye dark in
its own blaze, — and the limbs are weary with energy.
In this overcharge of the electrical cloud he had a pecu
liar passion for destroying. When younger, he often re
lieved himself by rolling fragments of rock to a summit
and letting them roll down, or by running on the full gal
lop till his breath grew longer, or most surely by hurting
himself with a penknife (as he had heard of Cardan's
doing), and even bleeding himself a little occasionally.
Seldom do ordinary, and still seldomer extraordinary, men
attain full-blooming youth of body and spirit, but when it
does happen, so much the more luxuriantly does one root
bear a whole flower-garden.
With such emotions Albano now stood alone behind the
palace towards the south, when a sport of his boyish
years occurred to him.
He had, namely, often in May, during a heavy wind,
climbed up into a thick-limbed apple-tree, which supported
a whole green hanging cabinet, and had laid himself down
in the arms of its brandies. And when, in this situation,
the wavering pleasure-grove swung him about amidst the
juggling play of the lily-butterflies and the hum of bees
and insects and the clouds of blossoms, and when the
flaunting top now buried him in rich green, now launched
him into deep blue, and now into the sunshine, then did
his fancy stretch the tree to gigantic dimensions : it grew
alone in the Universe, as if it were the tree of endless
life, its root pierced far down into the abyss, the white-red
clouds hung upon it as blossoms, the moon as a fruit, the
little stars glistened like dew, and Albano reposed in its
infinite summit, and a storm swayed the summit from day
into night and from night into day.
 ALBANO AND THE ALPS. 29

And now he stood looking up to a tall cypress. A

southeast breeze had arisen from its siesta in Rome, and
flying along had cooled itself by the way in the tops of
the lemon-trees and in a thousand brooks and shadows,
and now lay cradled in the arms of the cypress. Then
he climbed up the tree, in order at least to tire himself.
But how did the world stretch out before him, with its
woods, its islands, and its mountains, when be saw the
thunder-cloud lying over Rome's seven hills, just as if
that old spirit were speaking from the gloom which once
wrought in the seven hills as in seven Vesuviuses, that
had stood before the face of the earth so many centuries
with fiery columns, with erect tempests, and had over
spread it with clouds and ashes and fertility, till they at
last burst themselves asunder! The mirror-wall of the
glaciers stood, like his father, unmelted before the warm
rays of heaven, and only glistened and remained cold
and hard, — from the broad expanse of the lake the sunny
hills seemed on every hand to rise as from their bath, and
the little ships of men seemed to lie fast stranded in the
distance, — and, floating far and wide around him, the
great spirits of the past went by, and under their invisible
tread only the woods bowed themselves, the flower-beds
scarcely at all. Then did the outward past become in
Albano his own future, — no melancholy, but a thirst after
all greatness that inhabits and uplifts the spirit, and a
shrinking from the unclean baits of the future painfully
compressed his eyelids, and heavy drops fell from them.
He came down, because his internal dizziness grew at last
to a physical. His rural education and the influence of
Dian, who reverenced the modest course of nature, had
preserved the budding garden of his faculties from the
untimely morning sun and hasty growth ; but the expec
30 TITAN.

tution of the evening and the journey he had taken had

conspired to make the day of his life now too warm and
stimulating.
Roaming and dreaming, he lost himself among orange-
blossoms. Suddenly it was to him as if a sweet stirring
in his inmost heart made it enlarge painfully, and grow
void, and then full again. Ah, he knew not that it was the
fragrances which he had here in childhood so often drunk
into his bosom, and which now darkly but powerfully
called back every fantasy and remembrance of the past,
for the very reason that fragrances, unlike the worn-out
objects of the eye and car. seldomer present themselves,
and therefore the more easily and intensely renew the
faded sensations. But when he happened into an arcade
of the palace, which was colored mosaically with variegat
ed stones and shells, and when he saw the waves playing
and dancing on the threshold of the grotto, then did a
moss-grown past all at once reveal itself: he sounded
his recollections, — the colored stones of the grotto lay as it
were full of inscriptions of a former time before his mem
ory. Ah, here had he been a thousand times with his
mother ! She had showed him the shells and forbidden
him to approach the waves ; and once, as the sun was ris
ing and the rippled lake and all the pebbles glistened, he
had waked up on her bosom, in the midst of the blaze of
lights.
O, was not, then, the place sacred, and was not here the
overpowering desire pardonable, which he had so long felt
to-day, to open a wound in his arm for the relief of the
restless and tormenting blood ?
He scratched himself, but accidentally too deep, and
with a cool and pleasant exaltation of his more lightly-
breathing nature he watched the red fountain of his arm
 RECOGNITION OF A FATHER. 31

in the setting sun, and became, as if a burden had fallen

off from him, calm, sober, still, and tender. He thought
of his departed mother, whose love remained now forever
unrequited. Ah, gladly would he have poured out this
blood for her, — and now, too, love for his sickly father
gushed up more warmly than ever in his bosom. O come
soon, said his heart, I will love thee so inexpressibly, thou
dear Father !
The sun grew cold on the damp earth, — and now only
the indented mural crown formed by the golden steps of
the glacier-peaks glowed above the spent clouds, — and
the magic-lantern of nature threw its images longer and
fainter every moment, when a tall form, in an open red
mantle, came slowly along towards him round the cedar-
trees, pressed with the right hand the region of its heart,
where little sparks glimmered, and with the half-raised
left crushed a waxen mask into a lump, and looked down
into its own breast. Suddenly it stiffened against the
wall of the palace in a petrified posture. Albano placed
his hand upon his light wound, and drew near to the pet
rified one. What a form ! From a dry, haggard face
projected between eyes which gleamed on, half hid be
neath their sockets, a contemptuous nose with a proud
curl, — there stood a cherub with the germ of the fall,
a scornful, imperious spirit, who could not love aught,
not even his own heart, hardly a higher, — one of those
terrible beings who exalt themselves above men, above
misfortune, above the earth, and above conscience, and to
whom it is all the same whatever human blood they shed,
whether another's or their own.
It was Don Gaspard.
The sparkling chain of his order, made of steel and
precious stones, betrayed him. He had been seized with
32 TITAN.

the catalepsy, his old complaint. " O father ! " said Al-
bano, with terror, and embraced the immovable form ; but
it was as if he clasped cold death to his heart. He
tasted the bitterness of a hell, — he kissed the rigid lip,
and cried more loudly, — at last, letting fall his arm, he
started back from him, and the exposed wound bled again
without his feeling it ; and gnashing his teeth with wild,
youthful love and with anguish, and with great ice-drops
in his eyes, he gazed upon the mute form, and tore its
hand from its heart. At this Gaspard, awaking, opened
his eyes, and said, " Welcome, my dear son ! " Then the
child, with overmastering bliss and love, sank on his
father's heart, and wept, and was silent. " Thou bleedest,
Albano," said Gaspard, softly holding him off; "bandage
thyself!" " Let me bleed; I will die with thee, if thou
diest! O, how long have I pined for thee, my good
father!" said Albano, yet more deeply agitated by his
father's sick heart, which he now felt beating more heav
ily against his own. " Very good ; but bandage thyself ! "
said he ; and as the son did it, and while hurrying on the
bandage, gazed with insatiable love into the eye of his
father, — that eye which cast only cold glances like his
jewelled ring ; just then, on the chestnut-tops which had
been to-day the throne of the morning sun, the soft moon
opened soothingly her holy eye, and it was to the in
flamed Albano, in this home of his childhood and his
mother, as if the spirit of his mother were looking from
heaven, and calling down, " I shall weep if you do not
love each other." His swelling heart overflowed, and he
said softly to his father, who was growing paler in the
moonlight, " Dost thou not love me, then ? " " Dear
Alban," replied the father, "one cannot answer thee
enough : thou art very good, — it is very good." But
 THE MYSTERIOUS COMMISSION. 33

with the pride of a love which boldly measured itself with

his father's, he seized firmly the hand with the mask, and
looked on the Knight with fiery eyes. "My son," re
plied the weary one, " I have yet much to say to thee to
day, and little time, because I travel to-morrow, — and I
know not how long the beating of my heart will let me
speak." Ah, then, that previous sign of a touched soul
had been only the sign of a disordered pulse. Thou
poor son, how must thy swollen sea stiffen before this
sharp air, — ah, how must thy warm heart cleave to the
ice-cold metal, and tear itself away not without a skin-
peeling wound !
But, good youth ! who of us could blame thee that
wounds should attach thee as it were by a tic of blood to
thy true or false demigod, — although a demigod is of-
tener joined to a demi-beast than a demi-man, — and that
thou shouldst so painfully love I Ah, what ardent soul
has not once uttered the prayer of love in vain, and then,
lamed by the chilling poison, like other poisoned victims,
not been able any longer to move its heavy tongue and
heavy heart ! But love on, thou warm soul ! like spring-
flowers, like night-butterflies, tender love at last breaks
through the hard-frozen soil, and every heart, which de
sires nothing else than a heart, finds at last its bosom !

5. CYCLE.

THE Knight took him up to a gallery supported by

a row of stone pillars, which lemon-trees strewed all
over with perfumes and with little, lively shadows, silver-
edged by the moon. He drew two medallions from his
pocket-book, — one represented a remarkably youthful-
looking female face, with the circumscription, " Nous ne
2* c
34 TITAN.

nous verrons jamais, mon fils." " Here is thy mother,"

said Gaspard, giving it to him, " and here thy sister " ;
and handed him the second, whose lines ran into an indis
tinct, antiquated shape, with the circumscription, "Nous
nous verrons un jour, mon frere." He now began his
discourse, which he delivered in such a low tone and in
so many loose sheets (one comma often coming at one
end of the gallery and the next at the other), and with
such an alternation of quick and slow paces, that the ear
of any eavesdropping inquisitor keeping step with them,
under the gallery, had there been one down there, could
not have caught three drops of connected sound. " Thy
attention, dear Alban," he continued, " not thy fancy,
must now be put on the stretch. Thou art, unhappily, to
day too romantic for one who is to hear so many romantic
things. The Countess of Cesara ever loved the mysteri
ous; thou wilt perceive it in the commission which she gave
me a few days before her death, and which I was obliged
to promise I would execute this very Good-Friday."
He said further, before beginning, that, as his catalepsy
and palpitation of the heart increased critically, he must
hasten to Spain to arrange his affairs, and, still more,
those of his ward, the Countess of Romeiro. Alban
made one brotherly inquiry about his dear sister, so long
separated from him ; his father gave him to hope he
should soon see her, as she intended to visit Switzerland
with the Countess.
As I do not perceive what people will gain by it, if I
insert those (to me) annoying geese-feet* with the ever
lasting " said he," I will relate the commission in person.
There would, at a certain time (the Knight said), come
to him three unknown persons, — one in the morning, one
* Quotation-marks. — Tn.
 A GROTESQUE TESTAMENT. 3;

at noon, and one in the evening, — and each one would

present him a card, in a sealed envelope, containing
merely the name of the city and the house wherein the
picture-cabinet, which Albano must visit the very same
night, was to be found. In this cabinet he must touch
and press all the nails of the pictures till he comes to
one behind which the pressure makes a repeating-clock,
built into the wall, strike twelve. Here he finds behind
the picture a secret arras-door, behind which sits a fe
male form with an open souvenir and three rings on her
left hand, and a crayon in her right. When he presses
the ring of the middle finger, the form will rise amidst
the rolling of the internal whcelwork, step out into the
chamber, and the wheelwork, which is running down, will
stop with her at a wall whereon she indicates, by the
crayon, a hidden compartment, in which lie a pocket-
perspective glass and the waxen impression of a coffin-
key. The eye-glass of the perspective arranges by an
optical anamorphosis the snarl of withering lines on the
medallion of his sister, which he had to-day received,
into a sweet, young form, and the object-glass gives back
to the immature image of his mother the lineaments of
mature life. Then he is to press the ring-finger, and
immediately the dumb, cold figure will begin to write
with the crayon in the souvenir, and designate to him, in
a few words, the place of the coffin, of whose key he has
the waxen impression. In the coffin lies a black marble
slab, in the form of a black Bible ; and when he has
broken it he will find a kernel therein, from which is to
grow the Christmas-tree of his whole life. If the slab is
not in the coffin, then he is to give the last ring of the
little finger a pressure, — but what this wooden Guerike's
weather-prophet of his destiny would do, the Knight
himself could not predict.
 36 TITAN.

I am fully of opinion that from this bizarre testament

the repeating-work and half of the wheel-work might
easily be broken out, (just as clocks are now made in
London with only two wheels,) without doing the dial-
work or the movement of the hands the least injury.
Upon Albano all this testamentary whirl and whiz had,
contrary to my expectation, almost no effect ; excepting
to produce a more tender love for the good mother who,
when she already beheld, in the stream of life below, the
swift image of the pouncing hawk of death, thought only
of her son. Upon the fixed, iron countenance of his father
he so gazed during this narrative with tender gratitude
for the pains he had taken to remember and relate, as
almost to lose the thread of the discourse, and in the
moonshine and to the eye of his fancy the Knight grew
to a Colossus of Rhodes, hiding half the horizon of the
present, a being for whom this testamentary memory-
work seemed almost too trivial.
Thus far Don Gaspard had spoken merely as a genuine
man of the world, who always excludes from his speech
(into which no special, intimate relations intrude) all men
tion or flattery of a person, of others as well as of him
self, and regards even historical persons merely as condi
tions of things, so that two such impersonalities with their
grim coldness seemed to be only two speaking logics or
sciences, not living beings with beating hearts. O, how
softly did it flow, like a tender melody, into Albano's love
sick heart, which the pure and mild moon, and the glim
mering island-garden of his early days, and the voice
of his mother sounding on and echoing in his soul, all
conspired to melt, when at length the father said : " So
much have I to tell of the Countess. Of myself I have
nothing to say to thee but to express my constant satisfac-

V
\.
 DON GASPARD'S COUNSELS. 37
tion hitherto with thy life." " O, give me, dearest father,
instruction and counsel for my future government," said
the enraptured man, and as Gaspard's right hand twitched
convulsively toward his more hurriedly beating heart, he
followed it with his left to the sick spot and pressed in
tensely the hysterical heart as if he could arrest by grasp
ing at the spokes this down-hill-rolling wheel of life. The
Knight replied : " I have nothing more to say to thee.
The Linden City (Pestitz) is now open to thee ; thy
mother had shut it against thee. The hereditary Prince,
who will soon be Prince, and the minister, Von Froulay,
who is my friend, will be thine. I believe it will be of
service to thee to cultivate their acquaintance."
The sharp-sighted Gaspard saw at this moment sud
denly flit across the pure, open countenance of the youth
strange emotions and hot blushes, which nothing immediate
could explain, and which instantly passed away, as if an
nihilated, when he thus continued : " To a man of rank,
sciences and polite learning, which to others are final
ends, are only means and recreations ; and great as thy
inclination for them may be, thou wilt, however, surely, in
the end give actions the preference over enjoyments; thou ,
wilt not feel thyself born to instruct or amuse men merely, '
but to manage and to rule them. It were well if thou
couldst gain the minister, and thereby the knowledge of
government and political economy which he can give
thee ; for in the sketch of one country as well as of one
court thou hast the grand outlines of every greater one
to which thou mayest be called, and for which thou wilt
have to educate thyself. It is my wish that thou shouldst
be even a favorite of the Prince and the Court, less be
cause thou hast need of connections than because thou
needest experience. Only through men are men to be
38 TITAN.

subdued and surpassed, not by books and superior quali

ties. One must not display his worth in order to gain
men, but gain them first, and then, and not until then,
show his worth. There is no calamity like ignorance; and
not so much by virtue as by understanding is man made
formidable and fortunate. Thou hast at most to shun men
who are too like thee, particularly the noble." The cor
rosive sublimate of his irony consisted here, not in his
pronouncing " noble " with an accented, ironical tone, but
in his pronouncing it, contrary to what might have been
expected, coldly and without any tone at all. Albano's
hand, still on his, had for some time slipped down from
his father's heart along the sharp-edged steel chain of his
order to the golden, metal-cold Iamb that hung from it.
The youth, like all young men and hermits, had too severe
notions of courtiers and men of the world : he held them
to be decided basilisks and dragons, — although I can still
excuse that, if he means by basilisks only what the natu
ralists mean, — wingless lizards, — and by dragons, noth
ing but winged ones, and thus regards them only as am
phibia, hardly less cold and odious than Linnreus defines
such to be. Besides, he cherished (so easily does Plu
tarch become the seducer of youth whose biographer ho
might have been, like me) more contempt than reverence
for the artolatry (loaf and fish service) of our age, always
transubstantiating (inversely) its god into bread, — for
the best bread-studies or bread-carts, — for the making of
a carriere, — for every one, in short, who was not a dare
devil, and who, instead of catapultas and war machines,
operated with some sort of invisible magnetic wands, suc
tion-works, and cupping-glasses, and took anything in that
way. Every young man qas a fine season in his life when
he will accept no office, and every young woman has the
 EFFECT ON ALBANO. 39

same in hers, when she will accept no husband ; by and

by they both change, and often take one another into the
bargain.
As the Knight advanced the above propositions, cer
tainly not offensive to any man of the world, there swelled
in his son a holy, generous pride, — it seemed to him as
if his heart and even his body, like that of a praying saint,
were lifted by a soaring genius far above the race-courses
of a greedy, creeping age, — the great men of a greater
time passed before him under their triumphal arches, and
beckoned him to come nearer to them : in the east lay
Rome and the moon, and before him the Circus of the
Alps, — a mighty Past by the side of a mighty Present.
With the proud and generous consciousness that there is
something more godlike in us than prudence and under
standing, he laid hold of his fattier, and said : " This whole
day, dear father, has been one increasing agitation in my
heart. I cannot speak nor think rightly for emotion.
Father, I will visit them all ; I will soar away above
men; but I despise the dirty road to the object. I will in
the sea of the world rise like a living man by swimming,
and not like a drowned man by corruption. Yes, father,
let Fate cast a gravestone upon this breast, and crush it,
when it has lost virtue and the divinity and its own heart."
What made Albano speak so warmly was that he could
not avoid an irrepressible veneration for the great soul of
the Knight ; he continually represented to himself the
pangs and the lingering death of so strong a life, the
sharp smoke of so great a coldly quenched fire, and in
ferred from the emotions of his own living soul what
must be those of his father, who in his opinion had only
gradually thus crumbled upon a broad bed of black, cold
worldlings, as the diamond cannot be volatilized except
on a bed of dead, burnt-out, blacksmith's coals.
40 TITAN.

Don Gaspard, who seldom, and then only mildly, found

fault with men, — not from love, but from indifference, —
patiently replied to the youth : " Thy warmth is to be
praised. All will come right in good time. Now let
us eat."
6. CYCLE.

THE banquet-hall of our Islanders was in the rich

palace of the absent Borromamn family. They
conceded to the lovely island the prize-apple of Paris and
the laurel-wreath. Augusti and Gaspard wrote their eulo
gies upon it in a clear, easy style, only Gaspard used the
more antitheses. Albano's breast was filled with a new
world, his eye with radiance, his cheeks with joyous blood.
The Architect extolled as well the taste as the purse of
the hereditary Prince, who by means of both had brought
with him to his country, not artistic masters indeed, but
still masterpieces, and at whose instance this very Dian
was going to Italy to take casts for him there of the an
tiques. Schoppe replied : " I hope the German is as well
supplied with painters' academies and painters' colics as
any other people ; our pictures on goods, our illuminat
ed Theses in Augsburg, our margins of newspapers, and
our vignettes in every dramatic work, (whereby we had
an earlier Shakespeare Gallery than London,) our gallows-
birds hung in effigy, — are well known to every one, and
show at first sight how far we carry the thing. But I will
even allow that Greeks and Italians paint as well as we ;
still we tower far above them in this, that we, like nature
and noble suitors, never seek isolated beauty, without
connected advantage. A beauty which we cannot also
roast, sell at auction, wear, or marry, passes with us only
for just what it is worth ; beauty is with us (I hope)
 SCHOPPE QUIZZES GERMAN TASTE. 41

never anything else but selvage and trimming to utility,

just as, also, at the Diet of the Empire, it is not the side-
tables of confectionery, but the session-tables, that are the
proper work-tables of the body politic. Genuine Beauty
and Art are therefore with us set, painted, stamped only
on things which at the same time bring in something; e. g.
fine Madonnas only in the journals of fashion, — etched
leaves only on packages of tobacco-leaves, — cameos on
pipe-bowls, — gems on seals, and wood-cuts on tallies;
flower-pieces are sought, but on bandboxes, — faithful
Wouwermanns, but in horses' stalls before the stallions,*
— bas-reliefs of princes' heads, either on dollars or on
Bavarian beer-pitcher covers, but both must be of
unalloyed pewter, — rose-pieces and lily-pieces, but on
tattooed women. On a similar principle, in Basedow's sys
tem of education, beautiful painting and the Latin vocab
ulary were always linked together, because the Institute
more easily retains the latter by the help of the former.
So, too, Van der Kabel never painted a hare to order,
without requiring for himself one freshly-shot model after
another to eat and copy. So again, the artist Calcar
painted beautiful hose, but painted them immediately on
to his own legs."
The Knight heard such talk with pleasure, though he
neither laughed at nor imitated it ; to him all colors in the
prism of genius were agreeable. Only to the Architect it
was not enough in Greek taste, and not courtly enough for
the Lector. The latter turned round to the departing
Dian, with a somewhat flattering air, while Schoppe was
recovering breath for renewed detraction of us Germans,
• A good Wouwermann moans, in painters' language, a well-exe-
cated horse, the sight of which has an influence on the beauty of the
future colt.
42 TITAN.

and said : " Formerly Rome took away from other lands
only works of art, but. now artists themselves."
Schoppe continued : " So also our statues are no idle,
dawdling citizens, but they all drive a trade ; — such as are
caryates hold up houses ; such as are angels bear baptis
mal vessels ; and heathen water-gods labor at the public
fountains, and pour out water into the pitchers of the
maidens."
The Count spoke warmly for us, the Lector brilliantly :
the Knight remarked, that the German taste and the Ger
man talent for poetic beauties made good and explained
their want of both for other beauties (on the ground of
climate, form of government, poverty, &e). The Knight
resembled a celestial telescope, through which the planets
appear larger and the suns smaller ; like that instrument,
he took away from suns their borrowed lustre, without re
storing to thein their true and greater glory : he cut in
twain, indeed, the noose of a Judas, but he extinguished
the halo on a Christ's head, and in general he sought to
make out ingeniously a parity and equality between dark
ness and light.
Schoppe was never silenced (I am sorry that in his
toleration-mandate for Europe the German Circles should
have been left out). He began again: "The little which
I just brought forward in praise of the serviceable Ger
mans has, it seems, provoked contradiction. But the
slight laurel-crown which I place upon the holy body of
the Empire shall never blind my eyes to the bald spots.
I have often thought it commendable in Socrates and
Christ, that they did not teach in Hamburg, in Vienna,
or in any Brandenburg city, and go through the streets
with their disciples ; they would have been questioned, in
the name of the magistrates, whether they could not
 THE FATHKR OF DEATH. 43

work ; and had both been with families in Wctzlar, they

would have extorted from the latter the negligence-money.*
Touching the poetic art, Sir Knight, I have known many
a citizen of the Empire who could make but little out of
an ode unless it were upon himself: he fnncied he could
tell when poetic liberties infringed upon the liberty of
the Empire : such a man, who certainly always marched
to his work regularly, composedly, and considerately in
Saxon term-times, was exceedingly pained and perplexed
by poetic flights. And is it, then, so unaccountable and
bad ? The worthy inhabitant of an imperial city binds
on in front a napkin when he wishes to weep, in order
that he may not stain his satin vest, and the tears which
fall from his eyes upon a letter of condolence he marks
as he would any darker punctuation : what wonder, if, like
the ranger, he should know no fairer flower than that on
the posteriors of the stag, and if the poetical violets, like
the botanical,t should operate upon him as a mild emetic.
Such were, according to my notion, one way at least of
warding off the reproach which is flung at us Germans."

7. CYCLE.

WHAT a singular night followed upon this singu

lar day ! Sleepy with travelling, all went to
rest ; only Albano, in whom the hot eventful day still
burned on, said to the Knight that he could not now,
with his breast full of fire, find coolness and rest any
where but under the cold stars and the blossoms of the
Italian spring. He leaned against a statue on the upper

* This name is given to the quantum which is withheld from the

associate judges of the Supreme Court when they have not worked
enough.
t The Ipecacuanha belongs to the Violet species.
 44 TITAN.

terrace, near a blooming balustrade of citrons, that he

might sweetly shut his eyes beneath the starry heaven,
and still more sweetly open them in the morning. Even
in his earlier youth had he, as well as myself, wished him
self upon the Italian roofs of warm lands, in order, not as
as a night-walker, but as a regular sleeper, to wake up
thereon.
How magnificently there does the eye open upon the ra
diant hanging gardens full of eternal blossoms above thee,
whereas on thy German sweltry feather-pillow thou hast
nothing before thee, when thou lookest up, but the bed-tail !
While Zesara was thus traversing waves, mountains,
and stars with a stiller and stiller soul, and when at last
garden and sky and lake ran together into one dark Co
lossus, and he sadly thought of his pale mother, and of his
sister, and of the announced wonders of his future life,
a figure dressed all in black, with the image of a death's-
head on its breast, came slowly and painfully, and with
trembling breath, up the terraces behind him. " Remem
ber death ! " it said. " Thou art Albano de Zesara ? "
" Yes," said Zesara, " who art thou ?" "I am," it said,
" a father of death.* It is not from fear, but from habit,
I tremble so."
The limbs of the man continued to quake all over, in a
frightful and almost audible manner. Zesara had often
wished an adventure for his idle bravery ; now he had it
before him. Meantime, however, he kept a sharp watch
with his eye, and when the monk said, " Look up to the
evening star and tell me when it goes down, for my sight
is weak," he threw only a hasty glance upwards. " Three
stars," said he, "are still between it and the Alps." "When
• Of the order of St. Paul, or memento mori, which died in France
in the seventeenth century. The above address is its usual greeting.

v
 THE VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 45

it sets," the father continued, " then thy sister in Spain

gives up the ghost, and thereupon she will speak with
thee here from Heaven." Zesara was hardly touched by
a finger of the cold hand of horror, simply because he
was not in a room, but in the midst of young Nature,
who stations her mountains and stars as watchmen around
the trembling spirit ; or it may have been because the
vast and substantial bodily world, so near before us,
crowds out and hides with its building-work the world of
spirits. He asked, with indignation : " Who art thou ?
What knowest thou ? What wilt thou ? " and grasped
at the folded hands of the monk, and held both impris
oned in one of his. " Thou dost not know me, my son,"
said the father of death, calmly. " I am a Zahouri,* and
come from Spain from thy sister ; I see the dead down
in the earth, and know beforehand when they will ap
pear and discourse. But their apparition above ground
I do not see, and their discourse I cannot hear."
Here he looked sharply at the youth, whose features
suddenly grew rigid and lengthened, for a voice like a
female and familiar one began slowly over his head:
"Take the crown, — take the crown, — I will help thee."
The monk asked : " Is the evening-star already gone
down ? Is it talking with thee ? " Zesara looked up
ward, and could not answer ; the voice from Heaven
spake again, and said the same thing. The monk guessed
as much, and said : " Thus did thy father hear thy mother
from on high, when he was in Germany ; but he had
me thrown into prison for a long time, because he
thought I deceived him." At the mention of his "father,"
whose disbelief of the spiritual Zesara knew, he hurried
• The Zahouris in Spain are, as is well known, gifted with the
power of discerning corpses, veins of metal, &c. far under the earth.
 46 TITAN.

the monk, by his two hands held fast in his own single
and strong one, down the terraces, in order to hear
where the voice might now be. The old man smiled
softly ; the voice again spake above him, but in these
words: "Love the beautiful one, — love the beautiful
one, — I will help thee." A skiff was moored to the
shore, which he had already seen during the day. The
monk, who apparently wished to do away the suspicion
of a voice being concealed anywhere, stepped into the
gondola, and beckoned him to follow. The youth, rely
ing on his bodily and mental strength and his skill in
swimming, boldly pushed off with the monk from the
island ; but what a shudder seized upon his innermost
fibres, when not only the voice above him called again,
"Love the beautiful one whom I will show thee, — I will
help thee," but when he even saw, off toward the terrace,
a female form, with long, chestnut-brown hair, and dark
eyes, and a shining, swan-like neck, and with the com
plexion and vigor of the richest climate, rise, like a no
bler Aphrodite, revealed down to her bosom, from out
the deepest waves. But in a few seconds the Goddess
sank back again beneath the surface, and the spirit-voice
continued to whisper overhead, " Love the beautiful one
whom I showed thee." The monk coldly and silently
prayed during the scene, of which he heard and saw noih
ing. At length lu; said : " On the next Ascension-day,
at the hour of thy birth, thou wilt stand beside a heart
which is not within a breast, and thy sister will announce
to thee from Heaven the name of thy bride."
When before us feeble, rheumy creatures, who, like
Polypuses and flowers, only feel and seek, but cannot
see the light of a higher element, a flash darts, in the
total eclipse of our life, through the earthly mass which
j
 EXIT MONK; ENTER SCHOPPE. 47

hangs before our higher sun,* that ray cuts in pieces

the nerve of vision, which can bear only forms, not light;
no burning terror wings the heart and the blood, but a
cold shudder at our own thoughts, and in the presence
of a new, incomprehensible world, chains the warm
stream, and life becomes ice.
Albano, from whose teeming fancy a chaos might
spring as easily as a universe, grew pale ; but it was
with him as if he lost not so much his spirit as his under
standing. He rowed impetuously, almost unconsciously,
to the shore, — he could not look the father of death in
the face, because his wild fancy, tearing everything to
pieces, distorted and distended all forms, like clouds, into
horrid shapes, — he hardly heard the monk when he
said, by way of farewell, " Next Good Friday, perhaps,
I may come again." The monk stepped on board a
skiff which came along of itself (propelled, probably, by
a wheel under the water), and soon disappeared behind,
or in, the little Fisher's island (Isola peschiere).
For the space of a minute Alban reeled, and it ap
peared to him as if the garden and the sky and all were
a floating and fleeting fog-bank, — as if nothing were, as
if he had not lived. This arsenical qualm was at once
blown away from his stifled breast by the breath of the
Librarian, Schoppe, who was piping merrily at the cham
ber window ; all at once his life grew warm again, the
earth came back, and existence was. Schoppe, who could
not sleep for warmth, had come down to make his own
bed also on the tenth terrace. He saw in Zesara an in
tense inward agitation, but he had Ions been accustomed
to such, and made no inquiries.
* According to the account of some astronomers, thnt the sun, when
eclipsed, has sometimes shone through an opening of the moon, as
TJlloa, e. g., assures us that he once witnessed.
 48 TITAN.

8. CYCLE.

NOT by reasonings, but by pleasantries, is the ice

most easily melted in our choked-up wheel-work.
After a chatty hour, not much more was left of all that
had passed in the youth's mind than a vexatious feeling
and a happy one ; the former, to think that he had not
taken the monk by the cowl and carried him before the
Knight ; and the latter, at the remembrance of the noble
female form, and at the very prospect of a life full of ad
ventures. Still, when he closed his eyes, monsters full
of wings, worlds full of flames, and a deep-weltering
chaos, swept around his soul.
At last, in the cool of the afier-midnight, his tired
senses, under a slow and dissolving influence, approached
the magnetic mountain of slumber ; but what a dream
came to him on that still mountain ! He lay (so he
dreamed) on the crater of Hecla. An upheaved column
of water lifted him with it, and held him balanced on its
hot waves in mid-heaven. High in the ethereal night
above him stretched a gloomy tempest, like a long
dragon, swollen with devoured constellations ; near be
low hung a bright little cloud, attracted by the tempest,
— through the light gauze of the little cloud flowed a
dark red, either of two rose-buds or of two lips, and a
green stripe of a veil or of an olive-twig, and a ring of
milk-blue pearls or of forget-me-not, — at length a little
vapor diffused itself over the red, and nothing was there
but an open, blue eye, which looked up to Albano in
finitely mild and imploring ; and he stretched out his
hands towards the enveloped form, but the water-column
was too low. Then the black tempest flung hailstones,
but in their fall they became snow, and then dew-drops,

J.
 ALBANO'S DREAM AND WAKING. 49

and at last, in the little cloud, silvery light ; and the green
veil swept illuminated in the vapor. Then Albano ex
claimed, " I will shed all my tears and swell the column,
that I may reach thee, fair eye ! " And the blue eye
grew moist with longing, and closed with love. The
column grew with a loud roaring, the tempest lowered
itself, and pressed down the little cloud before it, but he
could not touch it. Then he tore open his veins and
cried, " I have no more tears, but all my blood will I pour
out for thee, that I may reach thy heart." Under the
bleeding the column rose higher and faster, — the broad,
blue ether began to swim, and the tempest was dissipated
like spray, and all the stars that it hud swallowed came
forth with living looks, — the little cloud, hovering freely,
floated gleaming down to the column, — the blue eye, as
it approached, opened slowly, and suddenly closed and
buried itself deeper in its light ; but a soft sigh whis
pered in the cloud, " Draw me to thy heart ! " O, then
he flung his arms through the flashing light and swept
away the mist, and snatched a white form, that seemed
to be made of moonlight, to his glowing breast. But ah !
the melting snow of the light escaped from his hot arms,
— the beloved one melted away and became a tear, and
the warm tear found its way through his breast, and sank
into his heart, and burned therein ; and his heart began
to dissolve, and seemed as if it would die. . . . Then
he opened his eyes.
But what an unearthly waking ! The little, white,
spent cloud, stained with storm-drops, still hung bending
down over him, in Heaven, — it was the bright, lovingly
near moon, that had gone in above him. He had
bled in his sleep, the bandage of his wounded arm hav
ing been pushed oflf by its violent movement. His rap
3 D
50 TITAN.

tures had melted the night-frost of ghostly terror. In

a transfiguring euthanasia, his firm being fluttered loosely
around like an uncertain dream, — he had been wafted
and rocked upward into the starry heaven as on a moth
er's breast, and all the stars had flowed into the moon
and enlarged her glory, — his heart, flung into a warm
tear, gently dissolved therein, — out of him was only
shadow, within him dazzling light, — the wind of the
flying earth swept by before the upright flame of his
soul, and it bent not. Ah, his Psyche glided with keen,
unruffled, inaudible falcon-pinions, in silent ecstasy through
the thin air of life. . . .
It appeared to him as if he were dying, for it was
some time before he became aware of the increasing
warmth of his bleeding left arm, which had lifted him
into the long Elysium that reached over from his dream
ing into his waking state. He refastened the bandage
more tightly.
All at once he heard, during the operation, a louder
plashing below him than mere waters could make. He
looked over the balcony, and saw his father and Dian,
without a farewell, — which, with Gaspard, was only the
poisonous meadow-saffron in the autumnal moment of
leave-taking, — fleeing, like blossom-leaves dropped out
of the flower-wreath of his life, away across the waves
amid the swan-song of the nightingales ! . . . O, thou
good young man, how often has this night befooled and
robbed thee! He spread out his arms after them, — the
pain of the dream still continued, and inspired him, — his
flying father seemed to him a loving father again, — in
anguish he called down, " Father, look round upon me !
Ah, how canst thou thus forsake me without a syllable?
And thou too, Dian ! O comfort me, if you hear me ! "
 FAREWELL TO ISOLA BELLA. 51
Dian threw kisses to him, and Gaspare! laid his hand
upon his sick heart. Albano thought of that copyist of
death, the palsy, and would gladly have held out his
wounded arm over the waves, and poured out his warm
life as a libation for his father, and he called after them,
" Farewell ! farewell ! " Languishing, he pressed the cold,
stony limbs of a colossal statue to his burning veins, and
tears of vain longing gushed down his fair face, while
the warm tones of the Italian nightingales, trilling in
response to each other from bank and island, sucked his
heart till it was sore with soft vampyre-tongues. Ah,
when thou shalt once love, glowing youth, how thou wilt
love! — In his thirst for a warm, communicative soul,
he woke up his Schoppe, and pointed out to him the fugi
tives. But while the latter was saying something or
other consolatory, Albano gazed fixedly at the gray speck
of the skiff, and heard not a word.

9. CYCLE.

THE two continued up, and refreshed themselves by

a stroll through the dewy island ; and the sight of
the alto-rilievo of day, as it came out in glistening colors
from the fading crayon-drawings of the moonlight, woke
them to full life. Augusti joined them, and proposed to
them to take the half-hour's sail over to Isola Madre.
Albano heartily besought the two to sail over alone, and
leave him here to his solitary walks. The Lector now
detected, with a sharper look, the traces of the young
man's nightly adventures, — how beautifully had the
dream, the monk, the sleeplessness, the bleeding, subdued
the bold, defiant form, and softened every tone, and that
mighty energy was now only a magic waterfall by moon
52 TITAN.

light ! Augusti took it for caprice, and went alone with

Schoppe ; but the fewest persons possible comprehend,
that it is only with the fewest persons possible, (and not
with an army of visitors,) properly only with two, — the
most intimate and like-minded friend and the beloved
object, — one can bear to take a walk. Verily, I had
as lief kneel down to make a declaration of love openly,
in the face of a whole court, on the birthday of a princess,
— for show me, I pray, the difference, — as to gaze on
thee, Nature, my beloved, through a long vanguard and
rear-guard of witnesses to my enraptured attitude !
How happy did solitude make Albano, whose heart
and eyes were full of tears, which he concealed for shame,
and which yet so justified and exalted him in his own
mind ! For he labored under the singular mistake of
fiery and vigorous youths, — the idea that he had not a ten
der heart, had too little feeling, and was hard to be moved.
But now his enervation gave him a soft, poetical fore
noon, such as he had never before known, and in which
he would fain have embraced tearfully all that he had
ever loved, — his good, dear, far-off foster parents in Blu-
mcnbilhl ; his poor father, ill just in spring, when death
always builds his flower-decked gate of sacrifice ; and
his sister, buried in the veil of the past, whose likeness
he had gotten, whose after-voice he had heard this night,
and whose last hour the nightly liar had brought so near
to him in his fiction. Even the nocturnal magic-lantern
show, still going on in his heart, troubled him by its mys-
teriousness, since he could not ascribe it to any known
person, and by the prediction that at his birth-hour, which
was so near, — the next Ascension-day, — he should
learn the name of his bride. The laughing day took
away, indeed, from the ghost-scenes their deathly hue,
 LAST LOOKS AT THE HOLY PLACES. 53
but gave to the crown and the water-goddess fresh
radiance.
He roamed dreamily through all holy places in this
promised land. He went into the dark Arcade where
he had found his childhood's relics and his father, and
took up, with a sad feeling, the crushed mask which had
fallen on the ground. He ascended the gallery, check
ered with lemon-shadows and sunbeams, and looked
toward the tall cypresses and the chestnut summits in
the far blue, where the moon had appeared to him like
an opening mother's eye. He approached a cascade, be
hind the laurel-grove, which was broken into twenty
landing-places, as his life was into twenty years, and he
felt not its thin rain upon his hot cheeks.
He then went back again to the top of the high terrace
to look for his returning friends. How brokenly and
magically did the sunshine of the outward world steal
into the dark, holy labyrinth of the inner! Nature,
which yesterday had been a flaming sun-ball, was to-day
an evening star, full of twilight: the world and the future
lay around him so vast, and yet so near and tangible,
as glaciers before a rain appear nearer in the deepening
blue. He stationed himself on the balcony, and held on
by the colossal statue ; and his eye glanced down to the
lake, and up to the Alps and to the heavens, and down
again ; and, under the friendly air of Hesperia, all the
waves and all the leaves fluttered beneath their light veil.
White towers glistened from the green of the shore,
and bells and birds crossed their music in the wind : a
painful yearning seized him, as he looked along the track
of his father ; and, ah ! toward the warmer Spain, full of
voluptuous spring-times, full of soft orange-nights, full of
the scattered limbs of dismembered giant mountain-ridges,
54 TITAN.

heaped around in wild grandeur, — thither how gladly

would he have flown through the lovely sky ! At length,
joy and dreaming and parting were all melted into that
nameless melancholy, in which the excess of delight
clothes the pain of limitation, — because, indeed, it is
easier to overflow than iafill our hearts.
All at once Albano was touched and smitten, — as if the
Divinity of Love had sent an earthquake into his inner
temple, to consecrate him for her approaching apparition,
— as he read on a young Indian-tree near him the little sign
bearing its name, — the " Liana." He gazed upon it ten
derly, and said again and again, " Dear Liana ! " He would
fain have broken off a twig for himself; but when he re
flected, that if he did water would run out of it, he said,
" No, Liana, I will not cause thee to weep ! " and so for
bore, because in his memory the plant stood in some sort
of relationship to an unknown dear being. With inex
pressible longings to be away, he now looked toward the
temple-gates of Germany, — the Alps. The snow-white
angel of his dream seemed to veil herself deep in a
spring-cloud, and to glide along in it speechless, — and it
was to him as if he heard from afar harmonica-tones.
He drew forth, just for the sake of having something
German, a letter-case, whereon his foster-sister Rabette
had embroidered the words, " Gedenke unserer " (Think
of us) : he felt himself alone, and was now glad to see his
friends, who were gayly rowing back from Isola Madre.
Ah, Albano, what a morning would this have been for
a spirit like thine ten years later, when the compact bud
of young vigor had unfolded its leaves more widely and
tenderly and freely ! To a soul like thine would have
arisen at such a period, when the present was pale before
it, two worlds at once, — the two rings around the Saturn
 ALBANO READY FOR THK FUTURE. 55
of time, — that of the past and that of the future : then
wouldst thou not merely have glanced over a short inter
val of race-ground to the pure, white goal, but turned
thyself round, and surveyed the long, winding track al
ready run. Thou wouldst have reckoned up the thousand
mistakes of the will, the missteps of the soul, and the
irreparable waste of heart and brain. Couldst thou then
have looked upon the ground without asking thyself: "Ah,
have the thousand and four earthquakes • which have
passed through me, as through the land behind me, en
riched me as these have enriched the soil? O, since all ex
periences are so dear, — since they cost us either our days,
or our energies, or our illusions, — O why must man every
morning, in the presence of Nature, who profits by every
dew-drop that stands in a flower-cup, blush with such a
sense of impoverishment over the thousand vainly dried
tears which he has already shed and caused ! From
springs this almighty mother draws summers; from win
ters, springs ; from volcanoes, woods and mountains ; from
hell, a heaven ; from this, a greater, — and we, foolish chil
dren, know not how from a given past to prepare for our
selves a future, which shall satisfy us ! We peck, like the
Alpine daw, at everything shiny, and carry the red-hot
coals aside as if they were gold-pieces, and set houses on
fire with them. Ah ! more than one great and glorious
world goes down in the heart, and leaves nothing behind ;
and it is precisely the stream of the higher geniuses which
flies to spray and fertilizes nothing, even as high water
falls break and flutter in thin mist over the earth."
Albano welcomed his friends with atoning tenderness ;
but the youth became, as the day waxed, as dull and
* In Calabria (1785) a thousand and four earthquakes happened in
the space of three fourths oi a year. — Munier'i Travels, ,fc.
56 TITAN.

heavy-hearted as one who has stripped his chamber at the

inn, settled his bill, and has only a few moments lefi to
walk up and down in the bare, rough stubble-field, before
the horses are brought. Like falling bodies, resolutions
moved in his impetuous soul with increasing velocity and
force every new second : with outward mildness, but in
ward vehemence, he begged his friends to start with him
this very day. And so in the afternoon he went away
with them from the still island of his childhood, speedily
to enter, through the chestnut avenues of Milan, on a new
theatre of his life, and to come upon the trap-door, which
opens down into the subterranean passage of so many
mysteries.

INTRODUCTORT PROGRAMME
TO TITAN.
BEFORE I dedicated Titan to the Privy-Legation's-
Counsellor and Feudal Provost of Flachsenfingen,
Mr. Von Hafenrefler, I first requested permission from
him in the following terms : —
" Since you have assisted far more in this history than
the Russian Court did in Voltaire's Genesis-History of
Peter the Great, you cannot confer any handsomer favor
upon a heart longing to thank you, than the permission to
offer and dedicate to you, as to a Jew's God, what you
have created."
But he wrote me back on the spot : —
" For the same reason, you might still better, in imita
tion of Sonnenfels, dedicate the work to yourself, and, in a
more just sense than others, combine in one person author
 THE TITLE, JUBILEE, EXPLAINED. 57

and patron. I beg you then (were it only on Mr. Von ••'■
and Mrs. Von **'s account) to leave me out of the play,
and confine yourself to the most indispensable notices,
which you may be pleased to give the public, of the very
mechanical interest which I have in your beautiful work ;
but for the gods' sake, hie hajc hoc hujus huic hunc hanc
hoc hoc hac hoc.
" Von Hafenreffer."
The Latin line is a cipher, and shall remain dark to
the public. What the same public has to demand in the
way of Introductory Programme consists of four explana
tions of title, and one of fact.
The first nominal explanation, which relates to the Ju
bilee Period, I get from the founder of the Period, the
Rector Franke, who explains it to be an Era or space of
time, invented by him, of one hundred and fifty-two
Cycles, each of which contains in itself its good forty-
nine tropical Lunar-Solar years. The word Jubilee is
prefixed by the Rector for this reason, that in every sev
enth year a lesser, and in every seven times seventh, or
forty-ninth, a greater, Jubilee-, Intercalary-, Indulgence-,
Sabbath-, or Trumpet-year occurred, in which one lived
without debts, without sowing and laboring, and without
slavery. I make a sufficiently happy application, as it
seems to me, of this title, Jubilee, to my historical chapters,
which conduct the business-man and the business-woman
round and round in an easy cycle or circle full of free Sab
bath-, Indulgence-, Trumpet-, and Jubilee-hours, in which
both have neither to sow nor to pay, but only to reap and
to rest ; for I am the only one who, like the bowed and
crooked-up drudge of a ploughman, stand at my writing-
table, and see sowing-machines, and debts of honor, and
manacles, before and on me. The seven thousand four
3*
 58 TITAN.

hundred and forty-eight tropical Lunar-Solar years which

one of Franke's Jubilee periods includes are also found
with me, but only dramatically, because in every chapter
just that number of ideas — and ideas are, indeed, the
long and cubic measure of time — will be presented by
me to the reader, till the short time has become as long
to him as the chapter required.
A Cycle, which is the subject of my second nominal
definition, needs by this time no definition at all.
The third nominal definition has to describe the obli-
gato-leaves, which I edit in loose sheets in every Jubilee
period. The obligato-leaves admit absolutely none but
pure contemporaneous facts, less immediately connected
with my hero, concerning persons, however, the more im
mediately connected with him ; in the obligato-leaves,
moreover, not the smallest satirical extravasate of digres
sion, no, not of the size of a blister, is perceptible ; but
the happy reader journeys on with his dear ones, free
and wide awake, right through the ample court-residence
and riding-ground and landscape of a whole, long vol
ume, amidst purely historical figures, surrounded on all
sides by busy mining-companies and Jews'-congregations,
advancing columns on the march, mounted hordes, and
companies of strolling players, — and his eye cannot be
satisfied with seeing.
But when the Tome is ended, then begins — this is
the last nominal definition — a small one, in which I give
just what I choose (only no narrative), and in which I
flit to and fro so joyously, with my long bee's-sting, from
one blossom-nectary and honey-cell to another, that I
name the little sub-volume, made up as it is merely for
the private gratification of my own extravagance, very
fitly my honey-moons, becauso I make less honey therein

X
 DIGRESSION ORGANIZED AND DEFENDED. 59

than I cat, busily employed, not as a working-bee to

supply the hive, but as a bee-master to take up the comb.
Until now I had surely supposed that every reader would
readily distinguish the transits of my satirical trailing-
comets from the undisturbed march of my historical
planetary system, and I had asked myself: " Is it, in a
monthly journal, any sacrifice of historical unity to break
off one essay, and follow it up with a new one ; and have
the readers complained at all, if e. g. in the annual sets
of the ' Horen,' Cellini's history, as is sometimes the case,
breaks off abruptly, and a wholly different paper is foisted
in?" But what actually happened ?
As in the year 1795 a medical society in Brussels
made the contrat-social among themselves, that every
one should pay a fine of a crown, who, during a meeting,
should give utterance to any other sound than a medical
one ; so, as is well known, has a similar edict, under date
of July 9th, been issued to all biographers, that we shall
always stick to the subject-matter, — which is the history,
— because otherwise people will begin to talk with us.
The intention of the mandate is this, that when a biog
rapher, in a Universal History of the World, of twenty
volumes, or even a longer one, — as in this, for instance,
— thinks or laughs once or twice, i. e. digresses, the
culprit shall stand out in the critical pillory as his own
Pasquino and Marforio, — which sentence has been al
ready executed on me more than once.
Now, however, I put an entirely new face upon mat
ters, inasmuch as, in the first place, I draw a marked
line in this work between history and digression, a
few cases of dispensation excepted ; secondly, inasmuch
as the liberties which I had taken in my former works
are in the present reduced to a prescriptive right and
60 TITAN.

confirmed into a servitude, the reader surrenders at

once when he knows, that, after a volume full of Jubilee-
pcriods, one is to follow which is entirely full of nothing
but honey-months. I take shame to myself, when I re
member how I once, in former works, stood with the
beggar's staff before the reader, and begged for the privi
lege of digression, when I might, after all, — as I do here,
— have extorted (he loan, as one has to demand of
women, as a matter of course, not only the tribute as
alms, but also the don gratuit as quarterly assessment.
So does not merely the cultivated Regent at the Diet,
but even the rude Arab, who extorts from the traveller,
besides the cash, a deed of gift for the same.
I come now to the Privy-Legation's-Counsellor, Von
Hafenreffer, who is the subject of my promised expose
of fact.
It must have been formerly learned from the 45th
Dog-Post-Day, who governs Flachsenfingen, namely, my
revered father. This striking promotion of mine was,
at the bottom, more a step than a spring ; for I was, pre
viously, no less than a Jurist, consequently the germ or
bud of an embryo Doctor ulriusque, and consequently a
nobleman, since in the Doctor the whole spawn and yolk
of the Knight lies ; therefore the former, as well as the
latter, when anything chances by, lives upon his saddle
or stirrup, although less in a robber's castle than in a
robber's chamber; I have, therefore, since the prefer
ment, changed less myself than my castle of residence ;
— the paternal seat in Flachsenfingen is at present my
own.
I care not now to eat my sugar-cake at court with sin,
— although one earns sugar-cake and manna more com
fortably than ship-bread, — but I represent, in order to

-
 BIOGRAPHICAL TIMBER-YARD. 6l

make a profit upon my adventure, the whole Flachsen-

fingen Department of Foreign Affairs at home here in
the castle, together with the requisite deciphering chan
cery. This, then, is what we shall do : we have a Pro
curator in Vienna, two Residents in five Imperial
cities, a Secretary of the Comitia in Ratisbon under
the Cross-Bench,* three Chancery-clerks of the circle,
and an Envoys-Plenipotentiary at a well-known and
considerable court not far from Hohenfliess, who is no
other than the aforementioned Mr. Feudal Provost Von
Hafenreffer. To the latter my father has even advanced
a complete silver-service, which we lend him, till he
shall have received his recall, because it is for our own
interest that a Flachsenfingen ambassador should, while
abroad, do extraordinary honor, by his extravagance, to
the princely hat or coronet of Flachsenfingen.
Now it is no joke to stand on such a post as this of
mine ; the whole legation-writing-and-reading company
write to me under frank, the chiffre banal and the
chiffre dechiffrant are in my hands, and I understand,
as it seems to me, the whole mess. It is unutterable, all
that I thus learn : it could not be read by men nor
drawn by horses, if I were disposed to hatch, biographi-
cally, and feed and reel off the whole silk-worm seed of
novels, which the corps of ambassadors send me every
post-day in closely-sealed packages. Yes (to use an
other metaphor), the biographical timber which my float-
inspection launches for me from up above, — now into the
Elbe, now into the Saale, now into the Danube, — stands
already so high before me in the ship-yard, that I could
not use it up, supposing I drove on the aesthetical build
ing of my biographical fools'-ships, masquerade-balls, and
* Quabanh, — Bench for Protestant Bishops in the Germanic Diet.
62 TITAN.

enchanted castles, day and night, year out and year in,
and never danced, nor rode, nor spoke, nor sneezed again
in my life. . . .
Verily, whenever (as I often do) I weigh my ovary
as an author against many another spawn, I ask out
right, with a certain chagrin, why a man should come to
bear so great a one, who cannot give it forth from him
self for want of time and place, while another hardly
lays and hatches a wind-egg. If I could despatch a
picket from my legation-division to knightly book-makers
with its official reports, would they not gladly exchange
ruins for castles, and subterranean cloister-passages for
corridors, and spirits for bodies ? whereas, now, for want
of the official reports of a picket, wenches must represent
women of the world, veimers • ministers of justice, as
well as jesters pages, castle-chaplains court-preachers, and
robber-barons the Pointeurs.t
I come back to my ambassador, Von Hafenreffer. At
the above-mentioned distinguished court sits this excellent
gentleman, and supplies me — no offence to his coadju
tors — from month to month with as many personalities
of my Hohenfliess hero as he can, by means of his lega
tion-soothsayers or clairvoyants, ferret out; — the small
est trifles are with him weighty enough for a despatch.
Certainly a quite different way of thinking from that of
other ambassadors, who in their reports make room only
for events which afterwards are to make their entrance
into the Universal History ! Hafenreffer has in every
cul de sac, servant's chamber and attic, in every chimney
and tavern, his opera-glass of a spy, who often, in order
to discover one of my hero's virtues, takes upon himself
ten sins. Of course, with such a hand-and-horse service
* Vdmtr, — old Westphalian judges. f Tellers in faro-banks.
 TITAN WARNS SINNERS IN HIGH LIFE. 63

of good luck, no one of us can wonder, — that is, I mean,

with such a cistern-wheel turned for me by Fortune her
self, — with such thieves' thumbs affixed to my own writ
ing-fingers, — with such silhouetteurs of a hero, who
make everything except color, — in short, with such an
extraordinary concatenation of circumstances, or Mont-
golfiers,* — it cannot of course be anything but just what is
expected, if the man who is lifted by them should, on his
mountain height up there, bring together and afterward
send down a work which will be freely translated after the
last day (for it deserves as much) on the Sun, on Uranus
and Sirius, and for which even the lucky quill-scrapcr
who nibbed the pens for it, and the compositor who prints
the errata, will take more airs upon themselves than the
author himself, and upon which neither the swift scythe
nor the tardy tooth of time, — especially since the latter
can, if requisite, be cut in two by the tooth-saw of the
critical file, — shall be able to make any impression.
And when to such eminent advantages the author adds
that of humility, then there is no longer any one to be
compared with him ; but unhappily every nature holds it
self, — as Dr. Crusius does the world, — not for the best,
indeed, but still as very good.
The present Titan enjoys, besides, the further advantage
that I at this moment inhabit and grace the paternal court,
and accordingly, as draughtsman, have certain sins near
and bright before my eyes in a position most favorable for
observation, of which at least Vanity, Libertinism, and
Idleness will stay and sit for their likeness ; for fate has
sowed these mushrooms and mosses as high as possible
among the upper classes, because in the lower and broad
er they would have spread too much, and sucked them
• The inventor of the balloon. — Tr.
64 TITAN.

dry, — which seems to be the pattern of that same fore

sight by which ships always have their assafoetida which
they bring from Persia hanging overhead on the mast, in
order that its stench may not contaminate the freight on
deck. Moreover, I have up here in the court all the
new fashions already around me for my observation and
contempt, before they have been, down below there, only
traduced, not to say commended, — e. g. the fine fashion of
the Parisians, that women shall by a slight tuck in their
dress show their calves, which they do in Paris, in order
to let it be seen that they are not gentlemen, who, as is
well known, walk on wooden legs, — this fashion will to
morrow or day after to-morrow (for it has arrived on an
individual lady) be certainly introduced. But the females
of Flachsenfingen imitate this fashion on quite another
ground, — for gentlemen among us have no defect, — and
that is, as a way of proving that they are human beings,
and not apes (to say nothing less), since, according to
Camper and others, man alone has calves. The same
proof was adduced ten years ago, only on higher grounds.
For since, according to Ilaller, man is distinguished from
monkey in no other respect than by the possession of a
posterior, the female officers of the crown, the dressing-
maids, sought as much as possible to magnify in the per
sons of their mistresses this characteristic of their sex by
art, — by the so-called cul de Paris; and, with such a
penultimate of the ultimate, it became then a jest and an
amusement to distinguish at a distance of two hundred
paces a woman of the world from her female ape, — a
thing which now many who know their Buffon by heart
will venture to do, when they are no nearer to her than
too near.
Similar biographical Denunciantes and Familiars I
 DISGUISE OF NAMES IN TITAN. 65

maintain in several of the German cities ; — my honored

father pays for them ; — in most places one, but in Leipsic
two, in Dresden three, in Berlin six, in Vienna as many
in every quarter of the city. Machines of such a nature,
so much like perspective-glasses, whereby one can survey
from his bed all that is going on in the street below, of
course make it easy for an author, from behind his ink
stand, to see clear down into dark household operations
going on in some by-lane, hidden among buildings twenty
miles distant. Therefore, the singular case may happen
to me every week, that a staid, quiet man, whom nobody
knows but his barber, and whose course of life is like a
dark, unfrequented cul de sac, but whom one of my en
voys and spies secretly follows, with a biographical con
cave mirror, which casts an image of the man, waistcoat,
breeches, walk, and all, into my study, situated at a dis
tance of thirty miles, — the case may occur to me, I say,
that such a secluded man shall accidentally step up to the
counter of the bookseller, and in my work, which lies
there smoking hot from the oven, shall find himself, with
all his hair, buttons, buckles, and warts, as clearly pic
tured out on the three hundred and seventy-first page, as
the impressions of Indian plants which are found on
rocks in France. That, however, is no matter.
People, on the other hand, who live at the same place
with me, as the people of Hof formerly did, come off
well ; for I keep no ambassadors near me.
But this very advantage of getting my anecdotes, not
out of my head, but from despatches, obliges me to take
more pains in putting them into cipher, than others would
have in dressing them up or thinking them out. No less
a miracle than that which bars up and hides the masonic
mystery, and the invisible church, and the invisible lodge,
66 TITAN.

has seemed thus far to avert the discovery of the irue

names of my histories, and, indeed, with such success, that
of all the manuscripts which have hitherto been de
spatched to the publishers, filled with conjectures on the
subject, not one has smelt the mouse,- — and truly fortu
nate for the world ; for so soon, e. g., as one person shall
have nosed out the names of the first volumes of Titan,
disguised as they have been in the best hieroglyphic
chancery offices, that moment I upset my inkstand, and
publish no more.
Nothing is to be inferred from the names which I use,
for I press into the service God-parents for my heroes in
the most singular ways. Have I not, e. g., often of an
evening, during the marching and countermarching of the
German armies, who made their crusades to the holy sep
ulchre of freedom, gone up and down through the lanes
of the camp, with my writing-tablets in my hands, and
caught and uttered the names of the privates, — which,
just before bedtime, were called out aloud, like the names
of saints, — just as they fell, in order to distribute them
again among my biographical people ? And has not merit
been promoted thereby, and many a common soldier risen
to be a nobleman fit for table and tournament, and have
not provost-marshals been raised to ministers of justice,
and red-cloaks to patribus purpuratis ? And did ever a
cock crow in all the army after this corps of observation
slinking round mobilized on two legs?
For authors who wish at the same time to narrate and
disguise true anecdotes, I am, perhaps, on the whole, a
model and file-leader. I have studied and imitated longer
than other historical inquirers those little innocent stretch
ing and wrenching processes which can make a history
unrecognizable to the very hero of the same, and I fancy
 VOLTAIRE'S HISTORICAL RULE. 67

I know how one is to make good biographies of princes,

protocols of high traitors, legends of saints, and auto
biographies ; no stronger touches decide the matter than
those slight ones, by which Peter of Cortona (or Bere-
tino) in the presence of Ferdinand of Tuscany trans
formed a weeping child into a laughing one, and the re
verse.
Voltaire demands more than once, as he always does,
— for he gave mankind, like an army, every order of
march three times, and repeated himself and everything
else most indefatigably, — that the historian shall arrange
his history after the law-table of the drama, to a dra
matic focal point. It is, however, one of the first dra
matic rules which Lessing, Aristotle, and the Greek
models give us, that the dramatic poet must lend to every
historical circumstance which he treats all that is favor
able to the poetic illusion, as well as keep clear of every
thing opposite, and that he must never sacrifice beauty
to truth, but the reverse. Voltaire gave, as is well
known, not only the easy rule, but the hard model also ;
and this great theatre poet of the world's theatre, in his
benefit dramas of Peter and Charles, never stuck to the
truth where he was sure he could attain sooner to illu
sion. And that is properly the genuine romantic history
corresponding to the historical romance. It is not for
me, but for others, — namely, the Provost and the Secre
taries of Legation, — to decide how far I have treated a
true history illusorily. It is a misfortune that the true
history of my hero can hardly ever see the light ; other
wise the justice might be done me that connoisseurs
would confront my poetical deviations with the truth,
and thereafter give each of us more easily his own, as
well the truth as myself. But this reward is what all
 68 TITAN.

royal historiographers and scandalous chroniclers must

resign nolens volens, because the true history never ap
pears in conjunction with their works.
But in the composition of a history an author must
also keep a sharp look-out upon this point, that it shall
not only hit and betray no real persons, but also no false
ones, and in fact nobody at all. Before I, e. g., choose
a name for a bad prince, I must look through the genea
logical index of all governing and governed families, in
order not to use a name which some person or other al
ready bears ; thus, in Otaheite, even the words which
sound like the name of the king are abolished after his
coronation, and supplied by others. Now, as I was for
merly acquainted with no living courts at all, I was not
in a situation, when preparing the battle-pieces and night-
pieces which I painted of the Cabals, the Egoism, and
the Libertinism of biographical courts, to succeed in skil
fully avoiding every resemblance to real ones ; yes, for
such an idiot as I, it was a miserable help, even, to be
often laying Machiavelli open before me, in order, with
the assistance of the French history, by painting from the
two, to turn off the edge of the application at least upon
countries in which no Frenchman or Italian ever had the
influence that is generally attributed to both of them
upon other Germans ; just as Herder, in opposition to
those naturalists who derive certain misshapen tribes of
men from a half-parentage of apes, makes the very good
remark that most of the resemblances to apes — the re
treating skull of the Calmucks, the prominent cars of the
Pevas, the slender hands in Carolina — appear just in
those countries where there are no apes at all. For
merly, then, as was said, striking unlikenesses I could
not succeed in hitting ; now, on the contrary, every court

^V
 APOLOGY FOR A LONG PROGRAMME. 69
around which my legation-flotilla coasts is well known
to me, and therefore secure from accidental resemblances,
particularly every one which I describe, — that of Flach-
senfingen, that of Hohenfliess, &c. The theatrical mask
which I have on in my works is not the mask of the
Greek comedian, which was embossed after the face of
the individual satirized,* but the mask of Nero, which,
when he acted a goddess on the stage, looked like his
mistress,f and when he acted a god, like himself.
Enough ! This digressive introductory programme has
been somewhat long, but the Jubilee-period was so, too :
the longer the St. John's day of a country, the longer its
St. Thomas's night. And now let us dance along to
gether into the book, — into this free ball of the world,
— I first as leader in the dance, and then the readers
as hop-dancers after me ; so that, amidst the sounding
baptismal and funeral bells in the Chinese house of
this world-building, — welcomed by the singing-school
of the muses, — serenaded from on high by the guitar
of Phoebus, — we may dance gayly from Tome to Tome,
from Cycle to Cycle, from one digression to another,
from one dash to another, — till either the work comes
to an end, or the workman, or everybody !
• Reflexions Critiques sur la Poesie, eto. de Dubois, Tom. I. Sect. 42.
t Sueton. Nero.
 SECOND JUBILEE.

The two Biographical Courts. — The Herdsman's Hut. — Tur

Flying. — The Sale of Hair. — The dangerous Bird-pole.
— A Storm locked up in a Coach. — Low Mountain-Music.
— The loving Child. — Mr. Von Faltemle from Vienna. —
The Torture-Soup£. — The Shattered Heart. — Werther
without Beard, rut with a Shot. — The Reconciliation.

10. CYCLE.

N the bloom of youthful powers, and the bright

ness of youthful prospects, the Count, between
his two companions, flew back through the
full, glowing Milan, where the ear and the
cluster and the olive often ripen together on the same
clod of earth. The very name of Milan (Mayland)
opened to him a whole spring, because, like myself, in all
things which belong to May — in May-flowers, May-chaf
ers, even May butter — he found, when a child, as much
enchantment as in childhood itself. Add to this, that he
was on horseback ; the saddle was with him a princely
seat of the blest, while a saddle-room was a Ratisbon
bench of counts, and eveiy nag his Pegasus. While on
the island, and during that mental and bodily exhaustion
in which the soul loves better to frequent clare-obscure
and pastoral worlds, than hot, dusty military- and fencing-
schools, all anticipation of the coming riddles and con
flicts of his life had been repulsive to him ; but now, with
 ENTRY INTO HAARHAAK. 71

his heart full of the glow of travel and the blood of

spring, he stretched out his young arms no less for a foe
than for a female friend, as if thirsting for a double con
quest.
The farther the island receded, so much the more did
the magic-smoke around the nocturnal apparition sink to
the ground, and leave behind in full view merely an in
explicable juggler. Now for the first time he revealed
the ghost-story to his companions. Schoppe and Augusti
shook their heads thoughtfully, but each thought of some
thing different; — the Librarian sought a. physical solution
of the acoustic and optical illusion ; the Lector sought a
political one : ho could not at all comprehend what the
stage-manager of this grave-digger's scene specially meant
by it all.
This one comfort the Librarian held to, that Alban on
his birthday was directed to pay a visit to the heart with
out a breast, which visit he could just forego, and so make
the seer out to be a myops and a liar. " Would to Heav
en," said he, " an Ezekiel would just prophesy to me that
I should bring him to the gallows ! I would not do it for
any money, but I would, without mercy, make it fatal, not
to his neck, but to his credit and his brains." To his in
credulous father, also, Albano wrote, during the journey,
not without a blush, the incredible history ; for he had too
few years over his head, and too much energy and daring,
to love reserve in himself or others. Only weak, cater
pillar- and hedgehog-like souls curl and crumple up into
themselves at every touch : under the free brain beats
gladly a free heart.
At last, when sunny mountains and shady forests
enough, like days and nights that have been lived through,
had been left behind them, they approached the goal of
72 TITAN.

their long riding-ground, full of countries, and now the

Principality of Hohenfliess lay only one principality dis
tant from them. This second principality, which was
next-door neighbor to the first, and which by breaking
through the walls might easily have been merged with
it into one common political structure, was called, as is
known to geographical readers, Ilaarhaar. The Lector
told the Librarian, as they approached the armorial and
boundary stones, that the two courts looked upon each
other almost as deadly foes ; not so much because they
were diplomatic relatives — although it is true that,
among princes, uncle, cousin, brother, signify no more
than brother-in-law applied to postilions, or father and
mother to the old folks among the Brandenbnrghers —
as because they were really relatives, and each other's
heirs. It would cost me too much room, if I were dis
posed to set before the reader the family-trees of the two
courts, — which were their Upas-trees and Dragon-trees,
— with all their heraldic leaves, water-shoots, and lichens ;
the result must content him, namely, that Hohenfliess, land
and people, would fall to the principality of Haarhaar, in
case the hereditary prince, Luigi, the last hollow shoot
and sapling of the male stock of Hohenfliess, were to
wither away. What hordes of Venetian Lion-heads
Haarhaar pours into the land of future inheritance, who
are to devour nothing there but learned advertisements
and placards, and what knavish bands of political me
chanics it colonizes there, as in a sort of Botany Bay,
cannot be told for want of time. And yet Haarhaar
again, on the other hand, is so generous as to desire noth
ing more heartily than to see the financial estate of Ho
henfliess — its business, agriculture, silk manufactures, and
breed of horses — in the highest bloom, and to hate and
 ENTRY INTO HOHENFLIESS. 73

curse in the highest degree all public extravagance, that

enervation of the great intercostal-nerve (money), as the
mightiest canonical impediment to population. "The Re
gent," says the truly philanthropic Prince of Haarhaar, " is
the chief shepherd, not the butcher, of the state: not even
the wool-shears should he take into his hands so often as
the shepherd's-flute ; not of the energies and matrimonial
prospects of others is our cousin (Luigi) master, but of
his own, these he must ruin ! "
As they rode into the territory of Hohenfliess, they
might have made an excursion to Blumenbuhl,* which
lies aside from Pestitz, and taken a look, as it were, at the
nursery of Albano (Isola Bella being his cradle), had not
the latter felt a burning hunger and thirst for the city,
and a dread like hydrophobia of a second leave-taking,
which besides only confuses the clear echo of the first.
His journey, the conversation of his father, the pictures
of the conjurer, the nearness of the academy, had so ruf
fled up our bird roc's wing-feathers, which at his age are
always too long as the steering tail-feathers arc too short,
that they would only have been sprained in the confine
ment of Blumenbuhl. By Heavens ! he longed to be
something in the state or the world ; for he felt a deadly
disgust towards that narcotic waste of high life through
whose poppy-garden of pleasure men stagger about, sleepy
and drunken, till they fall down in a twofold lame
ness.
It may not have been remembered by the readers of
the first Jubilee, because it was in a note, that Albano had
never yet been permitted to go to Pestitz, and on very
good grounds indeed, which are known, however, to the
• I have already said that ho was brought up there, under the Pro
vincial Director, Von WehrfriU.
4
74 TITAN.

Knight only, but not to me. This long closing of the

city-gates against him only made him the more eager to
enter them. And now they stood with their horses upon
a broad eminence, whence they saw the church-towers
of Pestitz before them in the west, and, if they turned
round, the tower of Blumenbiihl below them to the
cast; from the one and from the other came floating to
them a noonday hum : Albano heard his future and his
past sounding together. He looked down into the vil
lage, and up at a neat little red house on a neighboring
mountain, which gleamed after him, like a bright pic
tured urn of long-extinguished days. He sighed ; he
looked over the far building-ground of his future life, and
now with loosened rein dashed onward toward the towers
of the Linden-city, as towards the palms of his race-
ground.
But the neat little house played its antics before him
like a red shadow. For, ah ! had he not once in that
herdsman's hut spent a dreamy day, full of adventures,
and that, too, in the very season of childhood, when the
soul, on the rainbow-bridge of fancy, glides along, dry-
shod, over the walls and ditches of this lower earth ?
We will now go back with him into this lovely day, this
childhood's eve of life's festival, and become acquainted
with those earlier hours, which sent back to him so
sweetly from this herdsman's hut the Banz des Vaches
of youth.
1 I. CYCLE.

IT was, then, on a magnificent St. James's day — and

likewise on the birthday of the Provincial Director,
Wehrfritz, who, however, had not received the title yet
— that this same director — that was to be — had his
 DON GASPARD'S EDUCATIONAL PLAN. 75

chariot trundled out in the morning to ride to Pestitz,

and see the Minister, and, as Factor of the Province,
convert the flail of the state, by way of experiment,
into a drill-plough. He was a brisk, bustling man, to
whom a day of furlough was longer than a day of drill
to others, and to whom nothing made time pass heavily
but pastime. " In the evening, however," he said to him
self, " I 'll make a good day of it, for it happens to be
my birthday." His birthday present was to consist in
making one ; he proposed, namely, to bring home little
Albano an Oesterlein's harpsichord out of his own purse,
— little as there was in it, — and a music-master, into the
bargain, at the desire of Don Gaspard.
But why not, at the outset, explain all this in the clear
est manner to the reader ?
Don Gaspard, then, in revising a scheme of education
for Albano, had chosen that more attention should be
paid to his bodily health than to mental superfetation ;
he thought the tree of knowledge should be grafted with
the tree of life. Ah ! whoever sacrifices health to wis
dom has generally sacrificed wisdom too, and only inborn
not acquired sickliness is profitable to head and heart.
Accordingly, Albano had not to lug along, bending un
der the weight, the many-volumed encyclopaedia of all
sciences in his book-straps, but merely grammars. That
is to say, the rector of the place, — named Wehmeier,
better known by the title of Band-box-master, — after
schooling the village youth for the usual number of hours,
was accustomed to seek his fairest Struve's spare hours,
his Otia and Nodes Hagianee, in teaching Albano, and
driving into the mill-wheel axle of the everlastingly ac
tive boy — impelled by internal streams — alphabetic pins,
— so as to make it the barrel of a speech-organ. Of
 76 TITAN.

course, however, Zesara soon wished to move something

heavier than the key-board of languages ; thus, for ex
ample, the language-organ barrel became, in a proper
sense, the barrel of a hand-organ. For whole hours,
without any special knowledge of counterpoint, would he
practise on the parish organ (he knew neither note nor
key, and stood hard, all through the piece, on the thun
dering pedal), trying his hand at the most horrible dis
cords, before which the Enharmonics of all Piccinists
must be struck dumb, only to bury himself so much the
longer and deeper in the accidental prize of a chord.
So, also, did his soul, full of sap, work off its energy in
leaf-buds, as it were, and shoots and runners, by making
pictures, clay statuary, sun-dials, and designs of all sorts,
and even in the juristical rookery of his foster-father, for
example, in Fabri's State Chancery, it sent its thirsty
roots around and out over the dry leaves, as weeds often
do in vegetable gardens. O, how he pined for lessons
and teachers vaguely dreamed of (just as in childhood
he had aspired from octavos to quartos, from quarto to
folio, from folio even to a book as large as the world),
which would be the world itself! But so much the bet
ter ! only hunger digests, only love impregnates ; the sigh
of longing alone is the animating aura seminalis to the
Orpheus egg of knowledge. This you do not consider,
you flying teachers, who give children the draught ear
lier than the thirst ; you who, like some florists, insert
into the split stock of the flowers ready-made lack-dyes,
and put foreign musk into their cups, instead of simply
giving them morning sun and flower-soil, — and who
grant young souls no quiet hours, but bustle round them
during the dusting period of their blooming vine, against
all the rules of the vine-dressers, with your hoeing and

^
 ALBANO'S FOSTER-MOTHER. 77

your dunging and your clipping. O, can you ever, when

you thus prematurely force them, with their unripe or
gans, into the great realm of truths and beauties, just as
we all, alas ! with our dark senses, creep into lovely Na
ture, and blunt ourselves to the perception of her beauty,
— can you ever, in any way, make good to them the
great year which they would have lived to see, had they,
growing up like the new-created Adam, been able to
turn round with their open, thirsty senses, in the glorious
universe of spirits ? Hence it is that your Sieves so
nearly resemble the footpaths, which in spring grow
green first of all, but at a later period wind along yellow
and hard-trodden through the blooming meadows.
Wehrfritz, as he stood on the carriage-steps and turned
his face towards him, repeated his charge to have an
oversight of the young Count, and made the mark
[" with care "] with which merchants commend valuable
boxes of goods to the post, strong and thick upon him :
he loved the fiery child as his own (he had only one, and
that not a son) ; the Knight had confidence in him, and,
to justify it, since the point of honor was the centre of
gravity and pole of all his motions, he would, without
hesitation, if the boy, for instance, should break his head,
cut his own off; and finally Albano must stand a remark
ably good examination at evening before the new teacher
from the city.
Albina von Wehrfritz, the spouse, promised everything
in the name of all that was sacred ; she might have com
pared herself to the Evangelists Mark and John, because
her impetuous husband quite often represented the crea
tures who are pictured as the companions of the two
saints, those king-beasts, the lion and the eagle, just as
many another wife, in reference to her companion, may
78 TITAN.

be compared with Luke, and mine with Matthew.* Be

sides, she had bespoken for the evening a little family
feast, full of sportive, party-colored ephemerons of joy,
and by great good luck already, some days before, the
diploma had come in which installed our Wehrfritz as
Provincial Director, and which had been laid up against
this day as a birthday christening present.
But hardly had Wehrfritz got beyond the castle gar
den when Albano stepped forth with his project, and an
nounced his intention of sitting out the whole holiday up
there in the solitary little shooting-house ; for he loved to
play alone, and an elderly guest was pleasanter to him
than a boy to play with. Women are like Father Lodoli,
who (according to Lambert's day-book) shunned nothing
so much as the little word, Yes ; at least, they do not say
it till after, No. The foster-mother (I will, however, in
future, cut off from her and from the foster-sister, Rabette,
that annoying foster) said, without thinking, No, although
she knew that she had never yet carried one through
against the stubborn little fellow. Then she borrowed
very good dehortations from the will and pleasure of the
Provincial Director, and bade him consider, — then the
red-cheeked, good-natured Rabette took her brother's
part, and pleaded for him, without knowing why, — then
Albina protested at least he should not expect his dinner
to be sent to him on the mountain, — then he marched
out of the yard. ... So have I often stood by and
watched how the female elbows and knuckles, during
the stemming of a strong opposition, gradually, before
my eyes, became gristle, and bent up. Only in the
presence of Wehrfritz had Albina strength enough for a
long No.
* With this Evangelist, as is well known, an angel is associated.
 THE HERDSMAN'S HUT. 79

12. CYCLE.

OUR hero had passed over from those childish years

in which Hercules strangled the serpents, into the
years of confirmation, when he warmed them under his
waistcoat, to behead them again in later years. Exult-
ingly did his new and old Adam — they flew side by
side — flap their wings out there under a blue heaven
which had absolutely no anchoring ground. What cared
he for meal-time ? All children before and during a jour
ney carry no stomach under their wings, just as that of
the butterfly shrinks up when his wings are spread. The
oft-mentioned herdsman's-hut, or little shooting-house, was
nothing less than a shooting-house with a sentry-box, for
a pensioned soldier's wife, with a shooting-stand in the
lower story and a summer-house chamber in the upper,
wherein old Wehrfritz every summer meant to have a
rural party and a bird shooting, but never had it, because
the poor man dismasted and unrigged himself in his work-
chamber as others do in their dining-room. For, although
the state entices its servants like dogs for the tenth time,
only to cudgel them off again for the eleventh, and al
though Wehrfritz every assize day forswore all state busi
ness and earnings, — because an honest man like him
finds always in the body politic as much to restore as
in the antique statues of which only the stone drapery
remains, — nevertheless, he knew no softer couch and
feather-bed to rest on, than a still higher bench of oars,
and he was just now making every exertion to be Pro
vincial Director.
The German courts will have their own thoughts on
the subject when I offer them the following boyish idyl.
My black-eyed shepherd stormed the herdsman's moun
80 TITAN.

tain fortification, and received from the soldier's wife the

door-key to the white and green summer cabinet. By
Heavens ! when all eastern and western window-shutters
and windows were flung open, and the wind stole fluttering
through the papers and cooling through the sweltry cham
ber, and when, outside, heaven and earth stood round
about the windows and looked in beckoning, — when Al-
bano beheld, under the window toward the east, the deep
broad valley with the leaping, stony brook, on which all
the glimmering disks of light which the sun, like a jewel,
shot aslant, glided up the mountain side, — when at the
western window he saw, behind hills and woods, the arc of
the sky, the mountain of the Linden-city, that slept like a
coiled-up giant on the earth, — when he placed himself
at one window after another, and said, " How magnifi
cent ! " then his raptures in the chamber grew at last so
exalted, that he must needs go forth, in order, out of
doors, to exalt them still higher.
The Goddess of Peace seemed to have here her church
and her church seat. The active soldier's wife was plant
ing early peas in a little garden full of high bushes, and
now and then threw up a clod of earth into the cherry-
tree among the feathered fruit-thieves, and again fell to
sprinkling indefatigably the new linen and the planted
salad, and yet ran willingly from time to time to the little
ten-year-old maiden, who, blind from the measles, sat
knitting on the door-sill, and only when she dropped a
stitch called on her mother as interposing goddess. Al-
bano stationed himself on the outermost balcony of the
lovely opening valley, and every fanning of the wind
breathed into his heart the old childish longing, that he
could only fly. Ah, what bliss thus to snatch himself
away from the receding earthly footstool, and cast himself
 WINGS OF SOUL AND OF FEET. 8l
free and passive into the broad ether ! — and so plashing up
and down in the cool, all-pervading air-bath, to fly at mid
day into the darkling cloud, and unseen to float beside the
lark as she warbles below it, — or to sweep after the
eagle, and in the flight to see cities only as sculptured
assemblages of steps, and long streams only as gray, loose
threads drawn between two or three countries, and mead
ows and hills shrunk up to little color-grains and colored
shadows, and at length alight on the peak of a tower, and
place himself over against the blazing evening sun, and
then to soar upward when he had sunk, and look down
once more into his eye still beaming on, bright and open, in
the vault of night, and at last, when the earth-ball, whirl
ing over, hides his orb, to flutter, intoxicated with rapture,
into the forest-conflagration of all the red clouds ! . . .
Whence comes it that these bodily wings lift us like
spiritual ones? Whence had Albano this irrepressible
longing for heights, for the slater's weaver-shuttle, for
mountain-peaks, for the balloon, — just as if these were
helpers out of bed to the prisoners of this low earth-
couch ? Ah, thou dear deluded one ! Thy soul, still cov
ered with its chrysalis shell, confounds as yet the horizon
of the eye with the horizon of the heart, and outer ele
vation with inner, and soars through the physical heaven
after the ideal one ! For the same power which in the
presence of great thoughts lifts our head and our body
and expands the chest, raises the body also even with the
dark yearning after greatness, and the chrysalis swells
with the beating wings of the Psyche ; yes, it must needs
be, that by the same band wherewith the soul draws up
the body the body also can lift up the soul.
The least Albano could do was to fly on foot down the
mountain, to wade along with the brook, which was running
4* T
82 TITAN.

away into the pale-green birch thicket to cool itself. Of

ten before had his Robinsonading mania blown him to all
points and leaves of the wind-rose,* and he loved to go
with an unknown road a pretty piece of way to see what
way it would itself take. He ran along on the silver
Ariadne's thread of the brook, deep into the green laby
rinth, and proposed, in fact, to come out through the back
door of the long thicket upon a distant prospect. He
could not accomplish it, — the birches grew now lighter,
now darker, the brook broader, — the larks seemed to
sing, out there, far and high overhead; — but he was ob
stinate. Extremes had from of old a magnetic polarity
for him ; as the medium had only points of indifference.
Thus, for example, except the highest degree of the ba
rometer, no other was so agreeable to him as the lowest,
and the shortest day was as welcome as the longest ; but
the day after either was fatal.t
At last, after the progress of some hours in time and
space, he heard, beyond the lightening birches, and
through a noise louder than that of the brook, his name
uttered repeatedly, in low tones of commendation, by two
female voices. Instantly he galloped panting back again,
indifferent to the risk of lungs and life. He heard his
name long after again called out on all sides of him, but
in a cry ; — it was his private patron saint, the castellain
of the hut, who fired these shots of distress on his account
at the foot of the mountain.
He went up thither, and the round table of the earth
lay clear and with a singularly softening aspect around
his thirsty eye. Truly, the stretch of distance, together
with weariness, must have reminded this bird of passage,
behind the song-grating of the breast, of his own distant
• Compass. t Odious, or tabooed. — Tr.
 THE YOUNG HERMIT HOMESICK. 83

lands and times, and have made him melancholy at the

thought, when the landscape so mottled with red roofs
spread out before him its white, glistening stones and
ponds, like light-magnets and sun-splinters, — when he saw
on the long, gray causeway to Linden-town — views of
which hung in the summer-house, and of which two spires
shot up among the mountains — distant travellers plodding
on toward the city whose gates for him were closed, —
and when, indeed, everything seemed flying westward, the
pigeons that went whispering by, floating over the grain-
fields, and the shadows of the clouds that glided lightly
away over high gardens. . . . Ah, the youngest heart has
the waves of the oldest, only without the sounding-lead to
fathom their depths ! Learned Germany has, I perceive,
for several cycles, held itself ready for great fates and fa
talities, which are to give this herdsman's day of my hero
the necessary dignity ; I, who ought to have the first
knowledge on the subject, do not at present know of any
such. Childhood — ah yes, every age — often leaves be
hind in our hearts imperishable days, which every other
heart had forgotten : so did this day never fade from Al-
bano's. Sometimes a child's-day is at once made immor
tal by a clearer glimpse of consciousness ; in children, es
pecially such as Zesara, the spiritual eye turns far earlier
and more sharply upon the world within the breast than
they show or we imagine.
Now it struck one o'clock in the castle-tower. The
near and beloved tone, reminding him of his near foster-
mother, and of the denied dinner, and the sight of
the little blind one, who already had her twig of the
bread-tree or her dry reindeer's moss in her hand, — and
the thought that this was the birthday of his foster-father,
— and his inexpressible love for his afflicted mother,
84 TITAN.

upon whose neck he often suddenly fell in his loneliness,

— and his heart, bedewed with Nature, made him begin
to weep. But not for this did the stubborn little fellow
go home ; only the Alpine shepherdess had run on un
bidden to betray the fugitive to his seeking mother.
He would fain in this noonday stillness extort from
the little blind Lea, upon whose countenance a soft, deli
cate line-work ran legibly through the punctuation of the
pocks, a few words, or at least, as a fellow-laborer, the
long stick wherewith she had to drive the pigeons from
the peas and the sparrows from the cherries ; but she
pressed her arm in silence against her eyes, bashful
before the distinguished young gentleman. At last the
woman brought the pottage for the lost son, and from
Rabette a little smelling-bottle of dessert-wine into the
bargain.
Albina von Wehrfritz was one of those women who,
unlike states, keep only their promises, but never a
threat, — resembling the forest-officers of Nuremberg,
who, upon the smallest violation of the forest-laws, im
pose a fine of one hundred florins, and in the same hour
modify it to one hundred kreutzers.* They, however,
like Solon, who gave out his laws for a hundred years
in advance, give out theirs according to the proportion of
their smaller jurisdiction, to last one hundred seconds.

13. CYCLE.

I WOULD make more out of Albano's commemora

tion-dinner, which he, like a grown-up trencher-man,
could carve in the little chamber, and distribute among
the family circle, and at which he could fill for himself,
» To a German President of Finance, Vol. I. p. 206.
 AFTER-DINNER DREAMS. 85

were I not going to meet weightier incidents which befell

during the carrying back of the table dinner-service.
Albano went out, with the whole sea of his inner being
sparkling and phosphorescing under the influence of the
wine and the forenoon, and the blue heaven fluttering in
stronger breezes around him. He felt as if the morning
had long since gone by ; and he remembered it with a
tender emotion, as we all in youth remember childhood,
in age youth, — even as at evening we remember the morn
ing, — and the forms of Nature drew nearer to him and
moved their eyes like Catholic images. Thus does the
present offer us only shapes for optical anamorphoses,
and only our spirit is the sublime mirror which transposes
them into fair human forms. With what a sweet dip
into dreams did he, when he met the fanning of the east
ern wind, close his eyes, and draw the hum of the land
scape, the screaming of the cocks and birds, and a herds
man's flute, as if deeper and deeper into his shaded soul !
And then when he opened his eyes again on the shore
of the mountain, there lay peaceful down below in the
valley the pastured white lambs by the side of the flutist,
and overhead in heaven lay stretched out far away above
them the shining, fleecy lamb-clouds !
Meanwhile, he was fain for once to take the liberty of
shutting his eyes and groping too far into the garden, —
besides, the blind girl did not see, — holding his arms
open before him so as not to run against anything, when
all at once his breast touched a second, and looking up,
he found the trembling maiden so near to him, who bent
aside, stammering, " Ah, no ! ah, no ! " " It is only I,"
said the innocent one, holding her fast ; " truly, I will not
harm thee ! " — and as she, with a modest shyness, trusted
him, he held her a little while, and gazed down on her
bowed head with sweet emotion.
86 TITAN.

Heartily glad would he have been to give the terrified

one dole-money and benefits in this comedy for the poor ;
he had, however, nothing by him, till, luckily, his sister
Rabette, that bandagist, — from whose ribbon mania he
erroneously concluded that many girls are diabolically
possessed for ribbons, and swallow them like jugglers,
but never give them back, — she, and his new hair-band,
came into his mind. He wound off, joyfully, the long,
silken swathing-band from his head on hers. But the
lovely neighborhood, the tie-work of an inner, finer band,
and the blessedness of giving, and the vivacity of his in
born exuberance, so overcome him, that he would gladly
have emptied the Green Cellar of Dresden into her
apron, when a Jew pedler, with his smaller, silken one
on his stomach, and with a bagful of bought-up hair on
his back, came trudging up the Pestitz road. The Jew
suffered himself, very willingly, to be called, but nothing
to be borrowed from him, despite all bills of exchange
proposed to be drawn upon parents and pocket money.
Ah, a magnificent red cap-ribbon would have been as
becoming to Lea's blind eyes as a red bandage to a
wound ! For a blind lady loves to prink herself as much
as one who can see, unless she is self-conceited, and would
rather please herself in the glass than others out of it.
The merchant was very glad to let her feel of the ribbon,
and said he bought up hair in the villages, and yesterday
the children of the inn, with a piece of burning punk,
had crisped up his whole sackful of queues into short
wool, and if the young gentleman would let him trim his
brown hair down to the nape of the neck, he should, on
the spot, have the ribbon, and a very serviceable leather
queue of Wurzburg fabric into the bargain. What was
to be done ? The ribbon was very red, — so was Lea

V
 THE DANGEROUS BIRD-POLE. 87

with hope, — the Jew said he must pack up, — besides, the
hair-queue which he had hitherto worn ran like a second
backbone down over the whole of the first, and became
to Alban, by reason of the tedious swathing, every morn
ing, a check-rein and snaffle-bridle of his mettle. In
brief, the poor, plucked hare resigned to the Jew the
royal French Insigne, and buckled on the Wiirzburg
sheath.
And now he shook her hand right soundly, and said,
with a whole Paradise of loving joyousness in his face :
" The ribbon is, no doubt, very pleasant to thee, thou
poor, blind thing ! " Then the everlasting rogue actually
climbed the cherry-tree in order, up there, as a living
scare-crow, to spoil the cherries for the sparrows, and, as
a fruit-god, to throw down several of them to her as
rosaries and festoons.
By Heaven ! up there among the heart-cherries, it
seemed as if real wolf-cherries must be working in the
head of the boy : as the earth had her dark, middle ages,
so have children often dark, middle days, full of pure
monkery and mischief. On the high boughs, the growing
landscape, and the sun declining towards the mountains,
and particularly the spires of Pestitz, gleamed upon him
with such heavenly light, that he could not now imagine
to himself anything higher than the bird-pole near him,
nor any more blessedly enthroned crown-eagle than one
on the pole. . . .
But now I beg every one of my fair readers either to
step into the shooting-house, or make the best of her way
out of it with the soldier's wife, who is running on to
tell the naughty thing to her gracious lady, — for few
of them can stand it out with me to see our hero, the
male support of Titan, firmly planted by some farmers'
88 TITAN.

boys — to whom, moreover, Albina has intrusted the

remarche-riglement of hastening his return — on a cross-
stick, which is fitted in just under the crotch of the bird-
pole, and with his belly bound down to it, and so lying
horizontal in the air, gradually lifted through the wide
sweep of the arch, and held up in mid-heaven. It is too
bad ! but the servants could not possibly resist the sup
plications of his mighty eyes, his picturesque will and
spirit, and the offered recompenses and coronation-coins,
in comparison with which he verily weighed only half as
much as the last bird.
I am, nevertheless, partial to thee, little one, despite
that stiff dare-neck of thine built up between head and
heart. Thy monstrous Baroque-pearls of energies will
time soon, as the artists in the Green Cellar do with
physical pearls, use up in the finishing of a fine figure !
The imperial history of our imperial eagle on his
pedestal, covering at the same time the events that took
place on the . mountain, when the Band-box master and
Provincial Director came accidentally to the manned bird-
pole, shall be incontinently resumed, when we have the
14th Cycle.
14. CYCLE.

MASTER Wehmeier, who could not at a distance

explain to himself the form and motion of the
bird, had made up towards it, and now saw his pupil
lifted up on the cross. He fell instantly into the plunge-
bath of an icy shudder at his daring, but soon came out
of this into the shower-bath of a perspiring anxiety, which
came over him at the thought of seeing every minute his
eleve fall down and be crushed into twenty-six fragments,
like Osiris, or into thirty, like the Mcdicean Venus ;
 HORROR OF WEHRFRITZ. 89

"and this too, now," he thought besides, "just as I have

brought the young Satan so far along in languages, and
lived to win some honor by him." He therefore scolded
only the operators in the raising department, but not the
sentinel aloft, because there was reason to apprehend he
might take a lurch in the effort of answering, and pitch
down. Hard upon the heels of the optical chariot with
which the Devil threatened to run over the master, thus
spell-bound in the circle of agonizing anxiety, followed
a real one, wherein sat the future Provincial Director.
Ah, good God ! Besides, the Director always poured out
the whole gall-bladder full of bitter extracts at the Min
ister's house, merely because he found there better-
behaved and stiller children, without, however, reflecting
— like a hundred other fathers who must be included in
the charge — that children, like their parents, appear
better to strangers than they are, and that, above all, city
life, instead of the porous, thick bark of village life, over
lays them with a smooth, white birch-roll, while yet, in
the end, like their parents and courtiers, they prove to
resemble chestnuts, being smooth only on the outer shell,
but within confoundedly bristly. Thus surely will the
finest man in the country always be outwitted by at least
princes and ministers, who are ten years old, — supposing
even he could manage it more easily with their fathers.
When Wehrfritz saw his foster-son in his eyrie on the
Schreckhorn, and the Band-box master below, looking
up at him, he imagined the instructor had arranged it all,
and began loudly to vent upon his neck, from the locked-
up carriage, a little heaven of thunder-storms and thunder
claps. The persecuted Wehmeier began also, upon the
mountain, to bawl up at the Schreckhorn, by way of mak
ing it evident to the Director that he was in the way of
9° TITAN.

his office, and with the hammer of the law, as with a

forming stamp-hammer, could mould a pupil as well as
another man. The soldier's wife wrung her hands, —
the servants arranged themselves for the taking down
from the cross, — the poor little fellow, in a fever, drew
his knife, and called down, " He would instantly cut him
self loose and cast himself down so soon as ever any one
should let down the pole." He would have done it — and
put an untimely end to his life and my Titan — merely
because he dreaded the disgrace of the real and verbal
insults he might get from his father before so many
people (yes, in the chariot sat a gentleman who was a
perfect stranger) worse than suicide and hell. But
the Director, full of foolhardihood himself, and yet pro
portionately hating it in a child, was not to be discon
certed at that, and cried out, in a terrible tone, after the
servant who had the key of the coach-door ; he would get
out and go up. He was indescribably exasperated, first,
because behind the coach he had fastened on an Oester-
lein's harpsichord as a gift, for the present day of joy ; —
ah, Albano! why do thy joys, like the slurs of an ale
house fiddler, end in a discord ? — and, secondly, because
he had there a singing- dancing- music- and fencing-master
from the polished and brilliant house of the Minister for
Albano, sitting beside him on the cushion as spectator of
this debut. Gottlieb sprang from the box, and round be
fore the coach-door, run his hand, cursing, through all
his pockets ; — the coach-key was not in one of them.
The incarcerated Director lashed himself up and down in
his cage like a wagging leopard, and his fury was like
that of a lion, who, when one hunter after another has
shot at him, flies at the third. At all events, there was
Alban, in his noose, sawing the air to and fro. The
 A THUNDER-STORM IN A COACH. 91

Band-box master was best off ; for he was half dead, and
his cold body, running all away in a sweat of agony,
transmitted little more sense of the outward world ; his
consciousness was packed away tight and good as snuff
in cold lead.
Ah, I feel more keenly for the tormented boy than if
I were sitting with him up on the pole ; over his touch-
ingly noble countenance, with its finely-curved nose,
shame and the western aurora throw a purple hue, and
the low sun hangs with kisses on his cheeks, as if on the
last and highest roses of the dark earth, and he must
withdraw his defiant eyes from the beloved sun and from
the day which still dwells thereon, and from the two
steeple knobs of the Linden-city which glimmer on the
sides turned from him, and sorrowfully cast down his
strongly-drawn and sharply-angled eyebrows, which Dian
likened to the too heroic and energetic ones of the infant
Jesus in Raphael's ascending Madonna, to behold the hot
and close altercation which was taking place on the
ground below.
Gottlieb, with all his pains, could not squeeze out the
key, for he had it in his pocket, and in his hand, and did
not like much to produce it, from partiality for the young
master, whom the whole service loved, " as if they could
eat him," — as much as they loved the nine-pin alley.
He voted for sending and fetching the lock-smith, but the
coachman outvoted him, with the advice to drive immedi
ately to the door of the work-shop, — and growled at
the horses, and drove off the imprisoned, controversial
preacher in his pulpit, with the packed-up Oesterlein's
harpsichord, at a smart trot. All that the Bombardier,
during Gottlieb's mounting, had time to throw out of the
carriage, consisted in his staving through a window, and
 92 TITAN.

firing, from the port-hole, a few of the most indispensable

parting shots at the ill-omened bird on the pole.
By this time the msigister had recovered his spirit
and vexation, and boldly commanded the taking down of
the Absalom. While the child came slowly down before
him on his perch, he inserted the five incisor-teeth of his
fingers, as a music-pen, into his scalp, and ruled or raked
down along his occiput, with a view to playfully rectify
ing the crooked line of the hair, by pulling it moderately
with his hand, as with the end of a fiddle-stick, when, to
his astonishment, off came from my hero the Wurzburg
queue like a tail-feather.
Wehmeier stared at the c.auda prehensilis (the ring
tail), and by his attention's being thus drawn off to the
lesser fault, Albano gained as much as Alcibiades did
from the lopping off of the tail of his — Robespierre.
The magister thanked God that he could not sup to-day
with old Wehrfritz, and sent him, with his mock queue,
brow-beaten, home.

15. CYCLE.

THE good-hearted Albina had been all day long

removing out of the way of her lord all inflam
matory stuff (for the vitriol naptha of his nervous spirit
caught the fire of anger afar off), in order that nothing
might transform her pleasure-castles into incendiary places
of joy, — yes, as a sort of suburbs to the heavenly Jeru
salem of the evening, Rabette had packed away an or
chestra of miners that had chanced to pass by, in the
cabinet of the dining-room, — and for Albano Albina had
already contrived an heraldic costume, in which he should
deliver to him the vocation of the Province. Ah, but
 ALBANO COMES HOME DISGRACED. 93

what did the lady get from it all but flames, which Wehr
fritz vomited forth at his entrance, while he, as a camel in
his maw, had laid up besides, a long, cold stream of water
for the sprinkling of the magister ?
Albina, who, like most women, took the gall-stone
pelting of her husband for the fifty pounds of passengers'
ballast, which, to a passenger in the marriage-stage-coach,
go free, cheerfully gave him, at first, as ever, credit of
being right, and concealed every tear of unhappiness,
because cold sprinkling hardens men and salad, — then
step by step she took back the right, — but made the
blame at first mild on her tongue, as nurses make the
washing-water of the children lukewarm in their mouths,
— and at last said he should just give the child up to her.
But we are making old Wehrfritz swell under our
hand to a dragon of the Apocalypse, to a beast of Ge-
vaudan, and a tyrant, whereas he is in reality only a lamb
with two little horns. Had he not on his birth-feast in
the drudging year of his slaving life a claim upon one
unburdened evening, at least with a child whom he loved
more strongly than his own, and for whom he had loaded
himself down with a harpsichord and a teacher ? And
had he not a hundred times forbidden him — though he
himself dared and did too much — to imitate him, and
seat himself upon horseback either in a tempest, in a
pouring rain, or in a snow-storm ? And had he not just
come from the pedagogical knout-master, the Minister,
whose educational system was only a longer real terri-
tion and a shorter condemnation ? And does not the
sight of stern parents make one sterner, and of mild ones,
on the contrary, milder ?
Albano first met Rabette with his leathern hind-axle
in his hand, on his defiant way to the father's study, and
94 TITAN.

therefore to the court-martial punishment of a real revo

lutionary tribunal. But she caught him from behind,
with the angelic greeting, " Art thou here, Absalom ? "
and set him down by force ; and, after the necessary as
tonishment and questioning, tied on the vena cava of his
hair tightly and ungently, and showed up to him, in a
fearful light, the whirlwind of paternal wrath that await
ed him ; and again, in a ludicrous light, the lull of the
musical mountain-department, who, near the dining-room,
that race-ground and hunting-ground of the Director,
striding up and down in rage and impatience, were wait
ing with a pause for times of peace; and finally she
released him with a kiss, saying, " I pity you, you
rogue ! "
He marched, with a defiance which the tightness of
his hair aggravated, into the dining-room. " Out of my
sight ! " said the sparkling assailant. Alban instantly
stepped back out of the door, enraged at the injustice
of this wrath, and for that very reason the less troubled
at its unhealthiness ; for his benefactor kept passionately
running up to the table, which was spread for the birth
day feast, and, after an old bad habit of his, extinguishing
the well-kindled lime-pit of his indignation with wine.
In a few moments the musical academy and mining
company, transformed by their ill-humor into growling
contra-bassists, struck up also. The time had been tedi
ous to them in the dry cabinet, so the bassoonist and
the violinist had taken it into their heads to entertain
themselves with a low tuning. The Director, who could
not comprehend what in the world that forlorn sound
was that floated around him, took it for some time to bo
a melodious humming in his ears, when suddenly the
hammer-master of the dulcimer let his musical hammer
 ALBINA DISCIPLINES HER ALBANO. 95

fall on the stringed floor. Wehrfritz in an instant tore

open the doors, and saw before him the whole musical
nest and conspiracy sitting in a circle, armed and wait
ing. He asked them, hastily, " What business they had
in the cabinet ? " and, after a flying donation of a few
curses and cuffs, ordered the whole garrison, without any
tinkling noise, with their leather aprons and cuh de Paris,
to take themselves off instantly.
Albina, with a tender look, beckoned her outlawed
darling into her sewing-chamber, where she asked him,
quite composedly, because she knew he would not lie,
to tell the truth. After hearing his report, she repre
sented to him a little his fault (although she blamed the
present child, in comparison with the absent man, pretty
much in the style in which she had previously blamed
the present man, in comparison with the absent child),
and still more the consequences ; she pointed out (un
tying and tying again his cravat the while, and buttoning
some of his waistcoat buttons) how her husband was dis
graced in Albano's person before the second school-
consul, (with four and twenty Fasces,) whom he had
brought with him, the music- and dancing-master, Mr.
Von Falterle, who was up-stairs dressing himself; how
the dancing-master would certainly write all about it to
Don Gaspard ; and how for her good man the whole
sweet, painted jelly-apple of to-day's joy had been turned
into water : and now he must, even on this festive day,
afflict his soul in solitude, and, perhaps, catch his death
from drinking so much to drown his anger. Women,
like harpers, usually, during their playing, convert, with
small pedals, the whole tones of truth into semi-tones.
After she had still further enumerated to him all the
paternal evening-tempests which he had ever drawn upon
96 TITAN.

himself by his rides and his Robinson's voyages of dis

covery, and whose thunder-claps had, on every occasion,
only melted down the lightning-conductor (namely, her
self), she added, with that touching tone flowing, not
from the bony throat, but from the swelling heart, " Ah,
Albano, thou wilt one day think of thy foster-mother,
when it is too late ! " and melted into tears.
Hitherto the unmcltable slags and the molten portion
of his heart had been boiling up together within him,
and the warm flood had pressed upward, ever higher and
hotter, in his bosom, only his face had remained cold and
hard, — for certain persons have, exactly at the melting
point, the greatest appearance and capacity of hardening,
as snow freezes just before a thaw ; but now the strain
upon the too tightly-bound queue, which was the para
doxical sign of the approaching eruption, made him, in
the paroxysm of his fury, tear the Wiirzburg appendage
off over his head. Before Albina saw it, she had handed
him the Directorship appointment, with the words, " I
ought hardly to do it; but just hand it to him, and say it
was my present, and that thou wilt be quite another boy
in future." But when she saw his hand armed, she
asked, in a terrified tone, with the deep echo of a wearied-
out grief, " Alban ! " and turned immediately away from
the poor child, whose pain she misunderstood, with too
bitter tears, and said : " What new trouble is this ? O,
how you all torment my heart to-day ! Go away ! O,
come here," she called after him, " and relate the circum
stances ! " And when he had innocently and truly done
this, her voice, overpowered with tears, could no longer
blame him, but only say, mildly, " Well, then, carry the
present." Nevertheless, she had it in mind to represent
to her husband the abbreviation of the hair as an act of
 MAGIC EFFECT OF A DIPLOMA. 97
obedience to her will, and to the fashion of city children
in high life.
Alban went ; but on the painful way, the full glands of
his tears and his long-repressed heart broke forth, and he
entered with eyes still weeping before his solitary foster-
father, who was resting his tired and thinking head ; and
the boy held out to him, while yet a great way off, the
big-sealed document, and could only say, " The present,"
and nothing more, and sparks darted with the storm-
drops from his hot eyes. Lay thyself, innocent one,
softly on thy father's unbuttoned bosom ; and while he
holds in his right hand the enchanted cup of glory, and
makes himself drunk with it, let him not on any account
push thee away with his left ! The repelling hand will
by and by come to pulsate languidly and lightly upon thy
wet, fiery cheeks, and warm, penitent eyes : then will the
old man read the Decretum over again still more slowly,
so as almost to postpone the very first sound ; then will
he, when thou, with indescribable impetuosity, pressest
his hand to thy face to kiss it, make appear as if he had
just awaked, and say, with saltpetre coldness and glisten
ing eyes, " Call mother " ; and then, when thou liftest
upon him thy glowing countenance all quivering with
love from under thy downfallen locks, and when they are
flung sofily back from thy cherry cheeks, — then will he
look a pretty long time after his departing darling, and
brush away something from his eyes, that he may run
over the address of the diploma at his will.
Say, Albano, have I not guessed right ?
98 TITAN.

16. CYCLE.

EVERY post of honor lifts the heart of a man who

is placed on it above the vapor of life, the hail-
clouds of calamity, the frosty mists of discontent, and the
inflammable air of wrath. I will hold the magic leaf of
a favorable criticism before a gnashing were-wolf : imme
diately he shall stand before me as a licking lamb, with
little twirling tail ; and if the wife of an author could
only play before her heated literary partner every time
a critical trumpeter's piece on Fame's trumpet, he would
become like an angel, and she like that ale-house fiddler
who, in his bear-catching, softened the Saul in Bruin by
his jigs.
Wehrfritz came to meet Albina as a new-born seraph,
and recounted to her his glory. Yes, in order to atone to
her for the explosions of his Etna, he said not, as usual,
nolo episcopari ; he did not say he was hemmed round by
an impassable mountain chain of labors ; but, instead of
that perverse drawing back of the hand from the out-
shaking cornucopia of fortune, — instead of that virgin
bashfulness of rapture which is more common to brides,
— he betrayed the heartiness of a widow, and told Albina
her wishes of the morning had already become gifts ; and
asked what had become of the promised supper, and the
company, and the Magister, and the dancing-master
(whom the other had not yet seen), and Habette, and
all.
But Albina had already long since announced to the
Magister, through Albano, the invitation, and the disper
sion of all storms, and the arrival of the new commission.
Wehmeier, to tell the truth, had the greatest reluctance
to eat with a nobleman, merely because, as entertaining
 THE TWO MASTERS AT DINNER. 99

acteur of the table, he had so much to do with convers

ing, savoir vivre, looking out for others, keeping his limbs
in proper attitude, and passing all eatables, that, for want
of leisure, he was obliged to swallow such little things as
pickled cucumbers, chestnuts, crabs' tails, and the like,
down whole, and without tasting them ; so that afterward
he ofien had to carry round with him the hard fodder,
like a swallowed Jonah, for three days together in the
hunter's pouch of his stomach. Only this time he gladly
dressed himself for the feast, because he was curious and
angry about his pedagogical colleague, and that out of
anxiety lest haply this new joint-tenant should assume to
himself the magnificent winter crop in Alban's sowed
field as his own summer crop. Pie ascribed to his abbre
viated method of teaching all the wonderful energies of
his pupil, i. e. to the water-soil the aromatic essence of
the plant which grew therein.*
With so much the greater indulgent love he came,
leading with his own hand the halved pupil, to Rabctte's
cabinet, in a sap-green plush with a three-leaved collar.
" Mr. Von Falterle here," said Rabette on his entrance,
not from raillery, but from inconsiderateness ; "thought
some time ago it was you when the dog tried to get in."
" My dear sir," replied coldly and gravely the paradeur
of a Falterle by the side of our farm-horse, " the dog
scratched at the door ; but it is usual, as well at the min
ister's as in all great houses of Paris, for every one to
scratch with the finger-nail when he wishes admittance
merely into a cabinet, and not into a principal apartment."
What a splendidly picturesque contrast of the two
• For Boyle found in his experiments that ranunculi, mints, &c.,
.which he suffered to grow large in the water, developed the usual aro-
matio virtues.
loo TITAN.

brothers-in-offlce ! — the master of accomplishments with

the motley scarf-skin or hind-apron of a yellow summer-
dress, as if with the yellow outer wings of a buttermoth,
whose dark under-wings represent the waistcoat (when
he unbuttons it) ; Wehmeier, on the other hand, in a
roomy, sap-green plush, which a tent-maker seemed to
have hung on him, and with belly and shanks quivering
in the black velvet half-mourning of candidates, who
wear it till they carbonize into clear black. Faltcrle had
his glazed frost pantaloons plated and cast round his legs,
and every wrinkle in them produced one upon his face,
as if the latter were the lining of the former; while along
the thighs of the Band-box-master wound upward the
cockle-stairs of his swaddling modests.* The former in
bridal-shoes, the latter in pump-chambers, — the one flap
ping up like a soft, slimy gold tench, with the belly-fins of
his bosom-ruffles, with the side-fins of his hand-ruffles,
and with the tail-fins of a trinomial root or queue hanging
on three little ermine tails ; the Magister, in his green
plush, looking for all the world like a green whiting or a
chub. A magnificent set-off, I repeat !
The whiting would gladly have eaten up the tench,
when the goldfish led forth on his right arm Rabette,
and on his left Albano, to dinner. But now it grew
much worse. Alban, with his usual impetuosity, had his
napkin open first, — which became now, as it were, in
troductory programme and dokimasticum of Falterle's
system of teaching. " Posemcnt, Monsieur" said he to
the novice, " il est messeant de deplier la serviette avant
que les autres aient deplie les leurs." After some minutes,
Alban thought he would blow his soup cool ; it was one
a la Brittaniere, with rings. "II est messeant, Monsieur,"
* Some would rather hear this word than brecchea.
 THE BAND-BOX-MASTER'S PRIDE. IOI

said the master of accomplishments, "de souffler sa soupe."

The Band-box-master, who had already made up his
mouth to vent a puff from the bellows of his chest at
a spoonful of rings, stopped short, frightened into a dead
calm.
When afterward a veal-stuffed cabbage-bomb fell like
a central sun on the table-cloth, the Magister boldly gob
bled down the burning minced veal, as a juggler or an
ostrich swallows glowing coals, and breathed more in
wardly than outwardly.
After the bomb, came in a pike au four, to which, as is
well known, the cutting away of the head and tail, and the
closing up of the belly give the appearance of a roe's
loin. When Albano asked his old teacher what it was,
the latter replied, " A delicate roe's loin." " Pardonnez,
Monsieur," said his rival gourmand, " c'esl du brocket au
four, mon cher Compte ; mais il est messeant de deman-
der le nom de quelque mets qu'il soil, — on feint de le
savoir."
It is easy to show that this horizontal shot from a
double rifle pierced through the Magister's marrow and
bone ; the instruments of passion which lay in the cut-off
head of the pike au four, as in an armory, continued to
do their execution in his. Like most schoolmasters, he
thought himself to have the finest manners, so long as he
taught them, and fought against bad ones ; so long he
prized them uncommonly, just as he did his dress ; but
when he was outdone in either, then he must needs de
spise them from his heart. It brought him to his legs
again that he was all the while silently comparing the
master of accomplishments with the two Catos and Ho
mer's heroes, who ate not much better than swine, and
that he thus tied the Viennite to a pillory, and thrashed
102 TITAN.

him most lustily thereon, with one hand, while with the
other he rung above him the shame-bell. Yes" he placed
himself, in order to make his official brother small, upon a
distant planet, and looked down upon the bomb and the
pikc'nu four, and could not help laughing up there on his
planet, to find that this yellow-silk shop-keeper of Nature,
with his rubbish of brains, was no bigger than a paste-eel.
Then he pitied his forsaken pupil, and so came down
again, and swore on the way to weed as much out of him
every day as that other fellow raked in.
We shall learn quite soon enough how Albano's nerves
quivered on this lathe, and under these smoothing-planes.
The Director was indescribably delighted with this peda
gogical cutting and polishing of so great a diamond, al
though the cutting (according to Jeffries) takes from all
diamonds half their weight, and although he himself had
all his, and more carats than anglos. Wehrfritz could
never entirely forgive, — at which point he was now aim
ing, because he had brought with him for the little one
the Oesterlcins harpsichord, — until at least with one
word he had inflicted a short martyrdom ; accordingly,
blind to Albano's concealed bloody expiation of the fault,
he communicated to the company how strictly the Minis
ter educated his children, how they, e. g., for any involun
tary coughing or laughing at the table, like Prussian cav
alry soldiers, who fall off or lose their hats in the wind,
suffer punishment, and how they were, to be sure, no
older than Albano, but quite as well-mannered as grown
people. At the house of the Minister he had, on the con
trary, boasted to-day the acquirements of his foster-son ;
but many parents build up in every other house smoking
altars of incense for the same child, which in their own
they smoke with brimstone, like vines and bees. Be
 ALBANO ON THE RACK. 103

sides, deuse take it ! they, like princes (fathers of their

country), make redoubled demands precisely when chil
dren have satisfied immoderate ones ; so that the latter, by
opera tupererogationis in the shape of advanced lessons,
forfeit rather than win their play-hours. Do we not ad
mire it in great philosophers, e. g. Malebranche, and
great generals, e. g. Scipio, that, afier the greatest achieve
ments which they made in the kingdom of truths, or in
a geographical, they betook themselves to the nursery,
and there carried on real child's fooleries, in order gently
to relax the bow wherewith they had shot so many lies
and liars to the ground. And why shall not this simile,
wherewith St. John defended himself when he allowed
himself a play-hour with his tame partridge, also excuse
children for being children, when they have previously
stretched too crooked the yet thin bow ?
But now on with our story ! Old Wehrfritz recounted
to Rabette, in a very friendly manner, " how he had seen
to-day the pupil of Don Zesara, the magnificent Countess
de Romeiro, actually only twelve years old, but with such a
deportment as only a court dame had, and how the noble
Knight experienced more joy than usual in his little
ward." These hard, clattering words tore, as if he had
hydrophobia, the open nerves of the ambitious boy, since
the Knight had hitherto been to him the life's-goal, the
eternal wish, and the frere terrible, wherewith they kept
him under, — but he sat still there without a sign, and
choked his crying heart. Wehrfritz recognized this dumb
lip-biling of feeling ; however, he acted as if Albano had
not understood him.
Now began the Viennite too, hurling about his fire-balls
into all corners and niches of the Ministerial Vatican,
merely to throw a favorable light upon his dancing and
104 TITAN.

music scholars therein, as well as himself. Cannot the

daughter of the Minister, hardly ten years old, speak all
the modern languages and play on the harmonica, which
Albano has never yet once heard, and even execute four-
handed sonatas of Kotzeluch, and sing already like a
nightingale, on boughs that have not yet put on their foli
age too, and in fact passages from operas, which made her
nightingale breast grow hollow, so that he had to leave ?
Yes, cannot her brother do far more, and has he not read
out all the circulating libraries, particularly the plays,
which he also performs on amateur stages into the bar
gain ? And is he not at this precise hour making his case
right good in to-day's masquerade ball, if he only meets
there the object that inspires him ? Wehmeier did wrong
to sit opposite our jewel-humming-bird, Falterle, like a
horned-owl or a bird-spider, ready to pluck and eat the
humming-bird every minute. Verily, Falterle said noth
ing out of malice ; he could not despise or hate anybody,
because his mental eyes were so deeply buried in his own
inflated " I," that he could not look with them at all out
beyond his swollen self; he harmed no soul, and fluttered
round people only as a still butterfly, not as a buzzing,
stinging horse-fly, and sucked no blood, but only honey
(i. e. a little praise).
" Pray, tell me, Mr. Von Falterle," said Wehrfritz, who,
so soon as he had brought down this cold lightning-flash
upon Albano, would no longer shoot cold and flying insin
uations at him, " does the young minister sometimes sit
on a bird-pole, like our Albano here ? " That was too
much for thee, tormented child I " No," said Albano, in
a brassy tone, and with the friendliness of a corpse, which
signifies another death to follow ; and with an optical
cloud of floating complexions, left the seat cracking under
 HIS CLASSIC PRIDE OUTRAGED. 105

his dumb convulsions, and with clenched fingers went

slowly out.
The poor young man had, to-day, since the apparent
forgiveness of his Adamitish fall, and since the sight of
the elegant new teacher, for whom he had so long rejoiced
in hope, and whose fine copperplate encasement was just
of a kind to have an imposing effect upon a child, cast
off the last chrysalis-shell of his inner being, and prom
ised himself high things. Some hand had within an hour
snatched his inner man from the close, drowsy cradle of
childhood, — he had sprung at once out of the warming-
basket, had thrown stuffed-hat and frock far away from
him, — he saw the toga virilis hanging in the distance,
and marched into it, and said, " Cannot I, too, be a
youth ? "
Ah, thou dear boy ! man, especially the rosy-cheeked
little man, too easily cheats himself with taking repent
ance for reformation, resolutions for actions, blossoms for
fruits, as on the naked twig of the fig-tree seeming fruits
sprout forth, which are only the fleshy rinds of the blos
soms!
And now, while all the nerves and roots of his soul lay
naked and exposed to the harsh air, and with such fair,
fresh impulses, — just now must he be so often trampled
upon and disgraced. Honor burned in his bosom, — he
determined to pass through the coming years as through
a white colonnade of monumental pillars, — already a
mere Alumnus from the city was, to his soul thirsting for
glory and knowledge, a classic author, — and was he to
endure it that the Director should falsely accuse, and the
Vienna master caricature him to the Knight his father ?
Hard tears were struck, like sparks, from his proud, in
sulted soul, and the heat dissolved the comet nucleus of
5*
106 TITAN.

his inner world into a sweltry mist. In short, he resolved

to run away to Pestitz in the night, — rush into his
father's presence, tell him all, and then come home again
without saying a word of it. At the end of the village
he found a night-express, of whom he inquired the way
to Pestitz, and who wondered at the little pilgrim without
a hat.
But first let my readers look with me at the nest of
the supper-party. This very express brought the Vienna
master a bad piece of news touching the so-long-praised
son of the Minister, whose name was Roquairol.
The above-mentioned female pupil of the Knight, the
little Countess of Romeiro, was very beautiful : cold ones
called her an angel, and enthusiastic ones a goddess.
Roquairol had none of your Belgic veins, wherein, as
in Saturn, all liquids lie as fixed, frozen bodies, but Af
rican arteries, in which, as in Mercury, melted metals
run round. When the Countess was with his sister, he
was always trying, with the common boldness of boys in
high-life, to run his heart, filled with a venous system
of quick matches, upon hers, as a good fireship ; but she
placed his sister as a fire-wall before her. Unfortunately
she had gone, by chance, dressed as Werther's Lotta, to
this evening's masquerade, and the splendor of her des
potic charms was swallowed up and flashed round by
eyes all darkly glowing behind masks : he took his inner
and outer both off, pressed towards her, and demanded,
with some haste — because she threatened to be off, and
jvith some confidence, which he had won on the ama
teur-stage, and with pantomimic passionateness, which on
that stage had always gained him the finest serenade
of clapping hands — demanded nothing just now but re
ciprocal love. Werther's Lotta haughtily turned upon
 THE DOG MELAK PROTESTS. 107

him her splendid back, covered with ringlets ; beside him

self, he ran home, took Werther's costume and pistol
and came back. Then, with a physiognomical hurricane
on his countenance, he stepped up before her and said,
showing the weapon, he would kill himself here in the
hall, if she rejected him. She looked upon him a little
too politely, and asked what he wanted. But Werther,
half drunk with Lotta's charms, with Werther's sor
rows, and with punch, after the fifih or sixth "No!"
(being already used to public acting,) before the whole
masquerade, pointed the murderous weapon against him
self, pulled the trigger, but luckily injured only his left
ear-flap, — so that nothing more can be hung on that, —
and grazed the side of his head. She instantly fled, and
set out upon her journey, and he fell down, bleeding,
and was carried home.
This story blew out many lamps in Falterle's triumphal
arch, and lighted up many on Wehmeier's ; but it set Al-
bina at once into agony about her quite as wild mad-cap
Albano. She asked after him in the kitchen, and the
express-messenger helped her to a clew by his account
of the boy without a hat. She hastened, herself, in her
usual extravagance of anxiety, out through the village.
A good genius — the yard-dog, Melak — had proved
the antagonist-muscle and turnpike-gate of the fugitive.
That is to say, Melak wanted to go too, and Alban
chose rather that a patron and coast-guard so service
able to the castle-yard, and who oftener warned away
intruders than the night-watch did themselves, should go
home again. Melak was firm in his matters : he wanted
reasons, — namely, sticks and stones thrown at him ;
but the weeping boy, whose burning hands the cold nose
of the good-natured animal refreshed, could not give him
108 TITAN.

a hard word, but he merely turned the fawning dog right

about, and said softly, Go home ! But Melak recognized
no decrees except loud ones ; he kept turning round
again ; and in the midst of these inversions, — during
which, in Albano's mind, always on a Brockenberg and
seeing giant forms loom and glide through the clouds,
his tears and every undeserved word burned deeper
and deeper, — he was found by his innocent mother.
" Albano," said she, with a friendly but forced com
posure, " thou here in the cold night-air ? " This conduct
and language of the only soul which he had injured, took
so strong a hold on his full soul, which needed a vent,
whether in tears or in gall, that, with an arthritic shock
of his overstrained heart, he sprang upon her neck, and
hung there, melted in tears. At her questions, he could
not confess his cruel purpose, but merely pressed him
self more strongly to her heart. And now came the
anxious and penitent Director, too, following after, whom
the child's situation had melted over, and said : " Silly
devil t was my meaning then so evil ? " and .took the little
hand to lead the way back again. Probably Albano's
anger was exhausted by the effusion of love, and satis
fied through the appeasing of his ambition ; accordingly
and immediately, strange to tell, with greater affection
towards Wehrfriti! than towards Albina, he went back
with them, and wept by the way, merely from tender
emotion.
When he entered the room, his face was as if transfig
ured, though a little swollen ; the tears had washed away,
as with a flood, his defiance, and drawn all his heart's soft
lines of beauty upon his countenance, somewhat as the rain
shows in transparent, trembling threads the heaven-flower
(nostock), which does not appear in the sun. He placed
 RECONCILIATION AND MORAL. 109

himself in a posture of attention near his father, and kept

his hand the whole evening, and Albina enjoyed in the
double love a double bliss ; and even on the faces of
the servants lay scattered fragments of the third mock-
rainbow of the domestic peace, — the sign of the covenant
afier the assuaging of the waters.
Verily, I have often formed the wish — and afterwards
made a picture out of it — that I could be present at all
reconciliations in the world, because no love moves us so
deeply as returning love. It must touch Immortals, when
they see men, the heavy-laden, and often held so widely
asunder by fate or by fault, how, like the Valisneria,*
they will tear themselves away from the marshy bottom,
and ascend into a fairer element; and then, in the freer
upper air, how they will conquer the distance between
their hearts and come together. But it must also pain
Immortals when they behold us under the violent tempests
of life arrayed against each other on the battle-field of
enmity, under double blows, and so mortally smitten at
once by remote destiny and by that nearer hand which
should bind up our wounds !
• The female Valisneria lies rolled up under the water, out of which
it lifts its bud, to bloom in the open air; the male then loosens itself
from the too short stalk and swims to her with its dry blossom-dust.
 THIRD JUBILEE.

Methods of the two Professional Gardeners in their Ped

agogical Grafting-School. — Vindication of Vanity. —
Dawn of Friendship. — Morning Star of Love.

17. CYCLE.

| F we open the two school-rooms, we shall see

the Band-box-master, in the forenoon, sitting
and brooding upon the two-yolked eggs of the
eleve, and the accomplishing master, in the
afternoon, just as the cock-pigeon guards the nest the
former part of the day, and the female the latter.
Now Wehmeier, as well as his competitor, was fain to
take possession of his pupil with wholly new instructions ;
but what were new to him were new to himself. Like
most of the older schoolmasters, he knew — of astronomy,
except the little that was found in the book of Joshua,
and of physics, except the few errors which existed in
his rather-forgotten than torn-up manuscript books, and
of philosophy, except that of Gottsched, which required,
however, a riper pupil, and of other real sciences — strict
ly speaking, nothing, except a little history. If ever — in
the literary Sahara, to which the tormenting screw of
school-lessons, without end, and the beggar's or cripple's
wagon of a life without pay, that had been turned rather
into dross than into ore, had exiled him — new methods
 METHODS OF STUDYING HISTORY. Ill

of teaching or new discoveries came to his ears (they

never came to his eyes), he noted, at the moment, that
they were his own, only with a shade of variation ; and
he concealed from no one the plagiarism. I heartily
beg, however, all silken and powdered and curly-haired
Princes' instructors, blame not too sorely my poor Weh-
meier, so deeply overlaid with the heavy, thick strata of
fate, for his subterranean optics and his crookedness of
posture, but reckon his eight children and his eight school-
hours and his approaching fifties in his life's grotto of
Antiparos, and then decide whether the man can, under
these circumstances, come out again into light ?
But yet of history he knew, as was said, something ;
and this he seized upon as pedagogical lucky-bone and
Fortunatus's wishing-cap. Had he not already, in that ep
ical, picturesque style of paraphrase, — whereby he could
relate the smallest market-town history in such an inter
esting and fictitious way, (for whence will a good story
teller draw the thousand lesser but necessary touches
but from his head ?) — lectured out to his Albano Hiib-
ner's Biblical History, in a manner extremely touching ?
And which wept most during the delivery, teacher or
scholar ?
Now he had three historical courses open before him.
He could strike into the geographical road, which begins
with the wretchedest history in the world, — the history of
countries. But only the British and the French, at most,
can begin history as an epic, and a description of the
earth backward ; on the contrary, a Haarhaar, Baireuth,
or Mecklenberg princely patristic gives hollow teeth
hollow nuts to crack, without meat for head and heart.
And does not one magnify thereby a twig of history, on
which the accident of birth has deposited the young bark
112 TITAN.

chafer, most disproportionately into a tree of consanguin

ity ? And what cares one in Berlin, for instance, to
inquire after a lineage of Margraves, or in Hof, after the
pedigree of the Regents of Hohenzollern ?
The second method is the chronological, or that which
tackles the horses in front ; this starts with the birthday of
the world, which, according to Petavius and the Rabbins,
came into the world on the forenoon of the 22d Octo
ber,* hastens on to the 28th of October as the first
clown's and blunderhead's day of the young Adam, then
marches away over the 29th, the first Sunday, Fast-day,
and Bankruptcy-day, and so on down to the Bankruptcy-
and Fast-day of the latest child of Adam, who is com
pelled to listen to the case.
This milky-way was, for our Magister, too long, too
dreary, too strange. He steered the middle track be
tween the foregoing, which leads to the rich two Indies
of history, Greece and Rome. The ancients work upon
us more through their deeds than through their writings,
more upon the heart than upon the taste ; one fallen
century after another receives from them the double his
tory as the two sacraments and means of grace for moral
confirmation, and their writings, to which their stone
works of art attach every after age, are the eternal Bible-
institute against every failure of a Kanstein's. But let
us now, on a fine summer morning, walk along several

• The preceding fine Ootober days, as well as the Dog-holidays and

April, and, in short, the rest of the previous part of the year, were ore-
ated on the above-mentioned 22d October, and the said day itself also,
after their time. I thus easily shift the inquiry about all that earlier
period. For if any one dates the world differently, e. g. from the 20th
March, as Lipsius and the Fathers did, still he must fall in with my
after-creation of the fore-part of the year, when I thrust home upon
him with his own previous question.
 INFLUENCE OF PLUTARCH. 113

times before the Rectorate-residence, and listen, ourselves

also, outside, to hear with what voice the Magister within,
although in old-fashioned applications, cites out of Plu
tarch, — the biographical Shakespeare of Universal His
tory, — not the shadowy world of states, but the angels
of the churches who shine therein, the holy family of
great men, and cast a passing glance at the sparkling eye
with which the inspired boy hangs upon the moral an
tiques which the teacher, as in a foundery, assembles
around him. O, when the mighty storm-clouds of the
heroic past thus hung around Zesara's soul as on a moun
tain, and descended upon it with still lightnings and
drops, was not then the whole mountain charged with
heavenly lire, and every green thing that blossomed
thereupon fertilized, quickened, and called forth ? And
could he, then, so beautifully beclouded, haply look down
into low reality ? Nay, did not teacher as well as scholar,
amid the market-din of the Roman and Athenian forums,
where they went round in the train of Cato and Socrates,
remain entirely ignorant that the busy mistress was cook
ing, bed-making, scolding, and scouring close beside them ?
Of the eight screaming children, on account of the very
multitude, they heard nothing ; for a single buzzing fly a
man cannot bear, without a terrible effort, in his chamber,
while he could easily a whole swarm. Even so, from their
eyes, the school-room, on whose floor nothing was want
ing which is thrown into canary-cages for nest-building,
— hair, moss, roe's-hair, pulled flannel, and finger-lengths
of yarn, — was hidden by the floor of the (geographical
and historical) Old World, which, like the pavement of
St. Paul's church in Rome, consists of marble ruins full
of broken inscriptions.
114 TITAN.

18. CYCLE.

THE reader is now curious about the afternoon,

when the eleve is sent into the polishing-mill of
the Viennite, in order to know what sort of a polishing
he gets there. It cannot but make him still more curi
ous, when I repeat that Wehmeier, who, like other lite
rati, resembled the elephant in clumsiness and sagacity,
found nothing more agreeable to think of — and, there
fore, to describe — in ancient history, than a great man,
who had on little, as, for instance, Diogenes, or went
barefoot, like Cato, or unshaven, like the philosophers ;
nay, he hit the very middle mark, and drew out for him
self Frederick the Second's clothes, whereby he gained
as much as Mr. Page in Paris, and carried his shirts,
like the noble Saladin's, and with similar proclamations,
on poles for show, and sketched, as a second Scheiner,
the best map we have of the sun-spots of snuff on Fred
erick. Then he took these naked, rough colossi, and
piled them together into one scale, and threw into the
other the light, wainscoted figures, like Falterle and the
nice Nuremberg Kinder-garten of modern courts, and
bes-ought the scholar to take notice which way the sway
ing tongue of the balance would incline. . . .
I am not wholly on thy side here, Magister, since vig
orous youths too easily, without any prompting, tear in
pieces the thin plate of the ceremonial law, and often the
platers, the head masters of ceremonies, into the bargain.
For weaklings, the method is good.
Now, when Albano came to the accomplishing master,
he could but faintly, on account of the loud resonance of
the previous lesson, — for children of a certain depth,
like buildings of a certain size, give an echo, — appre
 ALBANO GETTING ACCOMPLISHED. 115

hend what Falterle commanded ; and only when he re

mained some days without the historical sensation was he
more widely open to the lesser instructions, as gilded
things cannot be silvered over till the gold is worn off.
The misfortune was, too, that he had to go through his
task-dances in the very next room to the study of the
Director, who was there occupied with his own. It often
happened that Wehrfritz, when Alban was as distrait and
inattentive in the Anglaise as a partner in love, would
cry out, while he was dictating in there, " In the name of
the three devils, chassez ! " Quite as many cases might
one reckon in which, when the music-master, like a bass-
drum, with everlasting exhortations glided away through
adagio into piano, the man had to call out in there, with
the strongest imaginable fortissimo, " Pianissimo, Satan I
pianissimo ! " Sometimes he was obliged to rise from his
labors, when, in the fencing-lesson, all admonitions to
" quart ! " availed nothing, and open the door, and, grim
with fury, say to him of Vienna, " For God's sake, sir,
don't be a hare ! Prick his leather soundly, if he does n't
mind ! " Whereupon the courtly fencing-master would
only gently encourage him to " quart thrust."
Nevertheless, he learned much. In such early years
one cannot rise above the finery nor the fine arts of a
Falterle, who, besides, was reinforced with the magical
advantage of having shone and taught in the forbidden
metropolis. Only the loud stride and the boots were not
to be taken from the pupil ; but the shoulders soon grew
horizontal, and the head perpendicular ; and the oscillat
ing fingers, together with the restless body, were steadied
with Stahl's eye-holder. In general, men with a liberal
soul in a finely-built body have already, without Falterle's
espalier-wall and scissors, an agreeable shape and stature.
Il6 TITAN.

Moreover, he felt toward the neat, friendly Falterle that

holy first love for men wherewith a child's heart twines
round all inmates of his home and village ; and simply
for this reason, that a lady could wind the Viennite
about her ring-finger, — yes, inside of the gold ring itself,
— and because he spoke and lied about the Knight of the
Golden Fleece as about a king, and because he was the
most agreeable creature that ever trod the earth.
As I mean in my biographies to teach tolerance and
even-handed justice toward all characters, I must here
lead the way with a pattern of toleration, by remarking
of Falterle, that his poor, thin soul had not the power
to develop itself under the stone table of the laws of
etiquette, and under the wooden yoke of an imposing sta
tion. To whom did the poor devil ever do any harm ?
Not even to ladies, for whom indeed he was always labor
ing before the looking-glass, like a copperplate engraver,
upon his dear self, but only, like other sculptors, by this
artistic work, to display pure beauties, not to mislead
them. The sea-water of his life — for he is neither a
millionnaire, nor even the greatest savant of the age, al
though he has read about among many circulating libra
ries — is sweetened by the water of beauty, wherein he
hourly bathes. He swills and gormandizes scarcely at
all. If he curses and swears, he does it in foreign lan
guages, as the Papist makes his prayers, and flatters
very few except himself.
The vain man, and still more the vain woman, hate
vain persons much too violently ; for such persons, after
all, are more diseased in the head than in the will. I
can here cheerfully appeal to every thinking reader,
whether he ever, even when he was going about with an
uncommonly vain feeling, remembers to have detected
 THE THUNDER-MONTHS OF LIFE. 117

any deep qualms of conscience or discords in himself,

which, however, were never wanting, when he lied very
much or was too hard. Much rather has he, on such
occasions, experienced an uncommonly agreeable rocking
of his inner man in the cradle of state. Hence a vain
man is as hard to cure as a gambler ; but for this further
reason, — most sins are occasional sermons and occasional
poems, and must frequently be set aside, from the third to
the tenth commandment inclusive. Marriage, the Sab
bath, a man's word, cannot be broken at any given hour.
One cannot bear false witness against himself, any more
than he can play ninepins or fight a duel with himself.
Many considerable sins can only be committed on Easter-
Fair or New-Year's Day, or in the Palais Royal, or in
the Vatican. Many royal, margravely, princely crimes
are possible only once in a whole life ; many never at all,
— for instance, the sin against the Holy Ghost. On the
contrary, one can praise and crown himself inwardly day
and night, summer and winter, in every place, — in the
pulpit, in the Prater, in the general's tent, on the back
seat of a sleigh, in the princely chair, in any part of Ger
many, — for instance, in Weimar. What! and must one
let this perennial balsam-plant, which continually per
fumes the inner man, be plucked up or lopped off?

19. CYCLE.

ALL these occupations and thorns were to Albano

right good, sharp earthquake-conductors, since in
his bosom already more subterranean storm-matter circu
lated than is needed to burst the thin wall of a man's
chest. Now he began to get on deeper and deeper into
the wild thunder-months of life. The longing to see
 Il8 . TITAN.

Don Zesara caught new warmth from the Roman history,

which lifted up on high before him Caesar's colossal im
age, and wrote under it, " Zesara." The veiled Linden-
city was carried over by his fancy and set upon seven
hills, and exalted to a Rome. A post-horn rang through
his innermost being, like a Swiss Ranz des Vaches, which
builds out into the ether all summits of our wishes in
long and shining mountain-chains ; and it blew for him
the signal of a tent-striking, and all cities of the earth lay
with open gates and with broad highways round about
him. And when, at this period, on a cool, clear summer
morning, he marched along metrically by the side of a
regiment on its way to Pestitz, so long as he could hear
the sound of the drums and fifes, then did his soul cele
brate a Handel's Alexander's Feast ; the past became au
dible, — the rattling of the triumphal cars, the movement
of the Spartan bands and their flutes, and the clear trum
pet of Fame, — and, as if at the sound of the last trum
pets, his soul arose among none but glorified dead on the
unbolted earth, and, with them, still marched onward.
When History leads a noble youth to the plains of
Marathon, and up to the Capitol, he would fain have at
his side a friend, — a comrade, — a brother-in-arms, but
no more than this, — no sister-in-arms ; for a heroine in
jures a hero greatly. Into the energetic youth friendship
enters earlier than love : the former appears, like the lark,
in the early spring of life, and goes not away till late au
tumn ; the latter comes and flees, like the quail, with the
warm season. Albano already heard this lark warbling,
invisible, in the air : he found a friend, not in Blumen-
biihl, not in the Linden-city, not in any place, but in his
own bosom ; and the name of that friend was — Ro-
quairol.
 THE INVISIBLE FRIEND AND HERO. 119

The case was this : For people like myself, country life
is the honey wherein they take the pill of city life. Fal-
terle, on the contrary, could not worry down the bitter
country life without the silvering-over of city life : thrice
every week he ran over to Pestitz, either into the boxes
of the amateur-theatre as dramaturgist, or on the stage
itself as actor. Now, on every such occasion, he took his
little part-book out into the village with him, and there,
relying on this rehearsal of the play, studied his part in
dependently of those of his colleagues ; just as, to this
day, every state-servant commits his to memory without
a glance at those of his fellow-performers : hence every
one of us consists of only one faculty, and, as in the Rus
sian hunting-music, knows how to fife only one tone, and
must throw his strength into the pauses. Into these
fragments of theatricals, then, borrowed from Falterle,
Albano entered with a rapture which his master soon
sought to increase by exchanging for these limited sectors
of the globe the whole dramatic world.
The Viennite had long since eulogized before him the
suicidal mad-cap Roquairol as a genius in learning, — and
himself as particularly such in teaching; and now he ad
duced the proof of it from the great parts which the mad
cap always played so well. For the rest, it was not his
fault that he did not exceedingly disparage the Minister's
son, whom he envied, not only for his theatrical, but for
his erotic achievements. For the inventively rich Ro
quairol had with that shot at himself in his thirteenth
year saluted and won the whole female sex, and made
himself, out of a sacrificial victim, priest of sacrifices, and
manager of the amateuress-theatre, attached to the ama
teur-theatre ; whereas the shy, stupid Falterle, with his
still-born fancy, could never bring a charmer to any other
120 TITAN.

step than the pas retrograde in a minuet, or to anything

more than a setting of the fingers, when he wanted to get
himself set in her heart. But the vain man cannot deny
others any praise which is also his own.
How must all this have won our friend's admiration
for a youth whom he saw pass through his soul now as
Charles Moor, now as Hamlet, as Clavigo, as Egmont!
As regards the notorious masquerade-shot described in a
former Jubilee period, our so inexperienced Hercules,
dazzled as he was by the naked dagger of Cato, must
have accredited that shot to such a kindred Heraclide, as
one of his twelve tragical labors. The fee-court-provost
Hafenreflfer even tells me, Albano once disputed with the
Vienna gentleman, who had long since let himself down
from a schoolmaster to a schoolmate, about the finest
ways of dying, and, in opposition to the tender Falterle,
who declared himself in favor of the sleeping-potion, de
clared himself on Roquairol's side, even with the stronger
addition : " He should like best of all to stand on the top
of a tower and draw the lightning on his head ! " In this
latter article he shows the high feeling of the ancients,
who held death by lightning to be no damnation, but a
deification ; but might not physical causes also have had
something to do with it, for his elbows and his hair often
flashed out, in the dark, electric fire, and more than once
a holy circle streamed out round his head even in the
cradle ? The Provost is strong for this view of the
matter.
Albano, at last, could find no way to cool his fiery heart
but by taking paper and writing to the invisible friend,
and giving it in charge to the gentleman from Vienna.
Falterle, who was complaisance itself— and withal un
truth itself, too — in spite of his aversion to Eoquairol,
 THE DREAMY YEARS. 121

took the letters with him, and was heartily glad to do it

(" I am quite at home at the Minister's," said he) ; but
never delivered a single one of them, since he had as little
influence in the proud Froulay-palace as with the son him
self, and so he merely brought back with him every time
a new and valid reason why Roquairol had not been able
to answer : he was either too very busy, or in the sick-
chair, or in company, — but every letter had delighted him ;
and our unsuspecting youth firmly believed it all, and
kept on writing and hoping. It would have been hand
somely done of the Legation's-counsellor. had he only,
that is to say, if he could, been so obliging as to hand
over to me Albano's palm-leaves of a loving heart ; not
for the archives of this book, but merely for my docu
ments relating to the case, for the catalogue of petals,
which I for my own private use am stitching and gluing
together, of Albano's flowering-time.

20. CYCLE.

OUR Zesara, on entering into the years when the

song of poets and nightingales flows more deeply
into the softened soul, became suddenly another being.
He grew stiller and wilder at once, more tender and more
impetuous, as, for instance, he once flew in the highest
rage to the help of a dog yelping under the blows of the
cudgel. Heaven and earth, which hitherto in his bosom,
as in the Egyptian system, had run into each other, that
is to say, the ideal and the real, worked themselves free
from each other, and Heaven ascended and receded, pure
and high and brilliant, — upon the inner world rose a sun
and upon the outer a moon, but the two worlds and hem
ispheres attracted each other and made one whole, — his
6
 122 TITAN.

step became slower, his bright eye dreamy, his athlete-

gymnastics less frequent, — he could not now help loving
all human beings more warmly, and feeling them more
near to him ; and often with closed eyes he fell trembling
upon the neck of his foster-mother, or out in the open air
bade his foster-father, at his starting on his journeys, a
more lonely and heartfelt farewell.
And now before such clear and sharp eyes the Isis-veil
of Nature became transparent, and a living Goddess
looked down into his heart with features full of soul. Ah,
as if he had found his mother, so did he now find Nature,
— now for the first time he knew what spring was, and
the moon, and the ruddy dawn, and the starry night. . . .
Ah, we have all once known it, we have all once been
tinged with the morning-redness of life ! . . . O, why do
we not regard all first stirrings of human emotion as
holy, as firstlings for the altar of God ? There is truly
nothing purer and warmer than our first friendship, our
first love, our first striving after truths, our first feeling
for Nature : like Adam, we are made mortals out of im
mortals ; like Egyptians, we are governed earlier by gods
than by men ; and the ideal foreruns the reality, as, with
some trees, the tender blossoms anticipate the broad, rough
leaves, in order that the latter may not set before the
dusting and fructifying of the former.
When, as often happened, Albano came home from his
inner and outer roamings, at once intoxicated and thirsty,
— with senses at the same time shut and sharpened, but
dreaming like sleepers who feel the more painfully the
putting out of the light, — at such times of course it
needed only a few cold drops of cold words to make the
hot, flowing soul, upon the contact of the strange, cold
bodies, scatter in zigzag and globules ; whereas a warm

-
 FALTERLE, A MATCH-MAKER. 123

mould would have rounded the fluid mass into the love
liest form.
Circumstances being such, of course no one will won
der at what I am presently to report. The dancing-,
music-, and fencing-master, who boasted little of his steps,
touches, and thrusts, but so much the more of his (Impe
rial Diet-) Literature, — for he had the new names of the
• months, the orthography of Klopstock, and the Latin char
acters in German letters sooner in his letters than any
one of us, — would fain show the house of Wehrfritz that
he understood a little more of literature and knew a thing
or two better than other Viennites (the more so since
he read absolutely nothing, not even political newspapers
and novels, because he preferred real, living men) ; he
therefore never came into the house without two pockets
full of romance and verse for Rabette and Albano. He
was encouraged in this by his endless officiousness, and
his emulous race-running with his colleague Wehmeier in
education, and the interest which he took in the youth
now growing so silent, whom he wished to help out of the
sweet dreams which the ruby* of his glittering young
life inspired with the exegetic dream-books, the works of
the poets. The revolution which had taken place in the
youth, who now mowed away whole romantic glades of
Everdingen, and plucked whole poetical flower-borders
of Huysum, I have now neither time nor wish even so
much as tolerably to portray, on account of the above-
promised wondrous circumstance ; suffice it, that Albano,
so situated, — the heaven of the poetic art open before him,
the promised land of Romance spread out before his eyes,
— resembled a planet, assailed by several whizzing comets,
and blazing up with them into a common conflagration.
* It used to be believed that a ruby gave pleasant dreams.
 124 TITAN.

But what further? The Vienna master — this I must

still premise — was a vain fool (at least in matters of
humility, for example, his pigmy feet, his literature, his
success with women), and particularly loved, by familiar
pictures of great ones and ladies, to have inferred his
confederation with the originals. The poor devil wa«,
to be sure, poor, and believed, with many other authors,
that he — unlike Solomon, who prayed for wisdom and
received gold — had inversely had the misfortune while
supplicating for the latter to receive only the former.
In short, on such grounds as these he would have been
very glad, let it be observed in passing, to know that the
belief prevailed in the house of Wehrfritz that he stood
on very good terms with his former pupil, the Minister's
daughter, — Liana, I think it was, if I read Hafenreffer's
handwriting correctly, — and that he quite often saw her,
and spoke with her mother. Add to this, that there was
not one word of truth in the whole : through the temple
in which Liana was there was no door-way for him. But
so much the less could he let the Director get ahead of
him, who often saw her, and always praised her more
warmly at home, merely for the sake of scolding the
rude innocence of Rabette, who had never been educated
by anybody. The Vienna master wished also, of course,
to draw the Count — to whom he only showed the coasts
of Roquairol's isle of friendship afar off, but no point for
landing — cunningly away from the brother through the
sister (he had found it impossible longer to deceive and
hold him back) ; for why did he paint it out before him
at such length, how poisonously, some years before, the
night- and death-chill brought on by that parting shot of a
brother whom she too devotedly loved had fallen upon
those tender, white leaves of her heart?
 FALTERLE'S PUPIL, LIANA. 125

Quite often would he, during a meal, hang up broad

merit-tables, countersigned by Wehrfritz, of Liana's pro
gress in music and painting, in order, seemingly, to stimu
late his pupil on the harpsichord and in drawing to greater
achievements. For if it was not for appearance* sake,
why did he paste up such very long altar-pieces of Liana's
charms before Rabette, that impartial one, who, vying only
with parsons' daughters, and not with those of ministers,
heard almost as gladly the praise of city beauties as we
do of Homer's, and in whose presence only a windy fool,
that would fain hold himself upright in the saddle before
women by singing the praises of other women, could in
tone such eulogies as his were of Liana ? Verily, before
such a resigned and unenvious soul as Rabette, — espe
cially as her complexion and hands and hair were none of
the softest, at least harder than Falterle's, — I would not
for any prize-medal in the world have undertaken, as he
however did, to bring near, in high colors, the happy
results with which the Minister, in order to bring over
Liana's uncommonly youthful beauty, by proper training,
into her present years, had done his best by means of
delicate and almost meagre fare, by tight lacing, by
shutting up his orangey, whose window he seldom lifted
off from this flower of a milder clime, — still less would
I have cared to be able to describe, like him, how she
had thereby become a tender creature of pastil-dust,
which the gusts of fate and the monsoons of climate
could almost blow to pieces, — and that she actually could
only wash herself with spirits of soap, and only with the
sofiest linen dry herself without pain, and could not
pluck three gooseberries without making her finger
bleed.
The shallow Viennite, who, if he spied a man of rank
 126 TITAN.

standing up on the cupola of a mountain, could never

take off his hat before him, down in the marsh, without
saying, in a low tone, at the same time, "Your most
profoundly obedient servant ! " and who spoke of distin
guished people, at the farthest, only in familiar or sa
tirical tones (to show his connection), but never in earnest
criticism, was, of course, as became him, not the man to
call old Froulay a stiff, sharp gravestone, under which
two such tender flowers as his lady with the ivy (Liana)
twining round her, crooked and crowded, had to wind
their way out into light. Mr. Von Hafenreffer, to his
honor, — in respect that he is a Legation's-Counsellor
and Fec-Court-Provost, — makes here the quite different
but more feeling observation, that the hard strata of such
connections as those through which Liana's life-rill must
needs filter and force its way, make it purer and clearer,
just as all hard strata are filtering-stones of water, — and
all her charms become, indeed, through her father's tyr
anny, torments, but also all her torments become, through
her own patience, charms. . . .
But, good Zesara, supposing now thou art compelled,
daily, to hear all this, — and supposing the master of ac
complishments forgets not to depict, besides, how she has
never grieved him with a disobedient look, or a tardiness,
how cheerfully she always brought him the paper-marks
of the lessons, and, at the end, her schooling-money or
an invitation, — and how carefully, mildly, and cour
teously she behaved toward her servants, and how one
must have thought her heart could not be warmer than
her very philanthropy made it, if one had not seen her
still more ardent filial affection for her mother; — good
Zesara, I say, what if thou hearest all this in addition
to thy romances, and that, too, of the sister of thy Ro
 DAWN OF LOVE. 127

quairol ; for every one, if it is only half practicable, loves

to spin himself into one chrysalis with the sister of his
friend, — and beside all this, of a maiden in the conse
crated Linden-city, about which Don Gaspard, as the old
Prussians* did about their sacred groves, draws addi
tional mystic curtains ; and, what is harder than all, just
after the turning-point of thy seventeenth year, Zesara,
when the monsoons and spring winds of the passions al
ready sweep over the waves of the blood ! For, of
course, at an earlier period, in the midst of the learned
club of so many linguists, — i. e. books of linguists, of
eclectics, upper-rabbins, — of ten wise men from the
East and from Greece, and, by reason of the uncommonly
dazzling JBpictetus'-lamps which the said Decemvirate of
wise men had lighted at the day-star of the wise ones, —
at such a time, I say, it was hardly to be expected of
thee that love's little Turin-lantern, which he kept as
yet unopened in his pocket, should strike thy eye very
strongly ! But now, my dear, now, I say ! Truly, no
where could any of us find less fault, if we are uncom
monly attentive to it, with what he does in the 2lst Cycle,
than in this 20th.

• Arnold's Ecolosiastical History of Prussia, Vol. I.

 FOURTH JUBILEE.

High Style of Love. — The Qotha Pocket-Almanac. — Dreams

on the Tower. — The Sacrament and the Thunder-Storm.
— The Night-Journey into Elysium. — New Actors and
Stages, and the Ultimatum of the School-Years.

21. CYCLE.

OW many blessed Adams of sixteen and a

half years will be at this moment enjoying
their siesta in the grass of Paradise, and see
ing their future bosom-companion created out
of the materials of their own hearts ! But they seek her
not, like the first Adam, close beside them on the build
ing-spot, but at a good distance from their own couch,
because distance of space lends as much enchantment to
the view as distance of time. Accordingly, every youth
seats himself in the mail-coach with the full persuasion
that in the cities for which he is booked quite different
and more divine Madonnas stand at the doors of the
houses than in his cursed one ; and the young men of
those cities, again, on their part, take passage in the ar
riving stage-coach, and go riding hopefully into his.
Ah, this sounds far too rude and harsh for all that I
have in my mind, and it is to me as if I were offering
the reader, instead of the living, floating rose-fragrance,
only the stiff, hard, thick, porcelain-rose ! Albano, I
 LOVE'S ADORATION OF ITS IDEAL. 129

will uncover and unclose thy silent, thickly-curtained

heart, so that we all may see therein the saintly image
of Liana, the ascending Raphael's-Mary, but, like the
pictures of the saints in Passion-week, hanging behind
the veil, which thou liftest with trembling to adore it,
when thou openest thy books of devotion, — the Roman
ces, — and when thou findest therein the prayers which
belong to thy saints. Even I find it hard not to do like
thee and the ancients, and make a mystery of the name
of thy guardian goddess, — concerning inner spiritual
apparitions (for outer ones are bodily apparitions) the
seer is glad to be silent nine days long ; — and with thy
blind belief in Liana's virtuous character being a thousand
times higher than thine is, and with thy holy sense of
honor, which watches over another's, it is, of course, a
riddle to thee how others, for instance the Vienna mas
ter or Wehrfritz, without the least blushing, can talk so
loudly and fondly of her, when thou thyself hardly darest
before others to — dream of her much. Truly, Albano is
a good creature ! Further, how such a light Psyche as
Liana, so crystallized into solid ether, somewhat like the
risen Christ, can at all eat carps and pick the bones out,
— or stir the stack of salad in the blue dish with the long,
wooden, miniature pitch-forks, — or how it can be that
she weighs half a pound more in the sedan than a blue
butterfly, — or how she can laugh loud (but that, how
ever, she never did, my friend) ; — all this, and in general
the whole petty service of this incarnate earthly life, was,
to the winged youth, a riddle and a real impossibility, or
at least the reality thereof was a sort of fixed-star occul-
tation; why shall I suppress that he would have been
far less astonished at a pair of angel's footsteps stamped
into Italian rocks, than at a pair of Liana's in the ground,
6* 1
130 TITAN.

and that he would have given for any one single trace
or relic of her — I mention only a thread-spool or a
tambour-flower — nothing less than whole cords of the
wood of the holy cross, together with casks of the holy
nails, and several apostolic wardrobes, together with the
holy duplicate-bodies into the bargain.
So have I often longingly wished I could have only a
pound of earth from the moon, or as much as a horn of
sun-dust from the sun, before me on my table and in my
hands. So do most of us authors of consequence hover
before a reader out of our own country in like manner
as fine, ethereal images, of whom it is hard to compre
hend how they can eat a slice of bacon, or drink a glass
of March beer, or wear a pair of boots ; it seems as if
people would collapse when they read anything about
Lessing's razor, Shakespeare's English saddle, Rousseau's
bear-skin cap, Psalmist David's navel, Homer's sleeve,
Gellert's queue-tie, Ramler's night-cap, and the bald-pate
under mine, though that is not of much more consequence.
The old Provincial Director, seeing that a maiden in
no way gains so much with a youth as by praises which
his parents bestow upon her, made some considerable
contributions toward the canonization of Liana, by fre
quently weighing against her the rustic Rabette, who
laughed just as he did, and insinuating a contrast between
his indulgent wife and the strict Minister's lady : he then
took occasion to set forth in detail after what strict rules
of pure composition this counterpointist (the Minister's
lady) harmoniously arranged the melodious tones of
Liana, and particularly how she discountenanced all
rudeness and laughter. Female souls are peacocks,
whose jewelled plumage must be sheltered in nice and
whitened apartments, whereas ours remain clean in duck
 RELICS OF THE LIVING SAINT. 131

coops. Albano pictured to himself mother and daughter

in the double forms in which the painters give us angels,
namely, the intelligent, strict mother, as one who hides
in a long cloud, with only her head visible, and Liana as
a glorified child that, with its tender wings, flutters about
a white cloud.
How he longed for something, though it were only a
fallen, faded rose of — silk from Pestitz ; and yet he
could not for shame ask the Vienna teacher for anything
except at the very last, afier long thinking, though with
a betraying glow, for one — lesson-mark ; " for he had
never yet seen one," he said. Falterle had one at this
moment in his pocket, — the number 15, Liana's former
age, was written upon it ; — she could have written the
number admirably ; — still it was something. Ah, could
he not more willingly have beset the Director for some
romances out of the portable-library of the Minister's
lady, in which the daughter must certainly have read,
yes, and might well even have forgotten some notes of
her reading ? He actually did it ; but Wehrfritz con
demned and cursed in the beginning all romances as poi
soned letters ; then he forgot over five times to ask for
any ; — and finally he brought with him a novel of
Madam Genlis, together with a Gotha pocket-almanac.
These books of the blest — in comparison with which my
own works and the Alexandrine Library and the blue
library are only miserable remiltenda — had all the
stamps of women's books ; for they all contained some
ornament or other of female heads, namely, a thimbleful
of hair-powder as they do, fag-ends of silk-ribbon as
they do, for demarcation-lines and memoranda of read
ings, — and just the same fragrance (which Semler
also praises in the books of alchemy), and which they
132 TITAN.

seemed to have borrowed from the blossoms of Paradise.

Ah, happy reader of the fairest book (I mean the Count),
canst thou ask more ?
By all means ; and he found more, too, namely, in the
latter end of the Gotha pocket-almanac, on the two blank
parchment-leaves, the words, " Concert for the Poor, the
21st February," and " Play for the Poor, the 1st Nov."
I have often, in my chase after mysteries, beaten out, on
these leaves, the weightiest ones from the bush. " Yes,
that is my pupil's hand," said Falterle ; " she and her
mother seldom let such an opportunity slip, because the
Minister does not allow them otherwise to give much to
the poor." Do not detain me here about the beauty of
her handwriting, — besides one writes better on parch
ment and slate than on paper, and a literary lady, exactly
unlike a literary man in this, has more calligraphy than
illiterate ones, — but let me hasten on to the working of
these incunabula of Liana, whose Dominical characters
diffuse over a loving man nothing but bright, inner Sun
days of the soul, and whose leaves resemble in sanctity
the Epistles which, in the Middle Ages, fell from heaven
upon the earth. Now, for the first time, was it to him
as if the flying angel, whose shadow hitherto had only
glided over the earth, folded up his pinions, and held his
downward course in the track of the shadow, not far from
the spot where Albano stands. He learned the Gotha
pocket-almanac by heart.
As he believed Liana to be much tenderer and better
than he, and as she appeared to his fancy like Hesper,
who, among all the planets, moves around the sun with
the least eccentricity, and he to himself like the distant
Uranus, who does so with the greatest ; and since ho
could not, without a blaze of shame on his cheek, think
 THE ROMANTIC WHITSUNTIDE. 133

of falling behind the daughter and mother in moral polish,

he became at once (no man knew why) more gentle,
mild, compliant, attentive to his person, obedient to the
Vienna teacher, — for Liana had been so too, —. and his
whole Vesuvius * was kept under by the veil of a saint.
The North American adores the form which appears
to him in dreams, as his guardian spirit. O, does not
even thus, to the youth, a fair dream ofien become his
genius ?

22. CYCLE.
A WHITSUNTIDE, such as I am now about to
describe, Albano, excepting in the Acts of the
Apostles, one can hardly find anywhere else than in
thine !
He had, hitherto, often listened to Liana's invalid-his
tory with the deafness of a vigorous, fire-proof youth,
when, on one occasion, the Director brought word home,
that the pious lady of the Minister would let her daughter
partake the sacrament on the first Whitsuntide holiday,
because she was apprehensive death regarded such a
creature as a strawberry, which must be plucked before
the sun had shone upon it. Ah, Albano saw death at this
moment groping about, and with his stony heel treading
on the pale red berry and crushing it. And then this
Philomela without a tongue, because she had hitherto
been compelled to be dumb, had, like a Proene, sent him
only the pictured history of her heavy existence, and
only the leaves of parchment! All loving emotions, like
plants, shoot up the most rapidly in the tempestuous at
mosphere of life. Albano felt at once a wide, deep woe,
and a tormenting fever-warmth in his heart, eaten hollow
• In Catania, the veil of St. Agatha is the only antidote to Etna,
 134 TITAN.

as it was by death. In his musical and poetic phantasy-

ings on his Oesterlein's-harpsichord, the dreamed tones
of Liana's voice and the weeping music of the harmon
ica, which she could play, and which he had never heard,
strangely mingled, like her swan-song, with his harmo
nies. But this was not enough ; he even wrote, secretly,
a Tragedy, (thou good soul !) wherein he, with wet eyes,
intrusted all his tenderest and bitterest feelings to anoth
er's lips, — but he only kindled them fearfully, while he
expressed them. Every one can remark that he proposed
in this way to escape that babbler and spy, accident ; but
not every one observes — something quite original in the
case ; in another's name, he might, he thought, venture to
give his deep pain a more passionate expression, for
which, in his own name, before so many stoic classical
heroes, he could not for shame muster up the courage.
But in this way the classics could not touch him.
The still, warm enthusiasm grew under the hot cover
ing of this glass bell much greater yet ; namely, to such
a degree, that he touchingly begged his foster-parents to
let him on the first Whitsuntide holiday go to the — Holy
Sacrament. The dilapidated state of the village church,
wherein it could hardly be partaken a year longer, must
needs speak as strongly in his favor, as the dilapidated
state of Liana's health did in hers. Always will there
remain in our poor human souls, separated from each
other by bodies and wildernesses, the longing to be at
least doing the same thing at the same time with one
another, at one and the same hour to look up at the
moon, or (as Addison relates) to send our prayers above
it ; and thus is thy wish, Albano, a human, a tender one,
to kneel at the same hour with thy invisible Liana, at the
steps of the altar, and then to rise fiery and commanding
 SUNDAY MORNING IN THE BELFRY. 135

after the coronation of the inner man ! He had in the

still country built up the altar of religion high and firm
in his soul, as all men of lofty fancy do : on mountains
are always seen temples and chapels.
But I must never accompany him into the Whitsun
tide church before ascending with him the church-tower.
Could anything be conceived more delicious, than when,
at this period, on fair Sundays, so soon as there was noth
ing but the heavy sun swimming through the wide heav
ens, he climbed to the belfry of the tower, and, covered
with the murmuring waves of the chime, looked out all
alone over the earth below, and upon the western bound
ary hills of the beloved city ? When presently the storm
of sound swept and confounded all together, and when
the jewel-sparkling of the ponds, and the flowery pleas
ure-tent of the frolicking spring, and the red castles on
the white roads, and the scattered trains of church-going
people slowly winding along between the dark-green
corn-fields, and the stream girdling round the rich pas
tures and the blue mountains, those smoking altars of
morning sacrifices, and the whole extended splendor of the
visible creation poured into his soul with a glimmering
overflow, and all appeared to him as a dim dream-land
scape — O then arose his inner colosseum full of silent,
godlike forms of spiritual antiques, and the torch-gleam
of Fancy* glanced round upon them like the play of a
moving magic life, — and there he saw among the gods
a friend and a loved one reposing, and he glowed and
trembled. . . . Then the bells died away with a heavy
groan, and became dumb, — he stepped back from the
bright spring into the dark tower, — he fastened his eye
* Allusion to the torches, before which tho Colosseum and the An
tiques and the glaciers, which are both, are seen magically gleaming.
 136 TITAN.

only on the empty, blue night before him, into which tho
distant earth sent up nothing save sometimes a butterfly
blown out of its course, a swallow cruising by, or a
pigeon hovering overhead, — the blue veil of Ether*
fluttered in a thousand folds over veiled gods in the dis
tance, — O then, then the cheated heart could not but
exclaim, in its loneliness, Ah ! where shall I find —
where, in the wide regions of space, in this short life —
the souls which I love eternally and so profoundly ? Ah,
thou dear one ! what is more painfully and longer sought,
then, than a heart ? When man stands before the sea
and on mountains, and before pyramids and ruins, and in
the presence of misfortune, and feels himself exalted, then
does he stretch out his arms after the great Friendship.
And when music, and moonlight, and spring and spring
tears softly move him, then his heart dissolves, and he
wants Love. And he who has never sought either is a
thousand times poorer than he who has lost both.
Let us now step into the Whitsuntide church, where
the deep stream of his fancy, for the first time in his life,
overflowed, and carried his heart far away, and sounded
on with it in a new channel : a physical storm had swol
len this stream. Early in the forenoon, the dark powder-
house of a storm-cloud stood mute near the hot sun, and
was glowing with his beams ; and only occasionally, dur
ing divine service, some distant, strange cloud let fall a
clap on the fire-drum : but when Albano stepped before
the altar with exalted, glorified emotions, and when he
ventured only to mask his love for Liana in an inward
prayer for her, and in a picture of her to-day's devotion,
and of her pale form in the dark bride-attire of piety, and
* As tho Queen of Heaven, Juno is always, by the ancients,
clothed in a blue veil. — Hagtdom on Painting.
 THUNDER-STORM DURING SERVICE. 137

when he softly felt as if his purified, sanctified soul were

now more worthy of that lovely one, — just then, the
tempest, with all its playing war-machines and revolv
ing cannons,* marched over from the Linden-city, and
passed, armed and hot, right over the church. Albano,
however, in the consciousness of a holy inspiration, felt
no fear ; but so soon as he heard the distant rumbling of
the falling avalanche, he thought only of Liana, and of
its striking the Linden-city church ; and now, when over
his head the sun kindled with his hot looks the powder-
tower of the storm-cloud, and made it fly into a thousand
flashes and claps, then did that partiality for the death by
lightning which had been nourished in him by the an
cients drive the terrible supposition into his heart, that
Liana was now dead and lost to him in the glory of
transfigured holiness. O then, must he indeed also be
lieve that now the wing of the lightning snatches him
above the clouds ? And when long flashes blazed about
the saints and the angels of the altar, and when the trem
bling voices of the singers, growing louder, and the tolling
of the familiar bells, mingled with the crashing thunder,
and he caught, amid the deafening din, a high, fine organ-
tone, which he took for one of the tones of that unheard
harmonica, — then did he mount, deified, upon the trium
phal and thunder-car by the side of his Liana ; the
theatre-curtain of life and the stage burned away from
under him ; and they soared away, linked together and
radiant, far through the cool, pure ether ! . . .
But the twelfth hour banished these spiritual appari
tions and the tempest ; Albano stepped out into a bluer,
cooler, breezier sky, — and the glistening sun looked down
with a friendly smile on the affrighted earth, whose bright
* An old machine that fires many shots at once.
 138 TITAN.

tears still quivered in all her flower-eyes. And now

when in the afternoon Albano still heard the peaceful
march of the thunder through Liana's city, then by his
faith in her newly-assured life, and by the soft dead-gold
of resting fancy, and by the holy stillness of the regen
erated bosom, and by the increased fervor of his love,
there grew up out of all regions of his soul an evening-
red, magic Arcadia, — and never did a man enter upon a
fairer one.
23. CYCLE.

IT arises not merely from my courtesy towards a read

ing posterity, my dear Zesara, but also from a real
courtesy toward thee, that I so faithfully transcribe all
acts in this pastoral of thy life ; in thy later days these
melodious ones shall echo in thy ears refreshingly out
of my book, and in the evening, after thy labors, thou
wilt read nothing more gladly than my labors here.
The following night deserves its Cycle. Soon after
Whitsuntide he was tormented with weekly medical
notes upon a new malady of poor Liana, which had be
gun, just as if he had guessed right, on Sacrament-day.
He heard that she was living or suffering in Lilar, the
pleasure- and residence-garden of the old Prince, in com
pany with her brother, of whose silence the Vienna mas
ter had just got up to his thousand and first reason.
Now, around Lilar, although not far from Pestitz, his
father had drawn no chains of prohibition. Liana's night-
lamp might, perhaps, glimmer a welcome, or at all events
her harmonica sound one, — yes, her brother might haply
be still walking round in the garden, — the June night
was, besides, serene and magnificent. Ah, in short, he
started.
 NIGHT-WALK OUT TO LILAR. 139

It was late and still ; far out of the sleeping village,

of which all the lights were extinguished, he could still
catch the flute-pieces of the clock in the castle upon the
Pestitz mountain. It was a quickener to him, that his
road lay for some distance along the Linden-city cause
way. He fixed his eyes steadily on the western moun
tains, where the stars seemed to fall to her like white
blossoms. Up on the distant height, the Hercules'
cross-way, the right arm ran downward and wound
along through groves and meadows to the blooming
Lilar.
March on, drunk with joy, full of young, light images,
through the Italian night, which glimmers and breathes
its fragrance around thee, and which, as over Hesperia,
not far from the warm moon, hangs out a golden evening-
star • in the blue west, as if over the dwelling of the be
loved soul ! To thee and thy young eyes the stars as yet
only shed down hopes, no remembrances ; thou hast in
thy hand a plucked, stiff apple-twig, full of red buds,
which, like unhappy beings, become too pale when they
bloom out ; but thou makest not, as yet, any such appli
cations thereof as we do.
Now he stood glowing and trembling in a dell before
Lilar, which, however, a singular round wood, of walks
lined with trees, still hid from his view. The wood grew
up in the middle to a blooming mount, which was embo
somed and encircled so curiously with broad sunflowers,
festoons of cherries, and glancing silver-poplars and rose-
trees, that it seemed, by the picturesque ignes-fatui of
the moon, to be a single, enormous kettle-tree, full of
fruits and blossoms. Albano was fain to ascend its sum
mit, and be, as it were, on the observatory of the heaven,
* In Italy the stars look not silvery, but golden.
H° TITAN.

or Lil.-ir, spread out below ; he found at last in the wood

an open alley.
The foliage, with its spiral alleys, wound him round
into a deeper and deeper night, through which not the
moon, but only the heat lightnings, could break, with
which the warm, cloudless heavens were overcharged.
The magic circles of the mount rose ever smaller and
smaller out of the leaves into the blossoms, — two naked
children, among myrtles, had twined their arms caress
ingly about each other's bent head, — they were statues
of Cupid and Psyche, — rosy night-butterflies were lick
ing, with their short tongues, the honey-dew from the
leaves, and the glowworms, like sparks struck off from
the glow of evening, went trailing like gold threads
around the rose-bushes ; he climbed amid summits and
roots behind the aromatic balustrade toward heaven ; but
the little spiral alley running round with him hung be
fore the stars purple night-violets, and hid the deep gar
dens with orange summits ; at length he sprang from the
highest round of his Jacob's-ladder, with all his senses,
out into an uncovered, living heaven ; a light hill-top,
only fringed with variegated flower-cups, received and
cradled him under the stars, and a white altar gleamed
brightly beside him in the moonlight.
But gaze down, fiery man, with thy fresh heart, full
of youth, on the magnificent, immeasurable, enchanted
Lilar ! A second twilight-world, such as tender tones
picture to us, an open morning-dream spreads out before
thee, with high triumphal arches, with whispering laby
rinthine walks, with islands of the blest ; the pure snow
of the sunken moon lingers now only on the groves and
triumphal gates, and on the silver-dust of the fountain-
water, and the night, flowing off from all waters and
 ALBANO'S EDEN WANTS ITS EVE. 141

vales, swims over the Elysian fields of the heavenly

realm of shadows, in which, to earthly memory, the un
known forms appear like Otaheite-shorcs, pastoral coun
tries, Daphnian groves, and poplar-islands of our present
world, — wondrous lights glide through the dark foliage,
and all is one lovely, magic confusion. What mean those
high, open doors or arches, and the pierced groves and
the ruddy splendor behind them, and a white child
sleeping among orange-lilies and gold-flowers, from whose
cups delicate flames trickle,* as if angels had flown too
near over them ? The lightnings reveal swans, sleeping
on the waves under clouds drunk with light, and their
flaming trains blaze like gold after them in among the
thick trees,t as goldfishes turn their burning backs out
of the water, — and even around thy summit, Albano,
the great eyes of the sunflowers turn on thee their fiery
looks, as if kindled by the sparks of the glowworms.
" And in this kingdom of light," thought Albano, trem
bling, " the still angel of my future hides himself and glo
rifies it, when he appears. O where dwellest thou, good
Liana ? In that white temple ? or in the arbor between
the rose-fields ? or up there in the green Arcadian sum
mer-house ? " If love makes even pangs to be pleas
ures, and exalts the shadowy sphere of the earth into a
starry sphere, 0 what an enchantment will it lend to
delight ! Albano could not possibly, in this outer and
inner splendor, think of Liana as sick ; he represented to
himself just now only the blissful future, and with a
yearning embrace knelt down at the altar ; he looked
toward the glittering garden, and pictured to himself how
• In ft tempestuous atmosphere, little flnme» nre emitted by orange-
lilies, gold-flowers, sunflowers, Indian pinks, &c.
t Probably on fluttering gold plates after tbe birds.
 142 TITAN.

it would be when he should one day tread with her every

island of this Eden, — when holy Nature should lay his
and her hands in one another upon these altar-steps, —■
when he should sketch to her on the way the Hesperia
of life, the pastoral land of first love, and then its holy
exultation and its sweet tears, and how he should not
then be able to look round into the eyes of that most ten
der heart, because he should already know that they
were overflowing with bliss. Just then he saw, in the
moonshine above the triumphal arches, two illuminated
forms move like spirits ; but his glowing soul went on
with its painting, and he imagined to himself how, when
the nightingales trilled in this Eden, he should look up
to her and say, in a delirium of love, " 0 Liana, I bore
thee long ago in my heart, — once upon that mountain,
when thou wast sick." . . .
This startled him, and he came to himself; he was
indeed on the mountain, — but he had forgotten the sick
ness. Now, kneeling, he threw his arms around the cold
stone, and prayed for her whom he so loved, and who,
also, surely had prayed here ; and his head sank, weep
ing and darkened, upon the altar. He heard human
steps approaching down below on the winding hill, and,
with trembling joy, he thought it might be his father ;
but he boldly remained on his knees. At last there
stepped in across the flowery border a tall, bent old man,
like the noble bishop of Spangenberg ; his calm counte
nance smiled full of eternal love, and no pains appeared
upon it, and it seemed to fear none. The old man, in
mute gladness, pressed the youth's hands together as a sign
that he should pray on, knelt down beside him, and that
ecstasy to which frequent prayer transfigures one spread
its saintly radiance over that form full of years. Singu
 THE UNKNOWN OLD MAN. 143

lar was this union and this silence. The fragment of the
moon, which was all that yet jutted above the earth,
burned darklier, and at last went down ; then the old
man rose, and, with that easiness of transition which
comes from being habituated to devotion, put questions
about Albano's name and residence ; after the answer,
he merely said, " Pray on thy way to God, the all-gra
cious, — and go to sleep before the storm comes."
Never can that voice and form pass away out of Alba
no's heart ; the soul of the old man peered, like the sun
in an annular eclipse, shining, full circle, out over the
dark body, which strove to hide it with its earth-mould.
Deeply struck, to the very roots of his nerves, Albano
rose, and the broadening flashes of the lightning showed
him now, down below near the enchanted garden, a sec
ond dark, entangled, horrible one, a sort of Tartarus
to the Elysium. He departed with singular and con
flicting emotions, — the future, and the beings therein,
appeared to him, on his way, to stand very near, and
already to run to and fro like theatre lights behind the
transparent curtain, — and he longed for some weighty
enterprise as a refreshment for his inflamed heart; but
he had to rest his head, full of this heath-fire, on the
pillow, and the high thunder, like a god of the night,
mingled with its first claps in his dreams.

24. CYCLE.

THE unknown old man lingered many days in Al

bano's soul, and would not stir. In fact, the chan
nel of his life now needed a bend, to break the stress of
the stream. Fate can educate men like him only by a
change of circumstances, just as it can weak ones only
 144 TITAN.

by a continuance of the same. For if it went on much

longer in this way, and the chandelier in his temple
should, by inner earthquakes, be thrown into ever in
creasing vibrations, the consequence would be, at last,
that no candle could any longer burn therein. What
Imperial-Diet-grievances did not Wehrfritz and Hafen-
reffer already jointly present on the subject, when the
shipmaster Blanchard, in Blumenbiihl, went up with his
aerostatic soap-bubbles, and Zesara could hardly, by al
most the absolute despotism of the Director, be kept
back from embarking ! And how divine a thing does he
not imagine it would be, not only to hurl down to the
earth its iron rings and arrest warrants, and soar away,
perpendicularly, above all its market-rubbish and bound
ary-trees and Hercules'-pillars, and sweep around it as a
constellation, but also to hover above the magic Lilar
and the hermetically-sealed Linden-city with devouring
eyes, and to lift a whole, full, heavy world to his thirsty
heart, by the handle of a single look !
But fate broke the fall of this swift stream. Namely,
as good luck would have it, the Blumenbiihl church had
this long time been daily threatening to tumble down, —
and I was wishing the Whitsuntide lightning had gone
in there, and had made ears and legs for the building
committee, — when by still greater good luck the old
Prince was taken sick. Now in the church was the
hereditary sepulchre of the Prince, which could not
conveniently serve, on the other hand, as the hereditary
sepulchre of the church.
About this time it must needs happen that the old
Princess, with the Minister Froulay, passed through the
village. The two had long since commissioned them
selves as Imperial vicars, business-agents, and sceptre
 PRINCELY VISIT TO BLUMENBOHL. 145

bearers of the State, because the feeble old gentleman

bad been glad to give up the amusements and burdens,
the glitter and weight of the crown, and admit those two
feudal guardians into the hereditary office of the sceptre.
In short, the age of the church, together with that of the
princely couple, decided the building of a new roofing
and covering for the vault.
The Provincial-Director was one of the inspecting
committee, and invited the distinguished company to his
house ; among whom, the Provincial architect, Dian, and
the Counsellor of Art, Fraischdorfer, as artist, and the
little princess as naturalist, are particularly to be no
ticed.
The poor dancing-master got wind of the procession
through a telescope, just as he was stretching his feet,
full of pas, into a warm foot-bath. It will not gratify
anybody, that the Vienna gentleman had but one thing
in common with the old Magister, — what the Devil
shares with the horse, namely, the foot, which measured
its good foot and a half, Paris measure, and that, there
fore, his double root, in the narrow forcing-pots of shoes,
shot out into a fruit-bearing, knotty-stock, full of inocu
lating eyes, i. e. corns. To-day he would have cut these
gordian knots in a foot-bath ; but, as it was, he must,
on occasion of such a visit, — although he had never
stretched them, — put on his tightest children's shoes, for
effect. Thus are men often caught with too tight shoes,
as monkeys arc with too heavy ones.
Albano, on the contrary, stood in buskins. In general,
every one who simply came from Pcstitz, had, in his eyes,
consecrated holy earth on his soles ; and here he looked
with the loving reverence of a village youth upon a
somewhat oldish, but red-cheeked and tall-built princess,
7 J
146 TITAN.

whose chin was bent up by time, and whose friendly face

— perhaps, by way of hiding the many wrinkles — was
buried deep in a whole bush of millinery. She kept this
head moving to and fro with a smiling comparison, as of
brother and sister, between him and Rabette ; for mothers
always look, in mothers, for the children first. He should
have further known that he had before him a friend of
Liana in the frizzle-headed little princess, who, although
already of his age, yet with a friendly liveliness, which
can never be subscribed to by the court-marshalship,
looked up at all, and even took Rabette by the hand, and
drew from her an indescribably good-natured and stiff
smile. The formidable one of the party was to him the
Minister, a man full of strong parts, both of body and
soul, full of furious, murderous passions, only that they
lay bound with flowery chains, and with respect to whom,
although his hard face was written over only out of court
liness with the twelve friendly signs of the zodiac of love,
it would not be specially apparent how one could be
father and guide to the weak-nerved Liana, when the
iron parts, of which man carries more in his blood than
any other animal, had settled, not as in the case of Gotz
of Berlichingen, into his hand, but into his brow and
heart.
I give merely a flying glance at the only member of
the company who was intolerable to Albano, — the art-
counsellor, Fraischdorfer, who had thrown off his face,
like the drapery of the ancients, into folds of simple and
noble greatness. This man, I must explain, had wanted
for many years to have our bashful little hero sit to him,
even to the very pit of his stomach, in order to represent,
whether in a crayon likeness or a medallion I know not,
his face, and the broad, high, Plato-like breast shining out
 THE ARCHITECT DIAN. 147

from his shirt-frills. But the bashful child played about

himself with his hands and feet so lustily, that nothing
could possibly be caught and copied except the naked face
without the pedestal, the thorax. Before me, on the con
trary, dear academy, must thou now for years keep thy
self on the model-stand, like a stylite, and expose to my
drawing-pen thy head and thy breast, together with its
cubic contents, not to mention the groupings at all.
He had, perhaps, to thank his noble form for it, that
the beautifully built, straight-nosed, and magnificently
slender Dian — with his raven hair and black, eagle eye,
who in every pliant motion showed a higher freedom of
carriage than is gained in ball-rooms and court-saloons —
came up to him warmly, and, with very few glances, saw
to the green bottom of the deep but clear sea of the
young man, and discerned the pearl-banks there. Alba-
no, with his too loud, vehement voice, — with his respect
ful but sharply-moving eyes, — with his rooted posture, —
expressed an agreeable mixture of inward culture and
ascendency with external rustic modesty and mildness,
like a tulip-tree not as yet cut up for a tulip-bed, — a
rural hermitage and log-house with golden furniture. He
had the faults of youth in its recluseness ; but men and
winter radishes must be sowed far apart, in order that
they may grow large : men and trees that stand near to
gether have, it is true, a more slender and tapering trunk,
but no power to brave the tempest, nor such a rich crown
and branching as those that stand free. With the most
unembarrassed heartiness, the architect disclosed to the
glowing youth, " They should from this time forth see
each other every week, since he was to come daily to
oversee the building of the church."
The whole Wehrfritz household is now peeping out
148 TITAN.

after the majestic procession, even to the last disappear

ing chariot-wheel, and is, of course, eager to say three
words upon the lavender-water of joy that leaves such a
fragrance behind it, which the procession had sprinkled
into all corners and upon all pieces of furniture. From
the Master of exercises — who, with the compression-ma
chines on his feet, stood only so far as the excrescences
in Purgatory, but from there up to the crown of his head
in heaven (because the affable Princess had remembered
very well his five positions) — even to the modest Ra-
bette, the eulogist of her victorious rival, — and even to
Albina, who was agreeably impressed with such warm,
motherly love in a Furstinn toward the Princess, — and
even to the Director, who looked back with pleasure on
the nobly sustained blade- and anchor-proof of his foster-
son and the universal probity of this converted portion of
the great world, because the man never observed that
Princes and Ministers, just as they have in their ward
robes mountain- and mining-habits, so also carry about
in their dressing-chamber Directorate-dresses, furred
gowns of justice, consistorial sheep-skins, and women's
opera-dresses ; — from all these, even to the Director, the
glad echo swelled, to die away in Zesara with an alarm-
cannon. His ambition took arms ; his liberty-tree shot
forth into blossoms ; the standards of his youthful wishes
were consecrated and flung to the breeze of heaven ; and
on the myrtle crown he covered a heavy helm with a glit
tering, high-waving, plumed crest. . . .
The following Cycle is composed merely for the pur
pose of showing how all this is to be taken.
 DIAN'S INFLUENCE ON ALBANO. 149

25. CYCLE.

IT is also my opinion that the antiphonious double choir

of the two educational colleagues, Wehmeier and Fal-
terle, had hitherto trained our Norman, as well as two
similar gymnasiarchs, Governess England and domestic
French instructress France, have actually educated the
charity-school-girl Germany according to the best school-
books, so that now we, in our turn, are in a condition to
school the Poles, and, with the ferule, from the desk of
our princely schools, to kantschu them down as much as
is necessary.
But now too much had waked up in Albano. He felt
overswelling energies which found no teacher. His
father, roving round through Italy, seemed to be neglect
ing him. That seat of the muses, Pestitz, — which now
had one more muse added to its number, — seemed to be
unjustly barred against him. Often he knew not how to
stay away. Fancy, heart, blood, and ambition were at
boiling heat. In such a case, as in every fermenting
cask, nothing is more dangerous than an empty space,
whether from a want of knowledge or of occupation.
Dian filled up the cask.
He came each week from the city, as if he had to ar
range the hammer-work of the church, according to plans,
as well as the building of its walls. A youth who sees
his first Greek cannot, at the outset, rightly believe it at
all ; he takes him for a classic glorification, — a printed
sheet out of Plutarch. And if his heart burns like that
of my hero, and if his Greek is of Spartan descent, like
Dian, — namely, an unconquered Mainotte, who has been
brought up in the classic double choir of the resthetic
singing-schools in Atiniah (Athens) and Rome, — then is
150 TITAN.

it natural that the inspired youth should stand every day

in the dust- and rubbish-clouds of the falling church-walls,
and wait to see his commander come forth from behind the
cloudy pillar.
Dian accompanied his beloved in his walks, often read
half the night with him, and took him with him on the
architectural journeys which he had constantly to make
into the country. He introduced him with inspired rev
erence into the holy world of Homer and of Sophocles,
and went with him among the loftier beings of this twin
Prometheus, those nobly formed, completely developed
men, yet unperverted by a partial provincial culture, who,
like Solomon, had a time for everything human, — for
laughing, weeping, eating, fearing, and hoping, — and
who shunned merely rude immodcrateness ; who sacrificed
on the altars of all gods, but on that of Nemesis first of
all. And Dian, whose inner man was a whole, from
which no member is torn away, no one swollen, and all
fully grown, himself went round with his darling as such
a Greek of Homer and Sophocles. While Wehmeier
and the foster-parents were always running after him
with a pulpit and a pew, at every passionate expression
of anger, or desire, or exultation, he, on the contrary, with
fair, liberal freedom, made room for him to unfold himself
to his full breadth and height. He respected in the youth
the St. Elmo's or St. Helena's fire, as he did frost in an
old man : the heart of vigorous men, he thought, must,
like a porcelain vase, in the beginning, be turned too
large and too wide ; in the furnace of the world it would
soon enough shrink up to a proper size. I too require
of youth, at first, intolerance, then, after some years, tol
erance, — that as the stony, sour fruit of a strong young
heart, this as the soft winter-fruit of an older head.
 DIAN BEGINS WITH RELIGION. 151

But while the Architect drew with him, and with him
examined casts of the antiques and works of art, he at
the same time made manifest most beautifully to the
youth his love for the artistical sign of the Balance in
man (who ought to be his own work of art), and his aver
sion to every paroxysm, which breaks the outward beauty
as well as the inward into folds and wrinkles, and his
desire to regulate his form and his heart after the lofty
pattern of repose on the antiques.
The Architect, as artists often do, and the Swiss still
oftener, preserved European culture and rural naivete
and simplicity side by side, like his beloved profession,
wherein, more than in other arts, beauty and surveying
reason border upon each other ; he therefore at first let
Albano look in and listen at the window of the philo
sophical lecture-hall from without, standing in the open
air. He led him, not into the stone-quarry, lime-pit, and
timber-yard of metaphysics, but directly into the ready-
made, beautiful oratory, formed of the materials thence
collected, otherwise called Natural Theology. He did
not let him forge and solder ring after ring of any iron
chain of reasoning, but showed such a one to him as a
deep-reaching well-chain, whereby Truth, sitting at the
bottom, is to be drawn up ; or as a chain hanging from
heaven, whereby the lower gods (the philosophers) are to
draw Jupiter down. In short, the skeleton and muscle-
preparation of metaphysics he concealed in the God-man
of religion. And so it should be (in the beginning) ;
grammar is learned from language more easily than the
latter from the former ; criticism from works of art, the
skeleton from the body, more easily than the reverse ;
although we always do reverse it. Unfortunate is it for
the youth of our day, that they are obliged to shake the
 15* TITAN.

drops and the insects from the tree of knowledge, before

the fruit.
And now he boldly threw open to him all the chamber-
doors of the philosophical schools, i. e. the three heavens ;
for in this youthful season one still takes the wick of
every learned light of the world for asbestos, as Brahmins
dress themselves in asbestos ; and the masses of ice
around the poles of our spiritual world represent, at this
early age, like the actual ones in the visible world, cities
and temples on azure-blue columns.
Now when Albano had read himself to the flaming point
upon some great idea or other, as Immortality or Deity,
he had then to write upon it ; because the Architect be
lieved, and I too, that in the educational world nothing
goes beyond writing, — not even reading and speaking ;
and that a man may read thirty years with less improve
ment than he would gain by writing a half. It is just
in this way that we authors mount to such heights ;
hence it is that even the worst of us, if we hold out, be
come somewhat, at last, and write ourselves up from
Schilda to Abdera, and from there away up to Grub
Street.
But what a glowing hour then came on for our darling !
What are all Chinese lantern-festivals to the high festi
val for which an inflamed youth lights up all the cham
bers of his brain, and in this illumination throws out his
first essays ?
In the forepart, and on the very threshold of the essay
perhaps, Albano still crept along step by step, and made
use merely of his head ; but as he got further on. and
his heart quivered with wings, and like a comet he must
needs sweep along before only shimmering constellations
of great truths, could he then restrain himself from imi
 ALBANO'S FIRST ESSAYS. 1 53

fating the rosy-red Flamingo, who, in his passage towards

the sun, seems to paint himself into a flying brand, and
to clothe himself in wings of fire ? When at length he
reached the practical application, verily every one was
like the others ; in each he formed and sowed an Arcadia
full of human angels, who in three minutes could cross
over on a Charon's pontoon thrown in for the purpose,
and land in the Elysium which floated so near : in every
one of these practical applications all men were saints,
all saints beatified ; all mornings blossoms, and all even
ings fruit ; Liana perfectly well, and he not far from it —
her lover; — all nations ascended more easily the noon
day heights ; and he upon his own, like men upon moun
tains, saw everything good nearer to him. Ah ! the
whole boggy present, full of stumps and blood-suckers,
had he kicked aside, and was now encircled only with
floating green worlds, full of pastures, which the sun-ball
of his head had projected into the ether.
Blissful, blissful time ! thou hast long since gone by !
O, the years in which man reads and makes his first
poems and systems, when the spirit creates and blesses
its first worlds, and when, full of fresh morning-thoughts,
it sees the first constellations of truth come up bringing
an eternal splendor, and stand ever before the longing
heart, which has enjoyed them, and to which time, by
and by, offers only astronomical newspapers and refrac
tion-tables on the morning-stars, only antiquated truths
and rejuvenated lies ! O, then was man, like a fresh,
thirsty child, suckled and reared with the milk of wis
dom ; at a later period he is only cured with it, as a
withered, sceptical, hectic patient ! But thou canst, in
deed, never come back again, glorious season of first love
for the truth, and these sighs can only give me a warmer
7*
154 TITAN.

remembrance of thee ; and if ihou ever shouldst return,

it certainly could not be down here in the low mine-shafi
of life, where our morning splendor consists of the little
flames that play upon the quartz crystals, and our sun is
a mine-lamp, — no ; but it may happen then, when death
reveals us, and tears away from over the heads of the
pale-yellow workmen the coffin-lid of the mine-shaft, and
we now again stand as first men on a new, full earth,
and under a fresh, immeasurable heaven !
Into this golden age of his heart fell also his acquaint
ance with Rousseau and Shakespeare, of whom the
former exalted him above his century, and the latter
above this life. I will not say here how Shakespeare
ruled, sovereign, in his heart, — not through the breathing
of living characters, but by lifting him up out of the loud
kingdom of earth into the silent realm of infinity. When
one dips his head at night under water, there is an awful
stillness round about him ; into a similar supernatural
stillness of the under-world does Shakespeare intro
duce us.
What many schoolmasters may blame in Dian is this,
that he gave the youth all books indiscriminately, with
out any exact course of reading. But Alban asked, in
later years : " Is such a course anything but folly ? Is it
possible? For does Fate ever arrange the appearance
of new books, or systems, or teachers, or outward circum
stances, or conversations, so according to paragraphs,
that one needs nothing more than to transcribe all that
passes upon the memory, and he shall have the order
into the bargain ? Does not every head need and make
its own ? And does more depend on the order in which
the incuts follow each other, or on the digestion of
them ? "

* ^
 FOR PESTITZ, VIA ISOLA BELLA. 155

26. CYCLE.

WHILE Dian was causing a nobler temple to go

up in the heavens than the stone one in the
village, the Princess, whose castrum doloris this was to
be, died ; they had, therefore, to deposit her remains for
a time in the accommodations of a Pestitz church. This
changed one or two thousand things. The Crown-prince
of Hohenfliess, Luigi, must now, will he nill he, come back
from Italy, to the princely chair, in which the old man, bent
up with years, had, for a long time, diminutive and speech
less, been rather lying than sitting, — although the Minister
standing behind the princely arm-chair took off his figure
and voice in a sufficiently lively manner. Don Gaspard,
who had not listened to any of the previous letters of Al-
bano, now despatched to him the following orders, which
rushed like fiery wine through his veins : " On my way
back from Italy we meet, in thy birthplace, Isola Bella.
Thou wilt be sent for." Even readers who have not had
a week's practice in folding and sealing letters of a diplo
matic corps, will easily observe that the Knight of the
Fleece is thinking to bring his son acquainted with the
young prince, and to establish and insure their first Pes
titz connections.
But I beg the world now to measure the Paradise of
a man, who after so long seafaring at last sees the long
shores of the new world stretch out into the ocean.
Was not life at this moment open to him in a hundred
directions ? Laurel-wreaths, ivy-wreaths, flower-wreaths,
myrtle-wreaths, wheat-garlands, — all these crowns over
hung the great gate of Pestitz and its house-doors. Thou
brother, thou sister, (I mean Roquairol and Liana,) what
a full, yearning soul was marching to meet you ! and
156 TITAN.

what a dreaming and innocent one ! Homer and Sopho

cles, and the ancient history and Dian, and Rousseau,
that magus of youth, — and Shakespeare and the British
weeklies (wherein a higher and more human poesy
speaks than in their abstract poems), — all these had left
behind in the happy youth an everlasting light, an un
paralleled purity, wings for every Mount Tabor, and
the fairest but most difficult wishes. He resembled,
not the urbane French, who, like ponds, reflect the hue
of the nearest bank, but those loftier men, who, like the
sea, wear the color of the boundless heavens.
In fact, now was the ripest, best point of time for his
change. Through Dian and his journeys, even Albano's
exterior man had been trained to grace in strangers' apart
ments. Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are
smoothest ; besides, there remained sticking on Zesara dia
mond-points enough at which mediocrity stumbles and is
wounded, and even uncommon worth is an uncommon fault,
— as high towers, for that very reason, appear bent over.
Zesara learned, even outside the circle of country young
sters, a readiness of ideas and words, which formerly
stood at his service only in a state of enthusiasm ; for
wit, generally a foe of the latter, was with him merely a
servant and child thereof. He did not, like witty suck
lings, coquette with all ideas, but he was either beset
by them or not touched at all ; hence came that silent,
slow, unostentatious ripening of his power ; he resembled
mountains of a gradual ascent, which always yield more
booty than those which rise abruptly. With great trees,
the seed is smaller and in spring the blossoms later than
in the case of small bushes.
The time ere Gaspard's messenger came to take him
away was to the detained youth an eternity, and the vil
 SCHOPPE CALLS FOR ALBANO. 157
lage a prison ; it shrivelled up to the household-buildings
of a convent. The hidden plan of his life, written, how
ever, by encaustic into his brain, was, as with all such
young men, this, to be and do nothing more than —
everything ; that is to say, to bless, to glorify, and to
enlighten at once himself and a country, — to be a Fred
erick II. upon the throne ; in other words, a storm-cloud,
which should contain thunders of excommunication for
the sinner, electrical light for the deaf, blind, and lame,
showers for the insects, and warm drops for thirsty
flowers, hail for enemies, an attraction for everything,
for leaves and dust, and a rainbow for the end. Now,
as he could not succeed Frederick II., he proposes to
be hereafter minister at least, — especially as Wehrfritz
made so much out of this by-sceptre, — this offshoot and
chip of the mother sceptre, — and in his spare hours a
great poet and philosopher withal.
I shall be delighted, Count, if thou shouldst become a
second Frederick, the second and only; my book will
profit by it and I myself mould my future thereby as a
rare historiographer, compounded of Zenophon, Curtius,
and Voltaire !
27. CYCLE.

ZESARA will never forget the spring evening, on

which he saw a passenger in a greatcoat, — a little
limping and covered with brown travelling-paint, to
which his white eyeballs formed a shining contrast, —
wade across the shallow brook beside the high bridge,
and how, further, the passenger took with him a watch
man's cane which the then Lieutenant of the Beggar's
Police had just leaned against his house-door, a vicarious
fellow-laborer, and handed the said cane, on his way, to a
 (58 TITAN.

cripple, with the words : "Old man, I have nothing by me

smaller than the stick. If anybody asks you about it,
just tell them you are keeping guard in the village
against the confounded beggar tribe, but have not eyes
enough." At the same time our pilgrim reached out to a
rector's little son, who needed it for about three minutes,
his pocket-handkerchief.
It was of course our old Librarian of Titles, Schoppe,
whom Don Gaspard had despatched with the note of
invitation for Isola Bella. Albano's delight was so great,
that only some days later did the youth mistake die odd
humorist, whereas the latter soon correctly weighed the
light, ardent, still wildling. Did it not fare still worse
with the old Provincial Director, who, merely because he
rated the body politic of the Empire as high as if he were
the installed soul therein, upon Schoppe's sallies against
the constitution, came out in a patriotic fury : " Sir," said
he, in an excited manner, " even if there were a flaw any
where, still a true German would be bound to maintain
a profound silence on the subject, unless he can help the
matter, especially in such cursed times."
The finest of all was, that, at Luigi's request, the Ar
chitect had to set out at the same time, for the purpose
of fetching casts of antiques from Rome.
And now march on, that soon ye may come back again,
and we may at last for once fairly enter Pestitz ! It may
well be expected that thou, good child (I should rather
say, wild-bee), wilt take thy flight from the rural honcy-
trce into the glass beehive of the city, with deeper pangs
than thou hadst imagined beforehand, — has not even the
old foster-father gone off on his journey without saying
his farewell, only to escape thine ? — and, as to thy good
mother, it seems to her as if one of the angry Parcaa
 FAREWELL TO BLUMENBUHL. 159
were tearing a son from her breast, as if his tender love-
bond, woven only of childish familiarity, would not stretch
out into the far future, — and thy sister locks herself up
in the attic, her rustic heart raging with fiery torments,
and cannot say anything to thee, nor give thee anything,
but a letter-case previously and privately worked by her
with the silken circumscription : " Remember us ! " and
even on thy laurel-seeking head will the triumphal arch or
rainbow of leave-taking, when thou passest under it, fling
down heavy, heavy drops, (ah, they will continue to hang
longer on the eyes that look after thee !) thy honest old
teacher Wehmeier will pour out upon thee the last stream
of his words and tears, and say, and thy tender heart will
not smile at it : " He is a worn out, old fellow, and has now
nothing before him but the hole (the grave) ; thou, on the
contrary, art a fresh, young blood, full of languages and
antiquities and magnificent, god-given talents, — of course
he shall not live to see thee make a famous man, but his
children well may ; and these poor worms,— thou must
one day adopt them, young master ! "
Thou pure soul, on every familiar house, on every dear
garden and valley will sorrow, indeed, sharpen her clasp-
knife, and tear open therewith softly gushing wounds in
thy glowing, tender heart. What do I say ? even from
thy friendly morning- and evening-heights, the nunnery-
gratings of thy holiest hopes, and from Liana herself,
thou wilt seem to be stealing away.
But cast thy weeping eyes over the broad, blue Italy,
and dry them in the spring breezes. Life begins, — the
signals for the martial exercises and tournaments of
manly youth are given, and, in the midst of the Olympic
battle-games, thou wilt hear the music of neighboring
concert- and dancing-halls magnificently pealing around
thee.
i6o TITAN.

What phantasies are these I am playing here ? What !

is it not more than too well known to all of us, that he
has been gone this long time, ever since the very first
Jubilee-period, — yes, and come back again, and has al
ready, ever since the second — and we are now counting
the fourth — been sitting in company with the Librarian
and the Lector, on horseback, before Festitz, unable to
get in, on account of the barricade of the
 FIFTH JUBILEE?

Grand-Entry. — Dr. Si-hkx. — The drumming Corpse. — Thr

Letter of the Knight. — Retrooradation of the Dyino-
day. — julienne. — tlir still good-kl(ii)a y of old age.
The healthy and rashful hereditary Prince. — Roquai-
rol. — The Blindness. — Sphex's Predilection for Tears.
— The fatal Banquet. — The Doloroso of Love.

28. CYCLE.

HEN he came to the fork of the road, of

which the right prong points to Lilar, Al-
beno, with a somewhat heavy heart, spurred
his horse across, and flew up the hill, till
the bright city, like an illuminated St. Peter's dome,
blazed far and wide in this spring night of his fancies.
It lay, like a giant, with its shoulders (the upper city>
resting on the heights, and stretched its other half (the
lower city) down into the valley. It was noon, and not
,, cloud in heaven ; at noonday a city stands before you
in full, white disk, whereas a village does not, until even
ing, come out of its first quarter into full light. It was
well fortified, not by Itimpler or Vanban, but by a bloom
ing palisade of lindens. The long wall of the palaces of
the mountain-city gleamed from above a welcome to our
Albano, and the statues, on their Italian roofs, directed
themselves towards him as way-guides and criers of joy ;
over all the palaces ran the iron framework of the light
162 TITAN.

ning-rods, like a throne-scaffolding of the thunder, with

golden sceptre-points ; down along the side of the moun
tain lay camped the lower city, by the side of the stream
between shady avenues, with its gay facades towards the
streets, and its white back turned toward Nature ; car
penters were hammering away like a forge on the green
sward among the peeled trunks of trees, and the children
were clattering round with the birch-bark ; cloth-makers
were stretching out green cloths like bird-nets in the sun ;
from the distance came white-covered carriers'-wagons
jogging along the country-road, and by the sides of the
way shorn sheep were grazing under the warm shadow
of the rich, bright linden-blossoms, — and over all these
groups the noonday chime of bells from the dear, famil
iar towers (those relics and light-houses that gleamed out
of the dusk . of his earlier days), floated like one all-
embracing and animating soul, and called together the
friendly throngs of people.
Contemplate the heated face of my hero, who at last
is riding into the open streets, built up in his fancy of
temples of the sun, where, who knows but that at every
long window, on every balcony, Liana may be standing ?
where the lying or prophetic riddles of Isola Bella must
be unravelled, — where all household gods and household
fates of his nearest future lie hid, — where now the
Mont Blanc of the Court and the Alps of Parnassus,
both of which he has to climb, lie with their feet stretch
ing close before him. All this would have oppressed me
not a little : but in the young man, especially before the
chandelier of the sun, a shower of light gushed down.
O, when the morning-wind of youth blows, the inner
mercury-column stands high, even though the external
weather be not of the best.
 DR. SPHEX'S DRUMMING CORPSE. 163

Few of us, when we have gone on horseback to the

academy, may have happened into such a refreshing stir
as met my hero : chimney-sweeps were singing away
overhead out of their pulpits and black holes to the pass
ers below, and a building-orator,* on the ridgepole of a
new house, was exorcising the future conflagration, and
quenching one in his own breast, and slinging the glass
fire-bucket far over the scaffolding ; yes, when we have
ridden with our hero through the laughing congregation
of the roof-preacher, and through the ranks of blooming
sons of the Muses,f who stand arm in arm, among whom
Alban sent round his fiery eye to find his Roquairol, —
after all this, when we reach his future residence, a new
clamor salutes our ears.
It came from the Land-physicus J Sphex, his future
landlord, who is to resign to him half his palace (for the
Doctor is made wealthy by his cures), because the house
lies exactly in the highest part of the upper city, or the
Westminster of the Court ; while in the lower town are
domiciled the students and the city. The short, thick-set
Dr. Sphex was standing, as our trio rode up, by the side
of a tall man, who sat upon a stone bench, and held in
readiness two drum-sticks upon a child's drum. At a
signal from Sphex, the tall man beat a faint roll upon his
drum, and the Doctor said to him, calmly, " Vagabond ! "
Although Sphex had turned round a little toward the
loud, approaching horsemen, still he soon made him go
on with his tattooing, and said, " Scoundrel ! " but during
the last beat he just hastily slipped in, " Scamp ! "
* One who dedicated a new house (somewhat as wo name a ship).
The glass foe-bucket which rjuenched ihe inner conflagration was prob
ably the wine-glass or beer-tumbler. — Tr.
t Collegians Tr.
J Provincial Physician. — Tr.
164 TITAN.

The horsemen dismounted ; the Doctor led them, with

out ceremony, into the house, after he had given the
drummer a hint, with his hand, not to stir. He opened
them their four (or twelve) walls, and said, coldly, " Step
into your three cavities." Albano marched out of the
warm splendor of day into the cool, purple Erebus of the
red-hung chamber, as into a picture-hall of painting
dreams, into a silver-hut, as it were, for the dark mine-
work of his life. He recognized therein the open hand
of his rich father, from the pictures of the carpet to the
alabaster statues on the wall ; and in the cabinet he found,
among the gifts of his foster-parents, all his poetical and
philosophical text-books, which had been sent after him,—
fair reflections from the still land of youth, left far be
hind him by his journey, in whose flower-vases only con-
cordias had hitherto bloomed, whereas now wild rockets
must be planted in them. Then (not the goddess of night
her mantle, but) the goddess of twilight threw her veil
over his eye, and, in the clare-obscure, made the forms
of youth — many of them armed, many crowned, a troop
of fates and graces — beset his heart, which had hitherto
been so calm, with their arms and levers, until it became
soft and languid for three minutes ; verily, to a youth,
especially this one, the sea-storms, those favorites of the
painter, the laboring volcanoes of the natural philosopher,
and the comets of the astronomer, are full as precious, in
the moral world, as they are to them in the physical.
Albano, now separated from Liana only by streets and
days, almost feared his dreamy raptures might betray
their object. "Any letters?" inquired the Lector, in
his short manner, abbreviated for the sake of adaptation
to citizens. " Bring it up, Van Swieten ! " said Sphex,
to a little son, who, with two others, named Boerhave
 SPHEX'S PREDICTION. 165

and Galen, had hitherto been acting as a corresponding

deciphering-chancery to the new guests behind a cur
tain. " Our old Lord," added Sphex, at once, as if it
had some connection with the letter, " has done lording
it at Inst ; for five days he has been dead as a mouse, as
I long ago predicted." " The old Prince ? " asked Au-
gusti, with astonishment. " But why have I not yet
remarked anything of funeral bells, knockers hung with
black, bottles of tears, and lamentation in the city ? " in
quired Schoppe.
The Physicus explained. Namely, he had, as physi
cian in ordinary, prophesied, with sufficient boldness,
the third day's dying of the old prince, and happily hit
it. Only as, exactly one day after the mournful event,
his successor, Luigi, proposed to make his entrance into
Pestitz, and, as the announcement of the high death
would have extinguished, with lachrymal-vessels, the
whole oil-fed illumination in honor of the son, and hung
the flowery triumphal arches with mourning-weeds, the
people had not been willing, although to the greatest dis
advantage of the prophetic Sphex, to let matters get wind
before the new prince had had his reception, just as that
Greek, at the news of his son's death, postponed mourn
ing till after the completion of his thanksgiving sacrifice.
Sphex protested that he had many years before fixed, in
the case of the illustrious deceased, the nativity of his con
sumption by his white teeth,* and never had he hit a
death-hour better than at that time ; he would, however,
leave it to any and every man to decide whether a phy
sician, who has made his prophecy everywhere known,
can spin much silk in a period of such political embezzle-
• According to Camper, hectic patients have very white and fair
teeth.
 166 TITAN.

ment. " But," replied Schoppe, " if people continue tc

carry along their deceased monarchs, like their dead sol
diers, as if they were alive, in the ranks ; still they can
hardly do otherwise ; for as in the case of great men it
is generally so plaguy hard to prove that they are living,
so is it also no easy thing to make out when they are
dead ; coldness and stiffness and corruption prove too
little. To be sure, one may, perhaps, conceal royal
death-beds for the same reason which led the Persians to
hide royal graves, in order to abridge as much as possi
ble for the poor children, the people, the bitter interval
between the death and the new inauguration. Yes, as ac
cording to a legal fiction the king never dies, we have to
thank God that we ever learn the fact at all, and that it
does not fare with his death as with the death of the quite
as immortal Voltaire, which the Paris journalists were not
permitted, by any means, to announce."
Van Swieten and Boerhave and Galen, after staying
out « long while, brought in a letter for Albano, with
Gaspard's seal ; he tore it open, with the unsuspecting
eagerness of youth, without a glance at the cover; but
the Lector took that into his hand and turned it over and
over like a Post-Office Clerk, Doctor of Heraldry, and
Keeper of the Seal, as was his custom at the inquest of
sphragistic wounds, and gently shook his head over the
badly renewed and patched patent of nobility, namely,
the impression of the arms on the wax. " Have the
youngsters done any injury to the seal ? " said Sphex.
" My father, also," said Albano, reading to conceal an
agitation which reached even to the outer man, and
which a flight of heavy thoughts had suddenly occasioned
among all his inner twigs, " has already heard of the
Prince's death." At that August! shook his head still
 SCHOPPE SCORNS A CHUM. 167

more ; for as Sphex had previously jumped at once from

the subject of the letter to that of the Prince's death, this
leap almost presupposed the reading of the same. Let
my reader deduce from this the rule, to take the distance
of two tones, from one to the other of which people jump
in his presence, and to infer from that the intermediate
and connecting tone between the two, which they wish to
conceal.
At present it was very well for the Count that the
Doctor showed the tutors their apartments ; ah, his soul,
already staggering with the events of the past day, was
now so intensely tossed by the contents of the letter I

29. CYCLE.

WHEN Sphex opened the Librarian's room for

him, the said room was already occupied with
a box of vipers (also arrived from Italy), with three-
quarters of a hundred weight of flax, a white hoop-
petticoat, and three silk shoes, with the holes punched,
belonging to the doctoress, and a supply of camomile.
The medical married couple had thought the pedagogical
couple nested together ; but Schoppe replied admirably
well, and almost with some irony toward the more politely
treated Augusti : " The more powerful and intellectual
and great two men are, so much the less can they bear
each other under one ceiling, as great insects, which live
on fruits, are unsocial (for example, in every hazel-nut
there sits only one chafer), whereas the little ones, which
only live on leaves, — for instance, the leaf-lice, — cleave to
gether nest-wise." Zesara would by all means have been
glad to hold to his insatiable heart the friend whom fate
had placed thereupon, constantly in every situation and
 168 TITAN.

season as a brother-in-arms ; but Schoppe has the right

• of it. Friends, lovers, and married people must have
everything else in common, but not a chamber. The
gross requisitions and trifling incidents of bodily presence
gather as lamp-smoke around the pure, white flame of
• love. As the echo is always of more syllables the farther
off our call starts, so must the soul from which we desire
a fairer echo not be too near ours ; and hence the near
ness of souls increases with the distance of bodies.
The Doctor caused his noisy children to run like a
cleansing stream through the Augean stable; but he
went down again to the drummer, with whom, according
to his own story, his connection stood thus : Sphex had
already, several years before, ventured certain peculiar
conjectures upon the secretion of fat and the diameter
of the fat-cells, in a treatise which he would not publish
till he could append to it the anatomical drawings there
unto appertaining, for which he was awaiting the dissec
tion and injection of the drummer that sat there. This
sickly, simple, flabby man, named Mall, he had a year
since, when certain symptoms of exophthalmy attached to
him, taken to board gratis, on condition that he should
let himself be dissected when he was dead. Unfor
tunately Sphex has found, for a considerable time, that
the corpse daily falls away and dries up from the likeness
of an eel to a horned-snake ; and he cannot possibly make
out what does it, since he allows him nothing emaeialing,
neither thinking, nor motion, nor passions, sensibility,
vinegar, nor anything else.
As to the drums, the corpse is obliged — since he is
full as hard of hearing as he is of comprehending, and
never can adopt a reason, for the very reason that he
never hears one — to carry them round, strapped to him,
 GASPARD'S LETTER TO ALBANO. 169
because during their vibration he can better apprehend
what his employer and prosector has to censure in him.*
The Doctor now began to scold at him down below —
Schoppe stood listening at the window — in the follow
ing wise: "I would the Devil had taken your cursed
father of blessed memo:y before he had died. You
shrink up like army-cloth under your lamentation, and
yet never wake him up, though you cried your nose away.
Drum better, church-mouse ! Don't you know, then,
scrub, that you have made a contract with another, to
grow into fat as well as you can, and that it 's expensive
maintaining a fellow that steals his wages in this way,
till he becomes available ? Others would gladly grow
fat, if they had such a chance. And you ! speak, rope ! "
Malt let the drumsticks clatter down under his thighs, and
said : " Thou hast hit the true secret of thy trouble with
me, — there is no real blessing upon our grease, — and
one of us silently wears away at the thought. As to my
blessed father, verily, I send him out of my head, let him
happen in when he will."

30. CYCLE.

THE paternal letter, which shook Albano's soul in

all its joints, runs, when translated, thus: —
" Dear Albano : I regret to say, that in the Campanian
vale I received a letter informing me of the continued
recurrence and increasing violence of thy sister's as-
• Derham (in his Physico-Theology, 1750) observes that the deaf
hear best under a noise; e. g. one hard of henring, under the sound of
bells ; a deaf housewife, under the drumming of the house-servant.
Hence when princes and ministers, who for the most part hear badly,
are passing through the country, kettle-drums are beat and cannon
fired, so that they can hear the people more easily.
8
170 TITAN.

phyxias ; it was written on Good Friday, and looked

forward to her death as a settled thing. I, too, am pre
pared for the event. So much the more am I struck
with thy account of the juggler of the Island, who would
play the prophet. Such a prediction presupposes some
circumstance or other, which I must trace out more
nearly in Spain. I think I already know the impostor.
Be thou, on thy birthday, watchful, armed, cool, and bold,
and, if possible, hold the jongleur fast ; but bring no
ridicule upon thyself by speaking of the subject. Dian
is in Rome, working away right bravely. Put on court-
mourning for the dear old Prince, out of courtesy.
Addio !
" G. di C."
" All, precious sister ! " he sighed inwardly, and drew
out her medallion, and looked through his tears upon the
features of an old age which was denied her, and read
with dim eyes the refuted subscription : " We see each
other again." Now, when life was opening before him
broad and smiling, it came home to him much more
nearly, that fate laid its hand so darkly and heavily
upon his sister ; to which was added, too, the melancholy
question, whether he was not guilty of her disappearance
and decline, since on his account the frightful Zahouri of
the Island had carried on perhaps a sacrificing jugglery :
even the circumstance that she was his weakly twin-
sister was a pang. But now his feelings stood contend
ing against each other in his mind, as on a battle-field.
" What destiny is on its way to meet me ! " thought he.
" Take the crown ! " that voice had said. " What one ? "
his ambitious spirit rose up and asked, and boldly conjec
tured whether it consisted of laurels or thorns or metals.
" Love the beautiful one ! " it had said ; he asked not,
 THE PRINCESS JULIENNE PAINTING. 171

however, in this case, " What one ? " only qe feared, since
the father of Death seemed terribly to certify his name
and credentials, that the voice announced for the ascen
sion- and birth-night might name some other name than
the most beloved.
In the evening, after the three new-comers had fairly
got through their household arrangements, — which, how
ever, had never yet been able to efface from Albano's
undulating soul the multiplied magic splendor of the
Linden-city, — the Lector introduced the Count to the
hereditary prince, Luigi. That individual was engaged
half an hour every day copying in the picture-gallery ;
and appointed the two to attend him there. They went
in. Any other than myself would have set before the
world a bill of fare raisonne of all the show-dishes in the
gallery ; but I cannot so much as present it with the
seventeen pictures, over whose charms those silken shame-
aprons or veils hung, which a Paris dame would gladly
take off from her own, merely for the sake of modestly
covering therewith works of art. One may easily con
ceive that our Alban, in this picture-gallery, must have
been vividly reminded of that one of his mother's,* and
that he would gladly have pressed every nail, had no one
been there.
But the Princess Julienne was there, whom he (as we
all do) still recognized right well as a Blumenbiihl ac
quaintance, as she also did him. She was truly full of
youthful charms, but one did not find these out till one
had been for two days violently in love with her ; that
made her every minute afterward prettier, as in fact love
is rather the father than the son of the goddess of grace,
and his quiver the best casket of jewels and the richest
* In whoso wall the lady with the souvenir sits.
172 TITAN.

toilet-box, and his bandage the best mouchoir de Venus

and beauty-patch that I know.
She was just sketching the gypsum-cast of a noble old
head, which seemed to the Count as if it must have been
drawn from the antique-cabinet of his memory, and toward
which his swelling heart flowed out right lovingly ; but
he could not recall the original. At last Julienne, in de
spite of etiquette, said, looking up most kindly, " Ah, dear
Augusti, my father lies dead in Lilar." The word Lilar
suddenly colored, in Albano, the pale image of recollec
tion, — perfectly like this white bust had the old man in
the moonshine looked, who, in that poetical summer-night,
pressed Zesara's hands together on the mountain for
prayer, and said, " Go home to sleep, dear son, ere the
storm comes." Now another would have inquired after
the name of the bust, and then, and not till then, have
disclosed the nocturnal history ; but the Count, in his
warmth, did merely the latter, after waiting a short time
for the conversation to run out. Augusti, when Albano
began the history — to him a foreign one — of his ac
quaintance with the original, was on thorns to interrupt
him ; but Julienne gave him a nod, to let him go on, and
the youth true-heartedly communicated to the sympathiz
ing soul the beautiful meeting, with a tenderness of emo
tion and fire, both of which increased when her eyes
flowed over into her smiles. "It was my father, — that
is his cast," said Julienne, weeping and glad. Albano,
after his manner, clasped his hands together, with a sigh,
before the bust, and said, " Thou noble, heartily-beloved
form ! " and his large eye gleamed with love and sorrow.
The good female soul was carried away by a sympathy
so uncourtly, and she gave herself up completely to her
inborn fire. Female and court life is truly only a longer
 GOOD FRIDAY OF OLD AGE. 173

punishment of bearing arms (as, according to the model

of the yes-sirs, there are no-sirs, so royal governesses
are true no-ma'ams) ; the seven-colored cockade of gay,
dancing liberty is there torn off, or runs into the black of
court-mourning ; every female pleasure-grove must be an
unholy one ; I know nothing more fatal, — but the curly-
haired Julienne, in spite of you and me, broke through
the eternal imprisonment (with sweet bread and strong
water), some twelve times a day, and laughed to the free
heavens, and offended (herself and others never) the
royal governess always. She now related to the Count
(while from nervous weakness and vivacity she continued
to smile more brightly and speak more rapidly) how her
dear, feeble father, more childlike than childish, whose
old lips and disabled thoughts could not possibly any
longer do more than lisp a response to prayers, had shut
himself up with a snowy-headed mystical court-preacher
in an oratory at Lilar (a gray head loves to hide itself
before it disappears forever, and seeks, like birds, a dark
place for going to sleep), — and how she and Fraulein
von Froulay (Liana) had alternately read prayers be
fore the half-blind old man, and, as it were, tolled the
evening-bell of devotion to the weary, sleep-drunken life.
She painted how, in this antechamber of the tomb, he
had outlived or forgotten all that he had once loved ; how
he had kept always asking after her mother, whose death
was ever slipping again from his memory ; and how the
dimmed eye had taken every hour of the day for even
ing, and accordingly every one who went out as one
going to bed.
We will not look too long at this late time of life,
when men again, like children, shrink up for the more
lasting cradle of the grave ; and when, like flowers sleep
174 TITAN.

ing at evening, they become undistinguishaUe, and grow

all alike, even before death makes them so.
The Lector, like all courtiers, was particularly ill-suited
with these funereals; he would also fain heal the Job's
malady of her lamentation by changing the current of
discourse, and bringing it nearer to Liana. But in the
very act of describing the sympathy and sacrifices of this
friend, and when memory brought back to her the long,
tearful embrace in which Liana had locked her and pain
at once as it were fast to her bosom, then came back into
her heart anew every dark, heavy drop of blood which
her powerful arteries had sent forth, and she ceased to
portray either this history or the head upon which sho
had been engaged.
The two female friends were none of those who send
a kiss to each other through two thicknesses of veil, or
who know how to hug each other without wounding or
bruising a curl, or whose love-feast every year, as the
sacramental bread every century, breaks lighter and thin
ner ; but they loved each other intensely, — with eyes,
lips, and hearts, — like two good angels. And if hitherto
joy had taken her harvest-wreath and made it a wed
ding-ring of friendship, so now did grief seek to do the
same with his girdle of thorns. You good souls ! to me
it is very easily imaginable how such a pure, bright link
ing of souls should at once painfully distend and bliss
fully exalt the heart of your friend Albano, as the aero
static ball at once destructively swells and soars. For
Liana's entry, there stood besides beautifully decorated
triumphal gates to the highest heavens in his innermost
being !
Meanwhile a stranger would not, without this pen of
mine (nor I myself without the fee-provost Hafenreffer),
 WANT OF HEALTHY RULERS. 175

have been able to observe anything in the Count, while

speaking, except a mild, wandering glow in his face, and
rapidity of utterance.

31. CYCLE.

INTO the midst of these delineations and enjoyments

the successor, or rather the afterwinter of the cold
old man, Luigi, suddenly entered. With a flat, carved
work of spongy face, on which nothing expressed itself
but the everlasting discontent of life-prodigals, and with
a little full-grown miniver* on his head (as forerunner
of the wisdom-teeth), and with the unfruitful superfeta-
tion of a voluminous belly, he came up to Albano with
the greatest courtliness, in which a flat frostiness towards
all men stood prominent. He immediately began to dust
about him with the bran of empty, rapid, disconnected
questions, and was constantly in a hurry ; for he suffered
almost more ennui than he caused ; as in general, there
is no one with whom life drags so disagreeably as with
him who tries to make it shorter. Luigi had run over
the earth as quickly as through a powdering room, and
had, as in such a room, become decently gray ; the milk-
vessels of his outer and inner man had, because they
were to be converted into cream-pots and custard-cups,
for that very reason, perverted themselves into poison-
cups and goblets of sorrow. As often as I puss along
before a painted princc's-suite in a corridor, I always fall
upon my old project, and say, with entire conviction :
" Could we only contrive for once, like the Spartans and
all the older nations, to get a regent to the throne in a
healthy state, then we should have a good one into the
• A kind of gray fur. — Tr.
176 TITAN.

bargain, and all would go well. But I know these are

no times for such a thing. It is a sin, that only at tor
ture do surgeons and physicians assist, not at joy, to
point out nicely the degree of pleasure as they do of the
rack, and to indicate the innocent conditions."
Albano, a stranger in the company and in the eyes of
this class of men, looked upon the gulf between himself
and Luigi as much less deep than it was ; it was merely
annoying and uncomfortable to him, as it is to certain
people, when, without their knowledge, a cat is in the
chamber. The progress of moral enervation and refine
ment will yet so cleanse and equalize all our exteriors, —
and according to the same law, indeed, by which physical
weakness throws back the eruptions of the skin and drives
them into the nobler parts, — that verily an angel and a
satan will come at last to be distinguishable in nothing
except in the heart. Alban had already brought with
him from Wehrfritz, whom he always heard contending
for the right of the province against the prince, an aver
sion to his successor; so much the more easily (lamed
upon him a moral indignation, when Luigi turned toward
the pictures and drew aside the curtains or aprons from
several of the most indecent, in order, not without taste
and knowledge, to appraise their artistic worth. A copied
Venus of Titian, lying upon a white cloth, was only the
forerunner. Although the innocent hereditary prince
made his voyage pittoresque through this gallery with
the artistical coldness of a gallery inspector and anatomist,
and sought more to show than to enrich his knowledge,
still the inexperienced youth took it all up with a deaf
and blind passionateness, which I know not how to vindi
cate in any way, not even by the presence of the princess,
and so much the less, because in the first place she busily
 SCHOPrE ON libertlnage. 177

divided her soul only between the gypsum-bust and its

copy, and because, secondly, in our day, ladies' watches
and fans (if they are tasty) have pictures on them which
Albano would want other fans to hide. The two flames
of wrath and shame overspread his face with a glowing
reflection ; but his awkward honesty of scorn contrasted
with the ease of the Lector, who with his cold tone, quite
as precise as it was light, preserved independence and
protected purity. " They please me not, one of them,"
he said, with severity : " I would give them all away for a
single storm of Tempesta's." Luigi smiled at his scholar
like eye and feeling. When they stepped into the second
picture-chamber, Albano heard the Princess going away.
As this apartment threatened him with still more rent
veils of the unholiest, he took his leave without special
ceremony, and went back without the Lector, who had
to-day to give a reading.
Never did Schoppe grasp his throbbing hand more
heartily than this time ; the aspect of an abashed young
man is almost fairer (especially rarer) than that of an
abashed virgin ; the former appears more tender and
feminine, as the latter appears more strong and man
ly, by a mixture of the indignation of virtue. Schoppe,
who, like Pope, Swift, Boileau, forced into combination
a sacred reverence for the sex with cynicism of dress
and language, emptied the greatest vials of wrath upon
all libertinage, and fell like a satirical Bellona upon the
best free people ; this time, however, he rather took them
under his protection, and said, " The whole tribe love the
blush of shame in others decidedly, and defend it more
willingly than shamelessness, just as (and on the same
kind of grounds) blind persons prefer the scarlet color.
One may liken them to toads, who set the costly toad
8* L
178 TITAN.

stone (their heart) on no other cloth as they do upon a

red one.
The Lector — who with all his purity and correctness
would, nevertheless, without hesitation, have helped a
Scarron write his ode on the seat of a duchess — when
he would treat the matter of the Count's flight, was at
a loss what to make of it, when the latter sprinkled him
with some rose-vinegar, and said, " The bad man's father
is lying on the board, and one lies before his own iron
brow : O, the bad man ! " Certainly the physical and
moral nearness of the two fair female hearts, and his love
for them, had done most to excite the Count against Lui-
gi's artistic cynicism. The Lector merely replied, " He
would hear the same at the Minister's and everywhere ;
and his false delicacy would very soon surrender." " Do '
the saints," inquired Schoppe, " dwell only upon the pal
aces and not in them ? " For Froulay's bore upon its
platform a whole row of stone apostles ; and on one cor
ner stood a statue of Mary, which was to be seen from
Sphex's house among nothing but roofs.
Youthful Zesara ! how does this marble Madonna
chase the blood-waves through thy face, as if she were
the sister of thy fairer one, or her tutelar and household
goddess ! But he took care not to hasten his entrance
into this Lararium of his soul, namely, the delivery of
his father's letter of introduction, by a single whisper, for
fear of suspicion ; so many missteps does the good man
make in the very gentile fore-court of love ; how shall
he stand in the fore-court of the women, or get a footing
in the dim Holy of Holies ?
 THE DEAD PRINCE LIES IN STATE. 179

32. CYCLE.

THE Court now caused to be made known in writ

ing (it could not speak for sorrow) that the dead
Nestor had departed this life. I set aside here the lamen
tation of the city, together with the rejoicing of the same
over the new perspective. The Land-physicus Sphex
had to eviscerate the Regent like a mighty beast, —
whereas we subjects are served up with all our viscera,
like snipes and ground-sparrows, on the table of the
worms. At evening, there reposed the pale one on his
bed of state, — the princely hat and the whole electrical
apparatus of the throne-thunder lay quite as still and
cold beside him on a Tabouret ; he had the suitable
torches and corpse-watchers around him. These Swiss-
guards of the dead (the sound of the word rings through
me, and I at this moment see Liberty lying on her bed
of state in the Alps, and the Swiss guarding her) consist,
as is well known, of two regency-counsellors, two coun
sellors of the exchequer, and so on. One of the excheq
uer-counsellors was Captain Roquairol. It can be only
touched upon here, in the way of interpolation, how this
youth, who of financial matters understood little more
than a treasury-counsellor in h,* arose, nevertheless,
to be a counsellor in war-matters there, — namely, against
his own will, through old Froulay, who (in himself no
very sentimental gentleman) was always reviving and
retouching the youthful remembrances of the old Prince,
because, in this tender mood, one could get from him by
begging what one would. How odious and low ! so can
a poor prince have not a smile, not a tear, not a happy
thought, out of which some court-mendicant, who sees it,
» Baireuth. — Tr.
180 TITAN.

will not make a door-handle to open something for him

self, or a dagger-handle to inflict a wound ; not a sound
can he utter which some forester and bugle-master of the
chase shall not pervert to the purpose of a mouth-piece
and tally-ho.
Julienne, at nine o'clock in the evening, visited the
only heart which, in the whole court, beat like hers and
for hers, — her good Liana. The latter gladly offered her
forehead to her commencing sick-headache, and sought
only to feel and to still another's pain. The friends, who,
before strangers' eyes, only displayed pleasantry, and be
fore each other only a tender, enthusiastic seriousness,
sank more and more deeply into this mood before the
severe and religious lady of the Minister, who never
found in Julienne so much soul as in the soft hour after
weeping, as stock-gilliflowers begin to scent the air when
they are sprinkled. Not the struggle, but the flight of
pain, beautifies the person ; hence the countenance of the
dead is transfigured, because the agonies have cooled
away. The maidens stood enthusiastically together at
the window, the waxing moonlight of their fancy was
made full moonlight by that of the outer world ; they
formed the nun's-plan to live together, and go in nnd out
together for life. Often it seemed to them, in this still
hour of emotion (and the thought made them shudder),
as if the murmuring wings of departed souls swept by
over them (it was only a couple of flies, who, with feet
and wings, had caught a few tones on the harp of the
Minister's lady) ; and Julienne thought most bitterly of
her dead father in Lilar.
At last she begged the sister of her soul to ride with
her this night to Lilar, and to share and assuage the last
and deepest woe of an orphan. She did it willingly ;
 ROQUAIROL'S GRIM MORALIZINGS. 181

but the " yes " was hard to extort from the Minister's
lady. I see the gentle forms step, from their long em
brace in the carriage, out into the mourning chamber at
Lilar, — Julienne, the smaller of the two. with quivering
eyes and changing color ; Liana, more pale with megrim
and mourning, and milder and taller than her companion,
having completed her growth in her twelfth year.*
Like supernatural beings the two maidens beamed
upon Roquairol's soul, already burning in every corner.
A single tear-drop had power to bring into this calcining
oven boiling and desolation. Already this whole evening
had he been glancing at the old man with fearful shud-
derings at the childish end of that faded spirit, which
once had been as fiery as his own now was ; and the
longer he looked, so much the thicker smoke-clouds
floated from the open crater of the grave over into his
green-blooming life, and he heard therein a thundering,
and he saw therein an iron hand glowing and threatening
to grasp at human hearts.
Amidst these grim dreams, which illuminated every
inner stain of his being, and which sternly threatened
him that a day would come, when, in his volcano too,
there would remain nothing fruitful but the — ashes, the
mournful maidens entered, who, on their way, had wept
only over the face that had grown cold, and now wept
still more heavily over the form that had grown beautiful ;
for the hand of death had effaced from it the lines of the
last years, — the prominent chin, the fire-mounds of the
passions, and so many pains underscored with wrinkles,
and had, as it were, painted upon the earthly tabernacle
* This precocious completion of growth I have observed in many
distinguished women, just as if these Psyches should resemble butter
flies, which do not grow after coming out of the chrysalis state.
 l8z TITAN.

the reflection of that fresh, still morning light which now

invested the disrobed soul. But upon Julienne a black
taffeta-plaster on the eyebrows, which had been left be
hind by a blow, — this sign of wounds made a more vio
lent impression than all signs of healing : she observed
only the tears, but not the words of Liana. "0, how beau
tifully he rests there ! " " But why does he rest ? " said
her brother, with that voice, murmuring from his inner
most being, which she recognized as coming from the
amateur-stage ; and grasped her hand with agitation, be
cause he and she loved each other fervently, and his
lava broke now through the thin crust : " for this rea
son, — because the heart is cut out of his breast, because
the wheel is broken at the cistern, because the fire-wheel
of rapture, the fountain-wheel of tears, moves therein no
more ! "
This cruel allusion to tbe opening of the body wrought
terribly on the sick Liana. She must needs avert her
eyes from the covered breast, because the anguish
cramped the breath in her lungs ; and yet the wild man,
desolating others as well as himself, who had hitherto
been silent by the side of the stiff corpse-guard, went on
with redoubled crushing : " Feel'st thou how painfully
this cricket-ball of fate, this Ixion's wheel of the wishes,
rolls within us ? Only the breast without a heart is
calm."
At once Liana took a longer and more intense look
at the corpse ; an ice-cold edge, as if of death's scythe,
cut through her burning brain, — the funeral torches (it
seemed to her) burned dimmer and dimmer, — then she
saw in the corner of the chamber a dark cloud playing
and growing up, — then the cloud began to fly, and, full
of gushing night, rushed over her eyes, — then the thick
 LIANA STRUCK BLIND. 183

night struck deep roots into her wounded eyes, and the
affrighted soul could only say, "Ah, brother, I am blind!"
Only hard man, but no woman, will be able to con
ceive that an aesthetic pleasure at the murderous trag
edy found its way into Koquairol's frightful anguish.
Julienne left the dead, and her old sorrow, and, with the
new one, flung herself around her neck, and moaned : " O
my Liana, my Liana ! Seest thou not yet ? Do look
up at me ! " The distracted and distracting brother led
on the sister, upon whose pale cheeks only single drops
fell like hard, cold water, with the sharp question : " Does
no destroying angel, with red wings, whiz through thy
night ; hurls he no yellow vipers at thy heart, and no
sword-fish into thy network of nerves, in order that they
may be entangled therein, and whet their saw-teeth in the
wounds ? I am happy in my pain ; such thistles scratch
us up,* according to good moralists, and smooth us down
too. Thou anguish-stricken blind one, what say'st thou, —
have I made thee truly miserable again ? " " Madman ! "
said Julienne, " let her alone : thou art destroying her."
" O, he is not to blame for that," said Liana ; " the head
ache long since made it misty to my eyes."
The friends took their departure in double darkness,
and therein will I leave it with all its agonies. Then
Liana begged her maiden to say nothing of it to her
mother so little time before sleep, since it might, perhaps,
go away in the night. But in vain ; the Minister's lady
was accustomed to close her day on the bosom and lips
of her daughter. The latter now came in, led along,
and sought her mother's heart with a groping, sidelong
motion, and, in this beloved neighborhood, could no
* Cloth is roughened with thistles, i. e. scratched up, in order to the
better shearing of it afterwards.
 184 TITAN.

longer refrain from a softer weeping; then, indeed, all

was betrayed and confessed. The mother first sent for
the Doctor before she, with wet eyes and with her gentle
aims around her, heard her afflicted daughter's story.
Sphex came, examined the eyes and pulse, and made no
more of it than a nervous prostration.
The Minister, who had everywhere in the house lead
ing-hounds with fine — cars, came in, upon being in
formed ; and while Sphex stood by, he made, except long
strides, nothing but this little note, " Voyez, Madame,
comme votre le Cain * joue son role a merveille."
As soon as Sphex had gone out, Froulay let loose
several billion-pounders and hand-grenades upon his lady.
" Such," he observed, " are the consequences of your vis
ionary scheme of education (to be sure his own, in respect
to his son, had not turned out specially well). Why did
you let the sick ninny go ? " He would himself have still
more gladly allowed it from courtly views ; but men love
to blame the faults which they have been saved the
trouble of committing ; in general, like head-cooks, they
had rather apply the knife to the white- than to the dark-
feathered fowl. " Vous aimez, ce me semUe, a anticiper
le sort de cette reveuse un peu avant qu'il soil decide de
notre." t Her silence only made him the more bitter.
" O, ce sied si bien a votre art cosmitique que de rendre
aveugle el de Felre, le dieu de Vamour s'y prete de modele."
Wounded by this extreme severity, — especially as the
Minister himself had chosen and commanded this very
cosmetic education of Liana, against the maternal wishes,
to gratify his political ones, — the mother had to go and
• A distinguished actor of tragedy.
t He means here their divorce, which was only deferred by the
mutual wish to keep Liana.
 SPHEX'S EXPERIMENT ON TEARS. 185

hide and dry her wet eyes in her daughter's bosom.

Married men and the latest literati regard themselves as
flints, whose power of giving light is reckoned according to
their sharp corners. Our forefathers ascribed to a dia
mond belt the power to kindle love between spouses. I
also still find in jewels this power ; only this stone (which
appertains to the flint species) leaves one, after the mar
riage-compact, as cold and hard as it is itself. Probably
Froulay's marriage-bond was one of such precious stone.
But the lady only said, " Dear Minister, leave we
that ! only spare you the sick one." " Voila precisement
ce qui fut voire affaire," said he, laughing scornfully. In
vain did Liana eloquently and touchingly pour out to him
her mistaken yet moving convictions of the falseness of
society, and plead for her brother, which everlasting ad
vocacy of all sorts of people (which proved too much)
was her only failing ; — all in vain, for his sympathy with
an afflicted one consisted in nothing but fury against the
tormentors, and his love toward Liana showed itself only
in hatred of the same. " Peace, fool ! But Monsieur le
Cain comes not into my house, madam, till further or
ders ! " Out of forbearance, I say nothing further to the
old conjugal bully than go — to the devil, or at least to
bed.
33. CYCLE.

THE German public may still remember the oUi-

gato-sheets promised in the Introductory Pro
gramme, and ask me what has become of them. The
foregoing Cycle was the first, most excellent Public ; but
see through the matter, how it is with obligato-sheets,
and that perhaps as much history lies therein as in any
one Cycle, however it may be called.
186 TITAN.

The Count had not yet learned anything of Lianas

misfortune, when he, with the others, went down to the
dinner of the Doctor, who to-day was very hospitable.
They found him seized with a most violent fit of laughter,
his hands thrust into his sides, and his eyes bent over two
little pots of ointment on the table. He stood up, and
was quite serious. The fact was, he found in Reil's
Archives of Physiology, that, according to Fourcroy and
Vauquelin, tears dye violet-juice green, and therefore
contain alkali. In order to prove the proposition and
the tears, he had thrown himself into a chair, and laughed
in right hearty earnest, so as afterward to cry and get a
drop or two for the brine-gauge of the proposition ; he
would gladly have wrought himself into another kind of
emotion, but he understood his own nature, and knew
that nothing could be got out of it so, — not a drop.
He left the guests alone a moment, — the lady was not
yet to be seen, — Malt sat on an ottoman, — the children
had satirical looks, — in short, Impudence dwelt in this
house as in her temple. Ridicule had no effect upon the
old man, and he only countermanded what displeased
himself, not what displeased others.
At length the rosy-cheeked wife of the physician
flourished into the apartment, — as preparatory course or
preamble of the dinner, — with three or four esprits or
feathers in her cap, — with a dapple neck -apron, — in a
red ball-dress, from which waltzing had taken out the
color in which she had dyed it, — and with a perforated
fancy-fan. If I wished, I could be interested in her ;
for, touching these esprits (since the esprit, like the
brain in Embrya, often sets itself upon the brain-pan,
and there suns itself), she thought women and partridges
were best served up at table with feathers on their heads;
 DINNER AT THE SPHEXES'- 1 87

touching the fan, she meant to have it understood she

had just come from a morning call (whereby she very
clearly implied that ladies could no more go through the
streets without their fan-stick than joiners without their
rule) ; touching the rest, she knew the guest was a Count.
Accordingly, it appears that she belongs to the honora-
bles, who (for the most part), like rattlesnakes, are never
better to be enjoyed than when one has previously put
the head out of the way ; but that we have still time
enough to believe, when we come to understand her
better.
The beautiful Zesara was for her blind, deaf, dumb,
destitute of smell, taste, feeling ; but there are many
women whom one cannot, with the greatest pains and
tediousness, displease ; Schoppe could do it more easily.
Sphex, for his own personal predilections, made more out
of a cell of fat in Malt than out of the whole cellular
texture of a lady, even of his own ; like all business
people, he held women to be veritable angels, whom God
had sent for the ministration of the saints (the business
men).
The dinner course began. Augusti, a delicate eater,
enjoyed much, and took not only to the fine service, but
to the torn napkins ; the like of which he had often had
in his lap at court, because there, in morals and in linen,
rents are preferred to plasters. Soon, as usual, came
forth even the outposts and first skirmishes of miserable
dishes, the common prophets and forerunners of the best
tit-bits, although at a hundred tables I have cursed them,
that they did not, like good monthly magazines, give the
best pieces first, and the most meagre last. The Doctor
had already said to the three boys, — " Galen, Boerhave,
Van Swieten, what is the polite way of sitting ? " and the
188 TITAN.

three physicians had already shoved three right har^s

between the waistcoat buttons, and three left hands ini-i
the waistcoat pockets, and sat waiting, " bolt upright,"
when good chap-sager was brought in for the dessert
Sphex partly expressed pleasure in cheese, partly a hor
ror of it, just as he found it in the way of his shop-busi
ness. He remarked, on one hand, how joiners, in their
glue-pot, had no better glue than what stood here before
them, — it had just that binding quality in a man, — yet
he would rather, for his own individual self, with Dr.
Junker, apply it externally, like arsenic ; but he also
confessed, on the other hand, that the chap-sager for the
Lector was poison. " I would pledge myself for it," said
he, " that you, if one could examine you, would be found
hectic ! the long fingers and the long neck speak in my
favor, and particularly are white teeth, according to Cam
per, a bad sign. Persons, on the contrary, who have a
set of teeth like my lady there may feel safe."
Augusti smiled, and merely asked the Doctor's lady, at
what time one could best gain access to the Minister.
Such poisonous reflections, as well as cats'-dinners,* he
gave out, not from Ratirical malice, but from mere indiffer
ence to others, whom, like an honest man, he never suf
fered in the least to sway him in his actions. With the
liberty-cap of the doctor's hat on his head, he received,
from his medical indispensableness, so many academic
freedoms, that he, between his four house-walls, ate and
acted not more freely than between the showy, bristling
pale-work of the court. Did he ever there — I ask that
— let a drop of sweet wine pass his lips without previ
ously drawing out an Ephraimite, which did not itself
outlive the probation-day, and hanging it in the glass,
• Poor dinners, just as cat-silver is an inferior metal. — Tr.
 ETtE-WATER FOR SPHEX'S MILL. 1 89

merely to prove before the court whether the Ephraimite

therein did not grow black ? And if the silver did so,
was there not as good as a demonstration of the wine
being oversmoked, and could not the physician have ap
plied the whole right neatly, court, sweetness, blacken
ing, poisoning, and oversmoking, if he had been the man
to do it ?
The Lector's accidentally inquiring about the time of
seeing the Minister was what Albano had to thank for
saving him from first learning the painful misfortune in
the house of the Minister, or in the presence of the blind
girl herself. " You can," answered Sara, the Doctoress,
" also despatch the servant ; he will subscribe for you all ;
I, however, pity none as I do the daughter." Now broke
loose a storm of questions about the unknown accident.
" It is so," began the physician, sulkily ; but soon (be
cause he saw in some eyes water for his mill, and
because he sought to roll off all medical blame from him
self upon Captain Roquairol) he set himself as well as
he could to pathetic detail, and lied almost like a senti
mentalist. With an unobserved hint to the affected lady,
he pushed an empty dish towards her as a lacrymatory,
in order that nothing might be lost. From the eclipsed
eyes of the vainly struggling youth, this first woe of his
life snatched some great drops. " May recovery be pos
sible ? " asked Augusti, exceedingly troubled, on account
of his connection with the family.
" Certainly ; it is a mere affection of the nerves," re
plied Schoppe, briskly, " and nothing more." Whytt
relates, that a lady who had too much acid in her stom
ach (in the heart it were still worse) saw everything
in a cloud, as girls do at the approach of sick-headache.
Sphex, who had lied only for the sake of pathos and
 190 TITAN.

alkali, and who was vexed that the Librarian should

have been of his private opinion, answered just as if the
latter had not spoken at all. " The highest degree of
consumption, Mr. Lector, often winds up with blindness,
and it were well, in this case, to prescribe for both.
Meanwhile I am acquainted with a certain periodical
nervous blindness. I had the case in a lady * whom I
brought out of it merely by blood-letting, smoke of burnt
coffee, and the evening fog from the water ; this we are
now trying again in the case of our nervous patient. A
dutiful physician will, however, always wish the devil
would take mother and brother."
In other words, the return of Liana's periodical malady
almost distracted him. Offences against his honor, his
love, his sympathy, never wrought the Physicus into a
heat; through all such he kept on his glazed frost sur-
tout ; but disturbances of his cures heated him even to
the degree of flying to pieces ; and so are we all a kind
of Prince-Rupert's-drops, which can bear the hammer
and never break, till one just breaks off the little thread
point, and they fly into a thousand splinters ; with
Achilles, it was the heel, with Sphex, the medical D.'s
ring-finger, with me, the writing-finger. The Doctor
now shook out the contents of his heart, as some call
their gall-bladder ; he swore by all the devils he had
done more for her than any and every physician, — he
had, however, already foreseen that such a stupid educa
tion — merely to look well and pray and read and sing —
would prove a cursed poor economy, — he had often
longed to break the harmonica-bells and tambour-ncc-
• A weak -nerved lady (I know not whether it is the same) who hud
much religion, fancy, and suffering, became, as she tells me, blind in
the same way, and was cured in the same way.
 ALBANO SUSPECTS DR. SPHEX. 191
dies,* — he had often called the attention of the mother,
with sufficient distinctness and without indulgence, to
Liana's so-called charms, and to her sensibility, her bright
redness of cheeks, and velvet-soft skin ; but had seemed to
himself, by so doing, almost to gratify more than to distress
her. The only thing that delighted him was, that the
maiden had, some years before, caught a deadly sickness
from the first holy sacrament, from which he had tried to
keep her away, because he had already experienced, in
the case of a fourth patient, the most melancholy conse
quences from this holy act.
To the astonishment of every one my Count took part
against all with Roquairol. Ah, thy first spring-storms
were even now whirling round imprisoned in thy bosom,
without a friendly hand to give them an outlet, and thou
wouldst cover thy bloody grief! And wast thou not
seeking a spirit full of flames, and eyes full of flames for
thine own, and wouldst thou not rather have entered into
brotherhood with a thundering hell-god than with an
insipid pictistical saint, forever gnawing like a moth ?
Sharply he asks the Doctor, "What have you done with
the Prince's heart ? " "I have it not," said Sphex, star
tled ; " it lies in Tartarus* although it would have
been more profitable to science had one been permitted
to put it among one's preparations ; it was large and very
singular." He was thinking how often — when he could
— he had, as an augur, during the dissection, secretly
slipped aside one or another important member — as a
princely or a cavalier-robber, a la minutta — for his

• The eternal pricking of the sensitive finger-nerves by knitting,

tambour, and other needles, perhaps as much as the touching of the
harmonica-bells, makes one, by stimulating, weak in the nerves.
t Tartarus is the melancholy part of Lilar.
 192 TITAN.

study, — a honey-bag which he gladly cut out for him

self with his anatomical honey-knife.
"Has the young lady, then, an unhappy passion, or
anything of the sort ? " inquired Schoppe. " More than
one," 8aid Sphex ; " cripples, idiots, young orphans, blind
Methusalems, — all these passions she has. Sports and
young gentlemen, I often say to the old lady, would be
better for her health."
But on this point, in the requirement of cheerfulness,
I give in to him. Joy is the only universal tincture
which I would prepare ; it works uniformly as anlispas-
modicum, as glutinans and astringent. The oil of glad
ness serves as ointment for burns and chills at once.
Spring, for example, is a spring-medicine ; a country-
party, an oyster-medicine ; a recreation at the watering-
places is, in itself, a glass of Utters ; a ball is a motion ;
n carnival, a course* of medicine; — and hence the seat of
the blest is at the same time the seat of the immortals.
" Yes, he had finally," the Doctor concluded, — "as
they were people of rank, — prescribed a dose of pride
(of the meadows), which manifests all the officinal heal
ing powers of joy ; taken in a stronger dose, it works fully
as well as enjoyment itself, enlivens the pulse, steels the
fibres, opens the pores, and chases the blood through the
long venous labyrinth.t In the case of his weakly lady,
such as they saw her there, he had used, he said, this
medicament long ago by dresses and a doctor's rank, and
had helped her to her legs thereby. But he would rather
cure sixty common women than one distinguished one, —

• Kursus — corso. — Tit.

t Pride of the meadows quickens the circulation of the blood even
to frenzy. This whole observation on the pharmaceutic value of pride
of the meadows is taken from Tissot's " Traitii sur les Nerfs."
 "BREAST WITHOUT A HEART." I93

and he should regret, as family physician, merely hia

receipts and medical opinions, in case, as he certainly
believed, the fair Liana should go hence."
The first question which Albano, who never missed
anything that was said, put to Augusti on the way back
from the Doctor's, was, What the Doctor's wife meant by
the subscribing servant ? He explained it. There is,
namely, in Pestitz, as in Leipsic, an observance, that
when a man dies or falls into any other misfortune, his
family place a blank sheet of paper, with pen and ink,
in the entrance-hall, in order that persons, who take and
show a nearer interest, may send a lackey thither, to set
their names on the paper as well as he knows how ; this
merchant-like indorsement of the nearer interest, this
descending representative system by means of servants,
who are generally, now-a-days, the telegraphs of our
hearts, sweetens and alleviates for both cities great sor
row and sympathy through pen and ink.
" What ! is that it ? O God ! " said Alban, and grew
unusually indignant, as if people were forcing servants
upon him as chrysographs and business-agents of his
feelings. " O ye egotistical jugglers ! through the pen
of scribbling lackeys do ye pour yourselves out ? Lec
tor, I would condole with Satan himself more warmly
than thus ! "
Why is this veiled spirit so lively and loud ? Ah,
everything had moved him. Not merely lamentation
over poor Liana, persecuted by all the nightly arrows
of destiny, entered like iron into his open heart, but also
amazement at the gloomy intermingling of fate with
his young life. Roquairol's ever-recurring expression,
" Breast without a heart" sounded to him as if it must
be familiar ; at last the converse of the expression came
9 M
 194 TITAN.

to his thoughts, the word of the Sphinx on the island,

" Heart vrithmit a breast." So, then, even this riddle was
solved, and the place fixed, when he was to hear, contrary
to every expectation, the prophecy of the loved one ;
but how incomprehensible, — incomprehensible !
" 0 yes ! Liana she is called, and no God shall change
the name," said his innermost souL For in earlier years
even the most vigorous youth prefers, in maidens, inter
esting delicacy of health and a tender fulness of feeling
and a moisture of the eye, — just as, in general, at Alba-
no's age, one values the flood (later the ebb) of the eyes
too highly, although, too often, like an over-rich inunda
tion, they wash away the seed-corns of the best resolu
tions ; — whereas, at a later period, (because he proposes
to himself marriage and housekeeping,) he looks out
rather for bright and sharp than after moist eyes, and for
cold and healthy blood.
As Albano, for the most part, drew down the fire from
his internal clouds on the discharging chains of the harp
sichord strings, — seldomer into the Ilippocrene of poe
try, — so did he now unconsciously make out of his inner
charivari a passage on the harpsichord. I transpose his
fantasy into my fancy in the following manner. On the
softest minor-tones the blindness, with its long pains,
passed by, and in the whispering-gallery of music he
heard all the soft sighs of Liana repeated aloud. Then
harder minor-tones led him down into Tartarus, to the
grave and heart of the friendly old man who had once
prayed with him, and then, in this spirit-hour, fell softly,
like a dew-drop from heaven, the sound, Liana ! With
a thunder-clap of ecstasy he fell into the major-key, and
asked himself, " This delicate, pure soul could fate prom
ise to thy imperfect heart?" And when he answered
 ALBANO'S FANTASIA. 195

himself, that she would perhaps love him, because she

could not see him, — for first love is not vain ; and when
he saw her led by her gigantic brother, and when he
thought of the high friendship which he would give and
require of him ; then did his fingers run over the keys
in an exalting war-music, and the heavenly hours sounded
before him, which he should enjoy, when his two eternal
dreams should pass over livingly out of night into day,
and when brother and sister should furnish at once, to
his so youthful heart, a loved one and a friend. Here
his inner and outer storms softly died away, and the
evenly-balanced temperament of the instrument became
that of the player. . . .
But a soul like his is more easily appeased with sorrow
than with joy. As if the reality had already arrived, he
pressed on still further ; indescribably fair and unearthly,
he saw Liana's image trembling in her cup of sorrow ;
for the crown of thorns easily ennobles a head to a
Christ's head, and the blood of an undeserved wound is
a redness on the cheek of the inner man, and the soul
which has suffered too much is easily loved too much.
The tender Liana appeared to him as already spun into
the funeral veil for the Flora of the second world, as the
tender limbs of the bee-nymph lie transparently folded
over the little breast, — the white form of snow, which
had once, in his dream, melted away on his heart, opened
the bright little cloud again, and looked, blind and weep
ing, upon the earth, and said, " Albano, I shall die before
I have seen thee." — " And even if thou shouldst never
see me," said the dying heart in his breast, " yet will I
still love thee. And even if thou shouldst soon pass
away, Liana, still I gladly choose sorrow, and walk faith
fully with thee till thou art in heaven." . . . Heaven
196 TITAN.

and hell had both at once drawn aside their curtains be

fore him, — only a few notes, and those the same as be
fore, and only the highest, and that only interruptedly and
faintly, could he any longer strike ; and at last his hands
sank down, and he began to weep, but without too severe
pangs, — as the storm which has unburdened itself of its
lightnings and thunders stands now over the earth only
as a soft, diffused rain.
 SIXTH JUBILEE.

The Ten Persecutions of the Reader. - Liana's Eastern

Room. — Disputation upon Patience. - The picturesque
Cure.

34. CYCLE.

OSTULATES — apothegms — philosophers

— Erasmian adages — observations of Roche
foucauld, La Brayere, Lavater, do I in one
week invent in countless numbers, more than
I can in six months get rid of by bringing them into my
biographical pelits sonpes as episode-dishes. Thus does
the lottery-mintage of my unprinted manuscripts swell
higher and higher every day, the more extracts and win
nings I deal out to my reader therefrom in print. In
this way I creep out of the world without having, while
in it, said anything. Lavater takes a more rational course ;
he lets the whole lottery-wheel, filled with treasures, under
the title of manuscripts (just as we, inversely, despatch
manuscripts to the publishers by mail under the title of
printed matter) circulate even among the literati.
But why shall I not do the same, and let at least one
or two lymphatic veins of my water-treasure leap up
and run out ? I limit myself to ten persecutions of the
reader, — calling my ten aphorisms thus, merely because
I imagine the readers to be martyrs of their opinions,
 198 TITAN.

and myself the Regent who converts them by force. The

following aphorism, if one reckons the foregoing as the
first persecution, is, I hope, the

Second.

Nothing sifts and winnows our preferences and partial

ities better than an imitation of the same by others. For
a genius there are no sharper polishing-machines and
grinding-disks at hand than his apes. If, further, every
one of us could see running along beside him a duplicate
of himself, a complete Archimimus* and repeater in com
plimenting, taking off the hat, dancing, speaking, scolding,
bragging, &c. ; by Heaven ! such an exact repeating-work
of our discords would make quite other people out of me
and other people than we are at present. The first and
least step which we should take toward reflection and
virtue would be this, that we should find our bodily
methodology, e. g. our walk, dress, dialect, our oaths,
looks, favorite dishes, &c., no better than those of all
others, but just the same. Princes have the good for
tune that all courtiers around them station themselves as
faithful supernumerary copyists and pier-mirrors of their
selves, and propose to improve them by this Helot-mim
icry. But they seldom attain their good end, because the
Prince, — and that were also to be feared of me and the
reader, — like the principle of non-distinguendum, does
not believe in any real twins, but imagines (hat in morals,
as in catoptrics, every mirror and mock rainbow shows
everything inverted.
• The title of a man, among the Romans, who walked behind the
corpse and acted out the looks and character which the deceased had
when living. — Pers., Sat. 3.
 THE TEN PERSECUTIONS. 199

Third.

It is easier and handier for men to flatter than to praise.

In the centuries before us humanity appears to us to

be growing up ; in those which come after us, to be fading
away ; in our own, to burst forth in glorious bloom : thus
do the clouds, only when in our zenith, seem to move
straight forward, those in front of us come up from the
horizon, the others behind us sail downward with fore
shortened forms.
Fifth.

What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but
that our hopes then cease.*
Sixth.
The old age of women is sadder and more solitary
than that of men ; spare, therefore, in them their years,
their sorrows, and their sex ! In fact, life often resembles
the trap-tree with its spines directed upward, on which
the bear easily clambers up to the honey-bait, but from
which he can slide down again only under severe stings.
SMTKNTH.

Have compassion on Poverty, but a hundred times

more on Impoverishment ! Only the former, not the
latter, makes nations and individuals better.
ElOHTH.

Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's.

JflXTH.

When two persons, in suddenly turning a corner, knock

• As Solomon says, " Desire shall fail." — Tr.
 200 TITAN.

their heads together, each begins anxiously to apologize,

and thinks only the other feels the pain and that he him
self has all the blame. (Only I excuse myself without
any embarrassment, for the very reason that I know, by
my persecutions, how the other party thinks.) Would to
God we did not invert this in the case of moral offences !

Last Persecution or the Reader.

Deluded and darkened man, living on from the mourn

ing veil to the corpse-veil, thinks there is no further evil
beyond that which he has immediately to overcome ; and
forgets that after the victory the new situation brings a
new struggle. Hence, as before swift ships there swims
a hill of water and a corresponding billowy abyss glides
along close behind, so always before us is there a moun
tain, which we hope to climb, and behind us still a deep
valley out of which we seem to have ascended.
Thus does the reader vainly hope now, after having
stood out ten persecutions, to ride into the haven of the
story, and there to lead a peaceable life, free from the
troubled one of my characters ; but can any spiritual or
worldly arm, then, protect him against scattered similes, —
against hemispherical headaches, — whimsies, — reviews,
— curtain-lectures, — rainy months, — or in fact honey
moons, which come in at the end of every volume ? —
Now for our History ! In the evening Albano and
Augusti went with the paternal letter of credit to the
Minister's. The frostiness and pride of that individual
the Lector endeavored, on their way, to varnish over
by praising his laboriousness and discernment. "With a
knocking at his heart the Count seized the door-knocker
to the heaven- or hell-gate of his future destiny. In the
antechamber — that higher servant's apartment and Lim
 ALBANO VISITS FROULAY. 201

bus infantum et patrum — there were still people enough,

for Froulay regarded an antechamber as a stage, which
must never be empty, and on which, as in the Jewish
temple, according to the Rabbins, for those who kneel
and pray, it is never too close. The Minister's lady was
not present as a patient here, merely because she was
looking after one of her own elsewhere. The Minister
also was not here, — because he made few ceremonies,
and only demanded uncommonly many, — but in his
working-cabinet; he had heretofore had his head under
the warm throne-canopy and taken a deep bite into the
forbidden apple of the Empire, therefore he willingly
made a sacrifice (not to others, but of others), and let
himself, as a saintly statue, be hung round with votive
limbs, without having to bestir his own, and, like St.
Franciscus at Oporto, with letters of thanks and petitions
which he never opens.
Froulay came, and was — as ever, aside from business
— as courteous as a Persian. For Augusti was his home
friend, — i. e. the Minister's lady was his home-friend, —
and Albano was not a good person to run against ;
because one had occasion for his foster-father in the votes
of the Province, and because the youth by a peculiar and
proper pride of his own commanded men. There is a
certain noble pride through which merits shine brighter
than through modesty. Froulay had not the most com
fortable part before him ; for the Court of Ilaarhaar was
as disaffected toward the Knight of the Fleece, as he was
toward it ; * but Ilaarhaar was to be without doubt (ac
cording to all Italian surgical reports) and in a few years
• He had formerly refused to givo the Spanish knight the hand of
the Princess; but I have had the promise of satisfactory documents
on this weighty article.
9*
 202 TITAN.

(according to all nosological ones) the heir of his inherit

ance and throne. Now the bad thing about it was, that
the Minister, who, like a good Christian, looked mainly to
the future, had to creep along between the German Herr
von Bouverot, on the one hand, who was secretly a crea
ture of Haarhaar, and the demands of the present mo
ment, on the other.
He received the Count, I said, in an uncommonly
obliging manner, as well as the Lector, and disclosed to
the two that he must present to them his lady, who
desired their acquaintance. He sent word to her, but,
without waiting an answer, conducted them both into her
apartment. Now was it to the youth as if the heavy
door of a still and holy temple turned on its hinges.
Even I too, at this moment, during their passage through
the rooms, share so in his foolishness that I fall into full
as great anxiety, as if I went in behind them. When
we entered the eastern room, which was extended out
at pleasure by picturesque paper-tapestry into a latticed
arbor of woodbine, there sat merely the Minister's
lady, who received us pleasantly, with firm and cold
reserve in look and tone. Her severely closed and
faintly-marked lips mutely spoke a seriousness which is
the gift of a good heart, and a stillness which is the
ornament of beauty, — as many wings, only when they
are folded, shower down peacocks'-eyes, — and her eye
gleamed with the good-will of reason ; but the eyelids
had been, by stern years, drawn deeply in, with a sickly
expression, over the mild sight. Ah, as oftentimes be
tween newly-married people a dividing sword was laid,
so did Froulay grind daily at a three-edged one which
separated him and her ! Singularly did the impure roil
on his face contrast with the after-summer serenity on
 LIANA'S EAST ROOM. 203

hers, although before witnesses, as it seemed, he took

away the irony from his courteousness towards her, and
kept hatred, as others do love, only for solitude.
Fortunately this nut-tree, which threw an unwhole
some, frosty nut-shadow on the whole flowerage of love
and poetry, soon transplanted itself back again among
more congenial guests. The Minister's lady, after the
first expressions of courtesy, directed herself more to
the Lector, whose correct, civilian's measure accorded
entirely with her religious one ; especially as only he
could ask and condole with her about Liana. She re
plied, that this room of Liana's had been left exactly
as it was the evening the blindness came on, in order
that, when she recovered, it might remain for her a
pleasant remembrancer, or a mournful one for others, if
she did not. O, deeply moved Albano, if every absence
glorifies, how much more must it do so with so many
traces of the beloved object's presence ! I confess, except
a loved one, I know of nothing lovelier than her sitting-
room in her absence.
On Liana's work-table lay a sketched outline of a
Christ's head near the open Messiah, — a folded walking-
veil, together with the green walking-fan, with inscribed
wishes of female friends, — some cut-out envelopes, —
the gossiping letter of one of Froulay's tenants, — a
whole lacquerwork sheep-fold, with wagon, stalls, and
house, with whose Lilliputian Arcadia she had proposed
to please Dian's children,* — a plucked leaf from the
thinning album of a female friend, which she had
trimmed with an India-ink flower border and then
planted full of fair wishes, of which fate had robbed
her own life. Ah, beautiful heart, how fondly would
• Dian's family reside at Lilar.
 204 TITAN.

I sketch and hand round something like a tabular view

of all the little mosaic of thy lightsome past, had the
fee-provost entered more intimately into these matters !
But what moves me and the Count more deeply is a
framed embroidery, on which her needle, like an ingraft-
ing-knife, had, on that dark day, ingrafted a rose with
two buds, and which wanted nothing more but the thorns.
O, these had destiny only too fully developed on thy
roses of joy, and then pressed them so deeply through
thy breast even to the heart !
At no hour of his life was Albano's love so tender and
holy as at this, or his sympathy so fervent. Fortunately,
the Minister's lady was all the time looking out of the
window into the garden, and did not perceive his emo
tion. At last she went on to point out Liana's harmonica,
which stood near ; then was his heart too full and visi
ble ; he started with the hasty words, he had never yet
heard one, and stepped before it. Ah, he was fain to
touch something whereon her finger had so often rested.
He laid his hand, as upon a sacred thing, on those prayer-
bells which had so often trembled under hers for pious
thoughts ; but they gave him no answer, till the Lector,
a connoisseur in the A B C as in the technology of all
arts, gave him in three words the indispensable in
structions. Now did he drink into his soul, full of sighs
and struggles, the first tri-olang, the first plaintive sylla
bles of that mother-tongue of the pining breast, — ah, of
those mutes'-beUs which the inner man shakes in his hand,
because he has no tongue ! and his veins beat wildly like
wings which wafted him up from the ground, and bore
him to a higher prospect than that which opens into the
last joy or the last agony. For in strong men great
pains and joys become overlooking heights of the whole
road of life.
 DISPUTATION ON PATIENCE. 205

I know not whether many readers will believe the fault

possible, which he now actually committed. The Minis
ter's wife, in the course of conversation, had very naturally
— apropos of Liana and Roquairol — fallen upon the
proposition that no school is more necessary to children
than that of patience, because, either the will must be
broken in childhood or the heart in old age. Ah, she
and her daughter themselves knelt, indeed, full of pa
tience, before fate, whether loading or armed ; although
the mother's was a pious patience, which looked more to
Heaven than to the wound, Liana's a loving patience,
which resigns itself to new sorrows as to old sicknesses,
as a queen does on coronation-day to the pains and fric
tion of her heavy jewelry, and like a child that sweetly
sleeps away and more sweetly dreams away his scars.
But Zesara, who like a wolf fled the very clanking of a
chain, and flew, exasperated, against everything of the
kind, from the light carcanets and chains of knighthood
even to the heavy harbor-chains which obstruct the pas
sage of youth out into the laboring sea, could not restrain
himself, especially with that heart of his so full of emo
tions, from saying, in too great warmth : " Man must de
fend himself; sooner would I, in a free struggle, empty
all my veins on the stirring battle-field than shed one
drop from them bound to the rack." — " Patience," said
the Minister's lady, who was full of it, " contends and
conquers also, only in the heart." — " Dear Count," said
AugU3ti, alluding not merely to Arria,* "the women must
always say to the men, ' It does not hurt ! ' "
I have not till now had an opportunity to make known
this fault of Albano, that he never spoke his opinion
* Roman Arria, who stabbed herself to show her Poetus how to
die. — Tr.
206 TITAN.

more freely and strongly than just then when he had

reason to fear losing one or two heavens of his life by
the stake ; in cases of less danger he could be more
yielding. Although, therefore, he observed that the Min
ister's lady was painfully reminded thereby of the mus
cular, but also hard-grasping, hand of her wild son, — or
much rather for the very reason that he observed it, and
because he proposed to be armor-bearer to this future
friend, — he stuck to his opinion, threw all instruments
for breaking in the young manly will out of the school
rooms into the street, and said, in his strongly relieved
style : " The Goths preferred never to send their children
to school, in order that they might remain lions. Even
if maidens must be soaked in milk a day before planting
them out in the civil world, boys, however, must be stuck,
like apricots, with the stony shell in the earth, because
they will soon enough throw off and forsake the stone by
their rooting and growth." — The Lector, with his fine
openness, — a crystal vase with golden edge, — remarked,
with a gentle reprimand of Alban's impetuosity, that at
least the way in which they had severally adduced their
proofs was one of those very proofs themselves ; and
women needed and showed more patience with persons,
and we more with things.
The Minister's wife, who imagined herself listening
more to her son than to his friend, was silent, and stepped
nearer to the window. Amid these war-troubles the
evening had wheeled her resplendent moon up over the
eastern mountains, and the streams of her light flowed
in at this moment, from all quarters, through the whole
garden that lay stretched out before the eastern room,
and lay in its broad alleys and flower-circles, when all at
once a little round house appeared through upshooting
 THE PICTURESQUE CURE. 207

water-jets, kindled into triumphal arches by the moon

light, and stood, even to its Italian trellised roof, all in a
blaze. With soft, emotion, the Minister's lady said : " On
that water-house stands my Liana ; she is trying the
evaporation of the fountain ; the physician promises him
self much therefrom. And Providence grant it ! "
But the agitated Zesara, with all his sharp eyes, could
not, however, in the full dazzling light of the level moon,
and behind the quivering nunnery-grate of confined silver-
or lymphatic-veins, individualize anything at this moment
from the glimmering Eden, except an undistinguishable,
still, white form. But it was enough for a weeping and
burning heart. " Thou angel of my youthful dreams,"
thought he, " may it be thou ! I greet thee with a thou
sand woes and joys. Ah ! can there then be sorrows in
thee, thou heavenly soul ! " And it came over him, that
if she were here in the room, with her afflicted and
enchanting form, she would melt his whole being with
sympathy, and he could now have cast off the embrace
of the brother, by whose hand fate had closed her soft
eyes in that long dream.
The stifling air of the most painful sympathy caused
him to look away, and turn round, and fasten on the open
Messiah those eyes whose drops he would not show ; but
the recollection that he was repeating her last reading-
pleasure made them fall only hotter and thicker. Sud
denly something darkening, which fluttered down before
the window like a falling raven, directed his look again
to Liana, over whom stood a fully illuminated little cloud,
as if it were a risen or descending saintly halo. Immor
tals seemed to dwell thereupon as on Ossian's clouds,
awaiting their sister ; and when she at length moved and
slowly sank down into the water-house, seemed it not
208 TITAN.

then as if her garment of flesh were passing into the

earth, and her peaceful spirit into the cloud ?
Here Augusti, as the mother had to follow the return
ing invalid into the sick-chamber, gave him the hint for
departure, which he took willingly ; his love contented
itself for the present with solitude, and with the hope of
another meeting. Young love and young birds need, in
the beginning, only to be warmed by covering, and not
till later to be nourished.
But a paraclete or comforter whispered sofily in the
ear of the youth's heart as they departed : to-morrow
thou wilt see her only a few steps from thee in the gar
den ! And that is very easily brought about ; he has
only, at evening-twilight to-morrow, when the evening-
walker makes use of her eye-medicine, to repair to the
alley, and from among the leaves look freely up into the
magic countenance, and then drink in the whole doctrine
of felicity in one paragraph, one passage, breath, mo
ment ; — but what a prospect !
The Count begged the Lector not to sit long with the
busy Minister. When they found him again, he hardly
— behind a pile of public documents — remembered,
after considerable (perhaps counterfeited) thought, that
they had been there, and deeply regretted that they were
going away. Ah, the comforter is whispering all the
evening and all night, — To-morrow, Albano !

35. CYCLE.

AS the juggling night threw our Albano from one

side and vision to the other, — for not the near
past but the near future wearies us with rehearsals of
our waking acts, with dreams, — how glad he was, in the
 LE GENTIL, THE SECOND. 209

morning, that his fairest future had not yet gone by.
Two very Eulenspiegelish wishes often lodge in man :
I often form the wish with my whole heart, that some
real joy of mine, e. g. a master-work, a pleasure-journey,
&c., might yet at last have an end ; and, secondly, the
wish above referred to, that one or another pleasure
might stay away a little longer.
The evening came with the greatest pleasure of all,
when Zesara, like Le Gentil starting for the East Indies,
set off for the eastern park of the Minister, to observe
the transit of his evening star Venus ; but only through
the moon. Before the lighted windows of the palace he
stopped among the people, and reflected, whether it were
quite allowable thus to run into the garden ; but really,
had he been turned back, his thirsting heart would have
carried him in through a whole Clerus and Diplomatic
Congress posted before the gate. Boldly he strode along
through the noisy palace before a barricade of tackled
carriages, turned the iron lattice-gate, and stepped hastily
into the nearest leafy avenue. Here, attended by a
torch-dance of gleaming hopes, he went to and fro, but
his eye was a telescope, and his ear was a hearing-trum
pet. The green avenue wound up over the garden till
it grew into another near the bath-house ; into this he
entered so as not to meet the blind one, or rather her
attendant.
But nothing came. To be sure he had not, like the
moon, — as was, indeed, to have been expected of him,
— come a half-hour too late, but in fact a half-hour too
early. The moon, that star which leads wise men full
of incense to the adoration, at last let fall broad, long,
silver-leaves, like festive tapestry, into Liana's eastern
room, — the Madonna on the palace was arrayed in the
ZIO TITAN.

halo and nun's-veil of her rays, — the Minister's wife

stood already at the window, — Nature played the lar-
ghetto * of an enchanted evening in deeper and deeper
strains, — when Albano caught nothing further except a
smaller one, made up of mere tones, which came from
the bath-house, the pleasure-seat of all his wishes, and
which, dying, would fain breathe its last with the spring-
day. But he could not guess who played it. One might
have inferred that it was Roquairol, merely because he
afterward, as I shall relate, according to the April-like
nature of his musical temperament, sprang up out of
pianissimo into a too wild fortissimo. The brother,
exiled by his father, could at least in the bath-house see
and console his dear sister, and show her his love and his
penitence ; although his stormy repentance makes a sec
ond necessary, and at last became only a more pious
repetition of his fault.
Although Albano's fancy was a retina of the universe,
on which every world sharply pictured itself, and his
heart the sounding-board of the sphere-music, in which
each revolved, yet neither the evening nor the larghetto,
with their rays and tones, could pierce through the high
waves which expectation as well as anxiety (both ob
scure nature and art) dashed up within him. The bank
of the fountains is entwined around with a green ring of
orange-trees, whose blossoms, in the East, according to
the Selam-cipher, signify hopes ; but really one after
another was short-lived, when he thought of the cold,
clear mother, or of his perhaps vain waiting. The
fountains leaped not yet, — he kept plucking away, like
a premature autumn, more and more of the broad fan-
• A movement in music n little more than two degrees quickor than
adagio. — Tb.
 THE APPARITION OF LIANA. 211

leaves from bis blooming Spanish wall, and still, through

all his widening windows, saw no Liana coming down
along the pebbly path (which was impossible, for the very
reason that she had been long standing in the bath-house
with her brother), and he began to despair of her appear
ance, when the brother suddenly stormed into the above-
mentioned fortissimo, and all the fountains sent up before
the moon murmuring wreaths of sparkling silver. Al-
bano looked out. . . .
Liana stood up there in the glimmer of the moon, be
hind the fluttering water. What an apparition ! He
tore asunder the twigs of the foliage before his face, and
gazed, uncovered and breathless, upon the sacredly beau
tiful form ! As Grecian gods stand and look unearthly
before the torch, so shone Liana before the moon, over
shadowed with the myriad glancing reflections of the
silvery rainbows, and the blest youth saw irradiated the
young, open, still Mary's-brow, upon which no vexation
and no effort had as yet cast a wave, — and the thin,
tender, scarcely-arched line of the eyebrows, — and the
face like a perfect pearl, oval and white, — and the loose
ly flowing ringlets lying on the May-flowers over her
heart, — and the delicate grace's-proportions, which, like
the white attire, seemed to exalt the form, — and the ideal
stillness of her nature, which made her place, instead of
an arm, only a finger upon the balustrade, as if the Psy
che only floated over the lily-bells of the body, and nei
ther shook nor bowed them, — and the large blue eyes,
which, while the head sank a little, opened upward with
such inexpressible beauty, and seemed to lose themselves
in dreams and in distant plains reflecting the evening-
twilight's glow !
Thou too fortunate man ! — to whom the only visible
212 TITAN.

goddess, Beauty, appears so suddenly, in her omnipotence,

and attended by all her heavens ! The present, with its
shapes, is unknown to thee, — the past fades away, —
the near tones seem to steal from the depth of distance,
— the unearthly apparition overflows and overpowers
with splendor the mortal breast !
Ah, why must a deep, cold cloud steal through this
pure and lofiy heaven ? Ah, why didst thou not find the
heavenly one earlier or later ? — and why must she her
self remind thee of her sorrow ?
For Liana — into whose veiled eye only a strong light
could trickle through — was looking for the moon, which
was a little overhung by its own aurora, and she turned
her head around gropingly, because she thought a linden-
top concealed it ; — and this uncertain inclination so sud
denly pictured to him her misfortune in a thousand colors !
A quick pang pressed his eyes, so that tears and sparks
darted from them, and pity cried within him : " O thou
innocent eye ! why art thou veiled ? Why from this
grateful, good soul is May and the whole creation taken
away ? And she sends round in vain a look of love after
her mother and her companion, and — O God ! she knows
not where they stand."
But the curtain of the moon soon floated aside, and she
smiled serenely on its radiance, as the blind Milton in his
immortal song smiles upon the sun, or as an inhabitant of
earth smiles upon the earliest splendor of the next life.
A nightingale, who hitherto, while hopping afier a glow
worm among the distant flowers, had responded to the
tones in the chamber only with single game-calls and
complemental notes of joy, flew nearer to Liana, and the
winged miniature-organ drew out at once all its flute-
stops, so that Liana, forgetting her blindness, looked
 THE CYCLOP IN MAN'S HEART. 213

down, and Albano started back alarmed, as if she were

looking upon him. Then was her pale face, upon the
cheeks of which a light redness played, as upon the white
pink, tenderly suffused with the faint red bloom of emo
tion under the mingling tones of the brother and of the
nightingale,— the eyelids quivered oftener over the gleam
ing eyes, — and at last the gleam became a quiet tear, —
it was not a tear of pain nor of joy, but that soft tear in
which the longing of the heart overflows ; as, in spring,
overfull twigs, though unwounded, weep.
There dwells in man a rough, blind cyclop, who in our
storms always begins to speak, and gives us fatal counsel.
Frightfully at this moment, in Zesara, did the whole
awakened energy of his bosom bestir itself, — that wild
spirit which drags us on condor's wings to the brink of
the precipice ; and the cyclop cried aloud in him : " Bush
out, — kneel before her, — tell her thy whole heart ; —
what though thou then art lost forever, if thou hast only
caught one sound of this soul ! — and then cool and sacri
fice thyself in the cold waters at her feet." Verily he
thirsted for the fresh basin in which the fountains leaped
back. But ah ! before this gentle, this afflicted and pure
one? "No," said the good spirit in him, "wound her
not again, as her brother did. O spare her! be silent,
respectful : then thou lovest her."
Here he stepped out on the illuminated earth as into
a heavenly hall, and took the open sun-path, but softly,
along before the fountains. As he passed by her, all at
once the arcade of drops, which had half latticed her
round, collapsed, and Liana stood cloudless, as a pure
Luna, without her cloud-court, in the deep blue of heaven ;
a shining lily * from the next world, which, to herself, is
• It used to bo believed that a lily lying in the singing-seats signi
fied the death of the person to whom it belonged.
214 TITAN.

a sign that she is soon to pass thither. O his heart, full

of virtue, felt with trembling the nearness of virtue in
another ; and, with all signs of the deepest veneration,
he walked along by the quiet being, who could not ob
serve them.
Not till, at every step, a heaven had escaped from him,
and he at last had none but the one above his head, did
he become quite gentle ; and then he was glad that he
had not been bolder. How the earth now shines to him,
how the heaven of suns approaches him, how his heart
loves I O, at some future time after yet many years,
when this glowing rose-garden of rapture already lies
far behind thy back, how softly and magically will it,
when thou turnest round and lookest toward it, glimmer
after thee as a white rose-parterre of memory I
 SEVENTH JUBILEE.

Alrano's Peculiarity. — The intricate Interlacings of Pol

itics. — Thr Herostratus of Gami.no Taiii.es. — Paternal
" Mandatum sine Clausula." — Good Society. — Mr. Von
Bouverot. — Liana's Spiritual and Bodily Presence.

36. CYCLE.

F the Feudal-Provost Von HafenrefFer had no

existence except as a creature of my fancy, I
should certainly proceed with my history, and
tell the world, as matter of fact (and the
whole romance-writing set would go to the death upon
it *), that Albano was sitting there the next morning,
blind and deaf, behind the broad bandage which the
bandage-maker Cupid had bound before his eyes, — that
he had not been able to count more than five, except at
evening, when he cast up the strokes of the clock, in or
der, afterward, to run in a magic circle round the Froulay
water-house, like one who sets out to charm the fire which
glides snake-like after him, — that he had, through those
two blow-holes t wherewith sentimental whales blubber
right out in bookstores, spouted out considerable streams,
• Lit. " Let themselves be struck dead thereupon," i. e. lay their
life that it was so. We have a vulgarism: " I 'll be shot if it 's uot
so." — Tr.
t Bltut-lochtr, mouth-pieces. — Tr.
 2l6 TITAN.

— for the rest, had never looked at another book (except

some leaves in the book of Nature), nor at another hu
man being (except a blind man), — " and to this my
surgeon's certificate of erotic wound-fevers (I would say
at the conclusion of my lies) Nature manifestly sets her
privy seal."
That she does not, says Hafenreffer ; these are noth
ing but confounded lies ; the case is quite otherwise,
thus : —
Zesara never stole a second time into Froulay's gar
den ; a proud blush of shame darted over him at the
very thought of the painful blush with which he should
come in contact, for the first time, with a mistrustful or
inquiring eye.
But in this wise the dear soul remained hid from him
until her recovery, as the May-month did from her; and
he silently tormented himself with reckonings up of her
sufferings and doubts of her cure. He was ashamed to
be taking any pleasure during her period of sadness, and
forbade himself the enjoyment of spring and the visiting
of Lilar : ah ! he knew too, full well, that the loving
spring and Lilar, where she had received so many joys
and the last wound, would make his heart too ungovern
able and too full.
His thirst for knowledge and worth, his pride, which
bade him stand in a glorious light with his father and his
two friends, impelled him onward in his career. With
all his native fire he threw himself upon jurisprudence,
and took no longer any other walks than between the
lecture-room and his study-chamber. To this zeal he
was driven by a characteristic passion for completeness ;
everything imperfect was to him almost a physical hor
ror ; he was shocked at defective collections, broken seta

-
 LAW AND LOVE. 217

of monthly magazines, lawsuits left to sleep, libraries,

because he could never read them out, people who died
as aspirants for office, or in the midst of building-plans,
or without a rounded system of thought, or as journey
men clothiers' boys or shoemakers' apprentices, and even
Augusti's flute-playing, which he only took up by the way.
It was the same energy which made him hold the bridle of
Psyche's winged horse tight, and stick the rowel of the spur
into him ; even when a child he had experimented on
this kind of force, in the holding of his breath, or in the
painful pressure of a sore spot, — and, by Heaven ! he
now, figuratively, did both again. There dwelt in him
a mighty will, which merely said to the serving-company
of impulses, Let it be ! Such a will is not stoicism, which
rules merely over internal malefactors, or knaves, or pris
oners of tear, or children, but it is that genially energetic
spirit, which conditions and binds the healthy savages of
our bosoms, and which says more royally to itself, than
the Spanish regent to others, I, the king !
Ah, of course (how could his warm soul do otherwise ?)
he often stood, at midnight, before the breezy window,
and looked tearfully at the white Madonna of the minis
terial palace, silvered by the pure moon. Yes, in the
daytime, he often sketched in his souvenir (it happened
to be a fountain and a form behind it, nothing more), or
he read in the Messiah (naturally going on with the
canto which he had already begun at the house of the
Minister's lady), or he informed himself about nervous
maladies, (was he, perhaps, with all his studying, guarded
against them ?) or he let the fire of his fingers run over
the strings, — nay, he would have plucked nothing but
roses, although with thorns, had this been their blooming
season.
10
218 TITAN.

And this sighing, stifled soul must shut itself up ! O,

he began already to fear every key of the harpsichord
would become a stylus, the instrument itself a box of let
ters, and all actions treacherously legible words. For he
must keep silent. The first young love, like that of busi
ness people (those of the Electorate of Saxony excepted),
needs no instruments of speech, at most only a portable
inkstand and pen. Only worldly people, who repeat their
declarations of love quite as often as the players, are in
a situation — and on similar grounds — to publish them,
just as the players do. But in the holier season of life
the image of the most beloved soul is hung, not in the
parlor and antechamber, but in the dim, silent oratory:
only with loved ones do we speak of loved ones. Ah, it
was with reluctance that he even heard others speak of
his saint ; and he ofien stole (with the altar of incense in
his bosom) out of the room where people were carrying
round for her a censer more full of coal-smoke than of
frankincense.
37. CYCLE.
They were expecting every day in Pestitz the return of
the German gentleman M. de Bouverot. who had been in
Haarhaar, putting the last retouching hand to the almost
sketched marriage contract between Luigi and a Haarhaar
princess, Isabella. Augusti was not partial to him, and
even said Bouverot had no honnetete ;* and related the
following, but with the soft irony of a man of the world :
Some years before, Bouverot had been sent by the
court of Haarhaar f to the Pope at Kome, in relation to
• Uonneltte entirely excludes, in the higher classes, murder; (let-
honntUte, lying, &c, except in n certain degree.
t This court is Catholic, but the country Lutheran; and to this
latter confession that of Ilohuniliess also subscribes.
 BOUVEROT'S MISSION TO ROME. 219

certain canonical difficulties ; just at the time when Luigi

also made the princely procession to Rome, together with
his Romish indictions.* Now Haarhaar, which in truth
already went chapeau-bas with the princely hat of Hohen-
fiiess, and had every possible officinal prospect of wearing
it, would not, for this very reason, present the appearance
of looking with cold eyes on the extinction of the race
of Ilohenfliess, the more, as the very male support of the
line, Luigi, even in his first years, was not a hero of any
great nervous significance. Nay, it must needs be a mat
ter of some consequence to the court of Haarhaar that
the good thin autumn-flowerage should return, if possible,
otherwise than it went out ; and even on such grounds it
privily instructed the German gentleman to rule and
watch over all his pleasures and pains as tnaitre de plai-
sirs, — especially with mattresses de plaisirs, — in such a
manner as to give perfect satisfaction in this respect.
Meanwhile, if our princely abiturient t had started pure
as a foetus, unhappily he was brought hack ground down
to a punctum saliens, especially as, by sundry caprioles
and other leaps through the hoop of pleasure, he was
spoiled for the leap into the knight's saddle. It may be
possible that the German gentleman was too sanguine in
his expectations of the rejuvenescence of the Prince ; yes,
he may have imitated the youth-restoring, wondrous es
sence of the Marquis d'Aymar,J whereby an innocent old
lady, who anointed herself with the elixir more than her
years required, was, through the excessive renovation,
reduced to a little child. In short, by this crusade under
the Knight of the Cross, Bouverot, the princely seat of
• Or convocations every fifteen years. — Tb.
t A departing graduate. — Tr.
X See Count Lnmbcrg's Day-book of a Man of the World.
 220 TITAN.

Hohenfliess — as is often the consequence of crusades —

will be left open at the proper time, and Haarhaar will
Beat itself thereon.
I confess reluctantly that Albano, in the beginning, —
because, with all his sharp-sightedness, his purity was
quite as great, — comprehended the fact only confusedly ;
but when he did get the idea, it was to him pharmaceutic
manna, as it was to Schoppe Israelitish. " The Knight
of the Cross," said the latter, "beareth not his cross in
vain, — it does him quite as much service as one daubed
on the houses in Italy does to them : not a soul may piss
on either of them, although even in Rome it may be done
before every antechamber."
Not long after that our three friends were going out
into the street just at the hour when the noisy carriages
rolled along to tea and play, when a litter was carried by
before them with the seat backward, whereupon, however,
nobody was sitting. " Holy Father ! " cried Schoppe, " in
there sits, bodily, Cepiiisio, from Home, who must some
time or other give me a sound drubbing." — " Softly,
softly ! " said Augusti, " that is the German gentleman ;
Cephisio is his Arcadian name." * — " Well, I rejoice so
much the more that I once in my life had a hearty,
downright set-to with the red-nose," said he, turning
round and accompanying the litter, with his arms thrust
under it, for almost ten paces, in order to get a better
view of the caged bird, before the latter snatched-to the
curtains. Albano caught a glimpse within the litter, as
it passed swiftly along, only of a sharp eye drawn like a
dagger, and a red-glowing nose-bud.
Schoppe came back and related the transactions in
• Whoever goes to the Academy of the Arcadians, takes an Arca
dian name.

-
 SCHOPPE AND THE GAMBLERS. 221

Rome. He said, against all mortal sinners, blood-guilty

men, and imps of iniquity he bore no such bitter and
grim wrath as against professional bankers, croupiers*
and Greet ; if he had a canker-worm-iron wherewith ho
might scrape away this vermin from the earth, or a co
chineal-mill wherewith he might grind them to powder,
he would do it most cordially. " O heavens I " he then
broke out, "had I in fact my foot just stretched out over
the curling, coiling worm-stalk (and though that foot had
the gout in it), I would gladly dash it down upon them,
and tread out the vile filth." But what he could, he did.
Being his own travelling servant, and a decoy-spider,
darting to and fro through all Europe, he had full often
the pleasure of getting these faro-leaf-caterpillars and
leaf-sappers under his thumb, — of becoming their pre
tended associates, — learning their tactics, — and then
rolling some fire-wheel or other into their hissing snakes'-
hole. I am not intimately instructed whether it is known
in Leipsic who the ringleader was that, a short time
since, at the fair, played a mock-police with mimic-con
stables, and broke up a bank ; — at least the bankers were
altogether out on the subject, because they were expect
ing the real police the next day, and were begging for
some indulgences and i7legal-benefits ; but I am in a con
dition here to name the thief-catcher: it was Schoppe.
The spoils he applied mostly to the purpose of running
new mines under the faro-tables.
With Cephisio he had played his cards otherwise. He
stepped up before his bank, and looked on for some min
utes, and at last presented a leaf with a stamped louis-
d'or. It won, and he showed behind the card a long roll
* One who watches the card and takes up the money at the
bank Tr.
222 TITAN.

of louis. Bouvcrot would not pay this roll. " He had

not seen anything," he said. " What is your croupier
sitting there for, then ? " said Schoppe, and pronounced
them swindlers, if they did not pay. To escape greater
damage, they paid him his winnings. He took the money
coldly, and departed, with these words to the Pointeurs :
" Gentlemen, I assure you, you are playing here with
finished cheats ; but they have paid me only because I
knew them." Amidst the increasing stiffness and pale
ness of the partners he turned, and slowly, with his broad-
shouldered, compact figure, and his knotty cudgel, walked
away unscathed.
Augusti wished from his heart — for the persecution's
sake — that Bouverot might not know the Librarian
again. They found at home an invitation from the Min
ister to tea and supper. " The poor daughter ! " said
Augusti ; " for the sake of this Bouverot, the half-blind
one must go to-morrow to the table." Meanwhile, our
youth will then surely see hw again at last, and only a
spring-day separates him from the dearest object I If
Augusti is right, then my observation fits in here, that
a good sound villain is always the motive-pike which sets
the still, quaker-like carp-tribe in the pond to swimming;
the hidden pock-matter, which brings cold children at
once to life.
38. CYCLE.

LIANA'S eyes healed, but only slowly : Nature

would not lead her at once out of her sombre
prison into the sun ; she could now, like the philosophers,
just recognize light rather than forms. Nevertheless,
the Minister issued cabinet orders that she should day
after to-morrow play on the harmonica, appear at the
 FROULAY'S NEED OF BOUVKROT. 223

sotiper, and even make the salad, and thereby mask her
blindness. He sometimes commanded impossible things,
in order to meet with as much disobedience as his anger
needed for the purpose of venting itself in punishment.
Certain people keep themselves all day long full of vex
ation beforehand for some coming event or other, like
urinal phosphate, which always boils under the micro
scope, or forges, wherein every day fire breaks out.
The Minister's lady pronounced her soft, firm, No.
About the harmonica she said she had asked the Doctor,
in his name, who had strictly forbidden it ; and the rest
was an impossibility. Here he could already, he felt so
like it, be angry at several things, especially at the asking
of the Doctor, which, however, had not yet taken place ;
he grew mad enough, and swore he should act according
to his own principles, and devil a bit did he care for
other people's.
This principle was in the present case the German
gentleman. That is to say, the above-mentioned anec
dote — Bouverot's guardianship of the hereditary Prince
on his travels, or the design of the thing — had at
both courts come to be the common talk in assemblies
and at tables, and was hidden only from the Prince
Luigi ; for on thrones, there are almost no mysteries to
any one excepting him (hardly his wife) who sits there
upon, as in whispering-galleries the people in distant
corners hear everything aloud, only not he who stands
in the middle. The German gentleman was, therefore,
in the Hohenfliess system, the important port -vein and
pulmonary artery wherewith even Froulay would water
himself. The latter is obliged throughout to serve the
present and the future, or two masters, of whom the one
of Haarhaar might very soon be his.
224 TITAN.

Bouverot was attached not merely to Froulay the min

ister, but to Froulay the father; a man like him, who
causes to be sent after him from Italy a whole cabinet of
Art, and whose acquaintance with the arts has so long
knit together even him and the Prince, must know how
to prize a Madonna of such carnation as Liana, and of
the Romish school, and, what is more, who, detached from
the canvas, moved sis a full, breathing rose. As to marry
ing the rose, that he could not propose to himself, because
he was a German Herr.
He had not seen her since his Italian tour, — nor had
the Count either, — to both the Minister wished to show
her as a round pearl of special whiteness and figure.
Froulay had — which after all happens oftencr than we
imagine — quite as much vanity as pride ; the latter to
repel blame, the former to court praise. But I should
have now to write a tournament-chronicle to tell posterity
the half of all his raging and racing and lance-thrusts,
in a fight wherein he served under the banners of en
mity, vanity, and avarice. He was no more to be hunted
to death than a wolf. All weapons were alike to him,
and he was ever taking sharper and more poisonous ones.
In the old judicial duels between man and wife, the man
stood commonly up to his stomach in a pit, in order to
bring his strength down to a level with the woman's, and
she struck at him with a stone tied up in a veil ; but in
the matrimonial duels the man seems to stand in the free
air and the woman in the earth, and she often has only
the veil without the stone.
In this combat there stepped between the two a shining
peace-angel who caught the wounds, namely, Liana. The
daughter, who had an enthusiastic love for her mother, and
the womanly reverence for the stronger sex toward her
 THE SOUPEB AT FROULAY'S. 225
father, and who suffered so endlessly under their strifes,
fell upon her mother's neck and begged her to allow
her what her father demanded ; she would certaiuly do
everything so as not to excite observation ; she would
take the greatest pains and practise herself specially be
forehand, — ah, he would otherwise only be still more
unkind to her poor brother, — this discord, merely on her
account, was so painful to her, and perhaps more injuri
ous than playing on the harmonica.
" My child, thou knowest," said the mother, for now
she had asked, " what the physician said yesterday against
the harmonica ; the rest is at thine own risk ! " Liana
kissed her joyfully. She must needs be led to her father,
that she might make known to him aloud the gladness of
her obedience. " I thank you, and be hanged," said he,
softly ; it is simply your cursed duty." She left him with
her joy dissipated to atoms, but without any great pangs ;
she was already accustomed to this.

39. CYCLE.
THE Lector, while they were yet on their way to
the Minister's, begged Albano to moderate the
fire of his assertions and his pantomimes. He made
known to him only so much of the family-jar as was
necessary, in order that he might not, by a mistaken idea
of her restoration, throw Liana into embarrassment. As
they entered the card-room, everything was already in
full blaze.
As, at this time, no one is presented to him, I must do
it; they are disciples (at least twelfth disciples) of the
Minister.
And first, I introduce to thee the holy President of
10* o
226 TITAN.

Justice, Von Landrok, a good apothecary's-balance of

Themis, which weighs out scruples, and wherein no false
weights lie ; but what is quite as bad, much smut, rub
bish, and rust. Those at the ombre-table near by are
the lords and ladies of Vey, Flol, and Kob, sleek, fine
souls, like minerals in cabinets, polished off on the show-
side, but on the concealed base still jagged and scratch
ing.
Go with me to the entrance of the next apartment;
here I have to present to thee the young but fat canon
Von Meiler, who, in order to line and stuff out and pad
his inner man with a thick, warm, outer one, needs to
fleece no more peasants yearly than the number of linden-
trees the Russian peels for his bark-shoes, namely, one
hundred and fifty.
The apartment into which thou art looking I present
to thee as a fly-glass full of courtiers, who, in order to
enter into the kingdom of heaven, have become not merely
children, but in fact embryons of four weeks, who, as is
well known, look like flies ; if Swift desires of his ser
vants nothing more than the shutting-to of the doors,
these wish nothing of their employer and bread-provider
but the leaving-open of the same.
I have the honor to set before thee yonder — it is
he who is not playing — the holy Church-Counsellor,
Schiipe, who would fain be chief chaplain to the court ;
a soft scoundrel, who soaks and softens the seed-corns of
the divine and human word, like melon-seed (they are
thereby to spring up sooner in the heart), so long in
sugared wine, that they rot in it ; a spiritual lord who
never in his life offered any other prayers than the two
which he always refuses, the fourth and fifth.*
* Give us our daily bread, and forgive us our debts. — [ ? Tr.]
 THE KNIGHT OF THE CROSS. 227

But the Lector will soon name to thee, at the window,

every one of the lords and dames, coldly, gently, and
without pantomime. At present the Minister himself
conducts thee to a gentleman, one of the players, with
a cross on, who drinks water with saltpetre, and is con
tinually licking his dry mouth ; it is Bouverot, — he is
just rising in thy presence ; examine the cold, but impu
dent and cutting, sharply-ground eye, whose corners re
semble a pair of open tinman's-shears, or a trap set, —
the red nose, and the hard, lipless mouth, whose reddish
crab's-claw, worn off by whetting, pinches together, —
the cocked-up chin, and the whole stocky, firm figure.
Albano does not surprise him ; he has already seen all
men, and he inquires about no one.
The Minister refreshed the youth, whose inner being
was one snarl, with the promise that at supper he would
present to him his daughter. He offered him a game ;
but Alban replied, with a too youthful accent, he never
played.
He could now roam round through the lanes of the
card-tables, and survey whatever he wished. In such a
case one posts himself, if there is no one of the company
whom he can endure, exactly before or beside the face he
detests the most, in order inwardly to lash himself into
vexation at every word and every feature of the counte
nance. Albano might have had many visages in his
eye which were, at least in a small degree, intolerable,
and by which he migiit have stationed himself ; — nay,
no sufficient reasons could have been assigned why he
should not have given his whole attention to a certain
chaffy, dried up paste-eel, a weakling full of impertinence,
who was observing through an eye-glass the card constel
lations as they came up, while Albano could extend the
 228 TITAN.

feelers of his optic nerves even to the spots on the cards

in the second apartment ; — there would, indeed, have
been no reasons, had not the German gentleman been
there ; before him he must place himself ; of him he
knew the most and the worst ; he stood in distant con
nection with Schoppe, even with Liana. Furies ! in the
neighborhood of certain faces the pinions of the soul
crumple up and mew themselves as swans' and pigeons'
feathers arc crushed before eagles' quills ; it was as un
comfortable and close for all the innocent feelings in such
a roomy breast as Albano's, as it is to a flock of pigeons
into whose cote some one has thrown the tail of a polecat.
I cannot disguise the fact, he muttered and growled in
wardly at all the man did and had, — whether it was his
having fingers whose points were finely shaved for the
faro-game, and whose nails had been somewhat peeled
off by an altogether worse game of hazard yet, — or his
looking occasionally through the hair of his eyebrows, —
or (only once) squashing a fly by a sudden snapping to
of his lips like a fly-trap, — or his uttering now a line of
German and now of French, which I expect of good
circles, whereas only low people never bring out a Ger
man word, except a few, such as Lansquenet* canif
(kneif), birambrol (bier am brod), excepted. Suffice it,
he thought always of Schoppe's fine expression: "There
arc men and times at which and with whom nothing could
he more refreshing to an honest man than — to give them
a sound drubbing." Duelling is quite as good, thought
the Count.
However, Schoppe must here be justified by an au
thority. Namely, the author himself, otherwise such
a soft, warm swan-skin, could never stand behind card-
* Lonzknecht. — Tr.

r
 LIANA AT THE SUPPER-PARTY. 229

table-chairs without becoming a complete game-cock, and

spreading out his scratching, bristly wing the wider the
longer he idly looked on ; the reason is this, that in gen
eral one finds only those people more and more tolerable
and better upon acquaintance, with whom one pursues and
purposes the same kind of objects.
Albano wished heartily he had his brother-in-arms
Schoppe with him now ; he went often, it is true, to
Augusti to vent himself; but he always sought to pacify
him ; yes, by keeping himself constantly engaged with
the church-counsellor, he cut off from him the opportu
nity of betraying his youthful, inexperienced soul to lis
teners. Moreover, the Lector chose afterward for half
an hour — what familiar friends often do in the absence
of familiar female friends — the latter (namely, absence).
The Count stood some time behind Bouverot's seat,
and looked into a Chinese mirror, japanned on the inside
with grotesque figures, and changed his position constant
ly, till he brought Cephisio's face to appear therein right
beside a painted dragon, just by way of comparison; —
all this went on, interrupted, however, by constantly in
creasing heart-beatings for Liana, when the servants
opened the doors to the supper-hall ; and now his heart
thumped even to pain, and his form, already so blooming
with youth, hung all full of the roses of happy and
modest confusion.

40. CYCLE.

WITH beating heart and burning cheek he made

his way into the midst of the motley prome
nading throng with some old lady or other, who, in her
vanity, misunderstood him, and at once hung on his arm
230 TITAN.

like a spring-bracelet, and who got nothing from him but

— answers. With flying and piercing glances he stepped
into the bright hall, which seemed as if it were made of
crystallized light, and into the sea of heads. He was
just making some answer when he caught, in the tumult
behind him, the low words, "I certainly hear my brother,"
— and immediately the still lower refutation, " It is my
Count." He turned round ; between the Lector and her
mother stood the dear Liana, a modest, timid, pale-red
angel, in a black silk dress, over which ran only the glit
tering spring-frost of a silver chain, and with a light
ribbon in her blond hair. The mother presented her to
him, and the tender cheek bloomed more redly, — for
she had, indeed, confounded the similar voices of the
guest and the brother, — and she cast down those beau
tiful eyes which could see nothing. Ah, Albano, how
violently thy heart trembles now that the past has be
come present, the moonlit night a spring morning ; and
this still form, now so near thee, works far more mightily
than in any dream ! She was too holy in his sight for
him to have been able to utter a lie before her about the
apparent recovery ; he preferred silence ; — and thus the
warmest friend of her life came to her the first time only
veiled and dumb.
The Lector soon led her away to her seat under the
second lustre ; opposite her sat her mother (probably, for
this reason, that the good, unconscious daughter, who
surely could not always be letting her eyelids fall, might
raise them with friendliness and propriety towards a be
loved being) ; the German gentleman, as an acquaint
ance, seated himself, without further ceremony, on her
right, Augusti on her lefi, — Zesara, as Count, came far
up above beside the highest lady.
 ALBANO AT THE SUPPER-TABLE. 23 1

Deuse take it ! that is, unfortunately, so often my own

case ! I assert the upper seat of honor, — and observe, a
mile below me, the daughter, but, like a myops, only half
of her, and can bring about nothing the whole evening.
Do pray transpose me without any scruples down beside
her, — you have to deal with nothing more than a puffed-
up man, — why, on earth, as in the heavens, must, then,
the largest planets be placed exactly the farthest from
their sun ?
I now draw my readers to the Minister's table, not to
show them the ministerial pomp ingrafted upon avarice,
or his dance of honor hemmed in between the parallel
lines of etiquette, or even his family arms, which were
carried round on every chafing-dish and salt-cellar, and
with the ice and mustard, — enough for us to know the
ubiquity of the insignia upon his flower-pots, shirts, bed
clothes, dog's cravats, and all his thoughts ; but the reader
shall just now look only at my hero.
He is very prominent. Upon such a new-comer, peo
ple, in a residence-city, have already, before he has fairly
given the driver his drinking-money, got all possible light
of nature and revelation ; nineteen of the company were
fastened upon him as his moral odometers. The bold
ness of his nature and his rank made up with him for
worldly tact, which was missed nowhere except in this,
that he never took sides except in the very strongest
manner, and always ran off into general and cosmopolitan
observations. But see, I pray you ! — O, I wish Liana
could see it, — how the rosy glow and the fresh green of
his healthiness shines among the yellow sicklings of the
age, out of whom, as from ships on the African coast of
youth, all the pitch that held them together had run out,
— and how the cheek-redness of spiritual health, a ten
 232 TITAN.

der, ever-returning suffusion (from anxiety about Liana)

graces him, whereas most of the world's people at the
table seem, like cotton wool, to take all colors more easily
than red !
He looked and listened, against the salvation-laws of
visiting, too much to Liana. She ate, under the height
ened redness of a fear of mistaking, only sparingly, but
without embarrassment; the Lector, with easy hand,
barred up against her the smallest road to error. What
astonished him was, that she covered such a sensitive and
easily weeping heart with such an unembarrassed cheerful
ness of countenance and conversation. Young man ! that
is, with the most delicate maidens, free from pangs of love,
no covering and disguise, but an enjoying of the moment
and habitual courtesy ! She retained so considerately
(what she had probably learned beforehand) the relative
rank of the familiar voices, that she never directed her
answer to the wrong place. She, however, looked often
to her mother with full eyes, and smiled then still more
serenely, not, however, for the purpose of deceiving, but
from real, hearty love.
Touching her salad, the best and most fit to be a
prince's table-guest among my female readers, who had
seen her mix it, would have taken several fork-loads
thereof. Uncommonly charming was it, when, growing
more earnest and red, she drew off her glove before the
blue, celestial hemisphere of glass ; with white hands and
supple arms, without a silken fold, worked away in the
green, between the blue of the glass and the black of the
silk ; considerately felt for the vinegar- and oil-castors, and
poured out as much as her practice (and the deciphered
advice of the Lector, — at least so it seems to me) directed.
By heavens ! the dressing is, in this case, the salad ; and
 BOUVEROT'S SNUFF-BOX. 233

the vain Minister, who had no understanding of pictures,

had a great eye for things that would make good pictures.
The mother seemed scarcely to look at the leaf-mixing.
To the Count, the Minister's lady seemed to-day to have
only good-breeding and no pious strictness ; but he did
not yet sufficiently know those polished women, who have
refinement without wit, sensibility without fire, clearness
without coldness ; who borrow of the snail his feelers, his
sofiness, his coolness, and his dumb gait, and who demand
and deserve more confidence than they obtain.
At this moment came in Cephisio, like an angel among
three men in the fiery furnace, but a dark angel. To the
Count, his contiguity of seat, and every word he addressed
to Liana, was already a crucifixion, — only to pass with a
look from her to him was an agony, little different from
that which I should have, if I had spent a day at Dresden
in the antique Olympus of ancient gods, and then, on going
out, should fall into a refectory full of swollen monks, or
into a naturalist's cabinet full of stuffed malefactors' skins
and bottled embryo-spiders. However he was pacified —
in my opinion, only deceived — by one thing, that the
German gentleman did not blaze away in lyrics beside
her, was neither in heaven nor out of his head, but in his
head, and quite composed and very polite. There are no
pigeons, Count, — ask the farmers, — which the hawks
oftener pounce upon than the glossy white ones!
The German gentleman now produced a snuff-box, with
a neat picture of Lilar, and asked Liana how it pleased
her; he liked the sentimentality of it particularly.
The Lector was terrified, leaned forward toward the
box-piece, and threw out a few opinions beforehand which
should guide the half-blind one in forming her own ; but
afier she had passed it two or three times obliquely
234 TITAN.

against the lights and near before her eyes, she was
able to express an original opinion herself, that the child
illuminated by the half-sunken sun, who is drawn alofi by
a flower-chain under the triumphal arch, was, to her feel
ings, " so very lovely." Here — and I have observed the
same case in a half-blind lady of powerful fancy and
receptive sense of art — the effort and the artistic sense,
or the spiritual eye, came to meet the bodily half-way.
The box, as well as its snuff, was presented farther on,
and came down along to the Counsellor of Arts, Fraisch-
dorfer, upon whom the new Prince's love of the arts and
the favorite's knowledge in them now placed new crowns ;
he found fault with nothing but the white of the blossoms.
" Spring," said he, " is, by reason of its wearisome white
ness, a mere monochrome ; I have visited Lilar only in
autumn." " There is the nightingale's song, too, which
we of course cannot paint, but yet we can hear it," said
Liana, cheerfully ; he was her teacher, and now, in the
technology of painting, even her father's. Over all her
acquisitions and inner fruits and blossoms the rose of
silence had been painted ; to that her tyrannical father
had entirely accustomed her, and especially before men, in
whom she always revered copied fathers.
When the landscape came to Albano, and he held be
fore him in miniature that spring night when Lilar and
the noble old man appeared to him so enchantingly, — and
as he touched what the dear soul had handled,— and now
in his own soul all accordant strings trembled, — just then
the Devil struck again a dissonant chord of the seventh : —
" The Prince, gracious sir," said the Minister to the
German gentleman, " was yesterday buried in private ;
only eight days hence we have the public interment. We
are obliged to hasten, because the suspension of the court
 DISPUTE ON CONVENTIONALISM. 235

mourning lasts until the inauguration, on ascension-day,

is gone by." I am too much excited to express myself
upon the eternal master of ceremonies, Froulay, who
would have raised a lantern-tax in the sun, and bridge-
toll before park-bridges and asses'-bridges ; but Albano,
dazzled by so many side-lights and glancing rays, — re
minded of Liana's sorrow over the old man, of his birth
day, of the heart without a breast, and of the madness of
the world, — was not in a condition, however much he
had intended appearing iu gentleness and lambs' clothes
before Froulay, to keep the latter on ; but he must needs
(and louder than he meant), in opposition to his next
neighbor, the Church Counsellor, Schiipe, with too great
youthful exasperation (not lessened by the eager listening
of Liana for the brotherly voice) declare himself against
many things, — against the everlasting dead sham-life of
men, — against the ceremonial haughtiness of a soulless
form, — against this starving on love merely from making
false shows of it ; — ah, his whole heart burned on his lip !
The honest Schape, whom I just now called a scoun
drel, took, with several expressions of countenance, Alba-
no's part. But I do not by any means, friend Albano ! —
thou hast yet to learn for the first time that men, in re
spect to ceremonies, modes, and laws, like a flock of sheep,
will, in a body, provided the bell-wether can only be got
to leap over a pole, continue to leap carefully over the
same place when the polo has been taken away ; — and
the most and highest leaps, in the state, are those we
make without the pole. But a youth would be an ordi
nary one who should love civil life very early, however
certain it is that he and we all judge too bitterly the
faults of every office which we do not ourselves hold.
The company listened in silence, and, out of politeness,
only inwardly admired ; on Liana fell a tender seriousness.
 236 TITAN.

They rose, — the closeness vanished, — so did his zeal;

— but, whether it came from the speaking, or the con
templation of the loved object, or from a youthful over
leaping of the hedges of visiting-propriety, — (it arose
not, however, from want of manners), — the fact is not
to be denied (and I do my best, too, to give it ex
actly) that the Count left the poor old lady who had
beeu escorted in by him, — Hafenreffer himself knows
not her name, — left her standing, and, I believe uncon
sciously, took Liana under his escort. Ah, her ! What
shall I say of the magic nearness of the dreamed-of soul,
— of the light resting of her hand, felt only by the arm
of the inner man, not of the outer, — of the shortness of
the heavenly way, which should have been at least as
long as Frederick Street ? Verily, he himself said noth
ing, — he thought merely of the abominable Inhibitorial-
room, where their separation must take place, — he trem
bled at every inquiring sound. " You have, perhaps,"
said Liana, lightly and openly, who loved to hear the
friendly voice, especially after the warm discourse, "al
ready visited our Lilar ? " — " Truly not; but have you ? "
he said, too much confused. " My mother and I have
made it our favorite home every spring."
Now were they in the parting-chamber. Alas ! there
and thus he stood with her, who saw nothing, for some
seconds immovable, and looked straight before him,
wanting to say something, till he was aroused by her
mother, who was eagerly seeking, for her affection, which
the whole evening had been nourishing, a sequestered
hour on her daughter's heart, — and so all was over, for
both vanished like apparitions.
But Alban was as a man who is deserted by a glorious
dream, and who all the morning is so inwardly blest, but
remembers the dream no more. And yet, stands not

v
 ALBANO SOFTENS TOWARDS AUGUSTI. 237

Lilar open to him, and will he not surely see it, so soon
as ever Liana can see it too ?
Never was he more gentle. The attentive Lector, in
this warm, fruitful seed-time, threw in some good seed.
He said, as they looked out together into the moonlit
night, Albano had this evening hardly brought forward
anything but thorny and exaggerated truths, which only
imbitter, but do not enlighten. At another time the
Count would have asked him whether he should have
carried himself like Froulay and Bouverot, who, with all
possible tolerance, presented theses and antitheses to each
other, like an academical respondent and opponent, who
previously prepare in concert logical wounds and plasters
of equal length ; — but to-day he was very kindly disposed
towards him. Augusti had so delicately and affection
ately cared for mother and daughter, — he had, without
blackening or whitewashing, said much good, but nothing
hastily, and his expositions had been calmly listened to:
he had neither flattered nor offended. Albano, therefore,
replied, softly : " But it is surely better to imbitter, dear
Augusti, than to put to sleep. And to whom shall I then
say the truth but to those who have it not nor any faith
in it ? Surely not to others." " One can speak any
truth," said he, " but one cannot reckon as truth every
mode and mood in which he speaks it."
"Ah !" said Albano, and looked up ; beneath the starry
heaven stood the marble Madonna of the palace, like a
patron saint, softly illuminated, — and he thought of her
sister,* — and of Lilar, — and of spring, — and of many
dreams, — and how full his heart was of eternal love, and
that he had as yet no friend and no loved one.
• Liana. — Tr.
 EIGHTH JUBILEE.

I.E petit Lever of Dr. Spiiex. — Path to Lilar. — Woodland-

Bridge. — The Mohnino in Arcadia. — Chariton. — Liana's
Letter and Psalm of Gratitude. — Sentimental Journey
through a Garden. — The Flute-Dell. — Concerning the
Reality of the Ideal.

41. CYCLE.

SAT up all last night till towards morning, —

for I cannot suffer any strange dechiffreur in
the case, — in order to cipher out the Jubilee
to the very last word, so enchained was I by
its charms ; I hope, however, as the mere thin leaf-skele
ton from Hafenreffer's hand has already done so much,
that now, when I run through its veins with sap-colors
and glossy green, the leaf will do absolute miracles.
With the Count it had been troubled weather since last
evening. For the patient, modest form which he had
seen shone, like the purpose of a great deed, before all
the images of his soul ; and in his dreams, and before he
sank to slumber, her gentle voice became the Philomela
of a spring-night. Withal, he heard them continually
talking about her, especially the Doctor, who every morn
ing announced further progress of the ocular cure, and
at last placed Liana's setting out for Lilar nearer and
nearer. To hear of a loved one, however, even the most
 CONSTRAINT OF CITY LOVERS. 23^

indifferent thinp is far mightier than to ''umk of her.

He heard further, ti.it her brother, since the murder of
her eyes, had withdrawn entire!" 'Vor.i the city, in which
he would not again appear except on a so-called festive-
steed at the Prince's funeral ; — and around this Eden, or
rather around its creatress, so high a garden-wall had
been run, and he went round the wall and found no gate.
I know nothing more odious than this ; but in what
residence-city is it otherwise? If I ever wrote a Ro
mance (of which there is no probability), one thing I
affirm openly, there is nothing which I would so sedu
lously shun as a residence-city, and a heroine in it saintly
enough for a canoness. For the conjunction of the upper
planets is more easily brought about than that of the upper
class of lovers. Does he wish to speak alone with her at
Court or at tea or in her family, there stands the Court,
the tea-party, the family close by ; — will he meet her in
the park, she rides, like the Chinese couriers, double,
because we give a consciousness to maidens, as nature
gives all important organs, duplicate, just as we give
good wine double bottom ; — will he meet her at least
accidentally in the street, then there stalks along behind
her (if the street lies in Dresden), a sour servant as
her plague-vinegar, soul-keeper, curator sexus, chevalier
d'honneur, genius of Socrates, contradictor, and Pestilen-
tiary. In the country, on the other hand, the parson's
daughter takes a run (that is all), because the evening
is so heavenly, about the fields of the parsonage, and
the candidate needs do nothing more than put on his
boots. Really, among people of rank, the mantle of
(erotic) love seems in the beginning to be a Dr. Faust's
mantle, which swears to soar over everything, whereas
it merely covers over everything ; only, at last, there
24° TITAN.

stands a Sehreckhom, a Mount Pilate, and a Jungfrau,

before one's nose. '
Blessed hero! Oo Friday came the Lector, and re
ported, that on Monday tLa -llustrious deceased — namely,
his empty coffin — is to be buried, and Roquairol rides
the festive-steed, — and Liana is almost well, for she
goes with the Minister's lady to-morrow to Lilar, in al'
probability to escape some sad black-bordered notes of
condolence, — and, on the following ascension-day comer
the consecration and masquerade. . . .
Blessed hero ! I repeat. For hitherto what hast thou
possessed of the blooming vale of Tempe, except the
barren heights whereon thou stood'st looking down into
the enchantment?

42. CYCLE.
ON the May-Saturday-evening, at 7 o'clock, every
vapor disappeared from the sky, and the brightly
departing sun went to meet a glorious Sunday. Albano,
who then, at length, meant to visit the unseen Lilar, was,
on the evening before, as sacredly happy as if he were
celebrating confession eve before the first holy supper ; —
his sleep was one constant ecstasy and awaking, and
in every dream a mimic Sunday morning rose, and the
future became the dark prelude of the present.
Early on Sunday he was about to sally forth, when he
had to pass by the half-glass door of the Doctor, " Sir
Count, one moment ! " cried he. When he entered, the
Doctor said, " Directly, dear Sir Count ! " and went on
with what he was about. To the painters, who, in future
centuries, will draw from me as they have hitherto from
Homer, I present the following group of the Doctor as

-
 Sl'HEX'S SUNDAY DISCIPLINE. 241

a treasure ; he lay on his left side ; Galen was smoothing

down his father's back with a little scratch-brush, while
Boerhave stood near him with a broad comb, and kept
dragging that instrument perpendicularly (not obliquely)
through the hair. He always said he knew nothing that
cheered him up so, and was such a good aperient, as
brush and comb. Before the bed stood Van Swieten in
a thick fur, which the correctioner had to wear when the
weather was warm and his behavior bad, in order that
he might, thus arrayed, be laughed at, as well as half
roasted.
Two girls stood waiting there in full Sunday gala, and
were thinking of going out into the country to see a par
son's daughter, and to the village church ; these he first
mauled, limb by limb, with the hammer of the law. He
loved to make his children antipodes of Romish defend
ants, who appear in rags and tatters, and so he set them
in the pillory, all ruffled and tasselled, especially before
strangers. The Count had already this long time, on the
red children's account, been standing with his face turned
toward the open window ; he could not, however, refrain
from saying, in Latin, " Were he his child, he would long
ago have made way with himself ; he knew nothing
more degrading than to be scolded in finery." " It takes
so much the deeper hold," said Sphex, in German, and
fired only these few farewell shots after the girls : " You
are a pair of geese, and will do nothing in church but
just cackle about your rags and tags ; why don't you
mind the parson ? He is an ass, but he preaches well
enough for you she-asses ; in the evening do you tell me
every word of the sermon."
Here is a laxative drink, Sir Count, which, as you are
going to Lilar, I beg you to give the Architect's lady for
11 r
242 TITAN.

her little toads ; but don't take it ill ! " By the deuse !
that is what precisely those people most frequently say,
who, themselves, never take anything ill. The Count, —
who at another time would have contemptuously turned
his back upon him, — now blushing and silent before the
preserver of his Liana, put it into his pocket, because,
too, it was for the children of his beloved Dian, to whose
spouse he wished to bear greetings and news.

43. CYCLE.

LILAR is not, like so many princely gardens, a torn-

out leaf of a deer-field, — a dead landscape-figurant
and mimic- and miniature-park, — one of those show-
dishes which are now served up and sketched at every
court, of ruins, wildernesses, and woodland-cottages, but
Lilar is the lusus naturae and bucolic poem of the roman
tic and sometimes juggling fancy of the old Prince. We
shall soon enter in a body behind our hero, but only into
Elysium. Tartarus is something entirely different, and
the second part of Lilar. This separation of the con
trasts I praise even more than all. I have long wanted
to go into a better garden than the common chameleonic
ones are, where one hands you China and Italy, summer-
house and charnel-house, hermitage and palace, poverty
and riches (as in the cities and hearts of the proprietors),
all on one dish, and where day and night, without an
aurora, without a mezzotinto, are placed side by side.
Lilar, on the contrary, — where the Elysium justifies its
happy name by connected pleasure-tents and pleasure-
groves, as the Tartarus does its gloomy one, by lonesome,
veiled horrors, — that is drawn right out of my heart.
But where is our youth now going with his dreams?
 ROMANTIC WALK TO LILAR. 243

He is yet on the romantic road that leads into Lilar,

properly the first garden-walk of the same. He strolled
along an embowered road, which gently rose over hills,
with open orchards, and into yellow-blooming grounds
and which, like the Rhine, now forced its way through
green, ivy-clad rocks, and now opened its flying, smiling
shores behind the twigs. Now the white benches under
jessamine bushes and the white country-seats became
more frequent ; he drew nearer, and the nightingales and
canary-birds * of Lilar came roving along, like birds
announcing land. The morning blew fresh through the
spring, and the indented foliage yet held fast its light,
ethereal drops. A carrier lay sleeping on his rack-
wagon, which the beasts, browsing right and left, safely
drew along the smooth road. Albano heard, in the Sun
day stillness, not the war-cry of oppressive labor, but the
peace-bells of the towers : in the morning chime the
future speaks, as in evening chimes the past ; and at this
golden age of the day there stood, also, a golden age in
his fresh bosom.
Now the fork-tailed chimney-swallows began to quiver
with their purple breasts over the heavenly blue of the
wild germanders, announcing the approach of our dwell
ings as well as their own ; when his road seemed about to
pass through an old, open, ruined castle, overhung with
rich, thick leaves, like scales, at whose entrance, or egress,
a red arm, pointing aside with the white inscription,
" Way out of Tartarus into Elysium," stretched out to
ward a neighboring thicket.
His heart rose within him at this double nearness
of such opposite days. With long steps he pressed on
* They have a whole room for winter quarters, of which in summer
the windows are merely thrown open.
 244 TITAN.

toward the Elysian wood, which seemed to be cut off from

him by a broad ditch. But he soon came out of the bush-
work before a green bridge, which flung its arch like a
giant serpent across the ditch, not, however, on the earth,
but among the summits of the trees. It bore him in
through a blooming wilderness of oaks, firs, silver-poplars,
fruit-trees, and lindens. Then it brought him out into
the open country, and now Lilar, from the east, flung,
over the wide-extending spikes of grain, the splendor of
a high golden ball to meet him. The bridge sank gently
'with him again into fragrant, glimmering broom, and be
neath and beside him sang and fluttered canary-birds,
thrushes, finches, and nightingales, while the well-fed
brood slept under the covert of the bridge. At last, after
passing an arched avenue, it came up again to the light,
and now he saw the blooming mountain cupola with the
white altar, whereon he had knelt on a night of his youth ;
and farther to the south behind him, the veil and dividing-
wall of Tartarus, a high-reared wood ; and as he stepped
onward, Elysium opened upon him more broadly, — a
lane of small houses with Italian roofs full of little trees,
smiled joyfully and familiarly upon the sight out of the
green world-map of dells, groves, paths, lakes ; and in
the east five triumphal gates opened passages into a wide-
extending plain, waving on like a green-glistening sea,
and in the west five others stood opposite to them with
opened lands and mountains.
As Albano passed down along the slowly-descending
sweep of the bridge, there came forth into view, now
blazing fountains, now red beds, now new gardens en
folded in the great one, and every step created the Eden
anew. Full of awe he stepped out, as upon a hallowed
soil, on the consecrated earth of the old Prince and the
 FIRST APPEARANCE OF POLLUX. 245
pious father* and Dian and Liana; his wild course was
arrested, and entangled, as if by an earthquake ; the pure
paradise seemed made merely for Liana's pure soul ; and
now for the first time a timid question about the propriety
of his hasty journey, and the loving fear of meeting for
the first time her healed eye, made his happy bosom grow
uneasy.
But how festal, how living, is all around him ! On the
waters which gleam through the groves swans are glid
ing ; the pheasant stalks away into the bushes, deer peep
curiously behind him out of the wood through' which he
has come, and white and black pigeons run busily under
the gates, and on the western hills hang bleating sheep
by the side of reposing lambs ; even the breast of the
turtle-dove in some hidden valley trembles with the lan-
guido of love. He strode through a long, high-bushed
rose-field, that seemed a settlement and plantation of
hedge-sparrows and nightingales, which hopped out of the
bushes on the growing grass-banks, and ran out in vain
after little worms ; and the lark sailed away on high over
this second world, made for the more innocent of God's
creatures, and sank behind the gates into the grain-
fields.
Intoxicate thyself more and more, good youth, and
link thy flowers into a chain as closely as the boy toward
whom thou art hastening. For, overhead, on the Italian
roof, before whose balustrade-breastwork silver-poplars,
girdled about with broad vine-leaves, played, and which,
in the spring-night, he had taken for a bower in roses,

• Such was the general title of the seelnded Emeritus, the court
preacher, Spcner, who resided there, and who was related to the noblo
old pious Spener, not only on the paternal side, but also on the spir
itual.
 246 TITAN.

stood a blooming boy bent forward, who was letting down

a chain of marigolds, and kept fastening on new rings to
the too short green cable. " My name is Pollux," he
answered briskly to Alban's sofi question, "but my sis
ter is named Helena,* but my little brother is named
Echion." " And thy father ? " " He is not here now,
he is away off there in Rome ; just go in to mother
Chariton, I am coming immediately." On what fairer
day, in what fairer place, with what fairer hearts could
he come into the holy family of the beloved Dian, than
on this morning, and with this mood ?
He went into the bright, laughing house, which was
full of windows and green Venetian blinds. When he
entered into the spring-room he found Chariton, a young,
slender woman, looking almost like a girl of seventeen,f
with the little Echion at her breast, defending herself
against the sickly and excitable Helena, who, standing in
a chair under the window, kept swinging in a many-
leaved sling of a vine-branch, and trying to girdle and
blind therewith the eyes of her mother. With charming
confusion, wishing at once to rise, with her lefi hand to
remove the leafy fetters without tearing, and to cover up
the suckling more closely, she stepped forward, inclining
her head, to meet the beautiful youth, with childlike
friendliness and warmth, but with infinite shyness, not
on account of the rank indicated by his dress, but because
he was a man, and looked so noble, even like her Greek.
He told her, with an enchanting love, which, perhaps, she
* They had these names as twins.
t The grammar seems to require "a still almost maidenly looking
woman of seventeen years," but the translator did not dare to think
Jean Paul could have meant that, consistently with the ages of the
three children, though, as an Oriental, Chariton may have married
very young.
 IN CHARITON'S COTTAGE. 247

had never seen so magnificently pictured, on his strong

countenance, his name, and the gratitude which his heart
kept in store for her husband, and the news and greetings
which he had brought from him. How the innocent fire
blazed out of the dark eyes of the timid creature ! " Was
then my lord," so she called her husband, " very well
and happy ? " And so she began now, unembarrassed
as a child, a long examination all about her husband.
Pollux came dancing in with his long chain. Alban
playfully took out the Doctor's medicine from his pocket,
and said, " This is what you are to take." " Must I drink
it right down, mother?" said the hero. Here she inquired
quite as naively after the detailed prescriptions of the Doc
tor, until the little suckling at her breast rebelled, and drove
her into a by-room to sit over the cradle. She excused
herself, and said the little one must go to sleep, because
she was going to walk with Liana, for whom she was
looking every minute.
Children love powerful faces. Alban was at once the
favorite of children and dogs, only he could never act
with the little jumping troop, on the childish play-ground,
when grown spectators were in the boxes.
" I can do a good many things ! " said Pollux. " And
I can read, sir ! " rejoined Helena to her brother. " But
then only in German ; but I can read Latin letters splen
didly, you ! " replied the little man to her, and ran round
through the room after readings and specimens ; but in
vain. "Man, wait a little!" said he, and ran up-stairs
into Liana's chamber, and brought one of Liana's let
ters.
248 TITAN.

43°. CYCLE.

ALBANO knew not that Liana had the upper — 80

bloomingly shaded — chamber reserved for her
own private use, wherein she frequently — especially
when her mother remained behind in the city — drew,
wrote, and read. The childlike Chariton, inspired with
the love-draught of friendship, did not know at all how
she could possibly so much as show her warmth of kind
ness to the fair, affectionate friend : ah, what was a
chamber ? Now into this always open room came the
children, whom Liana sometimes heard read ; and thus
was Pollux able on the present occasion to fetch out of
the solitary room the sheet which she had written this
morning.
While Albano, during the errand, sat so alone in the
keeping-room of the far-off friend of his youth, near his
still, pale daughter, who looked now at him and now at a
toy sheep-fold, as well known to him as Liana's eastern
chamber, when the morning breeze swept in the glorious
hum through the cool window, especially when, in the
light cut-work of the floor the Chinese shadows of the
vine and poplar foliage crinkled into each other, and
when, at length, Chariton began to sing the suckling to
sleep with a quicker, louder lullaby, which sounded to
him like her echoing sigh after the fair land of her youth ;
then was his full heart, which had been already so stirred
by all the events of the morning, wondrously moved,
and — especially by the flickering sham-fight of the shad
ows — almost to tears ; and the child looked up more
and more meaningly into his face.
Then came Pollux back with his two quarto leaves, and
now set himself at once to his lesson. The very first page
 LIANA'S SUNDAY MORNING LETTER. 249

composed the melody to Alban's inner songs ; but he could

neither guess the authoress nor the date of the letter,
except further along, by a desultory sort of reading to and
fro. The leaves belonged to previous ones ; not so much
as a grain of writing-sand evinced their recent birth (for
Liana was too courtly to use any) ; further, all the names
were disguised ; that is to say, Julienne, to whom they
were directed, had unfortunately in Argenson's bureau de
decachetage, where she resided, i. e. at court, demanded
them in cipher, and she accordingly took the name of
Elisa ; Roquairol was called Charles, and Liana her little
Linda. Linda, as will be well remembered, is the bap-
tismal name of the young Countess of Romeiro, with
whom the Princess on the day of that (for Roquairol) so
bloody masquerade had established an eternal heart- and
letter-alliance ; Liana, to whose pure, poetic eyes every
noble woman became a blessed saint and heroine, the
opaque jewel a bright, pure, transparent one, loved the
high Countess as if with the heart of her brother and her
female friend at once, and the gentle soul named herself,
unconscious of her worth, only the little Linda of her
Elisa.
Nor did Albano recognize the delicate running-hand ;
Julienne loved the French language even to its letters,
but Liana's resembled not the scrawled Gallic protocols,
but the neatly-rounded handwriting of the English.
Here is her leaf at last. O thou lovely being ! how
long have I thirsted for the first sounds of thy refreshing
soul!
" Sunday Morning.
" But to-day, Elisa, I am so profoundly happy,
and the evening-mist is transformed to an aurora in
heaven. I ought not to give thee yesterday's work at all.
II*
250 TITAN.

I was too much troubled. But might not my dear mother,

who had gone thither merely for my sake, become thereby
still sicker, whatever appearances of tolerable health she
might, for that very reason, assume with me ? And then
came thy form, beloved one, and all thy sorrow and the
painful neighborhood,* and our last evening here. O
how reproachfully did all that pass before my heavy
heart ! So, as we stopped before the house of dear
Chariton, and she kissed my mother's hand with tears of
joy ; then was I so weak that I too turned aside and shed
tears, but other tears, — I wept for the rejoicing one her
self, who indeed could not know whether at that hour her
precious friend in Rome might not be sick or dying.
" But now the dark, gray mist is wholly blown away
from the flower-garden of thy little Linda, and all the
blossoms of life shine in their pure, high colors before
her. After midnight my mother's headache passed
almost entirely away, and she was still sleeping so
sweetly this morning. O, what were my feelings there !
Soon after five o'clock I went down into the garden and
shrunk back at the splendor which burned in the dew and
between the leaves ; the sun was just looking in under
the triumphal gates, — all the lakes sparkled in a broad
fire, — a gleaming haze floated like a saintly halo around
the edge of the earth which the heaven touched, — and a
high-waving and singing streamed through the splendor
of morn.
" And into this unlocked world I had come back re
stored and so happy. I wanted continually to cry out :
' I have thee again, thou bright sun I and you, ye lovely
flowers ! and ye proud mountains, ye have not changed !
and ye are green again, and, like me, renewed, ye sweet-
* The Tartarus with Julienne's father's heart.
 BLESSING OF RESTORED SIGHT. 251

scented trees !' I floated, as if transfigured, in an endless

felicity, Elisa, weak, but light and free ; I had, so it
seemed to me, put off this burdensome clay under the
earth and kept only the beating heart, and in my enrap
tured bosom warm tear-fountains gushed down, as if over
flowers, and covered them with brightness.
"'Ah, God!' said I, trembling at the very greatness
of my joy, ' was it then a mere sleep, that immovable
repose of mother? ' and I must needs (smile on !) before
I went further, go up to her again. I crept breathless
to the bedside, bent listeningly over her, and my good
mother opened slowly her still gently dozing eyes, looked
upon me languidly but affectionately, and closed them
again without stirring, and gave me only her dear hand.
" Now could I right blissfully return to my garden ; I
bore, however, a morning-greeting to the ever-cheerful
Chariton, and told her that I might be found on the broad
way to the altar* if I should be wanted for anything.
Ah, Elisa, what feelings then were mine ! And why had
I not thee by the hand, and why could not my distressed
Charles see that his sister was so happy ? As, after a
warm rain, the evening-red and the liquid sunlight run
from all the gold-green hills, so stood a quivering splen
dor over my whole inner being and over my past, and
everywhere lay bright tears of joy. A sweet gnawing
consumed away my heart as if to death, and all was so
near to me and so dear ! I could have answered the whis
pering aspen and thanked the spring-breezus which fanned
so coolingly my hot eye ! The sun had laid itself with a
motherly warmth on my heart, and brooded over us all, —
the cold flower, the naked young bird, the stiff butterfly,
• Such is the name of that mount which Albano found in the well-
known spring night.
2S2 TITAN.

and every creature. Ah, such should man be too,

thought I ; and I took the sandy path, and spared tho
life of the poor little blade of grass and the flower that
peeped so lovingly, which truly breathe and wake like us.
I drove not away the thirsty white butterflies and pigeons
which stood beside each other and bent down from the
moist turf to drink. O, I could have stroked the waves
. . . this creation is truly so precious and from God's hand,
and every the smallest-shaped heart has surely its blood
and a longing, and into every little eye-point under the
leaf the whole sun and a little spring enter and abide !
" I leaned, a little exhausted, under the first triumphal
arch, ere I ascended to the altar, and looked out into the
glimmering landscape full of villages and orchards and
hills ; and the glistening dew, and the ringing of the vil
lage-bells, and the chime of the herd-bells, and the floating
of the birds over all, filled me with peace and light. Yes,
in such peace and seclusion and serenity will I spend my
fleeting life, thought I : does not the little Sad-cloak per
suade me, who, before my eyes, with his wings torn by
autumn, nevertheless flutters again around his flowers ;
and does not the night-butterfly admonish me, who clings,
chilled, to the hard statue, and cannot soar to the blossoms
of day ? Therefore will I never stir from my mother ;
only let the precious Elisa stay with us as long as her
Linda lives, and call her noble friend soon,* that I may
see and heartily love her !
" I went up the green-shaded mountain, but with pain :
joy weakens me so much. Think of me, Elisa : I shall
some time die of a great joy or of a great, all too great
woe! The spiral path to the altar was painted with
the hues of the blossom-dust, and overhead, not colored
* Linda de Romciro.
 LIANA'S POEM OF THANKS. 253

and stationary, but shifting, burning rainbows quivered

through the twigs of the mountain. Why stood I to-day
in a splendor such as I never knew before ? * And when
the morning breeze fanned and lified me, and when I
dipped myself deeper into the blue heaven, then said I,
' Now thou art in Elysium.' Then it was to me as if a
voice said, 'This is the earthly Elysium, and thou art
not yet sanctified for the other.' O, how ardently did I
then form the purpose to disentangle myself from so
many faults, and especially to renounce that too hasty
imagination of offence, which I may indeed conceal from
others, but through which I nevertheless injure them.
And then I prayed at the altar, and thanked the Eternal
Goodness, and wept unconsciously ; perhaps too much, but
yet without my eyes smarting.
"At last I wrote the poem of thanks which I append to
this, and which I will put into verse, if the pious father
approves.
" Poem of Thanks.
' Do I then gaze again with blessed eyes into thy bloom
ing world, thou All-loving One, and weep again, because
I am happy ? Why did I then fear ? When I went
under the earth in the darkness like the dead, and caught
only a distant sound of the loved ones and of spring above
me, why was my feeble heart in fear that there was no
more hope for life and light ? For thou wast by me in
the darkness, and didst lead me up out of the vault into
thy spring; and around me stood thy joyous children,
and the serene heavens, and all my smiling loved ones !
O, I will now hope more steadfastly ! Continue thou to
break off from the sick plant all rank flowers, that the
• The reason is, that after her recovery she was still short-sighted,
and to a short-sighted person the dew is so much the more brilliant.
254 TITAN.

rest may more fully ripen ! Thou dost indeed lead thy
human creatures into thy heaven and to thyself over a
long mountain ; and they go through the storms of life
along the mountain, only overshadowed, not smitten, by
the clouds, and only our eye grows wet. But when I
come to thee, when Death again throws his dark cloud
over me, and draws me away from all that I love into
the deeper cavern, and thou, All-gracious, settest me free
once more, and bearest me into thy spring, — into a still
fairer one than this, which is itself so magnificent, — will
then my frail heart, near thy judgment-seat, beat as gladly
as to-day, and will the mortal bosom dare to breathe in
thy ethereal spring ? O, make me pure in this earthly
one, and let me live here, as if I were already walking
in thy heaven ! ' "
• • • • *
If even you, ye friends, who have never seen her, are
yet won and touched by the patient, pure form, which can
resignedly rejoice that the storm-cloud has, after all, only
sent down rain-drops upon it, and no hail-stones, how
must she then have agitated the deeply-moved heart of
her friend ! He felt a consecration of his whole being,
just as if Virtue came down incarnate in this shape from
heaven, to hallow him with her smile, and then flew back
in a shining path, and he followed, inspired and exalted,
in her track.
He urged the boy instantly to carry back the leaves,
in order to spare her and himself— as she might appear
any moment — the most painful of surprises ; yet he firmly
resolved — cost what it might — to be true, and confess
to her, this very day, what he had done.
The little fellow ran up stairs and down again, re
mained a long time before the door, and came in with
 WALK THROUGH THE GARDEN. 255

Liana by the hand, who was dressed in white, with a

black veil. She looked in and around a little perplexed,
as she with both hands pushed back the veil from her
friendly face ; but she heard Chariton's lullaby. She
did not know him till he spoke ; and then her whole
beautiful being reddened like an illuminated landscape
after an evening shower : she had the pleasure, she said,
of knowing his father. Probably she knew the son still
better by Julienne's and Augusti's pictures, and on more
congenial sides ; her sisterly heart was certainly moved,
too, by his brotherly voice ; for the charm, and even
preferableness, of resemblance and copy is so great, that
one who looks like even an indifferent person becomes
more dear to us, like the echo of an empty sound, merely
because, in this case as in the imitative art, the past and
absent, shining through the fancy, become a present.
The gradually lowering tone of the mother's lullaby
announced the sinking of the infant to slumber, and at
last the diminuendo died away, and Chariton, with glis
tening eyes, ran to take Liana's hand. A frank and
serene friendship bloomed between the innocent hearts,
and held them entwined, as the vine does the neighbor
ing poplars. Chariton related to her what Albano had
related, with a reliance upon her most fervent sympathy.
Liana listened to her friend with eager attention ; but
that was quite as much as if she were looking at the his
torical source itself that was so near at hand.

44. CYCLE.

AT last they began a journey through the garden.

Pollux very reluctantly, and only after Liana's
promise to draw him a horse again to-day, stayed behind
 256 TITAN.

as patron-saint of the cradle. Alban said, to the extreme

joy of the Architect's wife, who could now show the
beautiful roan everything, that he had seen but little of
Lilar yet. How bewitchingly the two forms, linked in
friendship, walked before him side by side ! Chariton,
although a matron, yet of a Grecian slenderness, fluttered
along as a younger sister beside the lily-form of her
somewhat taller Liana. The former seemed, according to
the classification of the landscape-painters, nature in mo
tion ; Liana, nature in repose. As he joined Liana again,
by whose left hand Helena was running along, — the
mother on the right, — he found her softly-descending
profile indescribably touching, and around the mouth he
recognized lines which sorrow had drawn, the scars of
returning days ; while the lovely maiden, on the sunny
side of the front face, as in her easy conversation, mani
fested a free, benignant cheerfulness, which Albano, who
had never knocked at the school-room door of any young
ladies' academy, found it hard to reconcile with her tear
ful poetry. O, if the tear of woman passes away lightly,
so flutters away still more lightly woman's smile ; and the
latter, still oftener than the former, is only appearance !
He tried, from a longing of the thirsty heart, to catch
the little one's hand, but she hung with both upon Liana's
left ; presently, however, she skipped away, and plucked
three iris-flowers, — which, like her, resembled butter
flies, — and gave one to her mother, and two to Liana,
with the words, " Give him one too ! " And Liana handed
it to him, lifting her friendly face upon him as she did so
with that holy maiden-look which is bright and attentive,
but not searching, expressive of childlike sympathy with
out giving and demanding. Nevertheless, several times
during the day did she let those holy eyes sink down ;

S'
 THE THREE IRIS-FLOWERS. 257

but what compelled her to it was, that on Zesara's rocky

face, softened though it was by love, there rested a physi
ognomical right of the stronger : he seemed to look upon
a shy soul with a hundred eyes, and his two true ones
blazed as warmly, although quite as purely, as the sun's
eye in the ether.
The iris-flowers have this peculiarity, that one smells
them, another not ; only to these three beings in one did
the cups open themselves equally wide, and they rejoiced
long over this community of enjoyment. Helena ran
forward and disappeared behind a low bush ; she sat on
a child's bench by a child's table, awaiting, with a smile,
the grown people. The good old Prince had low moss-
benches, little garden-chairs, little table- and pot-orange
ries, and the like, placed everywhere, for the children,
about the resting-places of their elders ; for he loved to
draw these refreshing open flowers of humanity near to
his heart ! " One wishes so often," said Liana, " to live
in the patriarchal time, or in Arcadia, or in Otaheite ;
children are, indeed, — do you not believe so ? — every
where the same, and one has already in them what only
the most remote time and the most remote region can
insure." He indeed believed it, and gladly ; but he kept
asking himself, How can such an unstained Aphrodite be
born out of the dead sea of a court, as pure dew and rain
arise out of the briny water of the ocean ?
While speaking, she occasionally drew an uncommonly
graceful — how shall I write it — H'tn ! afier her words,
which, although a grammatical blunder at court, betrayed
an unspeakable good nature ; but I describe it, not in
order that all my fair readers may let this attractive inter
jection be heard the very next Sunday.
" The same," replied Albano, — but he meant it well, —.
258 TITAN.

" holds of the animals : the swan yonder is like the one
in Paradise." She took it just as it was meant ; but the
reason was the pious Father Spener, her teacher ; for at
Albano's question touching Lilar's abundance of beautiful
and gentle creatures, she answered : " The old Lord loved
these creatures with a real tenderness, and they could
often bring him even to tears. The pious Father thinks
so too ; he says, since they do everything at God's behest
by instinct, accordingly it seems to him, when he contem
plates the care of the parents for their young, just as if
the Infinitely Gracious One were doing it all himself."
They ascended now a half-shaded bridge, over a long
water-mirror hung round with quivering poplars, wherein
Liana's emblem, namely, a swan, slept on the water-rings,
the bent neck beautifully nestled on the back, the head
upon the wing, and gently wafted more by the breezes
than by the waves. " So reposes the innocent soul ! "
said Alban, and thought, perhaps, of Liana, but without
the courage to confess it. " And thus it awakes ! " Liana
added with emotion, as this white magnified dove slowly
raised its head from the wing ; for she thought of her
mother's waking on this very day.
Chariton, as if all made up of salient points, was con
tinually turning to Liana, and asking : " Shall we go this
way ? or in through there ? or out through here ? If
my lord were only here ! he knows all about it." She
would gladly have led him round every fount and every
flower, and looked into the youth's face as lovingly as
into that of her friend. Liana said to her, on the cross
way at the bridge : " I think the flute-dell yonder, with
the gleaming gold ball, will perhaps be pleasantest, es
pecially for a lover of music ; and, besides, they will
look for me there, when they bring the harp to my

v
 PAINTING AND MUSIC. 259

mother." She had promised to come back to her as soon

as that arrived. She shunned every path toward the
south, where Tartarus frowned behind its high curtain.
Liana spoke now of the contest between painting and
music, and of Herder's charming official report of this
strife. She, although a votary of the pencil, gave in her
vote, as was natural to the female and the lyric heart,
entirely for tones, and Albano, although a good pianist,
was rather for colors. "This magnificent landscape,"
said Albano, " is in fact a picture, and so is every fair
human form." " Were I blind," said Chariton, naively,
" then I should not see my lovely Liana." She replied :
" My teacher, the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdorfer, also
set painting above music. But to me, when I hear music,
it is as if I heard a loud past or a loud future. Music
has something holy ; unlike the other arts, it cannot paint
anything but what is good." * Verily, she was herself a
moral church-music, the angel-stop in the organ. The
pure Albano felt, by her side, the necessity and the exist
ence of a yet tenderer purity ; and it seemed to him as
if a man might injure, even unconsciously, a soul like
this, whose understanding was hardly anything more than
a finer feeling, — as window-glasses of pure transparency
are often broken, because they appear as if they were
not. He turned round mechanically, because he was
always one step in advance, and not only the blooming
Lilar, but also Liana's full form, shone at once and trans
figured into his soul. To clasp her to his heart was not
now his yearning, but to snatch this being, who had so
often suffered, from every flame ; to rush for her, sword in
• This proposition, that pure music, without text, cannot represent
anything immoral, deserves to be more investigated and developed
by me.
260 TITAN.

hand, upon her foe, to bear her mightily through the

deep, cold hell-floods of life ; — that would have illumi
nated his existence.

45. CYCLE.

THEY saw, already, some moist lights, of the high

fountains that leaped from above down into the
flute-dell, flickering aloft before them, when Liana, con
trary to Chariton's expectation, begged them both to go
with her into a pathless oak-grove ; — she looked upon
him so contentedly and open-heartedly as she said it, and
without that womanly suspicion of being misunderstood !
In the dusky grove rose a wild rock, with the words, " To
my friend Zesara." The late Princess had caused this
memorial Alp to be erected to Albano's father. Struck,
agitated, with smarting eyes the son stood before it, and
leaned upon it, as on Gaspard's breast, and pressed his
arm up against the sharp stone, and cried, with the deep
est emotion, " O thou good father ! " His whole youth,
and Isola Bella, and the future, fell at once upon a heart
which the whole morning had wrought upon, and it could
not longer restrain the pressing tears. Chariton was
serious, Liana continued faintly to smile, — but like an
angel in prayer. How often, ye fair souls ! have I, in this
chapter, been compelled to constrain my deeply-impressed
heart, which would fain address and disturb you : but I
will constrain it again !
They stepped silently back into daylight. But Alba
no's waves of emotion never fell suddenly; they ex
panded themselves into broad rings. His eye was not
yet dry when he came into the heavenly vale, — into that
resting-place of the wishes, whore dreams might have
 MECHANICAL FLUTE-MUSIC. 261

gone round freely, without sleep. Chariton — from her

earnestness much more busy — had, after a questioning
glance at Liana to know whether she might, (namely,
let certain machines play,) hastened on before them.
They passed through the blooming veil, which retired
as they approached; — and Albano beheld now the youth
ful dream of an enchanted valley in Spain, that entangled
one in a net of scents and shadows, set out livingly on
the earth before him. On the mountains bloomed orange-
walks, the stands hidden in the higher terrace, — every
thing which bears great blossoms on its twigs, from the
Linden even to the grape-vine and the apple-tree, drank
down below at the brook, or climbed or crowned the two
long mountains, which wound, with their blossoms, around
the flowers of the low ground, and mutually inclined
themselves, to promise an endless valley ; fountains
placed on the slopes of the mountains threw behind one
another silver rainbows over the trees into the brook ;
in the east burned the gold globe beside the sun, — the
last mirror of his dying evening-glance. " Receive my
thanks, thou noble old man ! " Albano was continually
repeating.
Liana went with him along the western ridge as far
as a bank covered with blossoms, under the arch that
fluttered above, where one may survey the first and sec
ond windings of the vale, and, over in the north, high
pines, and behind them, the spire of a church-tower, and
below, an auricula meadow, while Chariton, opposite
them on the eastern height, behind a statue of a Muse,
— for the Nine Muses beamed from the green Tempe, —
seemed to be winding up weights and pressing springs.
" My brother," Liana, in a low tone, broke the silence,
going on meanwhile with the knitting-work which she
262 TITAN.

had taken from her friend, " wishes very much to see
you." The soul of Albano, now awakened with all its
holy faculties, felt itself wholly like her, and free from
embarrassment, and he said, " Even in my childhood I
loved your Charles like a brother ; I have as yet no
friend." The tenderly-moved souls did not remark that
the word Charles came from the letter.
All at once single flute-tones floated up overhead on
the mountains and out of the bowers, — more and more
continually joined them, — they quivered through each
other in a beautiful confusion, — at last flute-choirs broke
forth mightily on all sides, like angels, and soared toward
heaven ; — they proclaimed how sweet is spring, and how
joy weeps, and how our heart longs, and then vanished
overhead in the blue spring, — and the nightingales flew
up from the cool flowers and alighted on the bright tree-
tops, and cried joyfully into the triumphal songs of May,
— and the fanning of the morning-breeze swayed the
lofty, glimmering rainbows to and fro, and threw them
far into the flowers.
Liana's work sank out of her hands into her lap, and,
in a way peculiar to herself, while she leaned her head
forward like a Muse, she cast her eye upward, fixing it
upon a dreamy distance ; her blue eye glimmered as the
blue cloudless ether overflows with soft lightning in the
tepid summer-night; — but the youth's spirit blazed up
in its emotion, like the sea in a storm. She drew down
the black veil, — certainly not against sun and air alone ;
and Albano, with an inner world pictured on his agitated
form, played — a sublime contrast to himself— with the
ringlets of the little Helena, whom he had drawn towards
him, and looked, with big tears, into her simple, little face,
which understood him not.

^
 ALBANO'S COKFESSION. 263

At this moment the mother came hastening over into

the silence, and asked, in a very friendly manner, how he
liked it all. His other ecstasies resolved themselves into
a commendation of the tones ; and the dear Greek her
self extolled what she had often heard, more and more
strongly, as if it were new to her, and listened most in
tently with him.
A maiden with the harp looked in through the enter-
ing-thicket of the vale, and Liana saw the sign, and rose
up. As she was on the point of raising her veil and de
parting, the great-hearted youth bethought him of his con
fession : " I have read your to-day's letter, — by heaven,
I must say it now!" said he. She drew the veil no higher,
and said, with trembling voice, " You surely have not
read it ! you could not have been in my chamber ? " and
looked at Chariton. He replied, he had not read it all,
but yet a good deal of it ; and related in three words a
much milder history than Liana could have hoped. " The
naughty Pollux ! " Chariton kept saying. " O God, for
give me, I pray you, this sin of ignorance !" said Albano.
She threw back the dark veil for a second, and said, with
heightened color and downcast look, appeased, perhaps,
by her joy at the agreeable disappointment of her worse
expectation : " It belonged merely to a female friend ;
and you will, perhaps, if I ask you, not read anything
again." And during the fall of the veil her eye looked
up soothingly and forgivingly, and with her beloved she
slowly departed from him.
O thou holy soul, love my youth ! Art thou not the
first love of this heart of fire, the morning-star in the
early dawn of his life, thou, this good, pure, and tender
one ? O, the first love of man, the Philomel among the
spring-tones of life, is always indeed, because we so err.
264 TITAN.

so hardly treated by Fate, and always killed and buried ;

but now, if for once, two good souls, in the white-blos
somed May of life, bearing the sweet tears of spring in
their bosoms, with the glistening buds and hopes of a
whole youth, and with the first, unprofaned longing, and
with the firstling of life as well as of the year, the forget-
me-not of love in their hearts, — if such kindred beings
could meet each other and trust each other, and in the
blissful month swear a union for all the wintry months
of this earthly time ; and if each heart could say to the
other, — " Hail to me, that I found thee in the holiest
season of life, before I had erred ; and that I can die and
not have loved anyone like thee!" — O Liana! O Ze-
sara! how fortunate must your beautiful souls be !
The youth lingered a few minutes longer in the magic
world that was working around him, whose tones and
fountains murmured like the waters and machines in
the solitary mine ; but at last there was something vio
lent in the solitary monotone and glimmer of the valley,
wherein he had been left so alone. He hurried on by the
nearest way, sprinkled occasionally with veins of water,
through the curtain of foliage, and stepped out once more
into the free morning earth of Lilar. How strange !
how distant ! how changed was all ! Into his wide open
inner world the outer world poured in with full streams.
He himself was changed ; he could not go into the night
of the oak-grove, to the rocky emblem of his father.
When he was over the bridge that stands in the twigs, he
saw the gentle company slowly walking over the broad
silver-white garden-path, and he blessed Liana, who could
now press to her agitated heart the heart of a mother.
The little one often whirled round dancing, and perhaps
saw him, but no one turned back. The harp, carried
 TANTALIZING PICTURES. 265

along after them, was swept by the eastern breeze, and

it .snatched tones from the awakened strings as from an
TEolian harp, and bore them onward with it ; and the
youth listened with melancholy to the receding murmur,
as of swans that hasten away over the lands, while behind
him the empty vale continued to speak lonesomely in the
fluting pastoral-songs of love, and hovering tones, gliding
along after him, came faintly and dimly to his ear. But
he went back up the mountain of the altar ; and as he
looked over the bright region, and saw still the white
forms moving in the distance, he let his whole, beautiful
soul dissolve itself in weeping. And here close we the
richest day of his youthful life !
But, ye good beings, who have a heart, and find none,
or who have the loved objects only in, and not on, your
bosoms, am I not, like the Greeks, drawing all there pic
tures of bliss, as it were, on the marble sarcophagi of
your changed, slumbering past ? Am I not the Archi-
mime, who, following afier, mimics before you the moul
dering forms which your soul has buried ? And thou,
younger or poorer man, to whom time, instead of a past,
has only given a future, — wilt thou not one day say to me,
I should have concealed from thee many blessed forms,
like holy bodies, for fear thou wouldst worship them ?
and wilt thou not add, that, had it not been for these
Phoenix-portraits, thou mightst have cherished lighter
wishes, and had many fulfilled ? And how much pain
have I then caused you all ! But myself, too ; for how
could it fare better with me than with the rest of you?
Your conclusion would, accordingly, be this : since you
can never really live pleasant days so pleasantly as they
shine afterward in memory, or beforehand in hope, you
would, therefore, rather have the present day without
12
266 TITAN.

either ; and since only at the two poles of the elliptic

arch of time one can catch the low music of the spheres,
and in the centre of the present nothing, you would,
therefore, rather stay and listen in the middle ; but as to
the past and the future, — neither of which can any man
live to see, because they are only two different poesy-
gardens of our heart, an Iliad and Odyssey, a Milton's
Paradise Lost and Regained, — you will not listen to
them at all, or have anything to do with them, in order
that you may nestle down, deaf and blind, in an ani
mal present.
By Heaven ! sooner give me the finest, strongest
poison of ideals, so that I may at least not snore away
my moment, but dream it away, and then die on it !
But the very dying would be my own fault ; for whoso
would fain translate poetic dreams into waking reality *
is more foolish than the North American, who realizes
his nightly ones : he proposes, like a Cleopatra, to per
vert the splendor of the pearls of dew into a refreshing
drink, and the rainbow of fancy to a permanent arch,
bridging over the rain-waters. Yes, O God, Thou wilt
and canst give us one day a reality, which shall embody
and redouble and satisfy our present ideals, — as thou hast,
indeed, already proved to us, in our love here below,
* It cannot be objected to me, that in fact the scenes of my book
have been actually experienced, and that no one would wish to expe
rience any better; for in the representation of fancy reality assumes
new charms, charms with which every other faded present magically
glimmers through the memory. I appeal here to the sensations of the
very characters who figure in Titan, whether they would not in my
book — in case they should ever light upon it — find in the pictured
scenes, which, however, are their own, a higher enchantment, which
has gone from the real, and which, to be sure, might produce such an
effect — but altogether illusorily — that my characters could wish to
live their own life.
 REALITY OF THE IDEA1 267

which intoxicates us with moments in which the inner

becomes the outer, and the Ideal, Reality ; but then —
no, for the Then of the life hereafter, this little Now, has
no voice ; but if, I say, here below fiction could become
fact, and our pastoral poetry pastoral life, and every
dream a day, — ah, even then would desire still remain
enhanced only, not fulfilled : the higher reality would
only beget a higher poetry, and higher remembrances
and hopes ; — in Arcadia we should pine after Utopia ;
and on every sun we should see an unfathomable starry
heaven retiring before us, and we should — sigh as we
do here !
 NINTH JUBILEE.

PLEASURE OF COORT-MOCRNING. — THB BURIAL. — ROQUAIROL. —

Letter to him. — The Seven last Words in TnE Water. —
The Swearino or Allegiance. — Masquerade. — Puppet
Masquerade. — The Head in the Air, Tartarus, the Spirit-
Voick, the Friend, the Catacomr, and the two united Men.

46. CYCLE.

1IPENING love is the stillest: the shady

flowers in this spring, as in the other, shun
sunlight. Albano spun himself deep into his
Sunday-dreams, and drew, as well as he could,
the green poppy-leaf of reality into his web, — namely,
the Monday, which was to show him, at the state-burial
of the Prince, the brother of his maiden-friend.
This day of festive sadness, at which the third but
greatest princely coffin was to be conveyed to its repose, at
last broke, and had been made momentous already by the
preparatory festival, at which the two first coffins, together
with the old man, had been interred, somewhat as virtues
are buried in the very beginning of a century, and not
till its end their empty names and wrappages and half-
bindings. At the rehearsal- and prefiguring-burial of the
illustrious deceased, the old pious Father Spener too, his
last friend, had gone down with him into the vault, in
order to have opened the wooden and tin casing of the
 UNWINDING OF THE MOURNING-SPOOL. 269

run-down wheel-work, and to cover over upon the still

breast of the dear sleeper his youthful portrait and his
own with the colored side down, without speaking or
weeping ; and the court made much of this morning- and
evening-offering of friendship.
Everything swells up monstrously for man, of which
they are obliged to talk a long while, — all Pestitz socie
ties were auxiliary funeral societies, and full of burial-
marshals, — every scaffolding of the neighboring future
was a mausoleum, and every word a funeral sermon or
an epitaph upon the pale man. Sphex, as his physician
in ordinary, rejoiced in his part of the sorrow and the
procession, — the Lector had already tried on the court
mourning, in the place of his cast-off winter-garb, and
found it to fit, — the court-marshal had not a minute's
rest, and the last day, which opens all graves and closes
none, had come to him now before its time, — the Min
ister, Von Froulay, whom the cold Luigi willingly lefi to
do everything, was, as a lover of old princely pomp, and
as convoking director of the present occasion, as much in
heaven himself as was the illustrious deceased, — the
women had risen from their beds this morning as to a
new life, because to these busy drapery-paintresses a
long chain of coats and of their wearers probably weighs
as much as a span of blood-related horses does to their
husbands.
Albano waited impatiently at the window for Liana's
brother, and loved the invisible one more and more
ardently ; like two connected wings, Friendship and
Love stirred and lifted each other within him. The
mourning-spool, namely, the empty coffin, had been fixed
in Tartarus, and was gradually wound off, and now the
dark mourning-ribbon would soon be ready to be stretched
270 TITAN.

to the upper city. Already, for an hour and a half before

the arrival of the procession, the saltpetre of the female
crowd had been crystallized on the walls and the win
dows. Sara, the Doctor's wife, came up with the children
and the deaf Cadaver into Schoppe's chamber, the sec
ond door of which stood open into Albano's, and, with an
ogling, amorous look, spoke in to the Count : " Up here
one can overlook the whole much better, and his excel
lency will pardon it." " You just stay together there, and
don't you trouble M. the Count," said she, turning back to
the children, and was on the point of entering the Count's
chamber, at whose threshold Schoppe, just coming from
Albano, caught and stopped her.
Now Sara was one of those common women who are
more carried away themselves by their own charms than
successful in carrying others away therewith. She would
merely set her face in the chair, and let it kindle and
singe and burn, while she on her part (relying on her lazy
Jack* of a visage) quietly and coolly worked away at
other things, either simple trash or vile scandal ; and then
when she had been a chthes'-rod of women, as Attila was
a Heaven's rod of nations, she looked round and surveyed
the damage which the fire of her face had done in the
male tinder-boxes. Particularly on the rich and beau
tiful Count had she an eye, — under Cupid's bandage.
Her head was full of good physiognomical fragments ; and
Lavater's objection, that most physiognomists unfortu
nately study nothing in the whole man but the face, could
not hit in any point her pure physiognomical sense.
Schoppe, readily divining that with this female soul-
• [Fattier Htim.] Or Athanor, a chemical stove, which works
on for a long time without poking. [Corresponding to our air-tight
stove. Athanor, from the Greek, undyingi — Tr.]
 SCHOPPE INTERCEPTS SARA. 271

dealer the walk or gang was a press-gang,* the white

linen, hunting-gear, the shawl, a bird-net,t and the neck,
a swan's-neck for any fox that happened to be near,
caught her by the hand at the threshold of the two cham
bers, and asked her, " Do you, also, take as much interest
as I in the universal joy of the land, and the long-desired
court-mourning ? Your eyes indicate something like it,
Mrs. Provincial Physician." " What interest do you
mean ? " said the medical lady, struck quite stupid. " In
the pleasure of the courtiers, who, in general, are distin
guished from monkeys, as the orang-outangs are, by the
fact that they seldom make leaps of joy ; at least, like
young performers on the piano-forte, they drum away,
without the smallest emotion, their most mournful and
their merriest pieces one after the other. O, if only
nothing bitter should spoil the mourning of the court-
household ! Do you wish the dear ones to have arrayed
themselves in vain in the black robes of joy, wherein,
like the grandsons of those who were left behind in the
battle of Leuctra, they go to meet the jubilee of a new
prince ? What ! " Unluckily she replied, in a sarcastic
tone : " Black is, in these parts, the mourning-color, Mr.
Schoppe." " Black, Mrs. Doctor ! " (he bounced back
with astonishment.) " Black ? — black is a travelling-
color, and bridal-color, and gala-color, and, in Rome, a
princely-children's color ; and, in Spain, it is a law of the
empire that the courtiers, like the Jews in Morocco, J
shall appear in black.
* The translator had to resort to the Scotch to help him get this
pun into English.
t Kzek. xiii. 18: "Woo to the women that sew pillows to all arm-
holes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every stature, to hunt
souls!" — Tb.
J According to Lempriere.
272 TITAN.

" Pestalozzi, madam — but there 's Malt, does he un

derstand me ? " Schoppe turned round to the man, who
had his drum on, and meant secretly to tap it during the
procession, so as to catch something of the muffled fu
neral drums, and exhorted him to give a beat or two,
in order that he might profit by the discourse. " Malt,"
said he, louder, " Pestalozzi remarks very justly, that the
great ones of our time, in face, dress, posture, image-
worship, superstition, and love for charlatans, approach
daily nearer and nearer the Asiatics ; it speaks in favor
of Pestalozzi, that they borrow of the Chinese, who dress
themselves in black for joy, and in white for mourning,
not merely temples and gardens and caricatures, but also
this very black of joy."
Among the children, — of whom the uneducated alone
were not ill-bred, — Boerhave, Galen, and Van Swieten
made themselves most prominent by the inlaid work and
designs of the present company, which they were en
graving on their bread and butter ; and Galen showed
his satirical projection of Mama, saying, " Only see what
a long nose I have made Mama have ! "
The Librarian, who was turning something similar,
arrested her, as she offered to go in, assuring her he
would not let her pass till she surrendered to his views :
the funeral column of march could hardly have got an
acre's distance out of Tartarus, and would give him time
enough. He continued : —
" Genuine mourning, on the contrary, my dear, always,
like anger, makes one party-colored, or, like terror, white ;
e. g. the creatures of a dead Pope mourn violet, so does
the French king, his lady chestnut brown, the Venetian
Senate, for their Doge, red. But to a regent you cannot,
more than I, allow any mourning whatever ; to the high
 SCHOPPE'S LECTURE ON MOURNING. 273

priest and a Jewish king * it was wholly forbidden ; why

should we allow the household more than the master?
And must not a sovereign, my best one ! who should per
mit the expensiveness of public mourning, manifestly
open afresh the closed wounds of private sorrow ? And
could he, when, like Cicero,f he had, by his exile, thrown
twenty thousand people into mourning weeds, answer it
to his conscience, that his last act was a Droit aVAubaine,
a robbery, and that the dying-bed, whereupon one for
merly bequeathed clothing to servants and the poor,
should now strip them thereof? No, madam, that does
not look like regents at least, who often, even by their
dying, as Marcion % asserted of Christ's journey to hell,
bring up a Cain, Absalom, and several others of the Old-
Testament culprits out of hell into the heaven of the new
administration.
" You do not yet give in, and the Cadaver looks at me
like a cow ; but consider this : peruke- and stuff-weavers
have frequently besought crowned heads to wear their
manufactures, in order that they might get a sale for
them ; — an hereditary and crown-prince, on the first
happy consecration- and regency-day, when he deposes,
that is, deposits his predecessor in the ground, puts on
coal-black, because the black wool is not good for much,
and does not sell well, and such an example at once
strikes the whole metropolis, — even cattle, drums, pul
pits, black. Only one word more, love : I assure you
there is nothing coming yet but the company of choristers.
For this very reason has the princely corpse, which might

• Sanhedrim, c. 2, Misch. 3. t Cic. ad Quirit. post redit, c. 8.

} His sect represented Christ's journey to hell bs having released all
the wicked from that region, but not Abraham, Enoch, the prophets,
&c. — Tertul. adv. Marcion.
12* »
274 TITAN.

easily spoil the whole pleasure of the funeral, been pre

viously disposed of, and only a vacant box is carried
along, in order that the procession may have no other
pensees than Anglaises* . . . O dearest, one last word :
What can you see, then, in the corpse of equerries and
pages ? For my sake now ! I too rejoice to see at once
so many people, and the prince so happy in the midst of
his children."
But the longer he saw the procession growing, that
loose juggler's thread, by which they were letting down
the empty but figured chest of Cypselus t into the family
vault, so much the more indignant became his mockery.
He applied his hypothesis to every sable member of the
dark chain. He praised them for opening the bal masque
of the new administration with these slow minuet steps,
and preparing themselves for the waltz of the wedding
and the gi-andfather's-dance of the allegiance-day. He
said, as one loved on festive days to make everything
easy for himself and his beast, as, accordingly, the Jews,
on the Sabbath, would not allow themselves or their cattle
to carry anything, not even the hens to carry the rags
sticking to them ; so he saw with pleasure, that in the
ceremony-carriages, and in the parade-box, and on the
mourning-horses, nothing was suffered to lie or sit ; yes,
that even the trains of the mourning-mantles were borne
by pages, and the four points of the bier-cloth by four
stout gentlemen. The only fault he found was, that the
soldiery in their joy had seized their guns upside down,
and that precisely the persons of the highest rank, Luigi,

* A title given to black colors.

t The Corinthian, who was hidden from his enemies in a chest of
cedar, ivory, and gold, richly adorned with figures in relief, and at
last expelled the usurpers and mounted the throne. — Tit.
 ALBANO SEES ROQUAIROL. 275

Froulay, Bouverot, as they came from a hasty funeral

potation at once into the open air, were obliged, by reason
of their staggering, to be led along and held up on both
sides.
47. CYCLE.

IN Albano another spirit spoke than in Schoppe, but the

two soon met. To the Count the night-like forms of
crape, the still funeral banners, the dead-march, the creep
ing siek-man's-walk, and the tolling of the bells, opened
wide all earth's charnel-houses, especially as before his
blooming eyes these death plays came for the first time :
but one thing more loudly than all — one will hardly
guess what — proclaimed before him the partings of life,
— namely, the beat of the drum stifled by the funeral
cloth ; a muffled drum was to him a broken reverberation
of all earthly catacombs. He heard the dumb, strangled
complainings of our hearts, — he saw higher beings look
ing down from above on the lamentable three hours'
comedy of our life, wherein the ruddy child of the first
act fades in the fifth to the old man in jubilee, and then,
grown up and bowed down, vanishes behind the falling
curtain.
As, in spring, we think more of death, autumn, and
winter than in summer, so also does the most fiery and
energetic youth paint out to himself in his season of life's
year, the dark leafless one oftener and more vividly than
the man in that stage which is nearest to it; for in both
springs the wings of the ideal unfold widely and find
room only in a future. But before the youth, Death
comes in blooming, Greek form ; before the tired, older
man, in Gothic.
Schoppe generally began with comic humor, and ended
276 TITAN.

with tragic ; so also now did the empty mourning-chest,

the crape of the horses, their emblazoned caparisons, the
Prince's contempt of the heavy German Ceremonial ; in
short, the whole heartless mummery, lead him up to an
eminence, to which the contemplation of a multitude of
men at once always impelled him, and where, with an
exaltation, indignation, and laughing bitterness hard to
describe, he looked down upon the eternal, tyrannical,
belittling, objectless and joyless, bewildered and oppressed
frenzy of mankind, and his own too.
Suddenly a gay, shining knight broke the dark chain :
it was Roquairol, on the parading gala-horse, who agi
tated our two men, and none besides. A pale, broken-
down face, glazed over with long inward fire, stripped of
all youthful roses, lightening out of the diamond-pits of the
eyes under the dark, overhanging eyebrows, rode along
in a tragic merriment, in which the lines of the veins
were redoubled under the early wrinkles of passion.
What a being, full of worn-out life ! Only courtiers or
his father could have set down this tragic exultation to
an adulatory rejoicing over the new regency ; but Albano
took it all into his heart, and grew pale with inward emo
tion, and said, " Yes, it is he ! O, good Schoppe, he
will certainly become our friend, this distracted youth.
How painfully does the noble one laugh at this gravity,
and at crowns, and graves and all ! Ah, he too has, in
deed, once died." " There the rider is right," said
Schoppe, with quivering eyes, and suddenly tapped Al-
bano's hand and then his own head ; " my very skull
here appears to me like a close bonsoir, like a light-extin
guisher, which death claps upon me, — we are neat sil
vered figures, kept up in an electrical dance, and we leap
up with the spark ; fortunately I am still alive and kick
 • ALBANO'S SADNESS. 277

ing, — and there is our good Lector creeping along, too,

and trailing his long crape," — in which respect Augusti's
citizenly-serious mood contrasted very strongly with the
humanly-serious one of the Librarian.
All at once Schoppe, out of patience with this general
emotion, said : " What a masquerade for the sake of a
mask ! Rag and tag for a piece of rag-paper ! Throw
a man quietly into his hole, and call nobody to see. I
always admire London and Paris, where they toll no
alarm-bells, nor set the neighborhood stirring, when the
undertaker carries one, who has fallen asleep, to bed."
" No, no," said Zesara, full of capacity for grief, " I ad
mire it not : to whomsoever the holy dead are of no con
sequence, to him the living are so too ; — no, I will gladly
let my heart break into one tear after another, if I can
only still remember the dear being."
O, how did the neighborhood accord with his heart !
In a cistern, before which the coffin of the coffin passed
by, there stood a bronze statue of the old man on horse
back, who saw pass by below him the unsaddled mourn
ing-horses, and the mounted festive-steed ; a deaf and
dumb man was stopping from door to door, and making,
with his bell, a begging jingle, which neither he nor
the buried one could hear: and was not the forgotten
Prince laid in the earth all unseen, and more lonesome
than any one of his subjects ? O Zesara ! it sank into
thy heart, how easily man is forgotten, whether he lies
in the urn or in the pyramid ; and how our immortal
self is regarded, like an actor, as absent, so soon as it is
once behind the scenes, and frets and fumes no longer
amo7ig the players on the stage.
But had not the gray hermit, Spener, laid upon the
sunken breast of that deeper hermit a double youth ?
278 TITAN.

O, in this frosty hour of pomp and pageantry, counts not

the faithful Julienne every tone of the funeral bell with
the beads of her tears, — that poor daughter whom sick»
ness has exempted from the ceremonials, not from pain,
who now has lost her last but one, perhaps her last relative,
since her brother is hardly one ? And will not Liana,
in her Elysium, guess the farce of sorrow which is acted
so near to her over behind the high trees in Tartarus ?
And if she suspects anything, O how profoundly will she
mourn !
All this the noble youth heard in his soul, and he
thirsted hotly after the friendship of the heart : it was to
him as if its mountain- and life-air floated down from
eternity, and blew the grave-dust away from his life-path,
and he saw, up yonder, the Genius place his inverted
torch upon the cold bosom, not to extinguish the immor
tal life, but to enkindle the immortal love.
He could not now do otherwise than go forth into the
open air, and, amid the flying tones of spring and the
deep, hollow murmur of the receding dead march, write
the following words to Liana's brother, in which he said
to him, after a youthful style, Be my friend !

«To Charles.
" Stranger ! At this hour, when, in the dead sea and
through our tears, the triumphal columns and thrones of
men and their bridge-posts appear to us broken, a true
heart puts a question to thee frankly, and let thine answer
it willingly and in truth !
" Has the longest prayer of man been answered to thee,
stranger, and hast thou thy friend ? Do thy wishes and
nerves and days grow together with his, like the four
cedars on Lebanon, which can bear nothing around them
 ALBANO'S LETTER TO ROQUAIBOL. 279

but eagles? Hast thou two hearts and four arms, and
livest thou twice over, as if immortal, in the battling
world ? Or standest thou solitary and alone upon a
frosty, dumb, slender, glacier-point, having no human
being to whom thou canst show the Alps of creation,
and with the heavens arching far above thee and abysses
yawning below ? When thy birthday comes, hast thou
no being to shake thy hand, and look thee in the eye and
pay, We still cleave together faster than ever ?
" Stranger : if thou hast had no friend, hast thou
deserved one? When spring kindled into life, and
opened all her honey-cups, and her serene heaven, and
all the hundred gates of her Paradise, hast thou, like
me, bitterly looked up and begged of God a heart for
thine ? O when, at evening, the sun went down like a
mountain, and his flames departed from the earth, and
now only his red breath floated upward to the silvery
stars, hast thou beheld the brotherly shadows of friend
ship which sank together on battle-fields, like stars of one
constellation, stealing forth through the bloody clouds out
of the old world, like giants ; and didst thou think of this,
— how imperishably they loved each other, and thou, like
me, wast alone ? And, solitary one, when night — that
season at which the spirit of man, as in torrid climes,
toils and travels — reveals her cold suns above thee in
a sparkling chain, and when, still, among all the distant
forms of the ether there is no dear loved one, and im
mensity painfully draws thee up, and thou feelest, upon
the cold earth, that thy heart beats against no breast but
only thine own, — O beloved ! weepest thou then, and
most bitterly ?
" Charles, often have I reckoned up, on my birthday,
the increasing years, — the feathers in the broad wing of
 280 TITAN.

time, — and thought upon the sounding flight of youth :

then I stretched my hand far out after a friend, who
should stick by me in the Charon's skiff wherein we
are born, when the seasons of life's year glide by along
the shore before me, with their flowers and leaves and
fruits, and when, on the long stream, the human race
shoots downward in its thousand cradles and coffins.
" Ah, it is not the gay, variegated shore that flies by,
but man and his stream : forever bloom the seasons in
the gardens up and down along the shore ; only we sweep
by once for all before the garden, and never return.
" But our friend goes too. O, if thou at this hour of
death's juggleries art contemplating the pale Prince, with
the images of youth on his breast, and thinking of the
gray friend who secretly bewails him in Tartarus, then
will thy heart dissolve, and in soft, warm flames run
round through thy bosom, and softly say : ' I will love,
and then die, and then love — O Almighty, show me the
soul which longs and languishes like mine ! '
" If thou say'st that, if thou art thus, then come to my
heart : I am as thou. Grasp my hand, and hold it till it
withers. I have seen thy form to-day, and on it the
marks of life's wounds : hasten to me ; I will bleed and
struggle at thy side. I have long and early sought and
loved thee. Like two streams will we mingle and grow,
and bear our burdens, and dry up together. Like silver
in the furnace, we will run together with glowing light,
and all slags shall lie cast out around the pure shimmer
ing metal. Laugh not, then, any longer so grimly, to
think what ignes-fatui men are ; like ignes-fatui we burn
and fly away in the rainy storm of time. And then, when
time is gone by, we find each other again, and it will be
again in the spring.
" Albano de Cesara."
 ROQUAIROL'S ANSWER. 281

48. CYCLE.

HOW gloriously, — before all the beating veins of

the inner man, like those of the outer in old age,
have stiffened into gristle, and all the vessels have be
come inflexible and earthy, and the moral pulse, like the
physical, hardly makes sixty strokes in a minute, and
before the shy old fool, at every emotion, reserves a
piece of his nature which he keeps cold and dry, and
which is to wait for another occasion, as sprinkled rasp
berry leaves always remain dry on the rough side, —
how gloriously, I say, before this period of espionage,
does a youth, especially an Albano, step along his path,
how freely, boldly, and exultingly ! and seeks with equal
confidence the friend and the foe, and closes with him,
to fight either for him or against him !
Let this excuse Albano's fiery letter ! The next day
he received from Roquairol this answer : —

" I am as thou. On ascension-evening I will seek thee

among the masks.
" Charles."
The redness of mortification rushed over the Count's
face at this artificial postponement of the acquaintance ;
he felt that, after such a tone from the heart, he would
have immediately, without a dead interim of five days,
and without an homage-day masquerade in a double sense,
gone to his friend and become his. But now he swore
no longer to run to meet him, but only to wait for him.
However, the roused indignation soon subsided, and he
began to invent fairer and fairer mitigations for the first
leaf of the so-long-sought favorite. Charles might cer
tainly, e. g. not wish to mix up the holy time of the first
282 TITAN.

recognition with this bustle of taking the allegiance-oath,

— or that first suicidal masquerade might have made
every succeeding one an inspiring era of a new second
life, — or he knew, perhaps, in fact, about Albano's birth
day, — or, finally, this glowing spirit chose to run or fly
on his own track.
Meanwhile, his note made the Count reproach himself
for his own letter, as if it had been a sin against his
Schoppe ; he held it to be a sin, in one friendship, to
yearn after another ; but thou mistakes!, fair bouI !
Friendship has steps which lead up on the throne of
God, through all spirits, even to the Infinite : only love
is satiable, and, like truth, admits no three degrees of
comparison ; and a single being fills its heart. Moreover,
Albano and Schoppe, in such a mutual metempsychosis
of their ideas, and such a near relationship of their pride
and nobility, held each other far more dear than they
showed to each other. For, as Schoppe, in fact, showed
nothing, one could love him in return only with the fin
ger on the lip, but, perhaps, so much the more strongly.
Albano was a burning-hot concave mirror, which has its
object near, and represents it erect behind itself; Schoppe
one which holds the object far off, and throws an inverted
image of it into the air.
On the evening before his birthday, and the day of
allegiance, Albano stood alone at his window, and pon
dered his past, — for a last day is more solemn than a
first : on the 3 1st of December I reckon up three hundred
and sixty-five days and their fates; on the first of January
I think of nothing, because, in fact, the whole future is
transparent, or may be all out in five minutes ; — while
the vesper-bell pealed over the fast-closing twentieth year
of his life, and the vesper-hour rose within him, he caeas

-v
 ALARM ABOUT SCHOPPE. 283

ured the abside-line * of his moral being, and looked up

at the towering pile of the approaching morrow, which
hung full either of spring-showers or hailstones. Never
yet had he so tenderly surveyed the circle of his beloved
beings, or glanced through the open doors of futurity, as
at this time.
But the fair hour was spoiled by Malt, who burst in
with the information that the limping gentleman had
leaped overboard. From the dormer-window might be
seen a returning village funeral-procession, conglomer
ated around the spot on the bank where Schoppe had
plunged in. With frightful wildness — for in Albano in
dignation was next-door neighbor to terror and pain —
he dragged along with him, as he flew to the rescue, the
lazy provincial physician, and even threatened him with
hard words ; for Sphex was going to wait for a carriage,
and meanwhile represent to himself the possible cases of
too late preparations for 0. rescue, and besides, perhaps,
cherished a hope of serving up Schoppe, on the anatomi
cal table, as Doctor's-feast of science.
The youth ran out with him, — through corn-fields,
amidst tears and amidst curses, — with alternate clenched
fist and outspread palm, and his eye grew more and more
dim and dizzy, and his heart hotter and hotter, the nearer
they approached the dark circle. At last they could not
only see the Librarian, but also hear him ; in good
case he turned towards them his curly head from among
the reeds, and, occasionally, as he was haranguing the
mourning-retinue, he flung up, in a fiery manner, his
hairy arm above the water-plants.
* The line which is drawn from the aphelion to the perihelion, the
two apsides, or the nearest and farthest points of a planet's distance
from the sun.
284 TITAN.

Of course the case stood thus : —

His sorites, as long as he lived, was the following :
" He had come into the world, not feet foremost, but
head foremost, and, accordingly, carried his head and
nose high and lofty,* because he could not help it. Now
he knew of no more genuine freedom than health ; —
every malady shuts up and warps the soul, and the
earth is, merely for that reason, a universal block-house,
la salpetritre and house of bruises ;t — whoso made use
of an oyster-snail-viper medicine was himself a slimy,
snaky, sticking viper, oyster, snail, and therefore the
ever-free savages killed their invalids, and the vigorous
Spartans gave no patient an office, least of all the crown ;
— and strength was especially necessary, in our degener
ate days, in order to maul qualified subjects, because, to
his certain knowledge, the list with some substance in it
was the best plaintiff's plea and actio ex lege diffamari
which a citizen could institute."
Therefore he bathed summer and winter in ice-cold
water, just as he, for the same reason, kept himself tem
perate in all things.
Now, then, in this odious May-weather, he had merely,
in his gray hussar-cloak, — at home, his night-gown, —
and with shoes down at the heel, gone to the water-side ;
he had previously stripped himself at the house so as to
be ready as soon as he should arrive at the bank. The
mourning-company, who saw him go at his swift pace
down to the water, and at last throw off everything and
leap in, could not but believe the man meant to drown
himself, and ran in a body to his bathing-place, not to
• A child coming into the world face foremost cannot afterward
bend its head forward. — The Mother of a Family, Vol. V.
t The name of the Invalid Hospital in Copenhagen.
 SCHOrPE'S DROWNING-SPEECH. 285

let him do it. "Do not drown himself!" cried the

mourning-company of blacks, while yet afar off. He just
let them come on till he could discourse the matter to them
somewhat nearer, in the following wise : — "I am yet
open to conviction ; I can hear reason, good folk, though
I am already standing up to my neck in the water ; but
ouffer yourselves to be correctly informed in this case,
dear Cherstens generally, for so Christians were called in
the time of Charles. I am a poor Sacramentarian, and
can hardly recollect what I have hitherto lived on, it was
so bloody-desperate little. Whatever I have undertaken
in this world, no blessing went with it, but it was all
crab's-track backwards and forward. I set up, in Vienna,
a neat little magazine of snipes' dung, but I made nothing
out of it for want of snipes. I took hold on the other end,
and hawked about in Carlsbad, for the lords and great
ones, who are accustomed to set a picture upon every old
stool and piece of trumpery, fine engravings for waste-
paper and privy purposes, in order that, instead of the
mere printed paper, they might have something tasty for
consumption ; but the whole set was left, a dead loss, on
my hands, because the manner was too hard and not ideal
enough. In London I prepared ready-made speeches
(for I am a litterateur) to be used by men who are hanged,
and yet would fain have something to say for themselves : I
offered them to the richest parliamentary orators, and even
knaves of booksellers, but came near having to use the
speeches for myself. I would gladly have got my living
by vomiting,* but that requires funds. I tried once to
get a settlement as note-stand to a count's regiment,
* In Darwin's Zoonomy, page 529, the case is adduced of a man
who did this before spectators. In Paris another did the same by
swallowing air.
286 TITAN.

because it looks stupid enough on drill- and parade-days to

see every one with a musical flap hanging on his shoulder,
from which his next neighbor behind plays. I offered for
a trifle to wear all the musicalia on my own person, and
stand before them with the notes ; but the first-lieutenant
(who is at once in the regency and in the treasury)
thought it would make the fifers laugh when they came
to blow. Thus has it fared with me from time imme
morial, dear Cherstens — but don't trample about on my
precious cloak there ! As ill luck would have it, I entered
into wedlock with a lady of Vienna, who was endowed
with melted seals ; • her name was Prcenumerantia
JSlementaria Philanthropia;\ you don't know what this
means in German, — a real hell-broom, who chased me,
all heated, like a hunted stag, into the reeds here. Chers
tens, I should defame myself in the water, were I to come
out plainly with the whole story of our woful condition ; J
... in short, my Fhilanthropia before marriage was soft
as the spines of a new-born hedge-hog, but in the nuptial
state, when the foliage was off, I saw, as on trees in win
ter, one raven's- and devil's-nest after another. She was
all the time dressing herself and dressing herself, till it
was time to undress ; when a fault in me or the children
had been removed, she would still continue to scold a lit
tle, as one continues to vomit, when the emetic and every
thing is out ; she indulged me preciously little, and had I
had a Fontanel § she would have reproached me for the
* In Vienna there was an Institute which made new sealing-wax
out of old, and endowed poor persons with the proceeds.
t Such was the tasteless name by which Basedow was going to
baptize a daughter, in memory of the appearing of an elementary
work on I'renumeration. See Schlichtegroll's Necrology.
} Wthntandty a parody of Ehtstande, wedded state.
f) An issue.
 SCHOPPE'S TIMELY END. 287

fresh pea which I should have been obliged every day to

put into it ; in short, we too pulled opposite ways, — the
linch-pin of love came out in the struggle, and I came
with the forward-wheels down into the water here, and
my Praenumerantia stays with the hind-wheels at home.
See, my women, this is why I do violence to myself—
besides, the gnawing-man * would have, at any rate,
caught me by the throat ; but behold yourselves in me
as in a mirror ! For when a man who is a litterateur,
and therefore, as you yet know by the case of Fichte,
goes about as instituted overseer, schoolmaster, and men
tor of the human race, leaps overboard before his wife's
face, and lets his Ephorie and tutorship go, you may
conclude from this of what your own husbands, who can
not measure themselves with me at all in learning, are
capable, in case you are such Pnenumerantias, Elemen-
tarias, and Philanthropias as unfortunately you have the
appearance of being. But," he concluded suddenly, as he
saw Albano and the Doctor, " clear yourselves away ; I
am going to drown myself!"
" Ah, dear Schoppe ! " said Albano. Schoppe blushed
at his situation. " It must be a clown," said the retiring
funeral retinue. " What child's foolery is this, then ? "
asked Sphex, resenting Albano's former passion and the
anatomical misshot, and derived satisfaction from telling
the story of the latter's rage. Schoppe knew how
heartily the noble youth loved him, and he would not
say anything, because he was ashamed, but he swore to
himself (in the grotesque style to which he was accus
tomed even in soliloquy) very shortly to let him into
his breast-cavern, and show him hanging therein a whole,
wild heart full of love.
* A name given in tome plocos to the consumption.
288 TITAN.

49. CYCLE.

THE blue day on which an ascension, a rendering

of allegiance, and a birthday were to be cele
brated already stood over Pestitz, after having cast off
its moming-red, — two horses were already harbingers of
four, the lowly coach-box, of the highest, — the country
nobility already went down, uncomfortably frizzled, into
the rooms of the inn, and scolded at being cheated out of
the fairest weather for heath-cock coupling, and the city
nobility, yet unpowdered, spoke of the day, but without
real earnestness, — the court-micrometer,* the court-mar
shal, was surrounded by all his quartermasters, — the
court-transit-instruments,t the courtiers, instead of their
half-holiday, when they work only in the afternoon, had
a whole working-day, and were already standing at the
wash-table, — the allegiance-preacher, Schape, believed
almost every word of his discourse, because he had read
it too many times over, and the nearness of publication
infused emotion into him, — there was no longer a domino
to be had for the evening, except among the Jews, —
when a man alighted at the door of the Doctor's house,
who . among all others was the most honest and hearty
about the allegiance, the Director Wehrfritz. There were
a son and a father in each other's arms, a fiery youth and
a fiery man. Albano seemed to him no longer to be the
old Albano, but — warmer than ever. He brought with
him from " his women," as he called them, congratulatory
letters and birthday presents ; he himself made not much

* A micrometer consists of fine threads stretched across in the tel

escope, which serve to measure the smallest distance.
t The transit-instrument, or culminatory, observes when a star has
reached the highest point in its course.
 SCENE AT THE ALLEGIANCE-HALL. 289

of the birthday or forgot it, and Albano had only cele

brated it a little just after waking. These festivals be
long more to the other sex, who gladly toy with times and
seasons in the way of loving and giving.
The Titular Librarian marched out to a village, named
Klosterdorf, where the Mayor with his family, after an
ancient custom, had to imitate the Prince with his, and so,
as commissioner, drive in the allegiance of the neighboring
circle ; this, Schoppe said, he still was pleased with, but
the other worked too fatally on his inwards. The Direc
tor, dazzled by the prospects of the day, and posted in the
front with an official speech to the chivalry, fell into a
quarrel with Schoppe. " The Exchequer and the Court,"
said he, " have been, of course, from time immemorial,
such as they are ; but the Princes, dear sir, are good ;
they are themselves sucked dry, and then they seem to
be the suckers." " Somewhat," rejoined Schoppe, " as
the death-vampyres only give out blood from themselves,
while they appear to take it; but I make up for that
again by attributing wholly to the Regents, besides the
sins of others, the merits, victories, and sacrifices of oth
ers also ; herein they are the pelicans, who shed a blood
for their children which really at a distance seems to be
their own."
All went off: Schoppe, out into the country ; Wehrfritz,
to church with the procession ; Albano, into a spectator's-
box in the allegiance-hall ; for he would not in any wise
be stuck into the train of the Prince, not even as em
broidery. Soon the noisy stream of pomp came sounding
back into the hall. The chivalry, the spirituality, and the
cities mounted the stage, where the oath was to be taken.
In the court-yard of the castle one foot stood upon an
other, and a needle might, to be sure, have reached the
13 a
290 TITAN.

ground, but no one could do so, to pick it up ; everybody

looked up at the balcony, and cursed before he swore.
The Prince, too, stayed not away ; the throne, that grad
uated and paraphrased princely seat, stood open, and
Fraischdorfer had decorated it with beautiful mytho
logical and heraldic shoulder-pieces and appendages.
Opposite the Count bloomed the court-dames, and be
low them a rose and a lily, Julienne and Liana. As one
lifts his eye from the stiff frosty landscape of winter to
the blue breathing heavens which looked down upon our
spring evenings, and wherein the light summer clouds
floated and the rainbow stood, so did he glance over the
sinning snow-light of the court at the lovely Grace of
spring, around whom remembrances hung, like flowers,
and who now stood so far aloof, so cut off, so imprisoned
in the heavy finery of the court ! Only through her
friend, who sits beside her, was she gently melted and
harmonized with the dazzling present.
Now began fine official speeches, the longest being
made by the old Minister, the shortest by Wehrfritz : the
Prince let the warm eulogies glide over his December-
visage without thawing it down, — a mistaken indifference!
For the praise of the Minister, as well as of other court-
servants, may yet help him with posterity, since, according
to Bacon, no praise is of more consequence than that
which servants give, because they surely know their mas
ter best.
Then the Upper-Secretary, Heiderscheid, read Luigi's
genealogical table, and illuminated the hollow family-tree,
together with its dryness, and the last pale green twig ;
with sunken eyes Julienne heard this amid the vivat of
the people, and Albano, never subdued by one thought
alone, saw her eyes, and could not, however vacantly
 ALBANO'S ASPIRATIONS. 291

the Regent listened, avoid the funeral picture, how, one

day, and that very soon, this extinguished man would
bear down after him the name of his whole race into the
vault ; he saw them carving the inverted arms and hang
ing the shield upside down, and heard the shovels strike
against the helmet and fling the earth after the coffin.
Gloomy idea! the tender sister would certainly have
wept, had she only been alone I
At last the turn came to those, to whom it never comes
first, although they are the only ones who have a hearty
meaning in such ceremonies. Heiderscheid stepped out
on the balcony, and caused the noisy swarming multitude
to stretch out the forefinger and thumb, and repeat the
oath after him. The mass, always fascinated, shouted
their vivat ; in the dazzled eyes gleamed the confident
expectation of a better regency and love for the unknown
individual. The Count, whom a multitude generally
made enthusiastic, as it did Schoppe melancholy, glowed
with the inspiration of brotherly love and thirst for
achievement ; he saw princes, like omnipotent ones, hold
ing sway on their eminences, and saw the blooming prov
inces and the gay cities of a wisely-ruled land spread
out before him ; he represented to himself how he, were
he a prince, could, with the electric sparkling of the
sceptre-point, dart, with an animating shock, into millions
of united hearts at once, whereas he could now, with so
great difficulty, scarcely kindle a few of the nearest ; he
saw his throne, as a mountain in morning light, pouring
out, instead of lava, navigable streams through the lands,
and breaking the storms, with a hum of harvests and fes
tivals around its feet ; he thought to himself how far,
from such n high place, he could send light abroad, like a
moon, which does not hide the sun by day, but, from her
 292 TITAN.

elevation, flings his distant brightness into the night,—

and how he would, instead of only defending, create and
educate freedom, and be a regent for the sake of forming
self-regents.* " But why am I not one ? " said he mourn
fully.
Noble youth ! do thy estates, then, furnish thee no sub
jects ? But just so does the lesser prince believe he
would govern a duchy quite otherwise, and the higher
one believes the same in regard to a kingdom, and so
does the highest, in regard to universal monarchy.
Meanwhile, all through this singular uneasy day, wild
perspectives of youth passed to and fro before him, and
the old spirit-voice, which he was going to meet to-day,
repeated in him the dark exhortation, Take the crown !
Wehrfritz came back in the evening with a red face from
the fiery allegiance-banquet, and Albano took an agitated
leave of him, as if of the ebb and calm of life — his
childish youth ; for to-day he launched out deeper into
its waves. Schoppe came back and wanted to have him
before the sight-hole of his show-box, wherein he slid
through the vicariate-allegiance-swearing in Klosterdorf,
in a series of comic pictures ; but these contrasted too
severely with higher ones, and gave little pleasure.
At night Albano put on his beautiful, serious character-
mask, that of a knight-templar, — for a comic one his
form, and almost his mood, was too great ; — the latter
was made still more solemn by this funeral dress of a
whole murdered knightly order. After he had caused
to be described to him once more the awful paths of Tar
tarus, and the burial-place of the Prince's heart, tq avoid
mistaking of the way in the night, he went forth; about
• Autarchs; for monarchs or sole-rulers are etymologically distin
guished from self-rulers.
 THE MASQUEBADE. 293

ten o'clock, with a high-heaving bosom, which the night-

larvae * of fancy, together with friendship and love and
the whole future, conspired to excite.

50. CYCLE.

ALBANO stepped, for the first time, into the in

verted puppet-world of a masquerade, as into a
dancing realm of the dead. The black forms, the slit
masks, the strange eyes, gleaming as out of night behind
them, which, as in that mouldering Sultan in the coffin,
alone remained alive, — the mingling and mimicking of
all ranks, the flying and ring-running of the clinking
dance, and his own solitude under the mask, — all this
translated him, with his Shakespearian frame of spirit,
into an enchanted and ghostly island full of juggleries,
chimeras, and metamorphoses. Ah, this is the bloody
scaffold, was his first thought, where the brother of thy
Liana rent his young life, like a mourning-garment ; and
he looked fearfully round, as if he feared Roquairol might
again attempt death.
Among the masks he found no one under which he
could suppose him to be ; this meaningless cousinship
of standing parts, footmen, butcher?, Moors, ancestors,
&c., — these could not conceal any loved one of Albano's.
Lonesomely and inquisitively he paced up and down be
hind the rows of the Anglaise ; and more than ten eyes,
which glistened opposite in the annular eclipse of the
pointed mask, — for women, from their open-heartedness,
do not love masks, but are fond of showing themselves, —
followed the powerfully and pliantly built form, which,
with the bold helm and plume, with the crossed white
• Ghosts of the dead. — Tb.
294 TITAN.

mantle and the gleaming mall on his breast, seemed to

bring a knight out of the heroic age.
At last a masked lady, who was chatting between un
marked ones, came up to him with long steps and large
feet, and boldly grasped his hand as if for a dance. He
was extremely embarrassed at the boldness of the sum
mons, and about the choice of an answer ; it is valor
precisely that loves to marry itself to gallantry, as the
Damascene blade, besides hardness, possesses a perpetual
fragrance ; but the lady only wrote in his hand his ini
tials, with the interrogation-mark after them, — " v. Ct"
and after the Yes, the charming one said, softly, " Do
you not remember me? the master of exercises, Von
Falterle ? " Albano testified, notwithstanding his dislike
of the part, a real joy at finding again a companion of
his youth. He asked which mask was Captain Roquai-
rol ; Falterle assured him he had not yet arrived.
By this time — as the footmen, the butchers, Falterle,
&c, were only the snow-drops of this masquerade-spring
— better flowers — violets, forget-me-nots, and primroses
— had sprung up or come in. For one such forget-me-
not I see a churl entering, puffed out behind aru before,
and convex like a burning-glass, who now opened the
back-door and shook out confects from his hump-back,
and then the front-door and produced sausages. Hafen-
reffer, however, writes me the invention has once before
appeared at a masquerade in Vienna. Then came a
company of German play-cards, which shuffled and
played out and took each other ; a fine emblem of athe
ism, which exhibits it wholly free from the absurdity
wherewith men have so loved to disfigure it ! Mr. Von
Augusti appeared also, but in simple dress and domino ;
he became (incomprehensibly to the Count) very soon the
 THE PUPPET-MASQUERADE. 295

polar-star of the dancers, and the controlling Cartesian

vortex of the dancing-school.
With what miserable, black ammunition-biscuit and
beggar's-bread of enjoyment these people get along !
thought Albano, to whom, all day long, his dreams, those
Jupiter's-doves, had been bringing ambrosia. And how
pale and stale is their fire, their fancy, and their speech,
he thought too. Verily, a life down in a gloomy glacier-
chasm ! for he imagined everybody must speak and feci
as intensely and ardently as he.
Now came a limping man, with a great glass-chest on
his belly ; of course it was easy to recognize the Libra
rian ; he had on — either because he sent too late, or
would not pay, for a domino — something black, which
he had borrowed of a mourning-cloak lender, and was
covered from shoulder-blade to shin-bone with awful
masks, which he, with many finger-signs, offered mostly
to those people who played their parts behind the oppo
site kind, e. g. short-nosed ones to long noses. He was
waiting for the beginning of a hop Anglaise, the notes for
which stood just on the hand-organ of his chest ; then he,
too, began ; he had therein an excellent puppet-masquer
ade which had been planed out by Bestelmaier, and now
he set the little masks to hopping parallel with the great
ones. His object was a comparative anatomy of the two
masquerades, and the parallelism was melancholy. Be
sides, he had rigged it all out with by-work : little
dumb persons swung their little bells in the chest ; a
tolerably grown-up child rocked the cradle of an inani
mate doll, with which the little fool still played ; a
mechanic was working away at his speaking machine, by
which he was going to show the world how far mere
mechanism could go toward giving life to puppets ; a
 J96 TITAN.

live, white mouse • sprang out by a little chain, and would

have upset many of the club, if he could have broken it ;
a starling, buried-alive, a true first Greek comedy and
school for scandal in miniature, was practising upon the
dancing-company the death-blow of the tongue with per
fect freedom and without distinction ; a looking-glass-
wall mimicked the living scenes of the chest so decep
tively, that every one took the images for true puppets.
The point of this comico-tragic dagger came home
directly enough upon Albano, as, besides, the hopping
wax-figure-cabinet of the great masquerade seemed to
double the solitude of man, and to separate two selves by
four faces ; but Schoppe went further.
In his glass case stood a faro-bank, and by it a little
man, who cut out the masked banker in black paper, but
into a likeness of the German gentleman ; this picture
he carried into the card-chamber, where a bank-keeping
mask — most certainly Cephisio — must needs hear and
see him. The banker looked at him some time inquir
ingly. Another, dressed wholly in black, with a dying ex
pression, which represented the Hippocratica faciesft did
the same. Albano looked towards it with a fiery glance,
because it occurred to him it might be Roquairol, for
it had his stature and torch-like eye. The pale mask
lost much, and kept redoubling its loss ; at that it drank
out of a quill immoderate draughts of Champagne wine.
The Lector came up ; Schoppe kept on playing before
the eyes that crowded round ; the pale mask looked
steadily and sternly at the Count. Schoppe took off his
• Docs he allude to the frightful white form, in my " vision of an
nihilation"?
t A phrase applied to the form of a dying man. [Properly a dis
temper which gives one a deathly look. See Bailey's Dictionary.
— Tr.]

V
 ALBANO AND THE PALE MASK. 297
own before Bouverot ; but there was another under it ;
he pulled this off; it disclosed an under-mask of the
under-mask ; he carried on the process to the fifth root ;
— at last his own rough face came forth, but bronzed
with gold-beater's skin and distorted, as it turned towards
Bouverot, with an almost frightful glaze and smile.
The pale mask itself seemed to start, and hastened with
long strides off into the dancing-hall ; it threw itself
wildly into the wildest of the dance. This, too, confirmed
Albano's conjecture, as well as its great defying hat,
which seemed to him a crown, because he prized noth
ing more highly about manly attire than fur, cloak, and
hat.
More and more fingers continually drew the letters
uv. C." in his hand, and he nodded composedly. The
time surrounded him with manifold dramas, and every
where he stood between theatre-curtains. As with
uneasy head and heart he stepped to the window, to
see whether he should soon have moonshine for his
night-walk, he saw a heavy hearse, flanked by torches,
move along across the market, which was conveying a
manor-lord to his family-vault ; and the undisturbed
night-watchman called out, behind the creeping dead
man, the beginning of the spirit-hour and of a birth-
hour, which is precious to us. Could his smitten heart
refrain from saying to him how sharply Death, the
hard, solid, insoluble, with its glacier-air, sweeps through
the warm scenes of life, and leaves behind it all over
which it breathes stiff and snow-white ? Could he help
thinking of the cold young sister, whose voice now
awaited him in Tartarus ? And as Schoppe, with his
puppet-parody, came to him, and he pointed out to him
the street, and the latter said : " Bon ! Friend Death sits
13 »
298 TITAN.

on his game-wagon, and glances quietly up, as if the

friend would say, ' Bon ! only dance on ; I make my re
turn trip, and carry you too to your place and spot,' " —
how close must it have been to him under his sultry visor !
At this second the pale mask came, with others, to the win
dow ; he opened his glowing face for coolness ; a hasty
draught of wine, and still more his fancy, showed him the
world in burning surfaces ; the mask surveyed him closely,
with a dark, uncertain glow of the eye, which he at last
could no longer bear, because it might as well have been
kindled by hatred as by love, just as the spots on the sun
seem now like abysses and now like mountains.
Eleven o'clock had gone by ; he suddenly disappeared
from the hot looks and the crushing throng, and betook
himself on his way to the heart without a breast.

51. CYCLE.
WHILE he stood at the gate leaning on his sword,
a group of new masks (mostly representatives
of lifelessness, e. g. a boot, peruke-stand, &c.) came
running into the city, and peered with astonishment
at the tall, white, knightly stranger. He took his sword
with him, but no servant. Whatever the danger into
which the visit of a secluded, gloomy catacomb-ave
nue, and the foreknowledge of this visit on the part of
others, might plunge him, his character left him no other
choice than the one which he had made ; no, he would
sooner have let himself be murdered than shamed before
his father.
How thy spirit mounted aloft, like a lightning-flash
darting upward toward heaven, when the great Night,
with her saintly halo of stars, stood erect before thee I —
 A NIGHT IN TARTARUS. 299

Beneath the heavens there is no terror, only under the

earth ! — Broad shadows lay across his road to Elysium,
which on Sunday had been colored with dew-drops and
butterflies. In the distance fiery prongs grew out of the
earth and moved along ; — it was the hearse with the
torches in the lower road. When he came to the cross-
way which leads through the ruined castle into Tartarus,
he looked round toward the enchanted grove, on whose
winding bridge life and songs of joy had met him ; all
was dumb therein, and only a long gray bird of prey
(probably a paper dragon) wheeled over it to and fro.
He passed through the old castle into an orchard that
had been sawed down, and looked like a tree-church
yard ; then into a pale wood, full of peeled May-trees,
which with faded ribbons and banners all looked toward
Elysium, — a withered pleasure grove of so many happy
days. Some windmills, with their long shadow-arms,
struck into the midst, and were continually seizing and
vanishing.
Impetuously Albano ran down a stairway darkened
with hangings, and came upon an old battle-field, — a
gloomy waste with a black wall, of which the monotony
was broken only by white gypsum heads, which stood in
the earth as if they were on the point of sinking or of
resurrection ; a tower full of blind gates and blind win
dows stood in the midst, and the solitary clock talked with
itself therein, and, with its iron rod swaying to and fro,
seemed fain to divide the wave of time, which ever tended
to run together again : it struck three quarters to twelve,
and deep in the wood the echo murmured as if in sleep,
and softly spake once more to fleeting man of fleeting
time. The road '.an in an eternal circle round about the
churchyard wall, without coming to a gate. Alban must,
300 TITAN.

according to his information, seek a spot in the wall where

it roared and reeled under him.
At last he stepped upon a stone which sank with him ;
then a section of the wall fell down ; and a tangled wood,
full of clumps of trees, whose stems twined together into
bush-work, danced before every beam of the moon. As
he looked round him under the gate, there hung over the
shadowy stairway a pale head like a bust of the murder-
field, and passed down without a body, and the bloodless
dead seemed to awake and run after it ; — the cold hell-
stone • of horror contracted his heart : he stood : the
death's-head hovered immovable over the last step !
All at once his heart sucked in warm blood again ; he
turned toward the misshapen wood with drawn sword,
because he was bearing along his life in his hand near
armed Death. He followed in the darkness of the moss-
green towers the roar of the subterranean flood and the
rocking of the ground. Unfortunately he looked round
again, and there stood the death's-head behind him still,
but high in the air on the trunk of a giant. The extreme
of horror always drove him with compressed eyes full
upon a phantom ; he called twice through the echoing
wood, " Who 's there ? " But when, at this moment, a
second head seemed all at once to stand beside the first,
then his hand clove, frozen, to the ice-cold key of the gate
of the world of the dead, and he tore it away bleeding.
He fled, and plunged through thicker and thicker
twigs, till at last he came out into an open garden and
into the splendor of the moon ; here, ah here, when he
saw the holy, immortal heavens and the rich stars in the
north gleaming again, which never rise nor set, the pole-
star and Friederich's-Ehre,f the Bear and the Serpent,
* The tapit infemaUi, or silver cautery. — Tb.
t Frederick's Honor.
 THE MYSTERIOUS SLEEPER. 301

and Charles's Wain and Cassiopaa, which looked down

upon him mildly, as if with the bright winking eyes of
eternal spirits, then his spirit asked itself, " Who can
lay hands on me ? I am a spirit among spirits " ; and the
courage of immortality beat again in his warm breast.
But what a singular garden ! Great and little flower-
less beds, full of yew, rue, and rosemary, divided it among
them ; a circle of weeping birches drooped like a funeral
train around the mute spot ; under the garden murmured
the buried brook, and in the middle stood a white altar,
near which lay a man.
Albano was strengthened by the appearance of the
common dress and the mechanic's bundle on which the
sleeper rested ; he stepped quite close to him, and read
the golden inscription of the altar : " Take my last offer
ing, all-gracious one ! " The heart of the Prince must
here be mouldering in the altar.
Ah, after these rigid scenes, it soothed his soul even to
tears to find here human words and a human sleep, and
the remembrance of God ; but as he looked with emotion
at the sleeper, suddenly that sister's voice which he had
heard on Isola Bella said softly in his ear, " I give thee
Linda de Romeiro." " Ah, good God ! " he cried, and
turned round ; and there was nothing on either side of
him, and he held himself up by the corner of the altar.
" I give thee Linda de Romeiro," it said again ; fright
fully the thought seized him, that the hovering death's-
head might be speaking near him, and he shook the sound
sleeper, who woke not, and shook and called still more
violently, when the voice spake for a third time.
" What ? " said the drowsy man, " directly ! What
wilt thou ? her ? " and raised himself reluctantly and with
a yawn ; but at the sight of the naked sword fell down
302 TITAN.

on his knees, and said : " Mercy ! I will, indeed, give

up all!"
" Zesara ! " a cry came from the wood, — " Zesara,
where art thou ? " and he heard his own voice ; but now
he boldly called back, " At the altar ! " A black form
rushed out, with a white mask in hand, and hesitated in
the moonlight before the armed one. Then at length
Albano recognized the brother of Liana, for whom he
had so long panted ; he flung his sword behind him, and
ran to meet him. Roquairol stood before him mute, pale,
and with a sublime repose on his countenance. Albano
continued to stand near him, and said with emotion,
" Hast thou been seeking me, Charles ? " Roquairol
nodded silently, and had tears in his eyes, and opened
his arms. Ah, then could the blissful man, with all the
flames and tears of love fall upon the long-loved soul, and
he kept saying incessantly, " Now we have each other !
now we have each other ! " And more and more pas
sionately he embraced him, as the pillar of his future, and
melted into tears, because now, indeed, the buried love
of so many years and so many choked up fountains of
the poor heart could at once gush forth. Roquairol, trem
bling, only clasped him to himself gently with one arm,
and said, but without passion, " I am a dying man, and
that is my face," holding forth the yellow death-mask ;
"but I have my Albano, and will die on his bosom."
Wildly they twined around each other ; the sap of life,
Love, ran through them with a creative power; the
ground over the rolling, subterranean flood shook more
violently ; and the starry heaven, with the white, magic
breath of its trembling stars, floated around the magic
glow.
Ah ye happy ones !
 ALBANO AND ROQUAIROL. 303

62. CYCLE.

SOME men are born fast friends ; their first finding

of each other is only a second, and they then, like
those who have been long parted, bring to each other not
only a future, but a past also; — this latter our happy
ones demanded of one another impatiently. Roquairol
answered Alban's question, How he came hither, in a fiery
manner : " He had been following him this whole evening,
— he had gazed at him at the window during the funeral
pomp with such a painful longing, and had almost been
constrained to fly and embrace him, — he had already,
but a moment ago, stood close by him, and at his question,
• Who 's there ? ' immediately taken off his mask." Now
did Albano's fallen arm strike again tensely through the
thin magic-lantern show of ghostly fear, as he now learned
that the two-headed giant had grown entirely out of an
optically-magnifying, mistaken notion of the distance of a
form which was so near, and the death's-head had for
feited its body on the stairway only by the dark curtains
and its black dress; even the hard spirit-scene at the
altar seemed to him now less insuperable through the rich
gain of living ldve.
Roquairol asked him what woe or joy had driven him
hither at midnight to a Moravian churchyard, and whither
he had sent the man with the sword. Albano did not
know that Moravians reposed here ; and, moreover, he
had not observed that the sword, probably from fear of its
being used, had been stolen. He answered, "My dead
sister was fain to speak with me at the altar ; and she
has spoken " ; but he feared to say more of this. Then
Roquairol's countenance suddenly changed; he stared at
him, and demanded confirmation and explanation ; during
304 TITAN.

this he looked into the air as if he would draw faces from

it by his looks, and said monotonously, fixing his eyes,
however, on Albano the while, " Dead one, dead one,
speak again ! " But only the death-flood went on speak
ing under them, and nothing more. But he threw him
self before the altar on his knees, and said in measured
tone, and yet with trembling lips : " Fly open, spirit-gate,
and show thy transparent world. I fear not you, the
transparent ones ; I become one of you, when you appear,
and walk with you, and become an apparition myself."
" O my good one, forbear," Albano entreated, not only
from piety, but from love also ; for an accident, a night-
bird shooting over, might, indeed, kill them by horror:
this horror stood, too, not far from them ; for on the illu
minated side of the weeping birches stepped out a white,
majestic old form. But when Roquairol, frantic with
wine and fancy, reached out the dying mask into the air,
and said, turning toward the grave of the heart, "Take
this face, if thou hast none, old man, and look at me from
behind it ! " Alban seized him ; the white form stepped
back with bowed head and folded arms into the branches ;
the round tower on the battle-field struck the hour, and
the dreamy region, murmuring, struck a response.
" Come to my warm heart, thou passionate soul. O
that I were permitted to receive thee on my very birth
day, at my very birth-hour ! " This sound melted at
once the ever-changing man, and he hung upon him with
wet eyes of joy, and said : "And to keep me even till our
dying hours ! O look not upon me, thou unchangeable,
because I appear so wavering and broken ; in the waves
of life man breaks and crinkles as the staff flickers in
the water, but the essential being stands nevertheless firm
as the staff. I will follow thee into other parts of Tar-
tirus ; but still relate the history."
 THE FRIENDS IN THE CATACOMB. 305

To give this history amounted to opening a sanctum

sanctorum of the inner man, or even a coffin to the light
of day ; but do you believe that Albano bethought him
self a minute ? or would you yourselves ? Wc are all
better, franker, warmer friends than we know and show ;
only let the right spirit meet you, — such a one as thirst
ing Love ever demands, — pure, large, clear, and tender
and warm, — and you give him everything, and love him
without measure, because he is without fault. Albano
found in this stranger the first friend who ever responded
to his whole heart with like tones, the first eye which his
shy feelings did not shun, a soul before whose first tear
flowers started up out of his whole future life as out of
the dry wastes of torrid climes during the rainy season ;
— hence love gave his strong spirit only the equable,
broad motion of a sea, whereas his friend, although older
and longer-trained, was a stream with waterfalls.
Charles led him into the so-called catacomb, while he
listened to the ghost-story of Isola Bella, which, however,
from having been exhausted by the former, he heard with
diminished fear. A dreary, charred vale, full of sunken
shafts, basked gray in the moonshine ; out of the wood
crept forth the death-flood below their feet, and leaped
down a stony stairway into the catacombs. The two fol
lowed it on another that ran by its side. The entrance
bore as frontispiece an old dial-plate, of which the light
ning had once struck away the hour one. " One ?" said
Albano ; " singular ! — just our coming hour ! "
How adventurously does the catacomb now wind on
ward ! The long death-flood murmurs obscurely far in
through the darkness, and glimmers at times under the
silvery stream which the moonlight sends in through the
shaft-openings; immovable creatures — horses, dogs, birds
T
 306 TITAN.

— stand drinking on the dark bank, that is to say, their

stuffed skins ; small gravestones, worn smooth by time,
with a few names and limbs, are the pavement ; on a
brighter niche we read that a nun was immured here ;
in another stands the petrified skeleton of a miner, who
was buried alive, with gilded ribs and thighs ; in scattered
spots were black paper hearts of men shot by the arque-
buse, and heaped-up nosegays of poor sinners ; the rod
which had whipped a forgiven penitent to death, a glass
bust with a phosphorus point in the water, chrisom-
cloths * and other children's clothes and playthings, and
a dwarf skeleton.
As the explanatory words of Roquairol, whose life-
path always ran down into vaults and out over graves,
beat out life more and more thin and transparent before
him, Zesara, afier his manner, at once shaking his head,
heaving forward his breast, stamping in the sand, and
cursing (which he easily did in terror and in strong emo
tion), broke out with the words : " By the Devil ! thou
crushest my breast and thine own. It is not so ! Are
we not together ? Have I not thy warm, living hand ?
Burns not within us the fire of immortality ? Burnt-out
coals are these bones, and nothing more ; and the heavenly
flame which has consumed them has again seized upon
other fuel, and blazes on. O," he added, as if comforted,
and stepped into the brook and looked through the open
ing of the shafi up to the rich moon, which streamed
down from heaven, and his great eyes filled with splen
dor, — "O, there is a heaven and an immortality ; we
remain not in the dark hole of life ; we, too, sweep
through the ether like thee, thou shining world ! "
* Linen cloths smeared with aromatic ointment, anciently placed
on the heads of children just born or baptized. — Tr.

m
 THE NARROW ESCAPE. 307

" Ah, thou glorious one," said Charles, whose soul con
sisted of souls, " I will now bring thee to a more cheerful
place." They had hardly gone eight steps, when it dark
ened behind them, and a sword, flung in overhead, came
perpendicularly down, and struck with its point in the
sand under the waves. " O thou infernal devil up there ! "
cried the infuriate Koquairol ; but Albano was softened at
the thought of the iron virgin • of the death-hour, who
had folded her sharp arras together so near him. They
clasped each other more warmly, and went silent and sad
towards a low music and a grave-mound. They seated
themselves upon it opposite an avenue which formed a
right angle with the tormenting catacomb, lined with
green moss, and of which crumbled sparks of rotten wood
pointed out the extent. He lost himself in an open gate,
and a prospect of Elysium, of which only the white sum
mits of some silver-poplars were distinguishable, and in
the distance was seen the spring redness of midnight
blooming in the heavens, and two stars twinkling over
head. The gate, however, was grated, and guarded by a
skeleton with an TEolian harp in his hand, which seemed
to strike upon it the thin minor tones which the draught
of wind just now wafted into the cavern.
" Here," said Charles, at the beautiful spot, and made
more curious by the deadly fling of Albano's sword, " fin
ish your narrative of to-day ! " Albano reported to him
candidly the word which the sister's voice had spoken :
" I give thee Linda de Romeiro." In the tumult of his
inner being he thought not of the anecdote, that she was
the very one for whom Charles when a boy had proposed
to die. " Romeiro ? " he started up. " Be still ! She ?
O thou mocking executioner, Fate ! Why she, and to-
• An allusion to a well-known instrument of the Inquisition. — Tr.

^
308 TITAN.

day? Ah, Albano, for her I early braved death," he

continued, weeping, and sank upon his breast, " and that
is what has made my heart so bad, because I have lost
her. Do thou only take her, for thou art a pure spirit ;
the glorious shape which appeared to thee on the sea, so
she looks, or now still fairer. Ah, Albano ! " This noble
youth trembled at the complicated plot, and at the destiny,
and said : " No, no, thou dear Charles, thou thinkest
falsely about everything."
Suddenly it was as if all the constellations rang, and
a melodious spirit-choir thronged in through the gate.
Albano was startled. ■ Nothing ; let be," said Charles.
" It is not the skeleton ; the pious father is walking in the
flute-dell, and is just drawing out his flutes, because he
prays. But how sayest thou, I think falsely of every
thing?" " How ?" repeated Albano, and could not, in the
magic circle of these echoes, which ail-powerfully brought
back to him that Sunday morning, either think or speak.
For did not the silver-poplars wave to and fro against the
stars, and rosy clouds lie couched about the heavens, and
did not the whole Elysium pass openly by with the sounds
which had floated through it, with the tears which had
besprinkled it, and with the dreams which no heart for
gets, and with the holy form which eternally abides in his
breast ? And now he held so fast the hand of her brother ;
so near was he to love and friendship, those two foci in
the ellipse of life's pathway ; impetuously he embraced
the brother, with the words : " By Heaven, I say to thee,
she whom thou hast just named concerns me not, and
never will."
" But, Albano, thou dost not surely know her yet ? "
said Charles, pursuing his inquiries, perhaps, too hardly ;
for the noble youth beside him was too bashful and too
 THE PIOUS FATHER'S VISION. 309

steadfast to unlock the sanctuary of wishes to the kins

man of his loved one ; to a stranger he could have done
it much more easily. " 0 torment me not," he answered
sensitively ; but he added more softly, " Believe me, I
pray you believe me, this first time, my good brother ! "
Charles yielded full as seldom as he ; and although swal
lowing the inquisitive tone, and speaking in a right loving
one, nevertheless said this : " By my bliss, I 'll do it, and
with joy; a heart must have been heartily loved and
divinely blessed which can renounce such a one." Ah,
docs Albano, then, know that I He only leaned silently,
with his fiery cheek full of roses, on Liana's brother,
shunning scrutiny for shame; but when the expiring calls
of the flute-dell gathered together like sighs in his breast,
and reminded him too often how that Sunday dimming
closed, how Liana stole away, and how he looked after
her with dim, wet eyes from the altar ; then, although his
heart did not break, his eye broke into tears, and he wept
violently, but silently, on his first friend.
Then, with mute souls, they turned homeward, and
looked thoughtfully toward the long, vanishing ways of
the future ; and when they parted, they well felt that they
loved each other right heartily, that is, right bitterly.
On the morrow the pious father lay prostrate under a
shock which was more blissful than mournful ; for he said
he had in the night seen his friend, the deceased Prince,
walking, clad in white, through Tartarus.
 TENTH JUBILEE.

RoQUAinoL's Advocatus Diaboli.* — Tur Festival Dat or

Friendship.

S3. CYCLE. t

OT toward the years of childhood, but toward

the season of youth, should we revert the
most longingly, if we came forth out of the
latter as innocent as out of the former. It is
the festival day of our life, when all avenues are full of
music and finery, and all houses are hung round with
golden tapestries, and when Existence, Art, and Virtue,
like gentle goddesses, still woo us with caresses; whereas,
in after years, they summon us, like stern gods, with com
mands ! And at this period Friendship dwells as yet in
a serenely open Grecian temple, not, as later, in a narrow
Gothic chapel.
Richly and majestically did life now glitter around
Albano, covered with islands and ships ; he had his whole
breast full of friendship and youth, and could now let the
impetuous energy of love, which oft Isola Bella had re
• At the canonization of a saint, the Devil was heard by attorney, in
the shape of objections to the act. Jean Paul, with a slight variation
of the sense of the old title, hints a converse process in Roquairol's
case, making the better angel show cause why sentence of damnaiion
should not be absolutely pronounced against him. — Tr.
t Here began Jean Paul's second volume of the Titan. — Tr.
 ROQUAIROL'S SUMMER-CHAMBER. 311

bounded from a statue, from his father, burst freely and

joyously upon a man who appeared to him fully as his
youthful dream had sketched him. He could not let go
Charles for a day ; he laid bare to him his soul and his
whole life — (only Liana's name retired deeper and
deeper into his heart) ; all models of friendship among
the ancients he was fain to copy and renew, and do and
suffer everything for his loved friend ; his being was now
a double-choir ; he drank in every joy with two hearts ; a
double heaven embosomed his life in pure ether.
When, on the following day, he met the form of the new
friend, — which was all that remained to him of the night
ly show-piece of the spirit-world, as a pale moon is left by
the extinguished stars of night, — and when he found him
so bald-headed and white, as the fiery smoke-column of
an iEtna ascends gray in the daytime, he seemed to see
the whilom suicide standing before him, the more freely,
but all the more warmly, did he stretch his hand across to
the solitary being, who, after his leap over life, dwelt now
only on his grave, as on a remote island. Others, for this
very reason, would draw their hand away : the baffled
self-murderer, who has made a rent in this fair, firm life,
comes back from his death-hour as a strange, uncomfort
able ghost, whom we can trust no longer, because in his
ungovernableness he may at any moment play again the
give-away game with the human form.
Therefore Albano saw in the chaotic life of the Captain
only the disorder of a being who is packing up and march
ing away. When he stepped for the first time into his
friend's summer-chamber, he saw, of course, a servant's
livery wardrobe, a theatrical green-room, and an officer's
tent before him at once. On the table lay confused tribes
of books, as on a battle-field, and on Schiller's Tragedies
312 TITAN.

the Hippocratic face of the masquerade, and on the Court

Almanac a pistol ; the book-shelf was occupied by the
sword-belt, together with its wash-ball of chalk, a choco
late-mill, an empty candlestick, a pomatum-box, matches,
the wet hand-towel and the dried mouth-napkin ; the
glasshouse of a run-down hour-glass, and the washing-
and the writing-table stood open, on which latter I, to
my astonishment, look in vain for any support under it,
or writing-sand on it ; the comb-cloth, or powder-mantle,
leaned back on the ottoman, and a long neck-cloth rode
on the stove-screen, and the antlers on the wall had two
hats with feathers shoved over the right and left ears ;
letters and visiting-cards were impaled like butterflies on
the window-curtains. I should not have been capable of
writing a billet there, much less a Cycle.
Is there not, however, a sunny-bright, free-fluttering
age, when one loves to see everything which announces
roving unrest, striking of tents, and nomadic liberty, and
when one would be thankful to keep house in a travelling-
carriage, and write and sleep therein ? And does not one
in those years look upon precisely such a students' cham
ber as this as a spiritual students' endowment of genius,
and every chaos as an infusorial one full of life ? For
give my hero this truant time ; there was still something
noble in his nature, that kept him back from becoming an
imitator of what he eulogized.
As, after the melting away of a late winter, all at once
the green garment of earth flutters up high in flowers
and blossoms, so in the warm air of friendship and fancy
did Albano's nature start up at once into luxuriant ver
dure and bloom. Charles had and understood all states
of the heart ; he created them dramatically in himself
and others ; he was a second Russia, which harbors all cli
 THE FRIENDS CRITICISE AUGUSTI. 313

mates, from France even to Nova Zembla, and wherein, for

that very reason, every one finds his own : he was every
thing to everybody, although for himself nothing. He
could throw himself into any character, although for that
very reason it sometimes took his fancy only to carry out
the most convenient. The girths, belly-bands, cruppers,
and saddle-straps of court, town, and city life, his Bu
cephalus had long since cleared ; and if the Count was
vexed every day at the lingual leading-string of the
Lector, who pronounced everything correctly, — Kanaster
instead of Knaster, Juften instead of Juchten, Fiinfzig
instead of Fiifzig, and Barbieren (the r in which I my
self take to be a stupid barbarism), — Roquairol was a
free-thinker, even to the degree of being a hectoring free-
speaker; and spoke, according to an expression of his
own, which was at the same time an example of the fact,
" right out of his liver and jaw." He was annoyed that
there should still cleave to the Count a certain epic dig
nity of speech acquired from books. They often thought
over and cursed with one another the pitiful bald life
which one would lead, who, like the Lector, should live as
a well-bred citizen of extraction, have conduite and a nice
dress, and a tolerable dapper knowledge of several de
partments, and for refreshment his table-wine, and taste
for excellent masters in painting and other arts, and
should advance to higher posts merely as stepping-stones
to still higher, and yet, after all this, have to stretch him
self out, all frizzled and washed, in his coffin, in order
that the gigantic body-world might, forsooth, hand over its
Pestitz representative also to the sublime world of spir
its. No, said Albano, rather throw a dark mountain-
chain of sorrows into the dead level of life, that one
may, at least, have a prospect and something great.
14
314 TITAN.

But Roquairol was not the man that he seemed to

him ; — friendship has its deceptions as well as love ; —
and often, when he had long looked upon this love-drunk
en, high-hearted youth, with his chaste maiden-cheeks and
proud, manly brow, who reposed such a confidence upon
his wavering soul, and whose heart stood so wide open,
and the holiness of whose fancy even he envied, then
did the delusion of the noble one move him even to pain,
and his heart struggled to break forth, and longed to say
to him, with tears : Albano, I am not worthy of thee !
But in that case I lose him, he always added ; for he
shunned the moral orthodoxy and decision of a man, who
was not, like a maiden, to be provoked and repelled and
won back again, all in sport. And yet the day came —
the momentous day for both —when he did it. How
could he ever have resisted Fancy, when he only resisted
by and through Fancy ? I do him half injustice : hear
the better angel, who opens his mouth.
Roquairol is a child and victim of the age. As the
higher youth of our times are so early and richly over
hung with the roses of joy that, like the inhabitants of
spice-islands, they lose their smell, and by and by put
under their heads a Sybarite-pillow of roses, drink rose-
sirup and bathe themselves in rose-oil,* until nothing
more is left them thereof for a stimulus except the thorns,
so are most of them — and often the very same ones —
stuffed full in the beginning, by their philanthropic teach
ers, with the fruits of knowledge, so that they come soon
to desire only the honey-thick extracts, then the cider
and perry thereof, until at last they ruin themselves with
the brandy made of that. Now if, in addition to this,
they have, like Roquairol, a fancy that makes their life
♦ Ottar of Roses. — Tit.
 SENTIMENTAL PRECOCITY. 315

a naphtha-soil, out of which every step draws fire, then

does the flame, into which the sciences are thrown, and
the consumption become still greater. For these burnt-
out prodigals of life there is then no new pleasure and no
new truth left, and they have no old one entire and fresh ;
a dried-up future, full of arrogance, disgust with life, un
belief and contradiction, lies round about them. Only
the wing of fancy still continues to quiver on their
corpse.
Poor Charles! Thou didst still morel Not merely
truths, but feelings also, he anticipated. All grand sit
uations of humanity, all emotions to which Love and
Friendship and Nature exalt the heart, all these he went
through in poems earlier than in life, as play-actor and
theatre-poet earlier than as man, earlier on the sunny side
of fancy than on the stormy side of reality ; hence, when
they at last appeared, living, in his breast, he could delib
erately seize them, govern them, kill them, and stuff them
well for the refrigeratory of future remembrance. The
unhappy love for Linda de Romeiro, which, at a later
period, would perhaps have steeled him, opened thus
early all the veins of his heart, and bathed it warmly in
its own blood ; he plunged into good and bad dissipations
and amours, and afterward represented on paper or on
the stage everything that he repented or blessed ; and
every representation made him grow more and more hol
low, as abysses have been left in the sun by ejected
worlds. His heart could not do without the holy sensi
bilities ; but they were simply a new luxury, a tonic, at
best ; and precisely in proportion to their height did the
road run down the more abruptly into the slough of the
unholiest ones. As in the dramatic poet angelically
pure and filthy scenes stand in conjunction and close sue
316 TITAN.

cession, so in bis life ; he foddered, as in Surinam, his

hogs with pine-apples ; like the elder giants, he had soar
ing wings and creeping snakes'-feet.*
Unfortunate is the female soul which loses its way, and
is caught in one of these great webs stretched out in mid-
heaven ; and happy is she, when she tears through them,
unpoisoncd, and merely soils her bees'-wings. But this
all-powerful fancy, this streaming love, this softness and
strength, this all-mastering coolness and collectedness, will
overspread every female Psyche with webs, if she neg
lects to brush away the first threads. O that I could
warn you, poor maidens, against such condors, which fly
up with you in their claws ! The heaven of our days
hangs full of these eagles. They love you not, though
they think so ; because, like the blest in Mahomet's para
dise, instead of their lost arms of love, they have only
wings of fancy. They are like great streams, warm only
along the shore, and in the middle cold.
Now enthusiast, now libertine in love, he ran through
the alternation between ether and slime more and more
rapidly, till he mixed them both. His blossoms shot up
on the varnished flower-staff 'of the Ideal, which, however,
rotted, colorless, in the ground. Start with horror, but
believe it, — he sometimes plunged on purpose into sins
and torments, in order, down there, by the pangs of re
morse and humiliation, to cut into himself more deeply
the oath of reformation ; somewhat as the physicians,
Darwin and Sydenham, assert that strengthening reme
• Tho above description of Koquairol reminds one of a German
Sinn-spruch on sensuality, from the Persian : —
11 Make his reason serve bis passions,
That Is what man never should ;
To the DeviVs kitchen, angels
Never carry wood."
 INFLUENCE OF ALBANO ON ROQUAIROL. 317

dies (Peruvian bark, steel, opium) work more power

fully when weakening ones (bleeding, emetics, &c.) have
been previously prescribed.
External relations might, perhaps, have helped him
somewhat, and the vow of poverty might have made the
two other vows lighter for him ; had he been sold as a
negro slave, his spirit would have been a free white, and
a work-house would have been to him a purgatory. It
was for this reason the early Christians always gave
those who were possessed some occupation or other, e. g.
sweeping out the churches,* &c. But the lazy life of an
officer wrought upon him to make him only still more
vain and bold.
So stood matters in his breast, when he came to Al-
bano's, — hunting like an epicure after love, but merely
to play with it ; with an untrue heart, whose feeling was
more lyric poetry, than real, sound being ; incapable of
being true, nay, hardly capable of being false, because
every truth assimilated to the poetic representation, and
this again to that ; able much more easily on the stage
and at the tragic writing-desk to hit the true language of
passion than in life, as Boileau could only imitate dancers,
but never a dance ; indifferent, contemptuous, and de
cided against the exhausted, worthless life, wherein all
that is settled and indispensable — hearts and joys and
truths — melted down and floated about ; with reckless
energy, capable of daring and sacrificing anything which
a man respects, because he respected nothing, and ever
looking round after his iron patron-saint, Death ; faint
hearted in his resolutions, and even in his errors fluctu
ating, and yet devoid only of the tuning-hammer, and not
of the tuning-fork, of the finest morality ; and, in the
* Simon's Christian Antiquities. Mureinna, &c, p. 143.
318 TITAN.

midst of the roar of passion, standing in the bright light

of reflection, as the victim of the hydrophobia knows his
madness, and gives warning of it.
Only one good angel had not flown with the rest, —
Friendship. His so often blown-up and collapsed heart
could hardly soar to love ; but friendship it had not yet
squandered away. His sister he had hitherto loved as a
friend, — so fraternally, so freely, so increasingly ! And
now Albano, splendidly armed, had come to his embrace !
In the beginning he played with him, too, lyingly, as
he had with himself at the masquerade and in Tartarus.
He soon observed that the country youth saw him falsely,
dazzled by his own rays, but he chose rather to verify
the error than to correct it. Men — and he — are like
the fountain of the sun near the Temple of Jupiter Am
nion, which in the morning only was cold ; at noon, luke
warm ; in the evening, warm ; and at midnight, hot : now
he depended so much on the seasons of the day, as the
sound and vigorous Albano did so little, who accordingly
imagined a great man was great all day, from the time
of getting up to the time of lying down, as the heralds
always represent the eagle with outspread wings, that
he seldom went in the morning, but mostly in the even
ing, to Albano, when the whole girandole * of his facul
ties and feelings burned in the wine-spirit which he had
previously poured upon it out of flasks.
But do you know the medicine of example, the heal
ing power of admiration, and of that soul-strengthener,
reverence ? " It is shameful of me," said Boquairol,
" when he is so credulous and open and honest. No,
I will deceive the whole world, only not his soul ! "
Such natures would fain make good their devastation
• Branch candlestick. — Tr.

^
 FESTAL DAY OF FRIENDSHIP. 319

of humanity by being true to one. Humanity is a

constellation, in which one star often describes half the
figure.
From this hour forth, his resolution of the heartiest
confession and atonement stood fixed ; and Alban, before
whom life had not yet run down into a jelly of corruption,
but was capable of being analyzed as a sound and well-
defined organism, and who did not, like Charles, complain
that nothing would take right hold of him, but everything
played round him like air, — he it was who was to bring
back youth to his sick wishes, and with the help of the
pure youth's unwavering perceptions and the danger of
losing his friendship, Roquairol proposed forcing himself
to keep with him the word of fruit-bearing repentance,
which to himself he had too ofien broken.
Let us follow him into the day, when he tells every
thing.
54. CYCLE.
ONCE Albano came early in the forenoon to the
Captain, when the latter was usually, according
to his own expression, " a fag-end of a yesterday's
candle stuck on thorns " ; but to-day he stood working
away blusteringly at the piano-forte and writing-desk
by turns ; and, like a dried-up infusorial animal, was
already, even at this early hour, the same old, busy
creature, because wine enough had been poured upon
him, that is to say, a good deal. Full of rapture, he ran
to meet the welcome friend. Albano brought him from
Falterle the childish leaves of love — for the Master of
Exercises had not had the heart to throw them into tho
fire — which he had written from Blumenbiihl to the
unknown heart. Charles would have been moved on the

r
320 TITAN.

subject almost to tears, had he not already been so before

the arrival. The Count had to stay there all day, and
neglect everything ; it was his first day of irregularity ; it
was comic to see how the otherwise unfettered youth, sub
servient, however, to a long habit of daily exertions,
struggled against the short calm, in which he should sail
no ship, as against a sin.
Meanwhile, it was heavenly ; the low-lying day of
childhood, which once clothed him with wings, when the
house was full of guests, and he, wherever he wanted to
be, came up again above the horizon ; the conversation
played and made gifis with everything which exalts and
enriches us ; all his faculties were unchained and in
ecstatic dance. Men of genius have as many festal
days as others do working days, and hence it is that
they can hardly endure a trivial and commonplace*
intercalary-day, and especially on such days of youth !
When Charles conjured before him tragic storm-clouds
from Shakespeare, Goethe, Klinger, Schiller, and life saw
itself colossally represented in the poetic magnifying-
mirror, then did all the sleeping giants of his inner
world rise up ; his father came and his future, even
his friend stood forth there as in new relief, out of
that shining, fantastic time of childhood, when he had
dreamed of him beforehand in these characters ; and in
the internal procession of heroes, even the cloud that
floated through the heavens and the guard-troop march
ing away across the market were incorporated. His
friend appeared to him far greater than he was, because,
like all youths, he still believed of actors and poets,
that, like miners, they always received into their bodies
• Schlendrians, — of a slow fellow, — corresponding to our oldfogy.
— Th.
 THE RED BILLET-DOUX. 321

the metals in which they labored. How often they both

said, in that favorite metaphor of the young man, " Life is
a dream," and only became thereby more glad and wide
awake I The old man says it differently. And the dark
gate of death, to which Charles so loved to lead the way,
became before the youth's eye a glass door, behind which
lay the bright, golden age of the belated heart in im
measurable meadows.
Maidens, I own, — as their conversations are more
fragmentary, matter-of-fact, and less intoxicating, — in
stead of such an Eden-park, go for a spruce Dutch gar
den, well trimmed with crab's-shears and lady-scissors,
which is furnished them every day in the afternoon by the
black hour, which serves up to them on the coffee- or
tea-table, the small black-board * of some evil reports, a
couple of new shawls sitting by, a well-bred man who
passes by with a will or marriage certificate, and finally
the hope of the domestic report. Come back to our
young men !
Towards evening the Captain received a red billet.
" Very well ! " said he to the woman who brought it, and
nodded. "You 'll get nothing out of that, madam," said he,
turning toward Albano. "Brother, guard only against
married women. Just snap once, for a joke, at one of
their red beauty-patches ; instantly they dart their fish
hooks into your nape.t Seven of these hooks, such as
you see here, have made a lodgement in mine alone."
The innocent child Albano! He took it for something
morally great to assert at once the friendship of seven
married ladies, and would gladly have been in Charles's
case ; he could not see the mischief of it, — that these
• Or Black-book. — Ta.
t Allusion to the mode of angling for frogs with a bit of red cloth.
14» n
322 TITAN.

female friends, like the Romans, love to clip the wings of

victory (namely, of ourselves), so that the Divinity may
not fly any farther.
•On a fine day, nothing is so fine as its sunset. The
Count proposed to ride out into the evening twilight, and
on the hill to look at the sun. They trotted through the
streets ; Charles pulled off his great cocked-up hat, now
before a fine nose, now before a great pair of eyes, now
before transparent forelocks. They flew into the Linden
avenue, which was festally decked with a motley wain
scoting of female street-silters.* A tall woman, with pier
cing, fiery eyes, in a red shawl and yellow dress, strode
through the female flower-bed, towering like the flower-
goddess : it was the authoress of the red note ; she was,
however, more attentive to the beautiful Count than to her
friend. On all walls and trees bloomed the rose-espalier
of the evening redness. They blustered up the white
road toward Blumenbiihl ; on both sides the gold-green
sea of spring heaved its living waves ; a feathered world
went rowing about therein, and the birds dove down
deep among the flowers ; behind the friends blazed the
sun, and before them lay the heights of Blumenbiihl,
all rosy-red. Having reached the eminence, they turned
their horses toward the sun, which reposed behind the
cupolas and smoke-columns of the proudly burning city,
in distant, bright gardens. In wondrous nearness lay the
illuminated earth round about them, and Albano could see
the white statues on Liana's roof blush like life under the
blooming clouds. He drove his horse close to his com
panion's, to lay his hand on Charles's shoulder ; and thus
they beheld in silence how the lovely sun laid down his
golden cloud-crown, and, with the fluttering foliage-breath
• Spazior-sitzerinncn, — not gangeritmen, i. e. street-walkers. — Tr.

-
 IN RATTO'S ITALIAN CELLAR. 323

around his hot brow, descended into the sea. And when
it grew dusky on the earth, and a glow lighted up the
heavens, and Albano leaned across and drew his friend
over to his burning heart, then rose the evening-chime
in 15 lumen biihl. " And down below there," said Charles,
with soft voice, and turned thither, " lies thy peaceful
Blumenbiihl, like a still churchyard of thy childhood's
days. How happy are children, Albano, — ah, how hap
py are children ! " " Are not we so ? " answered he, with
tears of joy. " Charles, how often have I stood on high
places, in evenings like this, and fervently stretched out
my childish hands after thee and after the world. Now
indeed I have it all. Truly, thou art not right." But he,
sick with the murmur and ringing-in-his-ears of long past
times, remained deaf to the word, and said, " Only our
cradle-songs, only those cradle-songs, sounding back on
the memory, soothe the soul to slumber, when it has wept
itself hot."
More silently and slowly they rode back. Albano bore
a new world of love and bliss in his bosom ; and the
youth, — not yet a debtor to the past, but a guest of the
present, — sweetly unbent by the long Jubilee of the day,
sank into clear-obscure dreams, like a towering bird of
prey hanging silent on pinions open with ecstasy.
" We will stay all night at Batto's," said Charles, when
they reached the city.

55. CYCLE.

THEY alighted down in Batto's Italian Cellar. The

house seemed to the Count at first, after the con
templation of broad nature, like a fragment of rock rolled
upon it, — although every 6tory, indeed, groans under
324 TITAN.

architectural burdens, — but the heavy feeling of subter

ranean confinement * soon forgot itself, and singular was
the sound that came down into the Italian vault of the
rattling of carriages overhead. The Captain bespoke a
punch royal. If he goes on so in his good fire-regula
tion, and always has a full cask at home as extinguishing-
apparatus, and his hose-pipes well proved, then my book
cannot be touched by the objection, that, as in Grandison,
too much tea is consumed ; more likely is it that too
much strong drink will be absorbed.
Schoppe was sitting in the Italian souterrain. He
loved not the Captain, because his inexorable eye spied
out in him two faults which to him were heartily intolera
ble, " the chronic ulcer of vanity and an unholy guzzling
and gormandizing upon feelings." Charles paid him
back his dislike ; the hottest waves of his enthusiasm
immediately bristled up in ice-peaks before the Titular
Librarian's face. Only not to-day ! He drank so amply
of king's-punch, — whereof a couple of glasses might
have burnt through all the heads of Briareus or of the
Lernean serpent, — that he then said everything, even
pious things. " By heavens ! " said he, healing himself
in this Bethesda-pool by — drawing from it, " since it is
all fiddle-faddle about this growing better, one should ob
fuscate himself t now and then, in order that the baited
spirit may once, at least, go free from its wounds and
sins." " From sins ? " said Schoppe ; " lice and tape
worms of the better sort will by all means emigrate from
my territory, when I grow cold ; but the worst of them
my inner man will certainly carry up with it. By the
• Zusinger means, originally, the narrow space between town-walls
and town. — Tr.
t Literally, press something before his brow. — Ta.
 ROQUAIROL PARODIES SCHOPPE. 325

hangman ! who tells you, then, that this whole church

yard of poor sinners here below shall at once march home
as an invisible church full of martyrs and Socrateses,
and every Bedlam come out a high-light lodge ? I was
thinking to-day of the next world, when I saw a woman
in the market with five little pigs, every one of which
she would fain drive before her with a string tied to its
leg, but which shot off from her and from each other like
wisps of electric light ; now, said I, we, with our few fac
ulties and wishes, which this cultivating age sets out in
quintuplo, fare already as pitifully as the woman with her
drove ; but when we get ten or more new farrows by the
rope, as the second world, like an America, must surely
bring new objects and wishes, how will the Ephorus*
manage his office there? I prepare myself to expect
there greater indescribable distresses, feudal crimes and
oppositions." But Roquairol was in his red blaze ; he
exalted himself far above Schoppe and above himself,
and denied immortality plumply, by way of parodying
Schoppe. "An individual man," said he, "could hardly, on
his own account alone, believe in immortality ; but when
he sees the masses, he has pity, and holds it worth the
while, and believes the second world is a monie lestaceo
of human potsherds. Man cannot come nearer to God
and the Devil hereafter than he does already here ; like
a tavern-sign, his reverse is painted just like his obverse.
But we need the fictitious future for a present ; when we
hover ever so still above our slime, we yet are continu
ally flapping, like carps lying still, with poetic fins and
wings. Hence we must needs dress up the future para
dise so gloriously that only gods shall fit into it, but, just
as in princes' gardens, no dogs. Mere trumpery ! We
* Overseer, a Lacedoeroouiau officer. — Tr.
326 TITAN.

cut out for ourselves glorified bodies, which resemble sol-

diers'-coats ; pockets and buttonholes are wanting ; what
pleasure can they hold, then?" Albano looked upon
him with amazement. " Knowest thou, Albano, what
I mean ? Just the opposite." So easy is everything for
fancy, even freaks of humor.
At this moment he was called out. He came back
with a red billet-doux. He put on his cravat, — he had
been sitting there a la Hamlet, — and said to Albano he
would fly back in an hour. At the threshold he paused,
still thinking whether he should go, then ran swiftly up
the steps.
In Albano the cup of joy, into which the whole day
had been pouring, overflowed with the sparkling foam
of a waggish humor. By heaven ! drollery became him
as charmingly as an emotion, and he often walked round
for a long time without speaking, with a roguish smile, as
slumbering children smile, when, as the saying is, angels
are playing with them.
Roquairol came back with strangely excited eyes ; he
had stormed wildly into his heart ; he had been wicked,
for the sake of despairing, and then, on his knees, at the
bottom of the precipice, confessing to his friend the nature
of his life. This man, so wilful, lay involuntarily bound to
the windmill wings of his fancy, and was now fettered
by a calm, now whirled round by the storm, which he im
agined himself cutting through. He was now, after the
analogy of the fire-eaters, a fire-drinker, in the uneasy
expectation of Schoppe's departure. The latter depart
ed at last, despite Albano's entreaty, with the answer:
"Jledeem the time, says the Apostle; but that means,
Prolong your life all you can : that is time. To this
end the best shops of the times, the apothecaries', re
 MIDNIGHT UNDER THE STARS. 327

quire that a man, after punch royal, shall go to bed and

sweat immoderately."
Now how changed was all I When Zesara joyfully
fell on his neck, — when the delirium of youth grew to
the melodies of love, as the rain in Derbyshire-hollow at
a distance becomes harmonies, — when from the Count's
lips flowed sweetly, as one bleeds in his sleep, his whole
inner being, his whole past life, and all his plans of the
future, even the proudest (only not the tenderest one), —
and when, like Adam in the state of innocence (according
to Madame Bourignon), he placed himself in such crystal
transparency before his friend's eye, not from weakness,
but from old instinct, and in the faith' that such his friend
must be, — then did tears of the most loving admiration
come into the eyes of the unhappy Roquairol at the un
varnished purity, and at the energetic, credulous, unso
phisticated nature, and at the almost smile-provoking
naive and lofty earnestness of the red-cheeked youth.
He sobbed upon that joy-drunken bosom, and Albano
grew tender, because he thought he was too little so,
and his friend so very much in that mood.
" Come out o' doors, — out o' doors I " said Charles ;
and that had long been Albano's wish. It struck one, as
they saw, on the narrow cellar-stairs, the stars of the
spring heaven overhead glistening down through the en
trance of the shaft. How freshly flowed the inhaled
night over the hot lips ! How firmly stood the world-
rotunda, built with its fixed rows of stars high and far
away over the flying tent-streets of the city ! How was
the fiery eye of Albano refreshed and expanded by the
giant masses of the glimmering spring, and the sight
of day slumbering under the transparent mantle of night I
Zephyrs, the butterflies of day, fluttered already about
328 TITAN.

their dear flowers, and sucked from the blossoms, and

brought in incense for the morning ; a sleep-drunken
lark soared occasionally into the still heavens with a loud
day in her throat; over the dark meadows and bushes
the dew had already been sprinkled, whose jewel-sea was
to burn before the sun ; and in the north floated the
purple pennons of Aurora, as she sailed toward morning.
With an exalting power the thought seized the youth,
that this very minute was measuring millions of little and
long lives, and the walk of the sap-caterpillar and the
flight of the sun, and that this very same time was being
lived through by the worm and God, from worlds to
worlds, through the universe. " 0 God ! " he exclaimed,
" how glorious it is to exist ! "
Charles merely clung, with the drooping, heavy feath
ers of the night-bird, to the cheerful constellations around
him. " Happy for thee," said he, " that thou canst be
thus, and that the sphinx in thy bosom still sleeps. Thou
knowest not what I am about to do. I knew a wretch
who could portray her right well. In the cavern of man's
breast, said he, lies a monster on its four claws, with
upturned Madonna's face, and looks round smiling, for a
time, and so does man too. Suddenly it springs up,
buries its claws into the breast, rends it with lion's-tail and
hard wings, and roots and rushes and roars, and every
where blood runs down the torn cavern of the breast. All
at once it stretches itself out again, bloody, and smiles
away again with the fair Madonna's face. O, he looked
all bloodless, the wretch ! because the beast so fed upon
him and thirstily lapped at his heart."
" Horrible ! " said Albano; " and yet I do not quite un
derstand thee." The moon at this moment lifted her
self up, together with a flock of clouds that lay darkly
 ROQUAIROL PAINTS HIMSELF BLACK. 329

camped along her sides, and she drew a storm-wind after

her, which drove them among the stars. Charles went
on more wildly : " In the beginning, the wretch found it
as yet good : he had as yet sound pains and pleasures,
real sins and virtues ; but as the monster smiled and tore
faster and faster, and he continued to alternate more and
more rapidly between pleasure and pain, good and evil ;
and when blasphemies and obscene images crept into his
prayers, and he could neither convert nor harden himself;
then did he lie there, in a dreary exhaustion of bleeding,
in the tepid, gray, dry mist-banks of life, and thus was
dying all the time he lived. — Why weepest thou ?
Knowest thou that wretch?" "No," said Albano, mildly.
" I am he ! " « Thou ? Terrible God, not thou ! " "O, it
is I ; and though thou despisest me, thou wilt be what I
. . . No, my innocent one, I say it not. See, even now
the sphinx rises again. O pray with me, help me, that I
may not be obliged to sin, — only not be obliged ! I must
drink, I must debauch, I must be a hypocrite, — I am a
hypocrite at this moment." Zesani saw the rigid eye,
the pale, shattered face, and, in a rage of love, shook
him with both arms, and stammered, with deep emotion,
" By the Almighty ! this is not true ! thou art indeed so
tender and pale and unhappy and innocent."
" Rosy-cheek," said Charles, " I seem to thee pure and
bright as yonder orb; but she too, like me, casts a long
shadow up toward heaven." Zesara let go of him, took a
long look toward the sublime, dark Tartarus, encompass
ing Elysium like a funeral train, and pressed away bitter
tears, which flowed at the remembrance how he had
found therein his first friend, who was now melting away
at his side. Just then the night-wind tore up a fir-tree
which had been killed by the wood-caterpillar, and Al
33° TITAN.

bano pointed silently to the crashing tree. Charles

shrieked : " Yes, that is I ! " " Ah, Charles, have I then
lost thee to-day?" said the guiltless friend, with infinite
pain ; and the fair stars of spring fell like hissing sparks
into his wounds.
This word dissolved Charles's overstrained heart into
good, true tears ; a holy spirit came over him, and bade
him not torment the pure soul with his own, not take
away its faith, but silently sacrifice to it his wild self,
and every selfish thought. Softly he laid himself on his
friend's bosom, and with magical, low words, and full of
humility, and without fiery images, told him his whole
heart; and that it was not wicked, but only unhappy and
weak, and that he ought to have been as heartily sincere
towards him, who thought too well of him, as towards
God ; and that he swore, by the hour of death, to be such
as he, — to confess to him everything, always,— to become
holy through him. " Ah, I have only been loved so very
little ! " he concluded. And Albano, the love-intoxicated,
glowing man, the good man, who knew by his own ex
perience the sacred excesses and exaggerations of re
morse, and took these confessions to be such, came back,
inspired, to the old covenant with unmeasured love.
" Thou art an ardent man ! " said Charles ; " why do men,
then, always lie frozen together on each other's breasts, as
on Mount Bernard,* with rigid eye, with stiffened arms ?
O why eamest thou to me so late ? I had been another
creature. Why came she f so early ? In the village down
below there, at the narrow, lowly church-door, — there I
first saw her through whom my life became a mummy.
• Strangers who are frozen are placed by tho monks, unburied, be
side each other, each lenning on the next one's breast,
t Linda de Komeiro.
 BOQUAIROL'S CLEOPATRA. 331

Verily, I am speaking now with composure. They car

ried along before me, as I went out to walk, a corpse-like
white youth on a bier into Tartarus : it was only a statue,
but it was the emblem of my future. An evil genius
said to me, ' Love the fair one whom I show thee.' She
stood at the church-door, surrounded by people of the
congregation, who wondered at the boldness with which
she took up, in her two hands, a silver-gray, tongue-dart
ing snake, and dandled it. Like a daring goddess, she bent
her firm, smooth brow, her dark eye, and the rose-blos
soms of her countenance upon the adder's head, which
Nature had trodden flat, and played with it close to her
breast. ' Cleopatra ! ' said I, although a boy. She, too,
even then, understood it, looked up calmly and coldly
from the snake, and gave it back, and turned round. 0,
on my young breast she flung the chilling, life-gnawing
viper. But, truly, it is now all gone by, and I speak
calmly. Only in the hours, Albano, when my bloody
clothes of that night, which my sister has laid up, come
before my eyes, then I suffer once more, and ask, ' Poor,
well-meaning boy ! wherefore didst thou then grow
older ? ' But, as I said, it is all over now. To thee, only
to thee, may a better genius say, 'Love the fair one
whom I show thee ! ' "
But what a world of thoughts now flew at once into
Albano's mind ! " He continues to torment himself,"
thought he, " with the old jealousy about Romeiro. I
will open heart to heart, and tell the good brother that it
is indeed his sister I love, and that eternally." His
cheeks glowed, his heart flamed, he stood, priest-like,
before the altar of friendship, with the fairest offering,
sincerity. " 0 Charles," said he, " now, perhaps, she
might be otherwise disposed towards thee. My father is
332 TITAN.

travelling with her, and thou wilt see her." He took his
hand, and went with him more quickly up to a dark group
of trees, to unfold, in the shadow, his tenderly blushing
soul. " Take my most precious secret," he began, " but
speak not of it, — not even with me. Dost thou not guess
it, my first brother? The soul that I have loved, as
long as I have loved thee ? " — softly, very softly he
added, — " thy sister ? " and sank on his lips to kiss
away the first sounds.
But Charles, in the tumult of rapture and of love, like
an earth at the up-coming of Spring, could not contain
himself ; he pressed him to himself ; he let him go ; he
embraced him again; he wept for bliss; he shut to. Al-
bano's eyes, and said, as if he had found his sister anew,
" Brother ! " In vain did Albano seek to stifle, with his
hand, every other syllable on his lips. He began to paint
to the excited youth — who, amid the secluded and poetic
book-world, bad acquired a higher tenderness than the
actual intercourse of society teaches — the portrait of
Liana ; how she did and suffered ; how she watched and
pleaded for him, and even impoverished herself to wipe
out his debts ; how she never severely blamed, but only
mildly entreated him, and all that, not from artificial pa
tience, but from genuine, ardent love ; and how this, after
all, made up hardly the accessories of her picture. In
this purer inspiration than the foregoing evening had
granted him, what crowned his bliss was, that he could
love his sister, among all beings, the most intensely and
the most disinterestedly, and with a love the most free
from poetic luxury and caprice. Really strengthened by
the feeling that he could, for once, exult with a pure and
holy affection, he lifted once more in freedom his disen
gaged hands, hitherto, like Milo's, jammed and caught in
 THE STAR OF MORNING AND HOPE. 333

the tree of happiness and life, which he would fain have

torn open ; he breathed fresh, living air and courage,
and the plan of his inner perfection was now gracefully
rounded by new good fortune and a consciousness full of
fair objects.
The moon stood high in heaven, the clouds had been
driven away, and never did the morning-star rise brighter
on two human beings.
 ELEVENTH JUBILEE.

Emrroidery. — Anqlaisk Cereus Serpens Musical. FAN

TASIES.

56. CYCLE.

OYFULLY did Roquairol, on the first evening

when he knew his father had gone a journey,
bear to his friend the invitation to go with
him to his mother. Albano blushed charm
ingly for the first time, at the thought of that fiery night
which had wrung from him the oldest mystery ; for hith
erto neither of them, in the common hours of life, had re
touched the sacred subject. Only the Captain could easily
and willingly speak of Linda as well as of every other
loss.
Liana always beheld her brother — the creator and
ruling spirit of her softest hours — with the heartiest joy,
although he generally wanted to get something when he
came ; for joy she flew to meet him, with the book in her
hand which she had been reading as her mother em
broidered. She and her mother had spent the whole day
pleasantly and alone, alternately relieving each other at
embroidering and reading ; as often as the Minister trav
elled, they were at once free from discord and from the
visiting Charivari. With what emotion did Albano recog
nize the eastern chamber, from which he had seen, for
 LIANA EMBROIDERING. 335

the first time, the dear maiden, only as a blind one, stand
ing in the distance between watery columns ! The good
Liana received him more unconstrainedly than he could
meet her, after Charles's initiation into his wishes. What
a paradisiacal mingling of unlooked-for shyness and over
flowing friendliness, stillness and fire, of bashfulness and
grace of movement, of playful kindness, of silent con
sciousness ! Therefore belongs to her the magnificent
surname of Virgil, the maidenly. In our days of female
Jordan-almonds, academical, strong-minded women, of
hop-dances and double-quick-march steps in the flat-shoe,
the Virgilian title is not often called for. Only for ten
years (reckoning from the fourteenth) can I give it to a
maiden ; afterward she becomes more manneristic. Such
a graceful being is usually at once thirteen and seven
teen years old.
Why wast thou so bewitchingly unembarrassed, tender
Liana ! excepting because thou, like the Bourignon, didst
not once know what was to be avoided, and because thy
holy guilelessness excluded the suspicious spying out of
remote designs, the bending of the ear toward the ground
to listen for an approaching foe, and all coquettish mani
festoes and warlike preparations ? Men were as yet to
thee commanding fathers and brothers ; and therefore
didst thou lift upon them, not yet proudly, but so affec
tionately, that true pair of eyes I
And with this good-natured look, and with her smile, —
whose continuance is often, on men's faces, but not on
maidens', the title-vignette of falsehood, — she received
our noble youth, but not him alone.
She seated herself at the embroidery-frame ; and the
mother soon launched the Count out into the cool, high
6ea of general conversation, into which only occasionally
336 TITAN.

the Ron threw up a green, warm island. Alban looked

on to see how Liana made her mosaic flower-pieces
grow ; how the little white hand lay on the black satin
ground (Froulay's thorax is to wear the flowers on his
birthday), and how her pure brow, over which the curly
hair transparently waved, bent forward, and how her
face, when she spoke, or when she looked after new col
ors of silk, lifted itself up, animated with the higher glow
of industry in the eye and on the cheek. Charles some
times hastily stretched out his hand towards her. She
willingly reached hers across ; he laid it between his two,
and turned it over, looked into the palm, pressed it with
both hands, and the brother and sister smiled upon each
other affectionately. And each time Albano turned from
his conversation with the mother, and truc-heartedly
smiled with them. But poor hero ! It is of itself a Her
culean labor to sit idly by where fine work is going
on, such as embroidery, miniature painting, &c. ; but
above all, with a spirit like thine, which has so many
sails, together with a couple of storms in behind, to lie
inactively at anchor beside the embroidery-frame, and
not to be, say, a spinning Hercules (that were easy), but
only one that sees spinning, — and that, too, in the pres
ence of a great spring and sunset out of doors, — and, in
addition to all this, in the company of a mother, so chary
of her words (in fact, before any mother, it is of itself
an impossibility to introduce an edifying conversation
with the daughter), — these are sore things.
He looked down sharply at the embroidered Flora.
" Nothing pains me so much," said he, — for he always phi
losophized, and everything useless on the earth troubled
him grievously, — "as that so many thousand artificial
ornaments should be created in vain in the world, without
 ROQUAIROL MORALIZES AGAIN. 337

a single eye ever meeting and enjoying them. It will

touch me very nearly if this green leaflet here is not
especially observed." With the same sorrow over fruitless,
unenjoycd plantings of labor, he often shut his eyes upon
wall-paper foliage, upon worked flowers, upon architec
tural decorations. Liana might have taken it as a paint
er's censure of the overladen stitch-garden, which, merely
out of love for her father, she was sowing so full, — for
Froulay, born in the days when they still trimmed the
gold-lace with clothes, rather than the reverse, was fond
of buttoning a little silk herbary round his body, — but
she only smiled, and said, " Well, the little leaf has surely
escaped that evil destiny : it is observed."
" What matters a thing's being forgotten and useless ? "
said Roquairol, taking up the word, full of indifference
to the Lector, who was just entering, and full of indiffer
ence to the opinion of his mother, to whom, as well as to
his father, only the entreaties of his sister sometimes
made him submissive. " Enough that a thing is. The
birds sing and the stars move in majesty over the wilder
nesses, and no man sees the splendor. In fact, every
where, in and out of man, more passes unseen than seen.
Nature draws out of endless seas, and without exhausting
them ; we, too, are a nature, and should draw and pour
out, and not be always anxiously reckoning upon the
profit, for watering purposes, of every transient shower
and rainbow. Just keep on embroidering, sister!" he
concluded, ironically.
" The Princess comes to-day ! " said the Lector, and,
delighted with the prospect, Liana kissed her mother's
hand. She looked up often and confidentially from her
embroidery at the courtier, who seemed to be very inti
mate, but who, as a refined man, was full as much
15 v
338 TITAN.

respected and as respectful as if he were there for the

first time.
The announcement of the Princess set the Captain into
a charming state of easy good-humor ; a female part was
to him as necessary for society as to the French for an
opera, and the presence of a lady helped him as much in
teaching, as the absence of a button did Kant.* By
way of drawing his sister off from the flowers, he re
moved the red veil from a statue on the card-table, and
threw it, like a little red dawn, over the lilies on the face
of the embroideress ; just then the door opened and
Julienne entered. Liana, trying to remove the veil, in
her haste to welcome her, entangled herself in the little
red dawn. Albano mechanically reached out to her his
hand to relieve her of the veil, and she gave it to him,
and a dear, full look besides. O how his enraptured eye
shone !
Julienne brought with her a train ofjevx tTesprit. The
Cnpiain, who, like a pyrotechnist, could give his fire all
forms and colors, reinforced her with his ; and his sister
sowed, as it were, the flowers with which the zephyrettes
of raillery could play. Julienne almost said no to yes,
and yes to no ; only toward the Minister's lady was she
serious and submissive, — a sign that, on her arena of dis
putation, among the grains of sand particles of golden sand
still lay, whereas for philosophers the arena is the prize
and the ground, — at once the battle-field, the Champ de
Mars, and the Champs Eli/sees. Upon the Count she
fixed her passionate gaze as boldly as only princesses may
venture to and love to ; and when he returned the glance
• He is said, in teaching, to have always looked at the spoi on a
rtudent's coat where the button was gone; and was embarrassed when
it was sewed on again.
 PRIVATE BALL OF TWO COUTLES. 339

of her brown eye, she cast it down ; but she remembered

him, from her old visit in Blumenbiihl, and inquired after
his friends. He now entered with pleasure upon some
thing that was as ardent as his own soul, —. encomiums.
It is against the finest politeness to praise or blame per
sons with warmth, — things one may. While he portrayed
with grateful remembrance his sister Rabette, Julienne
became so earnestly and deeply absorbed in his eye, that
she started, and asked the Lector about the steps of the
Anglaise which he had led at the masquerade. When he
had done his best to give an idea of it, she said she had
not understood a word of what he had been saying ; one
must, after all, execute it.
And herewith I suddenly introduce my fair readers in
a body to a domestic ball of two couples. See the two
sisters-in-soul, side by side, like two wings on one dove,
harmoniously flutter up and down. Albano had expected
Julienne would form a contrast, by nimble and sprightly
fluttering, to the still, hovering movement of her friend ;
but both undulated lightly, like waves, by and through
each other, and there was not a motion too much nor too
swift.
Hence I have so often wished that maidens might
always dance exactly like the Graces and the Hours, —
that is to say, only with one another, not with us gentle
men. The present union of the female wave-line with
the masculine swallow-like zigzag, as well in dress as in
motion, does not remarkably beautify the dance.
Liana assumed a new ethereal form, somewhat as an
angel while flying back into heaven lays aside his grace
ful earthly one. The dancing-floor is to woman's beauty
what the horse's back is to ours ; on both the mutual en
chantment unfolds itself, and only a rider can match a
34° TITAN.

dancing maiden. Fortunate Albano! thou who hardly

dar'st take the finger-points of Liana's offered hand in
thine! thou gettest enough. And only look at this friendly
maiden, whose eyes and lips Charis so smilingly bright
ens for the dance, and who yet, on the other hand, ap
pears so touchingly, because she is a little pale ! How
different from those capricious or inflexible step-sisters,
who, with half a Cato of Utica on the wrinkled or
tightly stretched face, hop, fall back, and slip round.
Julienne flies joyfully to and fro; and it is hard to say
before whose eyes she loves to flutter best, Liana's or
Albano's.
When it was done, Julienne wanted to begin over
again. Liana looked at her mother, and immediately
begged her friend rather for a cooling off. A mere pre
text ! A female friend loves to be alone with a female
friend ; the two loved each other before people only with
a veil upon their hearts, and longed for the dark arbor
where it might fall off. Liana had a real loving impa
tience, till she could, with her duplicate-soul, her twin-
heart, snatch moments free from witnesses in the garden
of evening and May. They came back changed and full
of tender seriousness. The lovely beings were perhaps
as like each other in their innermost souls and in stillness
as in the dance, and more so than they seemed.
And thus passed with our youth a fair-starred even
ing ! Pardon him, however, that he grasped and pressed
this nosegay so close as to feel some of the thorns. His
heart, whose love grew painfully near another, could
not help finding this other, where there was no sign of
response, at once higher and farther off. Her love was
love of man, — her smile was meant for every kind eye,
— she was so cheerful. In Lilar she easily passed into
 WOMEN AND SPANISH HOUSES. 34I

emotion and general contemplations; not so here, — of

course she would look right sympathetically upon her
wildly loving brother, who, since that confession-night,
had twined himself as if with oak-roots around the dar
ling ; but her half-blind love for the brother might indeed
be only, in the deceiving light of reflection, shining upon
his friend. All this the modest one said to himself. But
what he had enjoyed in full measure of ecstasy was the
increasing, clear, tender, steadfast love of his soul's-
brother.
57. CYCLE.

AS to Liana's secret inclination and Zesara's pros

pects I shall never once institute any conjectures,
although I might erase them again before printing. I
remember what came of it, when I and others, on a for
mer occasion, covered over with our hands Hafenrefler's
official reports upon matters of consequence, and under
took to unfold at length, by pure fancy, how things might
have gone on ; — it was of no use ! And naturally
enough ; for women and Spanish houses have, to begin
with, many doors and few windows, and it is easier to get
into their hearts than to look into them. Particularly
maidens', I mean ; since women, physiognomically and
morally, are more strongly marked and boldly developed,
I would rather undertake to guess at and so portray ten
mothers than two daughters. The bodily portrait-paint
ers make the same complaint.
Whoever observes the influence of night, will find
that the doubts and anxieties which he had contracted the
evening previous about the heroine of his life it has, for
the most part, completely killed by the time it gets to be
towards morning. Albano, in the spring morning, opened
342 TITAN.

his eyes upon life as in a triumphal car, and the fresh

steeds stamped before it, and he could only let them have
the reins.
He alighted with his friend at Liana's after a few years,
that is, days ; the Minister had not yet come back.
Heavens ! how new and bloomingly young was her form,
and yet how unchanged her demeanor! Why is it,
thought he, that I can get only her motions, not all her
features, by heart? Why can I not imprint this face,
even to the least smile, like a holy antique, cleanly and
deeply upon my brain, that so it may float before me in
eternal presence ? For this reason, my dear : young and
beautiful forms are the very ones which are hard for the
memory as for the pencil ; and coarse, old, masculine ones
easier for both. Again he filled himself with joys and
sighs by looking at her, — and these were increased by
the nearness of the garden, wherein June with his even
ing splendor lay encamped. O, if only one moment
could come to him, in which his whole soul might speak
its inspiration ! Out of doors there lay the young, fiery
spring, basking, like an Antinoiis, in the garden, and the
moon, impatient for the fair June-night, stood already un
der the gate of the east, and found the living day and
the lingering sun still in the field. But the mother re
fused to the asking look of Liana the sight of sunset, —
" on account of the unwholesome Serein." * Albano,
with his heart full of manly blood, thought this maternal
barrier around a child's health very small.
The hour for shutting gates upon to-day's Eden would
have struck for him the next minute, had it not been for
the Captain and the Cereus serpens.
* An evening vapor, which people in southern countries shun so
much.
 THE CEREUS SERPENS. 343

The Captain came running down from the Italian roof,

and announced that the Cereus would bloom this evening
at ten o'clock, the gardener said, and he should stay there.
" And thou too," he said to Albano. All that the double
limitations of forbearing tenderness toward sister and
friend would allow he lovingly set at stake, for the sake
of pleasing the latter. Liana herself begged him to wait
for the blooming ; she was so delighted to find it was so
near ! Her soul hung upon flowers, like bees and dew.
Already had her friend, the pious Spener, who fixed an
enraptured eye upon these living arabesques of God's
throne, made her a friend to these mute, ever-sleeping
children of the Infinite ; but still more had her own maid
enly and her suffering heart done it. Have you never
met tender, female souls, into whose blossoming time fate
had thrown cold clouds, and who now, like Rousseau,
sought other flowers than those of joy, and who wearied
themselves with stooping, in valleys and on rocks, to
gather and to forget, and to fly from the dead Pomona to
the young Flora? The thorough-bass and Latin, where
with Hermes proposes to divert maidens, must yield here
to the broad, variegated hieroglyphics of Nature, the rich
study of Botany.
A nameless tenderness for Liana came into Albano's
soul at the little four-seated supper-table ; it seemed to
him as if he were now nearer to her, and a relative ; and
yet he comprehended not his kinswoman, when, from
every serious mood into which her mother sank, she
strove to win her back with pleasantries. Out of doors
the nightingales were calling man into the lovely night ;
and no one pined more to be abroad than he.
For the soul's eyes, the blue of heaven is what the green
of earth is to the bodily eye?, namely, an inward strength
344 TITAN.

ening. When Zesara, at length, came free and clear out

of the fetters of the room, — out of this spiritual house-
arrest into the free realm of heaven, and beneath all the
stars and on the magic Olympus of statues, at which he
had so often longingly looked up, — then did his forcibly
contracted breast elastically expand: how the constella
tions of life moved to meet each other in brighter forms ;
how did spring and night sit enthroned !
The old gardener, who, simply from a grateful attach
ment to " the good-souled, condescending Fraulein," had,
with rare pains, forced these early blossoms from the
Gereus serpens, stood up there already, apparently as an
observer of the flowers, but in fact as an expectant of
the greatest praise, with a brown, indented, pitted, and
serious face, which did not challenge praise with a single
smile.
Liana thanked the gardener before she came to the
blossoms ; then she praised them and his pains. The old
man merely waited for every other one of the company
to be astonished also ; then he went drowsily off to bed,
with a firm faith that Liana would to-morrow remember
him in such a way as to make him contented.
The exotic beads of nectar-fragrance which hung in
five white calyxes, crowned as it were with brown leaf-
work, seized the fancy. The odors from the spring of a
hotter clime drew it away into remote dreams. Liana
only stroked with a soft finger, as one glides over eye
lids, the little incense-vases, without touching with preda
tory hand the full little garden of tender stamina which
crowded together in the cup. " How lovely, how very
tender ! " said she, with childlike happiness. " What a
cluster of five little evening stars ! Why come they only
by night, — the dear, shy little flowers ? " Charles seemed
 LUNA AND LIANA. 345

to be on the point of breaking one. " O let it live ! " she

begged; " to-morrow they will all have died of themselves.
Charles ! thus does so much else fade," she added, in a
lower tone. " Everything ! " said he, sharply. But the
mother, against Liana's will, had heard it, " Such death-
thoughts," said she, " I love not in youth ; they lame its
wings." " And then," replied Liana, with a maiden-like
turning of the tables, "it just stays with us, that's all, like
the crane in Kleist's fable, whose wings they broke, so
that he could not travel with the rest into the warm
land."
This gay, motley veil of deep earnestness was not
transparent enough for our friend. But by and by the
good maiden took pains to look just as the careful mother
wished. The benumbing lily which the earth wears on
her breast, the moon ; and the whole dazzling Pantheon of
the starry heavens ; and the city, with its pierced-work of
night-lights ; and the high, majestic, dark avenues ; and on
meadows and brooks the milk-white lunar-silver, where
with the earth spun itself into an evening-star ; and the
nightingales singing out of distant gardens ; — did not all
this stir omnipotently every heart, till it would fain con
fess with tears its longing ? And the softest heart of all
which beat at this moment below the stars, could it have
succeeded in wholly veiling itself? Almost! She had
accustomed herself, before her mother, to dry away with
her eye, so to speak, the tear, before it grew big enough
to fall.
Singular was her appearance, the next minute, to the
Count. The mother was speaking with her son ; Liana
stood, far from the latter, with face turned half aside, and
a little discolored by the moon, near a white statue of tho
holy Virgin, and looking out into the night. All at ouco
15*

<
 346 TITAN.

she looked upon him and smiled, just as if a living being

had appeared to her in the abyss of ether, and her lip
would speak. Earthly form more exalted and touching
had never before met his eyes ; the balustrade by which
he held swayed to and fro (but it was he himself who
shook it), and his whole soul cried, " To-day, now, I love
the heavenly one with the highest, the deepest love I
have felL" So he also said lately, and so will he say
oftencr: can man, with the innumerable waves of love,
institute measurements of altitude, and point to that one
which has mounted the highest ? Thus does man, where-
ever he may be standing, always imagine himself stand
ing in the centre of heaven.
Ah, at this moment he was again surprised, but it was
with an " Ah ! " Liana went to her mother, and when
she felt in the hand of her darling a slight shudder, she
importuned her to go out of the night-air, and would not
give over till she left with her the magic spot.
The friends stayed behind. According to Albano's reck
oning, it would not, of course, have been too much, if, in
this frank time, wherein our holier thoughts, hidden by
the common light of day, reveal themselves like stars,
they had all lingered on the roof till toward morning.
The two walked for a time up and down in silence. At
last the incense-altar of the five flowers held them fast.
Albano clasped accidentally the neighboring statue with
both hands, and said : " On high places, one wants to
throw something down, — even himself oftentimes; and I,
too, would fain throw myself off into the world, into far-
distant lands, as often as I gaze into the nightly redness
yonder, and as often as I come under orangery-blossoms,
as under these. Brother, how is it with thee? The
heavens and the earth open out so broadly : why, then,
 ALBANO AT LIANA'S PIANO-FORTE. 347

must the spirit so creep into itself?" "Just so do I feel,"

said he ; " and in the head, generally, has the spirit more
room than in the heart." But here, by a delicate guess,
he arrived, through agreeably circuitous routes, at the
accidental discovery of the reason why his sister had hur
ried down so soon.
" Even to obstinacy," said he, " she pushes her care
for her mother. The last time, when she observed that
mother saw her grow pale under the dance, she immedi
ately ceased. To me alone she shows her whole heart,
and every drop of blood, and all innocent tears therein ;
especially does she believe something in respect to the
future, which she anxiously conceals from mother." " She
smiled to herself just before she went away," said Al-
bano, and drew Charles's hand over his eyes, " as if she
saw up there a being from the veiled world." " Didst
thou too see that ? " replied Charles. " And then did her
lip stir ? O friend, God knows what infatuates her ; but
this is certain, she firmly believes she is to die next year."
Albano would not let him speak further. Too intensely
excited, he pressed himself to his friend's breast; his
heart beat wildly, and he said : " O brother, remain al
ways my friend ! "
They went down. In the apartment which adjoined
Liana's they found her piano-forte open. Now that was
just what the Count had missed. In passion — even in
mere fire of the brain — one grasps not so much at the
pen as at the string ; and in that state alone does musical
fantasying succeed better than poetic. Albano, thank
ing, meanwhile, the muse of sweet sounds that there were
forty-four transitions,* seated himself at the keys, with
the intention now to beat a musical fire-drum, and roar
• From one key to another. — Tr.
348 TITAN.

like a storm into the still ashes, and drive out a clear,
sparkling swarm of tones. He did it, too, and will
enough, and better and better ; but the instrument strug
gled, rebelled. It was built for a female hand, and would
only speak in female tones, with lute-plaints, as a woman
with a friend of her own sex.
Charles had never heard him play so, and was aston
ished at such fulness. But the reason was, the Lector
was not there ; before certain persons — and he was one
of them — the playing hand freezes, so that one only
labors and lumbers to and fro in a pair of leaden gloves ;
and, secondly, before a multitude it is easier playing than
before one, because the latter stands definitely before the
soul, the former floats vaguely. And, besides all that,
blessed Albano, thou knowest who hears thee. The
morning air of hope flutters around thee in tones, — the
wild life of youth stalks with vigorous limbs and loud
strides up and down before thee, — the moonlight, un-
desecrated by any gross earthly light, hallows the sound
ing apartment. Liana's last songs lay open before thee,
and the advancing moonshine will let thee read them
soon, — and the nightingale in the mother's neighboring
chamber contends with thy tones, as if summoned by the
Tuba to the field.
Liana came in with her mother, not till late, because
the heavy din of tones had something in it hard and pain
ful to both. He could sec the two sitting sidewise at the
lower window, and how Liana held her mother's hand.
Charles, after his manner, walked up and down with long
steps, and sometimes stood still near him. Albano, in
this nearness of the still soul, soon came out of the wilder
ness of harmony into simple moonlit passages, where only
a few tones moved delicately like graces, and quite as
 SILENT PARTING. 349

lightly dressed as they. The artistical hurly-burly of un-

harmonious ignesfaiui is only the forerunner of the melo
dious Charites ; and these alone insinuate themselves into
the softer souls. Ij; seemed to him — the illusion was
complete — as if he were speaking aloud with Liana ;
and when the tones, like lovers, went on ever repeating
the same thing from heartiness and zest, did he not mean
Liana, and say to her, " How I love thee ! 0 how I
love thee ! " Did he not ask her, " "Why mournest thou ?
why weepest thou ? " And did he not say to her, " Look
into this mute heart, and fly not from it, O pure, innocent
one, my own ! "
How did the good youth blush, when suddenly the
caressing friend placed his hands over his friend's eyes,
which hitherto, unseen in the darkness, had been over
flowing for love ! Charles stepped warmly to his sister,
and she, of her own accord, took his hand and said
words of love. Then Albano took refuge in the mur
muring wilderness of sounds, until his eyes were dried
enough for the leave-taking by lamp-light ; by slow de
grees he let the cradle of our heart cease rocking, and
closed so mildly and faintly, and was silent for a little
while, and then slowly rose. O, in this mute, young
bosom lived every blessed thing which the most glorious
love can bestow !
They parted seriously. No one spoke of the music.
Liana seemed transfigured. Albano dared not, in this
spirit-hour of the heart, with an eye which had so re
cently calmed itself, rest long upon her mild blue ones.
Her deeply touched soul expressed itself, as maidens are
wont, to her brother only, and that by a more ardent em
brace. And from the holy youth she could not, in part
35° TITAN.

ing, conceal the tone and the look, which he will never
forget.
That night he awoke often, and knew not what it was
that so blissfully rocked his being. Ah ! it was the tone
whose echo rang through his slumber, and the dear eye
which still looked upon him in his dreams.
 TWELFTH JUBILEE.

Froulat's Birthday and Proiects. — Extra-Leaf. — Rarrtte.

— The Harmonica. — Night. — The nous Father. — The
wondrous Stairway. — The Apparition.

58. CYCLE.

]APPY Albano! thou wouldst not have re

mained so, qadst thou, on the birthday of the
Minister, heard what he then proposed !
Already, for a considerable time, had Frou-
lay been full of noticeable, stormy signs, and might any
moment, one must needs fear, let the thunderbolt fly
from him ; that is to say, he was gay and mild. Thus,
also, in the case of phlegmatic children, does great live
liness threaten an eruption of the chicken-pox. As he
was a father and a despot, — (the Greeks had for both
only the one word, despot,) — so was it expected of him,
as connubial storm-maker,* that he would provide the
usual storms and foul weather for his family. Connu
bial storm-material for the mere troubling of marriage
can never be wanting, when one considers how little is
required even for its dissolution ; for instance, among the

* Temptttinrii, or Storm-makers, was a name given, in the Middle

Ages, to the master-wizards who could conjure up foul weather.
Weather-prayers were used in the churches against them, and other
wizard-masters called in to counteract the former.
35- TITAN.

Jews, merely that the woman scream too loud, burn the
dinner, leave her shoes in the place for the man's, &c.
Beside all this, there was much in the present case about
which there was a good chance to thunder ; e. g. Liana,
upon whom one might visit the misdemeanor of the
brother, because he obstinately stayed away and begged
for no grace. One always loves to let his indignation
loose upon wife, daughter, and son at once, and would
rather be a land-rain than a transient shower ; one child
can more easily imbitter than sweeten a whole family.
But Froulay still continued the smiling John. Nay,
did he not — I have the proofs — carry it so far, that
when, on one occasion, his daughter, in taking leave of
the Princess, fell upon her neck, — instead of represent
ing to her, with flashing eyes, how one must only accept,
not reciprocate, familiarities with superiors, and must take
care not to forget one's self precisely then, when they do
forget themselves, — and instead of sternly asking whether
she had ever seen him, in his warmest love toward the
Prince, offend against the Dehors, — instead, I say, of
doing this, and hailing and storming the while, did he not
merely break out that once into the fair words : " Child,
thou art too affectionate toward thy distinguished friend ;
ask thy mother ; she knows, too, what friendly liaisons
are"?
Only Liana — although so often deceived by these
calms — was full of unutterable hope and joy at the do
mestic peace, and believed in its permanence, especially
as the paternal birthday was so near, that Olympiad
and normal period upon which and by which the house
reckoned so largely. During the whole year the Min
ister had been looking out for this day, in order, in the
morning, when the congratulations came, not to forgot
 PRIVATE THEATRICALS. 353

to make believe he had forgotten it, but to be astonished

on the subject, — all owing to business, he said ; and at
evening, when the guests came, — on account of business
he never dined, he said, to astonish them. lie was alter
nately the worshipper and image-breaker of etiquette, min
isterial and opposition party thereof, as his vanity dictated.
Liana importuned her brother, till he promised to do
something to please his father; he composed, for the
purpose, a family-piece, in which he introduced the whole
confession-night between himself and Albano, only he
converted Albano into a sister. Liana gladly studied this
part also for the birthday, although she had to deliver
the blooming vest.
The Minister, contrary to expectation, accepted the
vest, the Captain and his hand-bill for the evening's per
formance, graciously ; for he was wont, on former occa
sions, like some other fathers, to growl the louder the
more his children stroked him. He danced away like
a Polack right merrily with his family, and stuck the
rod* behind the fur. Nothing worse at this moment re
volved in his head than the question, where it would be
best to open the amateur theatre, whether in the Salon
de Lecture or in the Salon des bains domestiques ; for
the two halls were entirely distinguished from one an
other, and from the other chambers, by their names.
The day came. Albano, whose invitation Charles had
to extort, because the Minister, out of pride, hated his
pride, brought with him, unfortunately, in his soul, the
tone which Liana had given him the last time to carry
home with him. His hope had hitherto lived upon this
• The Polish dancer always carries a rod under the fur-dress,
wherewith his partner is excused by a blow or two, when she makes
a misstep. — Upper Siltt. Monthly Mag., July, 1788.
w
 354 TITAN.

tone. O blame him not for it ! The airy nothing of a

sigh bears often a pastoral world or an orcus on its
ephemeron's-wing. Everything weighty may, like a
rock, be placed on a point, whereupon a child's finger
can set it in rotation.
But the tone' had died away. Liana knew no other
way than that, in the raiting congregation, — of whose
moral pneumatophobia,* after all, she was not aware in
its full extent, — one should hide every religious emo
tion behind the church fan. Boxes, pit, and farthing
gallery were, almost at the usual play-hour, set off and
filled out with Gratuluntes, all fit to be canons. The Ger
man gentleman was made particularly prominent by the
rich and insolent ostentation of his circumstances. Of the
visiting-company-lane it can, in passing, only be observed,
that in it, as in the antiphlogistic system, oxygen * played
the chief part, which, however, was given out less by the
lungs than by the heart.
When the curtain rose, and Roquairol made that night
of forgiveness and ecstasy pass by again in a still more
glowing form than it had actually had ; when this dreamy
imitation seemed the first appearance of the actual reality,
how hotly and deeply did he burn himself thereby into
his friend's soul! (Good Albano! This art of being his
own revenant, his own ghost, his mock- and mimic-self,
and of counterfeiting the splendid edition of his own life,
should have left thee smaller hopes !) The Count must
needs, in this most grave society that ever sate around
him, break out into an unseemly weeping. And why
did Charles put Albano's words, of that memorable night,
into the mouth of Liana, so bewitchingly interesting in
• Dread of spirits.
t The German for this is lauer-iloff (sour-stuff). — Tn.

^
 LIANA'S RKFUGE. 355

her emotion, and thus make his love, wrought upon by

so many charms, grow even to anguish ?
The German gentleman himself gave to Liana, that
while swan, floating, tinged with rosy redness, through
the evening glow of Phoebus, several loud, and to the
Count annoying signs of approbation. The Minister was
chiefly glad that all this happened in his honor, and that
the point of the last act was still going to throw a very
special epigrammatic laurel-wreath on his crown.
He got the wreath. The pair of children were very
favorably criticised by the Erlangen literary gazette * of
spectators, and by the belles-lettres review, and covered
over with crowns, — with noble martyrs' crowns. The
German gentleman had and used the public right of
ushering in the Coronation, and the Coronation-car.
Base man ! why should thy beetle's-eyes be permitted
to creep gnawingly over the holy roses which emotion
and sisterly love plants on Liana's cheeks ? But how
much gayer still was the old gentleman, — so much so
that he flirted with the oldest ladies, — when he saw the
knight bring out magnificently into full daylight his in
terest in Liana, not fantastically or sentimentally, but
by still and steady advances and marked attention, by
jokes and glances and sly addresses, and at lost by some
thing decisive ! That is to say, the German gentleman
drew the old man into a cabinet, and both came back out
of it vehemently animated.
The lovely Liana, withdrawn into her own heart, fled
from the upas-tree of the laurel away to her comforting
mother. Liana had preserved, in the midst of the stormy
mill-races of daily assemblees, a low voice and a delicate
• A noted review in Richter's day, published at Erlangen near
Nuremberg. — Tr.
356 TITAN.

ear, and the tumult had driven her inward, and left her
almost shy.
The fair soul seldom guessed anything, except a fair
soul : she so easily divined her like ; with such difficulty
her counterpart. Bouverot's advances seemed to her the
usual forward and side steps of manly courtesy ; and his
knightly celibacy did not allow her entirely to understand
him. Do not the lilies of innocence bloom earlier than
the roses of shame, as the purple color, in the beginning,
only dyes pale, and not till afterward puts on the red
glow, when it lies before the sun ? She kept herself this
evening near her mother, because she perceived in her
an unwonted seriousness. When Froulay had taken off
from his head the birthday garland, wherein were planted
more thorns and stalks than flowers, — when he had taken
off the crown of thorns, and stood in his nightcap amidst
his family, — he addressed himself to the business where
upon he had been thinking all the evening. " My little
dove," said he to his daughter, borrowing a good expres
sion from the Bastile,* — "my little dove, leave me and
Guillemette alone." He now laid bare his upper teeth by
a characteristic grin, and said he had, as he hoped, some
thing agreeable to communicate to her. "You know,"
he continued, " what I owe to the German gentleman."
He meant not thanks, but money and consideration.
We love to dwell upon it as a matter of great praise
in the family of the Quintii,t that they never possessed
gold : I adduce — without arraying a thousand other fami
lies of whom the same is to be sworn — only Froulay's.
Certain families, like antimony, have no chemical affinity
whatever with that metal, however much they might wish
* Thus did the prisoners name their turnkeys,
t Alexand. ab A]., v. 4.
 FROULAY SURPRISES HIS LADY. 357

it ; certainly Froulay wished it : he looked very much

to his interest (to nothing else), he willingly (although
only in cases of collision) set conscience and honor aside ;
but he got no further than to great outlays and great
projects, simply because he sought money, not as the
end and aim of his ambition, but only as the means of
ambition and enterprise. Even for some pictures which
Bouverot had purchased for the Prince in Italy he still
owed that individual the purchase-shilling which he had
taken out of the treasury. By his bonds as well as
circulars, he stood in widely-extended connections. He
would gladly have transposed his marriage contract into
a bond, and had, with his lady, at least that most intimate
community — of goods ; for, under present circumstances,
divorce and bankruptcy stood in neighborly relations to
each other ; but, as was said, many men, with the best
talons, — like the eagle of the Romish king,* — have
nothing in them.
He continued : " Now, perhaps, this gene will cease.
Have you hitherto made any observations upon him ? "
She shook her head. " I have," he replied, " for a long
time, and such as were really consoling to me, —favais
le nez bon quant a cela, — he has a real liking for my
Liana."
The Minister's lady never could draw an inference, and
begged him, with disguised astonishment, to come to the
agreeable matter. Comically on his face did the show of
friendship wrestle with the expectation that he should be
under the necessity immediately of being exasperated.
He replied : " Is not this an agreeable matter ? The
knight means it in earnest. He wished now to be pri-
• To distinguish himself from the cngle of the Emperor, who holds
something in both claws.
 358 TITAN.

vately espoused to her ; after three years he retires from

the order, and her fortune is made. Vous etes, je
Fespere, pour cette Jbis, un pen sur mes interets, lis
sont les volres."
Her maternal heart, so suddenly and deeply wounded,
wept, and could hardly be concealed. " Herr von Frou-
lay ! " said she, when she had composed herself a little ;
" I do not disguise my astonishment. Such a disparity
in years, in tastes, in religion." *
" That is the knight's affair, not ours," he replied, re
freshed by her angry confusedness, and, like the weather,
in his coldness threw only fine, sharp snow, no hail. " As
to Liana's heart, I beg you just to sound that." " O,
that innocent heart ? You are mocking ! " " Posito I so
much the more gladly will the innocent heart reconcile
itself to make her father's fortune, if she is not the great
est egotist. I should never love to constrain an obedient
daughter." " N'epuisez pas ce chapitre ; mon cceur est
en presse. It will cost her her life, which already hangs
by such frail threads." This allusion always struck the
fire of wrath from his flint. " Tant mieux," said he ;
" then it will never go further than an engagement ! I
had almost said — Sacre I and who is to blame for that ?
So it fares with me at the hands of the Captain too, —
in the beginning my children promise everything, then
they turn out nothing. But, madam," he said, swiftly and
venomously collecting himself; and, instead of compress
ing his lips and teeth, merely pinching moderately the
auditory organs of a sleeping lap-dog; "you alone in
deed know, by your influence upon Liana, how to dress
and redress everything. Perhaps she belongs to you by
a still prior claim than to me. I am not then compro-
* Iiouverot was a Cathohc.

N
 A RAINBOW OF ONE COLOR. 359

mitted with the knight. The advantages I detail no

further." His breast was here already warmed under
the vulture-skin of rage.
But the noble lady now indignantly rose, and said :
" Herr von Froulay ! hitherto I have not spoken of my
self. Never will I counsel or countenance or consent to
it, — I will do the opposite. Herr von Bouverot is not
worthy of my Liana."
The Minister, during this speech, had several times un
necessarily snappcd-to the snuffers over the wax candles,
and only beheaded the point of the flame ; the fixed air
of wrath now colored the roses of his lips (as the chemi
cal does botanical ones) blue. "Bon!" he replied, "I
travel ; you can reflect on the subject, — but I give my
word of honor, that I never consent to any other match ;
and though it were (whereupon he looked at the lady
ironically) still more considerable * than the one just
projected, — either the maiden obeys or she suffers, de-
cide'z I Mais je me fie a Vamour que vans portez au pere
et a la fiUe ; vous nous rendrez tout assez contens." And
then he went forth, not like a tempest, but like a rainbow,
which he manufactured out of the eighth color only,
namely, the black, and that with his eyebrows.
After some days of resentment with the mother and
the daughter, he rode, as Luigi's business-agent, to Haar-
haar to see the princely bride. The oppressed mother
confided to her oldest and only friend, the Lector, the
sad secret. The two hud now a pure relation of friend
ship toward one another, which, in Franee, in conse
quence of the higher respect for women, is more common.
In the first years of the ministerial forced marriage,
which dawned not with monrng dew, but with morning
* He meant one with the poor Lector.
360 TITAN.

frost, perhaps the hawk-moth • Cupid fluttered after

them ; but by and by children drove away this sphinx.
The wife is often forgotten in the sweet pains of the
mother. She, therefore, with her characteristic cool
and clear strength, took all that was ambiguous in her
relation to Augusti forever out of the way ; and he
made her firmness more easy by his own, because he,
with more love of honor than of women, grew not more
red at any kind of braided-work than at that of a basket.t
and erroneously believed that a man who receives it, has
as much to be ashamed of as a woman who does.
The Lector could foresee that she would also, after
her divorce, — which she postponed only for Liana's
sake, — remain single, if only for this reason, in order
not to deprive her daughter of an allodial estate, Klos-
terdorf, for the reservation of which she had now for one
and twenty years exposed herself to the battering-ram
and scythe-chariot and blunderbuss of the old Minister.
Whether she was not even silently intending her dear
Liana for a man so firm and tender, who differed from
her in nothing but in a worldly coolness toward positive
religion, is another and more delicate question. Such a
reciprocal gift were worthy such a mother and friend,
who must know from her heart, that combined feelings
of tenderness and honor prepare for a loved soul a surer
bliss than the love which genius offers, that alternation
of flying heat and flying cold, — that fire which, like the
electric, always twice destroys, — in the stroke and in the
rebound. The Lector himself started not that question ;
for he never made rash, unsafe plans ; and what one
would have been more so than that of such a connection,
• Literally, " twilight-bird." — Tr.
t To get the batket meant a refusal. — T it.

-
 PLAN FOR LIANA'S RESCUE. 361

in his poverty, or with such a father-in-law, in a country

where, as in the Electorate of Saxony, a statute, so bene
ficial (for parents), can countermand even a marriage of
many years' standing, which has been concluded without
parental consent ?
With moist eyes the Minister's lady showed him the
new storm-clouds, which had again descended upon her
and her Liana. She could build upon his fine eye for the
'world, upon his dumb lip and upon his ready hand for
business. He said, as ever, he had foreseen all this ; but
proved to her that Bouverot, if only from avarice, would
never exchange his knightly cross for the wedding-ring,
whatever designs he might cherish with regard to Liana.
He gave her to surmise, so far as a tender regard to her
sore relations would tolerate, to what degree of readiness
for compliance with Bouverot's wishes the very frailty
of Liana's life might allure the Minister, in order to har
vest it before it had done blooming. For Froulay could
much more nimbly swallow demands against honor than
injuries done to his vanity, as the victim of hydrophobia
can much more easily get down solid morsels than fluids.
Yet all this did not sound so immorally hard to the Min
ister's lady as readers of the middling classes might im
agine ; I appeal to the more sensible among the higher.
Augusti and the Minister's lady saw that something
must certainly be done for Liana during the Minister's
absence ; and both wonderfully coincided in their project.
Liana must go into the country this pleasant season, —
she must muster up health for the wars that were in
prospect, — she must be put out of the way of the knight's
visits, which now the birthday would multiply fourfold, —
even the Minister must have nothing to object to the
place. And where can this be ? Simply under the roof
16
362 TITAN.

of the Director Wehrfritz, who cannot endure the Ger

man gentleman, because he knows his poisonous relation
to the Prince. But of course there are first still other
mountains to be climbed than that which lies on the way
to Blumenbiihl.
The reader himself must now get over a low one ; and
that is a short comico-tragic Extra-leaf upon

The Green-Market op Daughters.

The following is certain : every owner of a very beauti
ful or very rich daughter keeps, as it were, a Pitt under
his roof, which to himself is of no service, and which he
must put to its first use after it has long lain idle, by
selling it to a Regent.* Strictly and commercially speak
ing, daughters are not an article of trade ; for the parental
grand adventurers no one can confound with those female
dealers in second-hand frippery, and stall-women, whose
transit-business one does not love to name ; but a stock,
with which one gains in a South Sea, or a clod, wherewith
one transfers symbolically (scortatione) real estate. "Jis
ne vends que mes passages et donne les figures par dessus
le marche" t said Claude Lorraine, like a father, — and
could easily say it, because he had the figures painted in
his landscapes by others ; — even so in the purchase or
marriage-contract only the knightly seats are supposed,
and the bride who resides upon them is thrown into the
bargain. Even so, higher up, is a princess merely a
blooming twig, which a princely sponsor plucks off and
carries home, not for the sake of the fruits, but because a
bee-swarm of lands and people has attached itself thereto.
* I do not mean (as perhaps may appear from the spelling) Pitt the
Minister, but Pitt the Diamond, which the father of the present Pitt
traded away to the Duke Regent of France, and for whose splinters
he got twelve thousand ducats into the bargain.
t I sell only my landscapes, and throw in the figures.
 MARIAGE DE CONVENANCE DEFENDED. 363

If a father, like our Minister, has not much, then he

can pawn his children, as the Egyptians did their parents
(namely, the mummies of them), as mortgages and hand-
pledges or imperial pawns, which are not redeemed.
At present the mercantile order, which formerly dealt
only in foreign products, has got possession of this branch
of commerce also ; methinks, however, they might find
room enough in their lower vaults to be selfish and
damned, without going up stairs to the daughter. In
Guinea only the nobility can trade ; with us they are cut
off and debarred from almost all trade, except the small
trade in daughters, and the few other things which grow
on their own estates ; hence is it that they hold so fast
to this liberty of trade, and that the noblesse seem here
to be a Hanse alliance for this delicate branch of busi
ness ; so that one may, in some manner, compare the
high standing* of this class with the higher one (in a
literal sense) which marketable people in Rome were
obliged to mount f in order to be seen.
It is a common objection of young and (so-called) sensi
tive hearts, that this sort of transaction very much con
strains, or in fact crushes love ; whereas nothing perhaps
makes so good a preparation for it ns this very thing.
For when the bargain is once concluded and entered by
the bookkeeper (the parson) in the ledger, then does the
time truly come on when the daughter can consider and
provide for her heart, namely, the fair season after mar
riage, which is universally assumed in France and Italy,
and is gradually coming to be in Germany also, as the
more suitable time for a female heart to choose freely
* Siand, in German, has the double meaning of an estaie and a
ttand. — Tb.
t Plant. Bacch., Act 4, Seen. 7, 4, 16, IT.
 364 TITAN.

among the host of men ; her state then, like the Venetian,
grows out of a commercial into a conquering one. The
husband himself, too, is quite as little interrupted after
ward as beforehand in his love by this short business
transaction; all is, that now — as in Nuremberg every-
Jew is followed by an old woman — close upon the heels
of our bridegroom a young one is seen. Nay, often,
the nuptial tradesman conceives an inclination even for
the article which he has carried home with him, —
which is an uncommon piece of good fortune; and as
Moses Mendelssohn, with his bundle of silken wares
under his arm, thought out his letters upon the affections,
so do better men, amidst their business, meditate love-
letters on this branch of trade, and deal with the virgin —
as merchants in Messina* do with the holy virgin — in
Co.; but of course such profitable connections of love with
business must always be rare birds, and are little to be
Counted upon.
The foregoing I wrote for parents who are fond of
sporting with children's happiness ; I will now out of
their and my sport make something serious. I ask you,
in the first place, about your right to prescribe for morally
free beings their inclinations, or even the show of inclina
tion, and by one act of despotism to stretch the poison
ous leaden sceptre over a whole free life. Their ten
years more of apprenticeship to you make as little dis
tinction in the reciprocal liberty as talent or its want.
Why do you not as well enjoin upon your daughters
friendship for life? Why do you not, in the second
marriage, exercise the same right ? But you have even
no right to reject, except in the age of minority, when
the child has not yet any right to choose. Or do you
* Seventh Part of the new Collection of Travels.

^
 THE CURSE OF FORCED MARRIAGES. 365

demand, upon their leaving the paternal roof, as pay for

training them up to freedom, the sacrifice of this very
freedom itself? You act as if you had been educators,
without having been yourselves educated; whereas you are
merely paying off to your children a heavy inherited debt
to your parents, which you can never pay back to them ;
and I know but one unpaid creditor in this respect, the
first man, and but one insolvent debtor, the last. Or do
you shield yourselves under the barbarously immoral Ro
man prejudice, which offers children for sale as white
negroes of the parents, because the power allowed at an
earlier period over the non-moral being slips over, unob
served from the gradualness of its development, into a
power over the moral being ?
If you may, out of love, force children to their happi
ness, so may they afterward, quite as well out of gratitude
force you to yours. But what is, then, the happiness for
which you are to throw away their whole heart, with all
its dreams ? Chiefly your own ; yotir glory and aggran
dizement, your feuds and friendships, are they to quench
and buy with the offering of their innermost souls. Dare
you own aloud your silent presuppositions in regard to
the happiness of a forced marriage ; for example, the dis-
pensableness of love in wedlock, the hope of a death, the
(perhaps) double infidelity, as well toward the connubial
merchant as toward the extra-connubial lover? You
must presuppose them sinners,* in order not to be your
selves robbers?
Tell me not that marriages of inclination often turn out
ill, and forced marriages often well enough, as may be
* I speak more particulnrly of the daughters, because they are the
moat frequent and greatest victims ; the sons are bloodless mass-
offerings.
366 TITAN.

seen in the instance of the Moravians, the old Germans,

and Orientals. Name me rather all barbaric times and
nations, in which — for both indeed only reckon the man,
never the wife — a happy marriage means nothing more
than a happy husband. No one stands by near enough
to hear and to count a woman's sighs ; the unheard pang
becomes at last speechless ; new wounds weaken the
bleeding of the oldest. Further : the ill-luck of fancy-
marriages is chargeable upon your very opposition to
them, and your war against the married couple. Still
further : every forced marriage is, in fact, for the most
part, half a marriage of fancy. Finally : the best mar
riages are in the middling class, where the bond is more
apt to be love ; and the worst in the higher, where it is
more a mercenary motive ; and as often as in these
classes a prince should choose merely with his heart, he
would get a heart, and never lose nor betray it.
Now, then, what sort of a hand is that into which you
so often force the fairest, finest, richest, but rebellious
one ? Commonly, a black, old, withered, greedy fist.
For decrepit, rich, or aspiring libertines have too much
of the connoisseur, too much satiety and freedom, to steal
any other than the most splendid creatures ; the less per
fect fall into the hands and homes of mere lovers and
amateurs. But how base is a man, who, abandoned of
his own character, backed merely by the despotic edict
of a stranger, paying for his fortune with a stolen one,
can now drag away the unprotected soul from the yearn
ing eyes of a weeping love into a long, cold life, and clasp
her to his arms as against the edges of frosty swords, and
therein so near to his eye see her bleed and grow pale
and quiver! The man of honor even gives with a
blush, but he takes not with a blush ; and the better

V
 APPEAL TO MOTHERS. 367

lion, the beast, spares woman ; * but these soul-buyers

extort from constrained beings at last even the testi
mony of free-will.
Mother of the poor heart, which thou wilt bless by
misfortune, hear me ! Suppose thy daughter should
harden herself against the misery which is forced upon
her, hast thou not reduced her rich dream of life to
empty sleep, and taken out of it love's islands of the blest,
and all that bloomed thereon ; the fair days when one
roamed over them, and the perpetual happy retrospect
of them when they already lie with their blooming
peaks low in the horizon ? Mother, if this happy time
was ever in thy breast, then snatch it not from thy
daughter ; and if it was barbarously torn from thee, then
think of thy bitter pang, and bequeath it not!
Suppose, further, she makes the kidnapper of her soul
happy, reckon now what she might have been to its
darling ; and whether she does not then deserve any
thing better than to gratify a jailer, locked in with her
forever by one shutting of the prison-door. But it sel
dom fares so well as this ; thou wilt heap a double dis
aster upon thy soul, — the long agony of thy daughter,
and the growing coldness of her husband, who by and by
comes to feel and resent refusals. Thou hiist cast a
shadow over the time when man first needs the morning-
sun, — namely, youth. O, sooner make all other seasons
of the day of life cloudy ; they are all alike, the third
and the fourth and fifth decades ; only at sunrise let it
not rain into life ; only this one never returning, irre
deemable time darken not !
But how, if thou shouklst be sacrificing not merely joys,
relations, a happy marriage, hopes, a whole posterity, to
• Pliny, Nat. Hist., VIII. 16.
368 TITAN.

thy plans and commands, but the very being herself*

whom thou constrainest? Who can justify thee, or dry thy
tears, when thy best daughter, — for she is the very one
who will be most likely to obey, be dumb and die, as the
monks of La Trappe see their cloister burn down, with
out one of them breaking the vow of silence, t — when
she, I say, like a fruit half in the sun and half in the
shade, blooms outwardly, and inwardly grows cold and
pale ; when she, dying after her lifeless heart, at last can
no longer conceal anything from thee, but for years bears
round the paleness and the pangs of decline in the very
orient of life ; and when thou canst not console her, be
cause thou hast crushed her, and thy conscience cannot
suppress the name of infanticide ; and when at last the
worn-out victim lies there under thy tears, and the wrest
ling creature, so affrighted and so young, so faint, and
yet thirsting for life, forgiving and complaining, with lan
guishing and longing looks, with painfully confused and
conflicting emotions, sinks with her blooming limbs into
the bottomless flood of death, — 0 guilty mother on the
shore, thou who hast pushed her in, who will comfort
thee ? But I would call every guiltless one, and show
her the bitter dying, and ask her, Shall thy child also
perish thus?
• And this is quite probable. Dr. Edward Hill reckoned that in
England eight thousand die annually of unhappy love, — of broken
hearts, as the Englishwomen touchingly expvess it. Beddoes shows
that vegetable food — and of this such victims are particularly fond —
fosters consumption, and that females incline to this. Besides, the
times of longing, which of itself, even without disappointment, as
homesickness shows, is a poisonous revolving leaden ball, occur in
youth, when the seed of pectoral maladies most easily springs up. 0
many married ones fall, under misconstructions, victims to the death-
angel, into whose hand they had, previously to marriage, put the
sword they themselves had sharpened!
t Forster's Views, Vol. I.
 ALBANO AT FROULAY'S. 369

59. CYCLE.
IT was a romantic day for Zesara, even outwardly ;
sun-sparks and rain-drops played dazzlingly through
the heavens. He had received a letter from his father,
dated at Madrid, which stamped at last the black seal of
certainty on the threatened death of his sister, and in
which there was nothing agreeable but the intelligence
that Don Gaspard, with the Countess of Romeiro, whose
guardianship he was now concluding, would travel in
autumn (the Italian spring) to Italy. Two tones had
been, in. his life, stolen away from the musical scale of
love ; he had never known by experience what it was
to love a brother or a sister. The coincidence of her
death-night with that night in Tartarus, this whole claw
ing into the holy images and wishes of his heart, stirred
up his spirit, and he felt with indignation how impotently
a whole assailing world might seek to remove Liana's
image from his soul ; and again he painfully felt, that this
very Liana herself believed in her near decline.
In this situation was he found by an unexpected invita
tion from the Minister's lady herself, — sun-sparks and
rain-drops played in his heaven also. He flew ; in the
antechamber stood the angel who broke the six apoca
lyptic seals, — Rabette. She had run to meet him from
a bashfulness before company, and had embraced him
sooner than he her. How gladly did he look into the
familiar, honest face ! with tears he heard the name of
brother, when he had lost a sister to-day !
The reason of her appearance was this : when the
Director was at the Minister's lady's the last time, the
latter had, with easy, disguised hand, opened her house to
his daughter, " for the sake of a knowledge of empty city
16« x
370 TITAN.

life, and for change," — in order that she might hereafter

venture to knock at his door on her own daughter's be
half. He said he would " forward the female wild deer
to her with pleasure, and all possible despatch." And as
in Blumenbiihl Rabette had answered him No, then Yes,
then No, then Yes, and had held with her mother, even
before midnight, an imperial-exchequer-revision, a mint-
probation-day about everything which a human being
from the country can wear in the city, she packed up
there and unpacked here.
" Ah, I am afraid in there," said she to Albano ; " they
are all too clever, and I am now so stupid ! " He found
beside the domestic trio the Princess also, and the little
Helena from Lilar, that lovely medallion of a fine day to
his stirred heart. Indescribably was he smitten with
Liana's womanly advances to Rabette, as if he shared
her with her. With courtesy and tenderness, a mildness
also, which was without falsehood or pride, came to the
help of the embarrassed playmate, on whose face the in
born gayety and eloquence of nature now singularly con
trasted with her artificial dumb gravity. Charles, with
his ready familiarity, was more in a condition to entangle
than to extricate her ; only Liana gave to her soul and
tongue, if only by the embroidery-frame, a free field ;
Rabette could write with the embroidering needle, no
illuminated and initial letters, indeed, but still a good
running-hand.
She gave — turning her face toward her brother's, in
order to pluck courage therefrom — a clear report of the
dangerous road and upsets, laughing all the while, after
the manner of the people when they are telling their mis
haps. Her brother was to her, at the company's expense,
both company and world ; upon him alone streamed forth
 LIANA'S FRIENDLINESS. 371

her warmth and speech. She said she could from her
chamber see him " play on the harpsichord." Liana im
mediately led both thither. How richly and sublimely,
beyond Rabette's demands upon city-life, was the maid
enly hospitium set out, from the tulip (not a blooming
one, but a work-basket of Liana's, — although every tulip
is such a basket for the finger of spring) even to the
piano-forte, of which she, of course, for the present can
use no more than seven treble-keys for half a waltz ?
Five moderate trunks of clothes — for therewith she
thought to come out, and show the city that the country
too could wear clothes — represented to him in their
well-known flower-pieces and tin bands the old impres
sions (incunabila) of his earliest days of life ; and to-day
every traee of the old season of love refreshed him. She
made him look for his windows, from one of which the
Librarian was fixing a hard gaze on a paving-stone in the
street to see how often he could hit it by spitting.
Here alone, in the presence only of the brother, Liana
spoke more loudly to the sister the word of friendship,
and assured her how happy she meant to make her, and
how sincere she was in all that she promised. O look
not into the flame of the pure, religious, sisterly love with
any yellow eye of jealousy ! Can you not comprehend
that this fair soul even now distributes its rich flames
among all sisterly hearts, until love concentrates them
into one sun ; as, according to the ancients, the scattered
lightnings of night gather themselves in the morning into
one solid solar orb ? She was, everywhere, an eye for
every heart ; like a mother, she never once forgot the
little in the great ; and she poured out (let no one deny
me the privilege of printing this minute example) for
little Helena the cup of coffee, which the Doctor for
372 TITAN.

bade, half full of cream, in order that it might be without

strength or harm.
The impatient Princess had already looked ten times
toward the heavens, through which now beams of light,
now rain-columns flew, till at length out of the consumed
cloud-snow the broad fields of blue grew up, and Julienne
could lead out the delighted young people into the garden,
to the annoyance of the Minister's lady, who did not like
to expose Liana to the Serein, — five or six blasts of the
evening-wind, and the wading through rain-water that
stood a nineteenth of a line * deep. She herself stayed
behind. How new-bora, glistening, and inviting was all
down below ! The larks soared out of the distant fields
like tones, and warbled near over the garden, — in all
the leaves hung stars, and the evening air threw the
liquid jewelry, the trembling earrings, from the blossoms
down upon the flowers, and bore sweet incense to meet
the bees. The Idyl of the year, Spring, parcelled its
sweet pastoral land among the young souls. Albano took
his sister's hand, but he listened with pain to her intel
ligence from home. Liana went far in advance with the
Princess, and bathed herself in the open heavens of con
fidential communion.
Suddenly Julienne stood still, chatting playfully with
her, in order to let the Count come up, and to inquire
after letters from Don Gaspard, and after tidings of the
Countess Romeiro. He communicated, with glowing
countenance, the contents of to-day's letter. In Julienne's
physiognomy there was a smile almost of raillery. To
the intelligence of Linda's intended journey she replied :
" That is just herself ; she will fain learn everything, —
travel over everything. I wager she climbs up on Mont
• A line (French) is one twelfth of an inch. — Tr.
 TO THE FOUNTAIN-HOUSE. 373

Blanc and into Vesuvius. Liana and I call her, for this
reason, the Titaness." How graciously did Liana listen,
with her eyes wholly on her female friend ! " You are
not acquainted with her ? " she inquired of the tortured
one. He answered, emphatically, in the negative, lto-
quairol came up ; " Passez, Monsieur" said she, making
room, and giving him a sign to move on. Liana looked
very earnestly alter. " La void / " said Julienne, letting
the cover of a likeness spring up, by a pressure, on a
ring of her little hand. Good youth ! it was exactly the
form which arose, that magic night, out of Lago Maggiore,
sent to thee by the spirits ! " She is hit there, exactly,"
said she to the agitated man. " Very," said he, con
fusedly. She did not investigate this contradictory *
"very"; but Liana looked at him; "very — beautifully
and boldly ! " he continued ; " but I do not love boldness
in women." " O, one can readily believe that of men ! "
replied Julienne ; " no hostile power loves it in the other
party."
They passed along now through the chestnut avenue
by the holy spot where Albano had seen, for the first
time, the bride of his hopes shining and suffering behind
the water-jets. O it was here that he would gladly, with
that soul of his painfully excited by the mutual reaction
of wonderful circumstances, have knelt down before the
still angel so near him ! The tender Julienne perceived
that she had to spare an agitated heart ; after a tolerably
loud silence, she said, in a serious tone : " A lovely even
ing, — we 'll go to the water-bouse. There is where
Liana was cured, Count ! The fountains must leap, too."
" O the fountains ! " said Albano, and looked with in
describable emotion upon Liana. She thought, however,
* Because he had just said he did not know her. — Tr.
374 TITAN.

he meant those in the flute-dell. Helena cried out behind

for them to wait, and came tripping along after with two
little hands full of dewy auriculas, which she had plucked,
and gave them all to Liana, expecting from her, as col-
lutress of benefices, the flower-distribution. " The little
one, too, still thinks of the beautiful Sunday at Lilar,"
said Liana. She gave the Princess one or two, and
Helena nodded ; and when Liana looked at her, she
nodded again, as a sign the Count should have something
too : " More yet ! " she cried, when he had got some ;
and the more Liana gave, the more did the child cry,
" More," — as children are wont to do, in the hyperboles
of their tendency to the infinite.
They went over a green bridge, and came into a neat
room. Instead of the piano-forte formerly there, stood
a glass chapel of the goddess of music, a harmonica.
The Captain screwed in behind a tapestry-door, and im
mediately all the confined spring-waters shot up outside
with silvery wings toward heaven. O how the sprinkled
world burned as they stepped out on the top !
Why wast thou, my Albano, just at this hour not en
tirely happy ? Why, then, do pains pierce through all
our unions, — and why does the heart, like its veins,
bleed most richly when it is heated? Above them lay
the still, wounded heavens in the bandage of a long,
white mass of cloud ; the evening sun stood as yet be
hind the palace, but on both sides of it his purple
mantle of clouds floated in broad folds away across the
sky ; and if one turned round toward the east to the
mountains of Blumenbuhl, green living flames streamed
upward, and, like golden birds, the ignes Jatui danced
through the moist twigs and on the eastern windows, but
the fountains still threw their white silver into the gold.
 LIANA SINGS TO THE HARMONICA. 375

Then the sun swam forth, with red hot breast, drawing
golden circles in the clouds, and the arching water-shoots
burned bright. Julienne bent upon Albano — near whom
she had constantly remained, as if by way of atonement
— a hearty look, as if he were her brother, and Charles
said to Liana, " Sister, thy evening song ! " " With all
my heart," said she ; for she was right glad of the oppor
tunity to withdraw herself, with the melancholy serious
ness of her enjoyment, and down below in the solitary
room to utter aloud, on the harmonica-bells, all that
which rapture and the eyes bury in silence.
She went down ; the melodious requiem of the day
went up, — the zephyr of sound, the harmonica, flew,
waving, over the garden-blossoms, — and the tones cra
dled themselves on the thin lilies of the up-growing water,
and the silver lilies burst aloft for pleasure, and from the
brightness of the sun, into flamy blossoms, and over
yonder reposed mother sun in a blue pasture, and looked
greatly and tenderly upon her human children. Canst
thou, then, hold thy heart, Albano, so that it shall remain
concealed with its joys and sorrows, when thou hearest
the peaceful virgin walking in the moonlight of tones ?
O when the tone which trickles down in the ether an
nounces to her the early wasting away of her life, and
when the soft, long-drawn melodies flow away from her
like the ro=e-oil of many crushed days ; dost thou not
think of that, Albano ? How the human creature plays !
The little Helena flings up auriculas at the flashing water-
veins, in order that she may dash one of them with the
spray of the intercepted jet, and the youth Zesara bends
far over the balustrade, and lets the stream of water leap
off from his sloping hand upon his hot face and eye, in
order to cool and conceal himself. The fiery veil was
376 TITAN.

snatched from him by his sister ; Rabette was one of

those persons whom this musical tremor gnaws upon
even physically, just as, on the other hand, the Captain
was little affected by the harmonica, and indeed was
always least moved when others were most so; there
were no pains with which the innocent girl was less
familiar than with sweet ones ; the bitter-sweet melan
choly into which she sank away in the idle solitude of
Sundays, she and others had scolded at as mere sullen-
ness. At this moment she felt all at once, with a blush,
her stout heart seized, whirled round, and scalded through
as by hot whirlpools. Besides it had to-day already been
swayed to and fro by the meeting with her brother again,
the leaving of her mother, and her confused bashfulness
before strangers, and even by the sight of the sunny-red
mountain of Blumenbiihl. In vain did the fresh brown
eyes and the overripe full lip battle against the uprend-
ing pain ; the hot springs tore their way through, and
the blooming face with the strong chin grew red and full
of tears. Painfully ashamed, and dreading to be taken
for a child, especially as all her companions' emotions had
remained invisible, she pressed her handkerchief over her
burning face, and said to her brother, " I must go away,
I am not well, I shall choke," — and ran down to the
gentle Liana.
Yes, thou needest only carry thither thy shy pangs I
Liana turned, and saw her hastily and violently drying
her eyes. Ah, hers too were indeed full. When Rabette
saw it, she said, courageously, " I absolutely cannot hear
it, — I must scream, — I am really ashamed of myself."
" O thou dear heart," cried Liana, joyfully falling upon
her neck, " be not ashamed, and look into my eye ! Sister,
come to mc, as often as thou art troubled ; I will gladly
 THE BREAKING UP. 377

weep with thy soul, and dry thy eye even sooner than
my own." There was an overmastering enchantment in
these tones, — in these looks of love, because Liana
fancied she was mourning over some eclipsed star or
other of her life. And never did trembling gratitude
embrace more freshly and youthfully a venerated heart
than did Rabette Liana.
And now came Albano. Awakened by the dying away
of the cradle-song, he had hurried afier her, leaving all
the cold and other drops unwiped from his fiery cheeks.
" What ails thee, sister ? " he asked, hastily. Liana, still
lingering in the embrace and the inspiration, answered
quickly, " You have a good sister ; I will love her as her
brother does." The sweet words of the so deeply affected
souls and the fiery storm of his being carried him away,
and he clasped the embracing ones and pressed the
sisterly hearts to each other and kissed his sister ; when,
at the sight of Liana's confused bending aside of her
head, he was terrified and flamed up crimson.
He must needs fly. With these wild agitations he
could not stay in the presence of Liana, and before the
cold, mirroring glances of the company. But the night
was to be as wonderful as the day ; he hastened with livo
looks, that appeared like angry ones, out of the city to
the Titaness, Nature, who at once calms and exalts us.
He went along by exposed mill-wheels, about which
the stream wound itself in foam. The evening clouds
stretched themselves out like giants at rest, and basked
in the ruddy dawn of America, and the storm swept
among them, and the fiery Briareuses started up ; night
built the triumphal-arch of the milky-way, and the giants
marched gloomily under. And in every element Nature,
like a storm-bird, beat her rustling wings.
378 TITAN.

Albano lay, without knowing it, on the woodland bridge

of Lilar, under which the wind-streams went roaring
through. He glowed like the clouds with the lingering
tinges of his sun ; his inner wings were, like those of the
ostrich, full of spines, and wounded while they lifted him ;
the romantic spiritual day, the letter of his father, Liana's
tearful eyes, his boldness, and then his bliss and remorse
about it, and now the sublime night-world on all sides
round about him, passed to and fro within him and shook
his young heart; he touched with his fiery cheek the
moistened tree-tops, and did not cool himself, and he was
near to that sounding, flying heart, the nightingale, and
yet hardly heard her. Like a sun, his heart goes through
his pale thoughts, and quenches on its path one constella
tion after another. On the earth and in the heavens, in
the past and in the future, stood before Albano only one
form ; " Liana," said his heart, " Liana," said all nature.
He went down the bridge and up the western trium
phal-arch, and the glimmering Lilar lay before him in
repose. Lo ! there he saw the old " pious father " on the
balustrade of the arch, fast asleep. But how different
was the revered form from the picture of it which he had
shaped to himself according to that of the deceased Prince.
The white locks, flowing richly down under the Quaker
hat, the femininely and poetically rounded brow, the
arched nose and the youthful lip, which even in late life
had not yet withered, and the childlikeness of the soft
face, announced a heart which, in the evening-twilight
of age, takes its rest and looks toward the stars. How
lonely is the holy sleep ! The Death-angel has conducted
man out of the light world into the dark hermitage built
over it ; his friends stand without near the cell ; within,
the hermit talks with himself, and his darkness grows
 ALBANO FINDS SPENER DREAMING. 379

brighter and brighter, and jewels and pastures and

whole spring-days gleam out at last, — and all is clear
and broad ! Albano stood before the sleep with an
earnest soul, which contemplates life and its riddles ; —
not only the incoming and the outgoing of life are hid
den with a manifold veil, but even the short path itself;
as around Egyptian temples, so around the greatest of
all temples sphinxes lie, and, reversing the case as it
was with the sphinx, he only solves the riddle who dies.
The old man spoke, behind the speech-grating of sleep,
with dead ones who had journeyed with him over the
morning meadows of youth, and addressed with heavy
lip the dead Prince and his spouse. How sublimely did
the curtain of the venerable countenance, pictured over
with a long life, hang down before the pastoral world of
youth dancing behind it, and how touchingly did the gray
form roam round with its youthful crown in the cold
evening dew of life, taking it for morning-dew, and look
ing toward the east, and toward the sun ! The youth
ventured only to touch lovingly a lock of the old man ;
he meant to leave him, in order not to alarm him with a
strange form, before the rising moon should have touched
his eyelids and awakened him. Only he would first
crown the teacher of his loved one with the twigs of a
neighboring laurel. When he came back from it, the
moon had already penetrated with her radiance through
the great eyelids, and the old man opened them before
the exalted youth, who, with the glowing rosy moon of
his countenance, glorified by the moon overhead, stood
before him like a genius with the crown. "Justus!"
cried the old man, "is it thou?" lie took him for the
old Prince, who, with just such blooming cheeks and
open eyes, had passed before him in the under-world
of dreams.
 380 TITAN.

But he soon came back out of the dreamy Elysium

into the botanical, and knew even Albano's name. The
Count, with open mien, grasped his hands, and said to him
how long and profoundly he had respected him. Spcner
answered in few and quiet words, as old men do who
have seen everything on the earth so often. The glory
of the moonlight flowed down now on the tall form, and
the quietly open eye was illumined, — an eye which not
so much penetrates as lets everything penetrate it. The
almost cold stillness of the features, the youthful gait of
the tall form, which bore its years upright as a crown
upon the head, not as a burden upon the back, more as
flowers than as fruit, the singular mixture of former
manly ardor and of womanly tenderness, — all this called
up before Albano the image of a prophet of the Eastern
land. That broad stream which came roaring down
through the alps of youth, glides now calmly and
smoothly through its pastures ; but throw rocks before
it, and again it starts up roaring.
The old man looked upon the youthful youth, the
oftener the more warmly. In our days youth is, in
young men, a bodily and spiritual beauty at once. He
invited him to accompany him this beautiful night to
his quiet cottage, which stands overhead there near the
church-spire, that looks down from above into flute-dell.
On the singular, mazy paths which they now took, Lilar
was transformed to Albano's eyes into a new world ; like
flying silver clouds of night, the glimmering beauties were
continually shifting and arranging themselves together
into new groups, and occasionally the two companions
penetrated through exotic shrubbery with lively-colored
blossoms and wondrous odors. The pious father asked
bim with interest about his former and present life.

X
 THE PARADOXICAL BRIDGE. 381

They came to the opening of a dark passage into the

earth. Spener, in a friendly manner, took Albano's right
hand, and said this way led up to his mountain-abode.
But soon it seemed to go downward. The stream of the
vale, the Rosana, sounded even in here, but only single
drops of moonlight trickled through scattered mountain
openings overspun with twigs. The excavation extended
farther downward ; still more remotely murmured the
water in the vale. And yet a nightingale sang a lay
that grew nearer and nearer. Albano was composed
and silent. Everywhere they went along before nar
row gates of splendor which only a star of heaven
seemed to fling in. They descended now to a distant,
illuminated magic bower of bright red and poisonous
dark flowers, arched over at once with little peaked
leaves and great broad foliage ; and a confusing white
light, partly sprinkled about by the living rays that
gushed in, and partly flying off from the lilies only as
white dust, drew the eye into an intoxicating whirl.
Zcsara entered with a dazzled eye, and as he looked to
the right, in the direction of the fire that rained in, he
found Spener's eye sharply fixed upon something to the
left ; he looked thither, and saw an old man, entirely like
the deceased Prince, dart by and stalk into a side cav
ern ; his hand quivered with affright, so did Spener's, —
the latter pressed hastily on downward ; and at last there
glistened a blue, starry opening : they stepped out . . .
Heavens ! a new starry arch ; a pale sun moves
through the stars, and they swim, as in play, after him,
— below reposes an enraptured earth full of glitter and
flowers ; its mountains run gleaming away up toward
the arch of heaven, and bend over toward Sirius ; and
through the unknown land delights glide, like dreams
over which man weeps for joy.
382 TITAN.

" What Is that ? Am I on or under the earth ? " said

Albano, astounded ; and his wandering eye fled for refuge
to the face of a living man, — "I saw a dead man."
Much more affectionately than before, the old man an
swered, " This is Lilar ; behind us is my little house ! "*
He explained the mechanical illusion * of the descent.
" Here, now, have I stood so many thousand times, and
feasted myself with so fervent a heart on the works of
God. How looked the form, my son ? " " Like the
dead Prince," said Alban. In a startled, but almost com
manding tone, Spener said, with a low voice, " Be silent,
like me, until his time, — it was not he. Thy salvation
and the salvation of many hangs thereon. Go no more
to-day through the passage."
Albano, half-angered by all the experience of this sin
gular day, said, " Well, then, I go back through Tartarus.
But what means the ghostly creation that everywhere
pursues me?" "Thou hast," said the old man, lovingly
and refreshingly, laying a finger on the youth's brow,
" nothing but invisible friends about thee, — and cast
thyself everywhere upon God. There are a great many
Christians who say, God is near or far off, that his wis
dom and his goodness appear quite specially in one age
or another, — truly that is idle deception ; is he not the
unchangeable, eternal Love, and does he not love and
bless us at one hour just as much as at another ? " As
we ought, properly, to call the eclipse of the sun an
eclipse of the earth, so it is man who is obscured, never
the Infinite ; but we are like the people who look at the
obscuration of the sun in the water, and then, when the
* Weigel. in Jena, invented the invorted bridge (/tons heUroclitut),
a stairway on which a person seems to descend, by going up. — Bush't
Uandbook of Intention*, Vol. VII.

V
 ALBANO RETURNS THROUGH TARTARUS. 383
water trembles, cry out, " See how the glorious sun
struggles ! "
Albano stepped into the solitude of the old man's
neatly ordered dwelling, only with heaviness, because, in
the hot ashes of his volcano, every feeling put forth and
throve the more luxuriantly. Spener pointed over from
his mountain-ridge to the little so-called " Thunderhouse," *
and advised him to occupy it this summer. Albano took
his leave at length, but his agitated heart was a sea, in
which the morning sun is glowingly still half reflected,
and into which, at evening, a lead-colored storm dips, and
which swells glistening under the storm. He looked up
from below at the old man, who was looking after him ; but
he would hardly have wondered to day if he had either
sunk or ascended. With indignant and spirited resolution.*,
to stake and sacrifice his life for his love, at which cold
hands were grasping, he strode without any fear through
Tartarus, which, by the magnifying mirror of night, was
distorted into a black giant armament : thus is the spirit-
world only a region of our inner world, and / fear only
myself. When he stood before the altar of the heart in
the dumb night, where nothing was audible but the
thoughts, then did the bold spirit advise him repeatedly
to call upon the dead old man, and swear aloud by his
heart, full of dust ; but when he looked up to the fair
heavens, his heart was consecrated, and only prayed,
" O good God, give me Liana ! "
It grew dark ; the clouds, which he had taken for the
shining mountains of a new earth, stretching away into
the heavens, had reached the moon, and overshadowed it
with darkness.
* It had the name from its height and its being so often struck wiih
lightning.
 THIRTEENTH JUBILEE.

Roquairou's Love. — Philippic against Lovers. — The Pic

tures. — Alrano Alrani. — The Harmonic Tete-a-tete. —
The Rids to BlumknrOhl.

60. CYCLE.

UT of the drops which the harmonica had

wrung from Rabette's heart the old enchanter,
Fate, is perhaps preparing, as other enchanters
do out of blood, dark forms ; for Roquairol
had seen it, and wondered at the sensibility of a heart
which hitherto had been set in motion more by occu
pations than by romances. Now he drew nearer to her
with a new interest. Since the night of the oath, he
had drawn his heart out of all unworthy fetters. In
this freedom of victory, he went forward proudly, and
stretched out his arms more lightly and longingly after
noble love. He now visited his sister incessantly ; but
he still kept to himself. Rabette was not fair enough
for him, beside his tender sister. She was an artifi
cial ribbon-rose beside one by Van der Ruysch ; she said
herself, naively, that she looked, with her village-com
plexion in white lawn, like black-tea in white cups.
But in her healthy eyes, not yet corroded into dimness
by tragical drops, and on her fresh lips, life glowed ; her
powerful chin and her arched nose threatened and prom
 THE VINE ON THE LIGHTNING-ROD. 385

ised spirit and strength ; and her upright and downright

heart grasped and repelled decidedly and intensely. He
determined to prove her. The Talmud * forbids to in
quire afier the price of a thing, when one does not mean
to buy it ; but the Roquairols always cheapen and look
further. They tear a soul in two, as children do a bee,
in order to eat out of it the honey which it would gather.
They borrow from the eel, not only his dexterity in
slipping away, but also the power to twine around the
arm and crush it.
And now he let all the dazzling powers of his multi
form nature play before her, — the sense of his ascen
dency permitted him to move freely and gracefully, and
the careless heart seemed open on all sides, — he linked
so freely earnestness and jest, glow and glitter, the great
est and the least, and energy with mildness. Unhappy
girl ! now art thou his ; and he snatches thee from thy
terra firma with rapacious wings up into the air, and
then hurls thee down. Like a vine running on a light
ning-rod, thou wilt richly unfold thy powers and bloom
up on him ; but he will draw down the lightning upon
himself and thy blossoms, and strip thee of thy leaves
and rend thee utterly.
Rabette had never conceived of such a man, much less
seen one ; he made his way by main force into her sound
heart, and a new world went in after him. Through
Liana's love for the Captain, hers mounted still higher ;
and the two could speak of their brothers in friendly
reciprocation. The good Liana sought to bring to the
help of her friend many a thing which would hardly
take hold, particularly mythology, which, by reason of
the French pronunciation of the names of the gods, was
* Busa Metzia, c. 4, m 10.
17 T
386 TITAN.

still more unserviceable to her. Even with books Liana

sought to bring them together ; so that reading was to
her a sort of week-day Divine service, which she attended
with true devotion, and was always delighted when it
was over. Through all these water-wheels of knowl
edge streamed Roquairol's love, and helped drive and
draw. How many blushes now flitted without any occa
sion over her whole face ! The laugh which once ex
pressed her gayety, came now too often, and betokened
only a helpless heart, which longed to sigh.
So stood matters with her when Charles once play
fully stole behind her and covered her eyes with his
hand, in order, under the mask of her brother's voice,
to give her soft, sisterly names. She confounded the
similar voices ; she pressed the hand heartily, but her
eye was hot and moist. Then she discovered the mis
take, and flew with the concealed evening and morning
redness of her countenance out of the room. Now he
looked closer into the eyes of Liana, who blamed him
for it, and hers too had wept. She would fain at first
conceal from him the object of the sisterly emotion ; but
another's No was to him, of old, an auxiliary verb, — a
fair wind blowing him into port. Liana grew more and
more agitated ; at last she related how Rabette's account
of Albano's youthful history had drawn from her in turn
the history of his early relations, and that she had por
trayed to her the bloody night of the masquerade, and
even shown his bloody dress. " And then," said Liana,
" she wept with me as heartily as if she had been thy
sister. O, it is a dear heart ! " Charles saw the two
linked together like two pastures, namely, by the rain
bow which stands over both with its drops ; he drew
her with thankful love to his breast. " Art thou then

X
 ALBANO QUARRELS WITH HIS TUTOR. 387

happy ? " asked Liana, in a tone ominous of something

sad.
She must needs disclose to him her full heart, and tell
him all. He heard with astonishment, how that whole
Tartarus-night, on which the unknown voice had prom
ised Linda de Romeiro to his friend, had been made
known to her. By whom ? She held an inexorable
silence; he contented himself, because, to be sure, it could
only have been Augusti, who was the only one that knew
of it. "And now believest thou, thou heart from heaven,"
said he, " that I and the brother of my soul could ever
separate by robbing each other? O, it is all otherwise, all
otherwise ! He curses the mock-spirits and the object of
the mimicry. O he loves me ; and my heart will rejoice
in the day when it is his ! " The touching ambiguity of
these last words dissolved him in a sacred melancholy.
But she, in the midst of the heartiest overflow of feel
ing, took part, as if out of piety, with the spirits, and said :
" Speak not thus of spiritual apparitions ! They exist, that
I know, — only one needs not fear them." Here, how
ever, with firm hand she held fast the veil over her experi
ences ; he too had known long since, that, notwithstanding
her most tremblingly delicate feelings, which shrunk even
from the sight of the blue veins on the lily hand, as from
a wound, she had appeared unexpectedly courageous be
fore the dead and in the ghostly hours of fantasy.
Behind the waves of so different an emotion which now
drove his heart up and down, Rabette was eclipsed.
He burned now only for the hour when he could tell his
Albano the singular treachery of the Lector.
388 TITAN.

61. CYCLE.
EVEN before the Captain disclosed to his friend Au
gust's probable treachery, Albano was almost en
tirely at variance with his two tutors. In a circle full of
young hearts which beat for one another, and still more
fondly fight for one another, two always take an indissolu
ble hold of each other, and become one at others' expense.
Albano boldly broke with every one whom Charles
displeased. Besides, Schoppe had long been loved by
few, because few can endure a perfectly free man ; the
flower-chains hold better, they think, when galley-chains
run through them. He, therefore, could not bear it, when
one " with too close a love clambered up round him so
tightly that he had the freedom of his arms no more than
if he wore them in bandages of eighty heads." * The
sarcastic liveliness of his pantomime chilled the Captain,
by having the appearance of a somewhat stricter obser
vation, more than did the composed face of the Lector,
who from that very circumstance took everything more
sharply into his still eye.
The good Schoppe had one fault which no Albano
forgives, namely, his intolerance toward the "female
saintly images of isinglass," as he expressed it, — toward
the tender errors of the heart, the sacred excesses by
which man weaves into this short life a still shorter
pleasure. On one occasion Charles walked up and down
with arms akimbo and drooping head, as on a stage, and
said, accidentally, so that the Titular-librarian overheard
him, "OI was very' little understood by the world in
my youth." He said nothing further ; but let anybody

• The head of a bandage is a technical term in surgery. — Tr.

 SCHOPPE LASHES CAPTAIN CHARLES. 389
shake, in jest, a baker's dozen * of hornets, a basket of
crabs, a mug of wood-pismires, all at once over the
Librarian's skin, and take a flying observation of the
effect of the stinging, nipping, biting ; then can one, in
a measure at least, conceive what a quivering, swelling,
and irritation there was in him, so soon as he heard the
above-mentioned phraseology. " Mr. Captain ! " he be
gan, drawing in a long breath, " I can stand through a
good deal on this rusty, stupid earth, — famine, pesti
lence, courts, the stone, and fools from pole to pole ; but
your phraseology surpasses the strength of my shoulders.
Sir Captain, you may, most certainly, use this rhetoric
with perfect justice, because you, as you say, are not
understood. But, 0 heavens ! O devils ! I hear, in fact,
thirty thousand young men and maidens, from one cir
culating-library to another, all with inflated breast, saying
and groaning round and round, that nobody understands
them, neither their grandfather nor their god-parents,
nor the con rector, when, in fact, the wrapping-paper.t
commonplace pack does not itself understand. But the
young man means by this merely a maiden, and the
maiden a young man ; these can appreciate each other.
Out of love will I undertake, as out of potatoes, to serve
up fourteen different dishes ; let one just shear off, as
they do off of the bears in Gbttingen, its beastly hair,
and no Blumenbach would any longer recognize it.
" Mr. Von Froulay, I have somewhat often compared
* The German word mandtl (literally almond) means a collection
of Jiftten. There being no one word expressing it collectively in Eng
lish, baktr't dozen (which means thirteen) seems to come near enough.
— Tr.
t See Dr. Franklin's verses, comparing different classes of people
to different kinds of paper. Sparks's edition of Franklin's Works, YoL
H. p. 161. — Tb.
39° TITAN.

this cursed exaltation of souls, merely from low motives,

with the English horsetails, which also always stand point
ing to heaven, only because their sinews have been cut.
Must not one be mad, when one hears every day, and reads
every day, how the commonest souls, the very doggerels
and trumpeters' pieces of Nature, think themselves exalted
by love above all people, like cats that fly with hogs'
bladders buckled on to them ; how they rendezvous in the
hare's form and emporium of love, the other world, as on
a Blocksberg, and how, on this finch-ground, in this theat
rical green-room (or dressing-room, which then becomes
the opposite), they drive their business until they are
coupled. Then it 's all over ; fancy and poesy, which
now should be to them for the first time serviceable, are
caught I They run away from them like lice from the
dead, although on these the hair continues to sprout out.
They shudder at the next world ; and when they become
widowers and widows, they do their courting very well
without the hogs' bladders, and without the decoy-feath
ers, and the folding screen of the next world. Such
a thing as this now, Sir Captain, provokes one, and then,
in the heat, the just must suffer with the unjust, as your
ears unfortunately attest ! "
Alban, who never light-mindedly forgave, silently sep
arated himself from a heart, which, as he unjustly said,
quenched the flames of love with satiric gall.
In the chain of friendship with Augusti, one ring after
another absolutely broke in twain. The Count found
in the Lector a spirit of littleness which was more re
volting to him than any bad spirit. The elegance of a
good courtier, his propensity to keep the smallest secrets
as faithfully as the greatest, his passion for starting up
behind every action a long plan, his thirsty curiosity for
 AUGUSTI JEALOUS OF ROQUAIROL. 391

genuine historical sources, at court and in the city, and his

coldness toward philosophy, so dried up the overstrained
image which Albano had formed of him, that it wrinkled
up and grew full of rents. Such dissimilarities never
rise among cultivated men to open feuds ; but they
secretly put upon the inner man one piece of armor after
another, till he stands there in solid mail, and strikes out.
Now, in addition to all this, the Lector bore the Cap
tain a hearty grudge, because he cost the Minister's lady
many anxious hours, and Liana, and even the Count,
much money, and because he seemed to him to pervert
the youth. The otherwise directly ascending flame of
Albano was now, by the obstacles thrown in the way of
his love, bent on all sides, and, like soldering fire, burned
more sharply ; but this sharpness Augusti ascribed to
the friend. Albano appeared to those whom he loved
warmer, to those whom he endured colder, than he was,
and his earnestness was easily confounded with defiance
and pride ; but the Lector imagined that Albano's love
was stolen from him by Charles.
He undertook, with equal refinement and frankness,
to play off on the Count a good map-card of the spots
which were thickly sown in the heavenly body of this
Jupiter. But he tore every map. Charles's painful
confessions on that night extinguished all additions by
other hands. And Albano's grand faith, that one must
shield a friend entirely, and trust him entirely, warded off
every influence. O it is a holy time, in which man de
sires offerings and priests, without fail, for the altar of
friendship and love, and — beholds them ; and it is a too
cruel time, in which the so often cheated, belied bosom
prophesies to itself, on another's bosom, in the midst of
the love-draught of the moment, the cold neighborhood
of bankruptcy !
392 TITAN.

As the Lector saw perfectly that Alban, at many of

his charges against Charles, — for instance, of his wild-
ness and disorder, — remained cold, for the reason that
he might deem himself to be reproached over another's
shoulders, as the French (according to Thickness) take
home the praises given to another ; he now, instead of
the point of similarity, took hold of an entire dissimi
larity of the Captain, his light-mindedness toward the
sex. But this only made the matter worse. For, in
matters of love, Charles was to him the higher fire-
worshipper, and the Lector only the one whom the coal
of this fire blackens. Augusti cherished, in regard to
love, pretty nearly the principles of the great world,
which, merely for honor's sake, he never coined into
action, and he assigned only the cloud-heaven near the
earth to love. The Captain, however, spoke of a third
heaven, or heaven of joy, as belonging thereto, wherein
only saints are the blest. Augusti, after the manner of
the great world, spoke much more freely than he acted,
and sometimes as openly as if he were dining in the
hall of a watering-place. Charles spoke like a maiden.
The virgin ear of Albano, which is easily corrupted in
good visiting-parlors, and which in study-chambers re
mains intact, united to his want of the experience that a
cynical tongue is often found in the most continent men,
for instance, in our buffoonery-loving forefathers, and an
ascetic one in modest libertines, — these two things must
naturally have involved the pure young man in a double
error.
Thus did Augusti start up within him more and
more storm-birds. Both came often to the verge of a
complete feud and challenge ; for the Lector had too
much honor to fear any one thing, and dared in cold
blood as much as another in hot.
 A PURPOSE RIPENS IN ALBANO. 393

Now, at length, did Charles disclose fully to his friend,

though with all the tenderness of friendship, Liana's ac
quaintance with that Tartarus-night. "The otherwise
reserved Lector must be after nearer advantages with
his tattling," Albano concluded, and now the toad of
jealousy, which lives and grows in the living tree without
any visible way in or out, nursed itself to full size in
his warm heart. Unanswered love is besides the most
jealous. God knows whether he is not scenery-master
of these ghost scenes working in and through each other
with so many wheels. All these are Albano's private
conclusions ; open accusations were forbidden by his
sense of honor. But his warm heart, always expressing
itself, demanded a warmer society, and this he found
when he followed the pious father, and went to Lilar
into the Thunderhouse, into the midst of the flowers and
summits, in order, lying nearer to the heart of Nature,
to dream and enjoy more sweetly.
There was only one warm, sun-bright spot for him in
Charles's historical picture ; namely, the hope that per
haps only the mistakes about his relation to the Countess,
out of which Liana had been helped by her brother, had
dictated to her the evenly cold deportment which she
had hitherto maintained towards him. On this sunny
side Rabette threw a billet, in which she wrote him that
she was going back to her parents on Saturday, because
the Minister was coming. That hope, this intelligence,
the prospect of less favorable circumstances, his going to
Lilar, — all this decided him in the purpose of snatch
ing to himself a solitary moment, and therein casting off
before Liana the veil from his soul and hers.

17*
394 TITAN.

68. CYCLE.
SINGULARLY did events cut across each other on
the day when Albano came into the Ministerial
house to take leave of Rabette, and (a trembling voice
said within him) of Liana, too. Rabette beckoned to
him, from the window, to come to her chamber. She
had folded together the Icarus's wings of her apparel
into the trunks. Over her inner being a prostrating
storm swept to and fro. Charles had disturbed the
equilibrium of her heart by his warmth, and had not
restored it again by a word of recompense. Like the
doves, she flutters around the high conflagration. O may
she not, like them, escape with singed feathers, and come
back again, and at last fall into it ! She said she had
longed for her friends, ever since she saw yesterday a
flock of sheep driven through the city. She should ac
company, on Saturday, Liana and her mother to attend
the consecration of the church, and the interment of the
princely couple. He begged her, so abruptly and eagerly,
to contrive for him to-day a solitary moment with her
friend in the garden, that he absolutely did not hear her
sweet news of Liana's intention to stay there and make
her a visit.
Alas ! he found with the Minister's lady that showman
of magnificent pictures, who, like Nature, made not only
a beginning of his spring, but an end of his autumn, with
poisonous flowers,* Mr. Von Bouverot. Dian had sent
hiin four heavenly copies from Rome ; these he opened
with dry, artistic palate. Liana received the Count again
as ever. Was, perhaps, Raphael's Madonna delta Sedia,
• It is well known that spring flowers, on account of dampness and
shade, are for the most part suspiciouv; as also the autumnal ones.
 BOUVEROT CRITICISING PICTURES. 395

in whose heaven-descended palladium her tender soul

was absorbed, the seal-keeper of her holiest mystery ?
The all-forgetting artistic passion became her so grace
fully ! Her optic nerves had become, by her long paint
ing, like delicate feelers, which closed fast around lovely
forms. Certain female forms, like this one, stirred up
her whole soul. For she had, in childhood, sketched
in her inner heaven shining constellations of the heroines
of romances, and in general of unseen women ; great
ideas of their spirit, their heavenly walk, their exaltation
above all that she had ever seen ; and she had felt equal
shyness and longing to meet one such. Hence she went
forth out of this colossal nymphcum * of her fancy, so
easily dazzled, and with such warm, heartfelt reverence,
to meet pure female friends and the Countess Romeiro.
Now certain pictures brought back these altar-pieces
like copies. The good girl thought not of this, but her
friend may well have done so, that one needed only to
quicken into life the eyes of this loving, down-gazing
Mary, and merely to warm these lips with tones, and
then one had Liana.
The German gentleman went on, and now placed be
side each other Raphael's Joseph, telling his brothers a
dream, and the older Joseph, interpreting one to a king,
and began to translate the three Raphaels into words,
and that with so much felicity, and not only with so
much insight into mechanics and genius, but also with
such a precise setting forth of every human and moral
lineament, that Albano took him for a hypocrite, and
Liana for a very good man. She seized every word
with a wide-open heart. When Bouverot painted the
prophesying Joseph, as at once childlike, natural, still,
• Museum of Nymphse or Chrysalides. — Tr.

'
396 TITAN.

and firm as a rock, and glowing and threatening, there

stood the original at her side.
There also dropped from the German gentleman much
thought about Da Vinci's boy Christ in the Temple,
about the magnificently executed fraternization and
adoption of the boy and the youth in one face. Liana
had also copied the copy, but she and her mother were
modestly silent on the subject.
But at last Franciscus Albani disturbed the calm that
had hitherto prevailed, by his " Repose during the Flight."
While he acted the dream-interpreter to these pictur
esque dreams, and Kabette had her eyes fastened sharply
on the Saint Joseph of this picture, sitting beside Mary,
with an open book, Liana said, unluckily, "A fine
Albani ! " "I should think not," Kabette whispered ;
" brother is much more beautiful than this praying Jo
seph ! " She had confounded Albani with Albano ; her
whole picture-gallery lay in the hymn-book, whose
hymns she separated from each other with golden-red
saints. The others did not comprehend ; they knew him
only as Count of Zesara, — but Liana, sweetly blushing,
flung at Rabette a tenderly reproving glance, and looked,
with mute endurance, more closely at another picture.
Never before in Albano, — in whom the strongest and
the tenderest feelings coupled, as the echo makes thunder
louder and music lower, — had the bitter-sweet mingling
of love and pity and shame wrought more warmly, and
he could have at once knelt down before the maiden, and
yet have kept silent.
The German gentleman had finished, and said to the
men, with a look full of victory, " He had, however,
something more in his case, which bore away the palm
from the Raphaels ; and he would beg them to follow
 LIANA UNDER THE BED PARASOL. 397

him into the adjoining apartment." On the way, he ob

served, that few works were executed with such mag
nificent freedom and bold abandon. In the room he un
packed a little bronze Satyr, against whom an overtaken
nymph is defending herself. " Divine ! " said Bouverot,
and held the group by a thread, in order not to rub off
the rust. " Divine ! I set the Satyr against the Christ ! "
Few have even a moderate idea of the amazement of
my hero, when he saw the critic set virtue and vice at
once at a round table, without any quarrel for precedency.
With a fiery glance of contempt, he turned away, and
wondered that the Lector remained. It seems to be un
known to him that painting, like poetry, only in its child
hood related to gods and divine service, but that by and
by, when they grew up to a higher stature, they must
needs stride out from this narrow churchyard, — as a
chapel • was originally a church with church-music, until
both were left out, and the pure music retained. Bou
verot had the regard for pure form in so high a degree,
that not only the smuttiest, most immoral subject, but
even the most pure and devout, could not contaminate
his enjoyment ; like slate, he stood the two proofs of
heating and freezing, without undergoing any change.
Albano had seen the maidens through the window in
the alley, and hastened down to take leave of his sister,
and to something more weighty. He came, with fuller
roses on his cheeks than those which glowed around
him, to a grassy bank, where Liana, with his sister, was
sitting behind the red parasol, with half-drooping eyelids,
and head bent aside, softly absorbed in the harvest of
evening, suffused with a sunny redness by the parasol,
in white dress, with a little slender black cross on her
• In the artistic technical sense. — Ta.
398 TITAN.

tender bosom, and with a full rose ; she looked upon

our lover so simply, her voice was so sisterly, and all
was such pure, careless love ! She told him how de
lighted she was with the scenes of his youth, and with
country life, and how Kabette would conduct her every
where; and particularly to the consecration discourse,
which her father-confessor, Spener, was to deliver on
Sunday. She talked herself into a glow, with picturing
how greatly the great breast of the old man would be
moved by the dirge and pa;an over the ashes of his
princely friend.
Rabette had nothing in her mind but the solitary min
ute, which she would fain leave her brother to enjoy with
her. She begged her, in a lively manner, to play for her
yet once more on the harmonica. Albano, at this pro
posal, plucked for himself a moderate nosegay from the —
foliage of the tree that hung over his head. Liana looked
at her warningly, as much as to say : " I shall spoil thy
cheerfulness for thee again." But she insisted. At the
entrance into the water-house, a light blush flitted across
Albano, at the thought of the latest past and the nearest
future.
Liana speedily opened the harmonica, but the water,
the colophonium* of the bells, was wanting. Rabette
was just going to fill a glass down at the fountains, for
the sake of leaving them alone ; but the Count, from
manly awkwardness about entering at once into a ruse,
stepped courteously before her and fetched it himself.
Hardly, at length, had the lovely, pleasing creature laid,
with a sigh, her delicate hands on the brown bells, when
Rabette said to her, she would go down into the alley
to hear how it sounded at a distance. As if at the pain-
• A black resin, used for violin-strings. — Tr.
 THE TEMPLE OF LOVE. 399

ful sunstroke of a too sudden and great pleasure, his

heart started up, he heard the triumphal car of love
rolling afar off, and he was fain to leap into it and rattle
away into life. The credulous Liana took the with
drawal for a veil which Rabette wished to throw over
her eye, sweetly breaking into tears at music, and imme
diately removed her hands from the bells ; but Rabette
kissed her entreatingly, pressed back her hands upon
them, and ran down. " The true heart ! " said Liana ;
but this pure, guileless confidence in her friend touched
him, and he could not say, Yes.
When, in the meadows of Persia, a happy one, who,
on the luxuriant enamel has been sleeping down among
the pinks and lilies and tulips, blissfully opens his eyes
at the first evening call of the nightingale upon the still,
tepid world, and the motley twilight, through which some
gold threads of the evening sun float glowingly : that
blissful one is like the youth Albano in the enchanted
chamber, — the Venetian blinds scattered round broken
lights, trembling green shadows ; and there was a holy
twilight as in groves around temples ; only murmuring
bees flew, out of the loud, distant world, through the silent
cell, into the noise again. Some sharp streaks of sun
shine, like lightnings before sleepers, were wafted roman
tically to and fro with the rose ; and in this dreamy
grotto, amid the rustling wood of the world, the solitude
was not disturbed by so much as the shadowy existence
of a mirror.
Into this enchantment she let the tones fly out of her
hands like nightingales, — the tones were propelled to
wards Albano, as by a storm, now more clearly, and now
more faintly ; he stood before her, with folded hands, as
if in prayer, and hung with thousand looks of love on
400 TITAN.

the downward gazing form; all at once she lifted upon

him that holy eye, full of sympathy, but she suddenly
cast it down before the sun-glance of his.
Now the great eyelids immovably closed upon the
sweet looks, and gave her, like a sleep, the appearance
of absence ; she seemed a white May-flower on wintry
soil, hanging down its blossom-bells. She was a dying
saint in the devotion of harmony, which she heard rather
than made ; only the red lip she took with her as a
warm reflection of life, as a last rose, that was to deck the
fleeting angel ; 0 could he disturb this prayer of music
with a word of his ?
With narrower and narrower circles did the magnetic
vortex of tones and of love clasp him round, — and now,
when the drawing of the harmonica, like the water-draw
ing of the scorching sun, licked up his heart ; and when
the lightnings of passion darted over his whole life, and
illumined the mountain-ridges of the future and the val
leys of the past, and when he felt his whole being con
centrated into one moment, he saw some drops trickle
out from Liana's drooping eyes, and she looked up cheer
fully to let them fall; then Albano snatched her hand
away from the keys, and cried, with the heart-rending
tone of his longing, " O God, Liana ! "
She trembled, she blushed, she looked at him, and
knew not that she still wept and looked on, and continued
to play no more. " No, Albano, no ! " she said, softly,
and drew her hand out of his, and covered her face,
started at the pause of the musical tones, and collected
herself and again made them flow out slowly, and said,
with trembling voice : " You are a noble being. You
are like my Charles, but quite as passionate. Only one
request! I am about to leave the city for a while."
 THE RIDE TO BLUMENBUHL. 401

His alarm at this became ecstasy, when she named

the place, his Blumenbiihl. She went on with difficulty
before the delighted lover ; her hand often lay for a long
time on the dissonance in forgetfulness of the analysis ;
her eyes glimmered more moistly, although she said
nothing more than this : " Be to my brother, who loves
you inexpressibly, as he has loved no other yet, — 0 be
to him everything! My mother recognizes your influ
ence. Draw him, — I will speak it out ! — especially
draw him off from playing deeply ! "
He could hardly, for his confusion, asseverate the
"Yes," when Rabette came running in with the almost
unsuitably accented tidings, that the mother was coming.
Probably she had seen that Rabette was alone. Albano
parted from the pair with abrupt wishes of a pleasant jour
ney, and forgot, in the flurry, to answer in the affirmative
Rabette's request for a visit. The mother, meeting him,
ascribed his ardor to a brother's emotion at taking leave.
While he hastened through the wealth of the season,
he thought of the rich future, — of Liana's stammering
and veiling : do not fair female souls, like those angels
before the prophet, need only two wings to lift them, but
four to veil themselves ? The sea of life ran in high
waves, but everywhere it flashed on its broad surface,
and sparks dropped from the oar.

63. CYCLE.
AH, on the morning following this, the evening red
ness of a whole heaven had grown, to be sure,
into a sad cloudiness. For Liana walked before the youth
in such long, thick veils. Any mystery of trouble throws
up cold cloister-walls between hearts drawn near to-
z
402 TITAN.

gether ; that is manifest. Hitherto accidents of various

kinds had bent aside some flowers which Liana had
drawn as a veil over her heart (as the ground stories in
cities prevent looking in at the windows by flowers and
grape-vines), and had disclosed the darkest corner of the
background, in which something like the reverse side
of a bust hung, which, turned round, would perhaps re
semble the Count. But as yet the image hangs with
its face toward the wall. However, a female heart is
often like marble ; the cunning stone-cutter strikes a
thousand blows, without the Parian block showing the
line of a crack ; but all at once it breaks asunder into
the very form which the cunning stone-cutter has so long
been hammering after.
On Saturday, when the Minister's lady and the pair of
friends were about to start for Blumenbjuhl, in order to
behold the burial and the consecration, the Captain came
to the Count, not only full of joy, — for he had gladly,
out of love to Rabette, helped make for Liana, not wings
indeed, but still wing-shelk, and out of a threefold interest
for his friend, helped tighten the fly-work, — but also full
of anxiety. But, ye muses ! why in the poetical world
are there rarely any occurrences which have such mani
fold motives as often in the actual?
His anxiety was simply this, lest his father should
arrive earlier than his mother went off, — for he knew
the Minister. The latter intended, according to his let
ters, to arrive on Monday or Tuesday (Saturday at the
latest) ; but this might — as Froulay loved to let his
friends swim in the broad play-room of expectation —
still more certainly threaten that he — because, like the
Basle clocks,* he always struck an hour too early, and
• Alluding to tho case whero by this change of the town-clock the
Basle people outwitted an enemy. — Tit.
 FROULAY, A PERE TERRIBLE. 403

came in the hope of catching his people at some right

odious thing — might at any minute come driving in at
the court-yard gate. If he came driving furiously up this
forenoon, or at the moment when the servant was lifting
the daughter into the carriage, and the mother already
sat therein, then was this much certain, by a thousand
conclusions from observance, that both would have to go
up into the house again ; that he would order all trunks
and boxes unpacked, and, as to the daughter of the Pro
vincial Director, after her ten thousand entreaties, —
although her very second would freeze upon her lips, —
he would, in a friendly manner, with quite jocose equa
nimity, let her be carried home, as a solitary member
of a conclave, in a close carriage. Certain men — and
he is their generalissimo — know no sweeter cordial for
themselves, than to put under lock and key, before the
very nose of their friends, the garden-gates of some
Arcadia or other, for which they have not drawn up for
them a map of the route and region, and judicially to seal
them up. Besides, just before a pleasure party, most
parents secrete gall ; if Froulay, in fact, could absolutely
prevent one, that was as much for him as if he were
himself returning home from one red and gay.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, our friends went to
walk beneath the loveliest sky. Everything had been al
ready arranged ; Charles proposed to follow to-morrow ;
Albano not till Monday, after the general return (his
tender motives, and the hard ones of others, decided it) ;
and there floated through the whole vaulted blue no cloud
but Charles's concern lest the second depositing of the
princely corpse might draw his father along as early as
to-day, . . . when he suddenly cried out, with a curse :
"There he comes!" He knew him by the tiger-spotted
404 TITAN.

post-team, and still more by the long line of horses tackled

on tandem. A purgatorial moment of life ! The car
riage rattled swiftly down the street ; the head horses
streamed forth in a longer and quite disorderly train ;
the people stared. At last the pulling distance became
an acre long, — that seemed quite impossible, — when
Albano's eagle eye discovered that there was no leather
connection between the post-train, and at last, that in fact
there was merely a strange churl, with two horses, acci
dentally riding along before the carriage, and at this
moment they saw the open triumphal car, with the female
trinity slowly moving up the BlumenbUhl heights, and
the blended tulip-bed of the three parasols glimmered
long after them.
 FOURTEENTH JUBILEE.

Alrano and Liana.

64. CYCLE.

O many tender and holy sensibilities flutter

round in our inner world, which, like angels,
can never assume the bodily form of outward
action, so many rich, full flowers stand therein
which bear no seed, that it is lucky poetry has been
invented, which easily treasures up all these inborn spirits
and the flower-fragrance in its limbo. With this I catch,
dear Albano, thy glorious perfume-breathing Sunday, and
hold fast the invisible incense for the Schneider's-skin of
the world !
On Sunday he visited the thunder-house in Lilar.
The Lector kept himself up with the hope that the Count
would very soon tread down the flower-parterre of the
new enjoyment as flat and dead as a cross-way. It was
a fine morning, all sprinkled with dew ; a fresh wind
blew from Lilar over the blooming grain ; and the
sun burned alone in a cool heaven. Over the Blumen-
biihl road a swarm of people were plodding onward, and
no one went long alone ; on the Eastern heights he saw
his friend Charles, with bowed crest, dashing to meet the

The breezes of Lilar came flying to welcome him with

406 TITAN.

a breath of orange-fragrance, and blew away the ashes

which rested on the glowing altar-coals of that first mag
nificent Sunday. He went down the bridge, and Pollux,
early in his finery, came driving a ruffled turkey-cock to
meet him. A Sceur Servanie of old Spener had been
already for an hour cooking at Chariton's, merely to see
him go by. The latter ran, festally decked, out of the
house, which opened itself gayly with all its windows to
the whole heavens, to meet him, and, in the confusion of
her joy, broke out with the main matter first, namely, that
everything was ready and beautiful up there in the little
house, and whether he would have his dinner up there.
She would fain, in the midst of the conversation, pull
Pollux out of the Count's fingers, but he let him swing up
for a kiss, and won thereby every heart, even the old one
behind the kitchen fire.
While he marched off toward his little house through
the western triumphal arch, he felt, with indescribable
strength and sweetness, that the lovely time of youth is
our Italy and Greece, full of gods, temples, and bliss, —.
and which, alas ! so often Goths and Vandals stalk through
and strip with their talons.
His blooming path ran at length into the descending
and ascending stairway, which he had passed with Spener ;
single streaks of day burned themselves into the moist
ground and painted the scattered twigs fiery and golden.
In the mystic bower, where the dead Prince had stalked
along before him in the by-cavern, he found no such
cavern, but only an empty niche. He stepped out above,
as out of the haunch of the earth. His little house lay on
the crooked back of the mountain ridge. Down below
reposed around him those elephants of the earth, the
hills, and Lilar gloriously swelling in blossoms, and he
 A CREATION-DAY OF NATURE. 407

looked from his windows into the camp of the giants of

Nature.
Meanwhile he could not now stay on the window-sill, nor
near the inspiring JEoYinn harp, nor in the eye-prison of
books ; through streams and woods and oyer mountains
fresh nature longed to sweep. That he did.
There are sometimes between the every-day days of
life — when the rainbow of Nature appears to us only
broken up, and as a misshapen, motley mass on the hori
zon — certain creation-days, when she rounds and con
tracts herself into a fair form, nay, when she becomes
alive, and speaks to us like a soul. To-day Albano had
such a day for the first time. Ah, years often pass away
and bring no such day ! While he went thus roaming
along on both sides of the mountain ridge, the northeast
wind began to flow fuller and fuller to meet him ; — with
out wind, a landscape was to him a stiff, fast-nailed wall-
tapestry ; — and now the wind rolled the solid land over
into a fluid state. The neighboring trees shook themselves
like doves sweetly shuddering in its bath, but in the dis
tance the woods stood fast, like hosts in battle array, and
their summits like lances. Majestically swam through
the blue the silvery islands, the clouds, and on the earth
shadows stalked like giants over streams and mountains ;
in the valley sparkled the Rosana, and rolled into the oak
grove. He went down into the warm vale ; the flowery
pastures foamed and their seed played in its cloud-fleece
ere the earth caught it ; the swan spread voluptuously his
long wing; pairs of doves were pecking each other for love;
and everywhere lay beds and twigs full of hot maternal
bosoms and eggs. Like a glorious blue bouquet, the neck
of the reposing peacock played off its dissolving colors in
the high grasses. He stepped under the oaks, which with
408 TITAN.

knotty arms seized hold upon heaven, and with knotty

roots the earth. The Rosana talked alone with the mur
muring wood, and ate away, foaming, at the rocky crags
and at the decaying shore ; — night and evening and day
chased each other in the mystic grove. He stepped into
the stream, and went out with it before a warm, busy
plain full of villages, and out from them came the Sabbath
sounds, and out of the grain-fields larks arose, and on the
mountains human foot-paths crept upward, — the trees
lifted themselves up as living things, and the distant men
seemed to be fast-rooted, and became only little shoots on
the low bark of the enormous tree of life.
The soul of the youth was cast into the holy fire ; like
asbestos-paper, he drew it out quenched and blank ; it
was to him as if he knew nothing, as if he were one
thought ; and here the feeling came upon him in a won
derfully new manner, that is the world, thou art on the
world ; — he was one being with it, — all was one life,
clouds and men and trees. He felt himself grasped by
innumerable polypus-arms, and swallowed up at the same
time with them, and yet running on in the infinite heart.
In a blissful bewilderment he arrived at his dwelling,
from which little Pollux came rolling down the mountain
to meet him, and call him to dinner. In the little house
the very thought of his heart was expressed by the
iEolian harp at the open window. While the child was
thundering away with his little fist on the harpsichord,
and the birds joyfully screamed in out of the trees, the
soul of the world swept exulting and sighing through the
iEolian strings, now lawlessly and now regularly, playing
with the storms and they with it ; and Albano seemed
to hear the streams of life rushing between their shores,
the countries of the earth, — and through flower-veins and
 CHARITON'S LOVE OF THE LOVERS. 409

oak-veins, and through hearts, — around the earth, bear

ing clouds on their bosom, — and the stream, which thun
ders through eternity, a Divine hand was pouring out
under the veil.
Albano came, with the innocent boy dancing before him,
to the still smiling mother. Even here, between the four
walls, the sails continued to propel him which the great
morning had swelled. Nothing surprised him, nothing
seemed to him common, nothing remote ; the wave and
the drop in the endless sea of life flowed away in indi
visible union with the streams and whirlpools which it
bore onward. Before Chariton he stood like a shining
god, and she would gladly have veiled either him or
herself. Never was humanity individualized in purer
forms, crippled by no alloy of provincialism or nation
ality, than in this circle of joy, wherein childhood, woman
hood, and manhood, twined with flowers, met and softly
clasped each other.
Chariton spoke constantly of Liana, out of love, not
merely for the absent one, but also for the one who stood
near ; for, although she looked with those open eyes,
which seem more to image quietly than to behold, more
to let in than to draw in, still she was, like children,
virgins, country people, and savages, at once open-heart-
edly true and keen. She had easily detected Albano's
love, because everything is easier to disguise from women,
— even hatred, than its opposite. She praised Liana
infinitely, particularly her incomparable kindness ; and
" her lord had said, few men had so much heart as she,
for she had often been, without any fear, whole nights
with her in Tartarus." Certainly, neither was this ex
plicable to the Count. The marvellous is the aureole
of a beloved head ; a sun, softened down to a human
18
410 TITAN.

countenance, takes less powerful hold than a beloved

countenance glorified into a sun-image.
More and more heartily delighted at his delight, she
offered to lead him into Liana's chamber. A simple
little chamber, — under a green twilight of glimmering
vine foliage, some books of Fenelon and Herder, old
flowers still in their water-glasses, little Chinese dishes,
Julienne's portrait, and another of a deceased youthful
friend, whose name was Caroline, an unstained writing-
stand, with English-pressed paper, — was what he found.
The holy spring hours of the virgin passed by before
him, dropping dew like sunny clouds.
He happened to touch a penknife, when Chariton
brought quills to be cut, " because," she said, " they had
so much trouble on this score since her master had
gone away." For a woman can more easily drive any
pen — even the epic and Kantian — than make one ; and
here, as in several other cases, the stronger sex must
lend the weaker a hand.
Albano wished to see, also, the working-chamber of
his teacher ; but this she decidedly — although an hour's
eating together had not given her any new courage —
refused, because her master had forbidden it. He begged
once more ; but she smiled more and more painfully,
and adhered to her gentle no.
He now dreamed away the murmur of the morning
in the magic garden, on whose waters and paths the
moonshine and reflection of memory played. Out of
the nine million square miles of common earth, how do
certain poetical lands stand out to a poetical heart ! On
the mountain with the altar, where he once saw her
disappear down below, the afternoon chime of Blumen-
biihl came wafted to him with the fanning of a freer
 ALBANO'S WALK TO BLUMENBflHL. 41 1

ether ; and his childhood's life, and the present scenes

yonder, and Liana, gave him a tender heart, and he
surveyed, with dimmer eyes, the transfigured land.
At evening came happy church-goers from Blumen-
biihl, and praised the consecration and the burial mightily.
He saw the pious father still standing up there on the
back of the mountain. The morning when he should be
able to see Liana a whole day, and perhaps tell her
all, overspread his life with a morning dew, glimmering
around him in splendid rainbow circles. Even in bed
he sang for joy the morning song of the rowers on Lago
Maggiore, — the constellations over Blumenbiihl shone
through the open window of his little Alp-house down
into his closing eye. When the bright moon aud flute-
tones from the vale awakened him again, the silent
rapture still glowed on under the ashes of slumber, and
grew till it closed his eyes again.

65. CYCLE.
\
UNDER a fresh morning-blue, Albano, full of hopes
that he should to-day clear up his life, so con
stantly running into white fog, took the same old road
which once brought him hither by night (in the 23d Cycle)
in order on the mountain to see Elysium and Liana. The
whole blooming path was to him a Roman earth, out of
which he dug up the beautifully pictured vases of the
past; and the nearer the village, so much the broader
grew the hallowed spots. He wondered that the lambs
and shepherd-boys had not, like the grass, shot up taller
during his absence, which, itself, in consequence of the
growth of his heart and the many-complexioned vicissi
tude of his experiences, appeared very much prolonged to
412 TITAN.

his imagination. Like a morning draught of clear alpine-

water, the old clang of the herdsman's horn gushed into
his breast ; but the narrow alder-path, into which he used
to drive the Director's riding-horse before unsaddling, and
the very court-yard, even the four walls and the ceiling-
pictures of domestic bliss, cramped up both root and sum
mit in his swelling soul, which longed to grow into the
earth and into the heavens; he was yet in the years when
one opens high to the air with a treadle the tympan of
life's clavichord, in order that the harmonious roar may
swell out everywhere.
In the castle how profusely was his heart covered with
hearts, and the youngest love drowned by the old, from the
easily weeping mother, Albina, even to the hand-extending
old servants, who, on his account, stirred more briskly
their petrified limbs I He found all his loves — Liana
excepted — in Wehrfritz's study,* because he loved
"young folk" and discourse, and always insisted that they
should set out the breakfast on his table of papers, which,
he said, was as good as a breakfast-table with varnished
scrap-pictures that nobody saw. Albano tormented him
self with the fear that the Minister's lady had been the
church-robber of a very goddess, and carried Liana back
yesterday, — till the Captain hastily explained the non
appearance. The good soul had had yesterday to atone
for the commotion of her sympathizing heart with sick-
headache. Her loved teacher, Spener, with his sublime
soul-stillness, — those eyes, which wept no more over the
earth, buried with the princely pair, — standing with his
head under the cold polar star of eternity, so that now,
like the pole, it no longer saw any stars rise or set, —
* Museum (home of the muses) is the beautiful German name for
It— Tr.
 LIANA IN MORNING-DRESS. 413

calmly, and with hands apostolically folded in one another,

speaking so ail-persuasively upon the sorrow and the great
end of this pale life, pressing, with his inspired speech,
men's hearts to the verge of tearful emotion, and yet with
exalted tenderness drawing them back from extreme grief,
that so only the heart may weep without the eye, — and
then the consecration of the coupled coffins and of the
church, — O, in the delicate Liana these emotions could
not surely fail to grow into sorrows, and all that her
teacher buried in silence was in her spoken aloud. In
addition to this, she had not taken the usual medicine of
keeping still, but had disguised all her pangs behind active
joy, so as to give her departing mother no pains, although
herself far too great ones.
Into the midst of this explanation she herself entered
pleasantly, in a white morning-dress, with a nosegay of
Chinese roses, — a little pale and tired, — looking up with
a dreamy softness, — her voice somewhat low, — the roses
on her cheeks closed into buds, — and, like a child, smiling
upon every heart ; — thou angel of heaven ! who may
dare to love and reward thee ? She beheld the lofty
youth ; — all the lilies of her still face were, contrary to
her wont, baptized into a heavenly morning-red of joy, and
a tender purple lingered upon them.
She asked him, with an open manner, why he had not
come yesterday to the festivities, and disclosed, as a matter
of moment, that they would all to-day visit the pious fa
ther, for whom she had been tying her dwarf-roses. He
took gladly the fourth voice in the concert of the pleasure-
party. What a magnificent hanging garden, with its
loveliest flowers and prospects, is built out into the even
ing-hours ! How many happy ones a single roof covers !
The ingenuous Rabettc, more brisk and busy for her
4H TITAN.

still gladness, was, unweariedly, Liana's sick-nurse and

Roquairol's lion-keeper and maitresse de plaisirs, who
made every one of the mother's ground-plans of pleasure
broader by a half, and her whole being was so happy !
Ah, her poor innocent heart had not yet, indeed, been loved
by any one, and therefore it glows, with the fresh energies
of the first love, so brightly and truly before a mighty one
which seems to come down to it with a blessing, like a lov
ing god, drawing after it a whole heaven ! Roquairol saw
how bewitchingly a busy activity shook aside in the play
room of her character and her occupations the heavily
hanging foliage, which in the visiting parlor darkly over
spread her real worth ; she was even made more lovely
by the darker, neat house-dress, since he by his preaching
had sent back every white drapery of her brunette per
son into the wardrobe. She would not obey her mother
in this matter, till he had demanded it. Nay, he had yes
terday brought her to the point of really wearing about
with her the watch which the proud Minister's lady had
presented her, though she blushed like fire at the unwont
ed ornament. Meanwhile he proposed to take with her,
as it were, a true serpentine flowery way to the altar of
his love's loud Yes, — the silent one he was saying all the
time ; — he knew she would get in at once so soon as he
rode forth with the conch-chariot of Venus, to which he
had tackled a dove and a hawk.
How gloriously the forenoon flew away on golden
wing-shells and on transparent wings! The beloved
Albano was introduced into all the changes of the house;
the finest was in his study-chamber, which Rabette had
transformed into her toilet-chamber, sewing-room, and
study, and which again, since yesterday, had become
guest-chamber and library to Liana. How gladly did he
 LIANA AS RABETTE'S GUEST. 415

step to the western window, where he had so often caused

his invisible father and the beloved one to appear, in
an unearthly manner, in the crystal mirror of his fancy !
On the panes were many L's and R's drawn by his
boyish hand. Liana asked what the R's meant ; " Ro-
quairol," said he, for she did not inquire afier the L.
With infinite sweetness did the thought flow around his
heart, that his beloved was indeed to live through some
blooming days in the dreamy cell of his first fresh life.
Liana showed him with childlike joy how she shared
everything, that is, the chamber, fairly with Rabette, in
her double housekeeping and chum-ship, and how she
made her very hostess her guest.
I have often admired with envy the fine, light, nomadic
life of maidens in their Arcadian life-segments ; easily do
these doves of passage flutter into a strange family, and
sew and laugh and visit there, with the daughter of the
house, one or two months, and one takes the ingrafted
shoot for a family twig; on the other hand, we house-
pigeons are inhabitive and hard to transplant, and gen
erally, after a few days, journey back again. Since we, as
more brittle material, less easily melt in with the family
ore ; since we do not weave our work into that of others
so easily as maidens do theirs, — because carriages full
of working-tools must follow after us, — and since we
need much and contrive much ; — from all this our claim
to a passport is very well deduced, without the least
detriment to our characters.
After a half-eternity of dressing, — since, in the neigh
borhood of the loved one, an hour of absence lasts longer
than a month when she is far off, — the maidens entered,
equipped for travelling, in the black dress of brides. How
charmingly the roses become Rabette, in her dark hair,
and the lace edging on the white neck, and the timid
416 TITAN.

flames of her pure eye, and the flitting blushes ! And

Liana — I speak not of this saint. Even the good old
Director, when the innocent face looked upon him so
childlike from beneath the white veil of India muslin,
sprinkled with gold wire, which was simply thrown over
her head after the manner of the nuns, could not but give
his satisfaction words : " Like a nun, like an angel ! "
She answered : " I wanted once really to be one with
a friend ; but now I take the veil later than she," she
added, with a wondrous tone.
She hung to-day with tender enthusiasm upon Rabette,
perhaps from the weakness of ill health, perhaps from love
for Albano and the parents, and perhaps because Rabette,
in her love, was so good and beautiful, and because she
herself was nothing but heart. She had, besides, the
sacred fault of forming too enthusiastic conceptions of her
female friends, — into which the nobler maidens easily
fall, and which belongs less to married women, — carried
to an unusual height ; thus, for instance, her friend Caro
line, who had met her like a heroine of romance only
on the romantic playground of friendship and beautiful
nature, she could not, in the beginning, without a rend
ing away of the saintly halo, at all conceive of as hav
ing hands, which drove the needle and flat-iron, and
other implements of the female field of labor.
Whoso will feel the tenderest participation in joy, let
him look not at happy children, but at the parents who
rejoice to see them happy. Never did the blue-eyed and
round-eyed AHiina — across whose face time had struck
many a note of life thrice over, among which, however,
no step-motherly discord appeared — look oftener to and
fro, and more benignantly, than from one to another
of these couples ; for such they were, according to the
maternal astrology of the aberrations and perturbations
 OUT OF STRENGTH SWEETNESS. 417
of these double-stars. The father, who maintained the
" hypocrisy and spiritlessness * of the young people now-
a-days," compared with the ambition of his contemporaries
and comrades, was chained to the Captain, who, as man
ager of his inner theatre, had to-day assigned himself the
part of a gay youth. He pleased him even by the pithy
flowers of speech, which the hidden breeze let fly from
him ; for as every genius must have its rough idiom, its
doggerel verse, so had he — (others have the devil, the
deuse) — the journeyman's greeting of genius, Rascal,
together with the derivatives, rascality, &c. But how
much more mightily did Albano carry away all female
hearts by the stillness with which, like a quiet aftersum-
mer, he let fall his fruits. The parents ascribed this re
serve to city life : as if Charles had not been longer to this
painter's school ! No, Love is the Italian school of man ;
and the more vigorous and elevated he is, of precisely so
much the higher tenderness is he capable, as on high trees
the fruit rounds itself into a milder and sweeter form than
on low ones. Not in unmanly characters does mildness
charm, but in manly ones ; as energy does, not in un
womanly ones, but in the womanly.
The good youth ! While Charles, unhappily, always
knew clearly when his glance burned and lightened, how
innocently blazes from thy eyes a glowing heart, which
knows it not ! May thy evening be the seed-corn of a
youth full of blossoms! The chariot rolls on, without
thy knowing whether it is to be a chariot of Elijah or of
Phaeton, whether thou art, by means of it, to soar to
heaven or to fall therefrom !
* Kopf- vnd Ohr-hangerei. Hanging down of head (hypocrisy) and
ears. — Tb.
18* li
418 TITAN.

66. CYCLE.
THE carriage flew through the village with the four
young people. How grateful to our youth was
the expanse of heaven and of earth ! The portal of
life — youth — was hung with flowers and lights. They
rolled along at the foot of the mountain by the bird-pole,
the sign-post of a boyish Arcadia, by the cradle where, in
the enraptured sleep of childhood, he had stretched out
his boyish arm after the high heaven ; and through the
birch thicket, now dwindled in his eyes to a bush, which,
on that golden morning, he had found so broad and long ;
and by the open triumphal arch of the east, behind
which the sea of the many-shaped Lilar poured the tide
of its charms ; and when they arrived behind the moun
tain-wall of the flute-dell, they sent back the carnage.
They walked on a glorious earth, under a glorious
heaven. Pure and white swam the sun like a swan
through the blue flood, — meadows and villages crowded
up close around the distant, low mountain-ridges ; a soft
wind swayed the green waves of the crop to and fro
all over the plain ; on the hills shadows lay fast asleep
under the wings of white clouds ; and behind the sum
mits of the heights the mast-trees of the Rhine ships
majestically sailed away.
As Albano went along so close by the side of his be
loved, the purgatory burning under his Eden fell back
deeper and deeper into the earth's core ; full of uneasi
ness and hope, he cast his fiery eye now on the summer,
now on the mild vesper-star, which glimmered so near
to him out of the spring ether. The good maiden seemed
to-day more still, serious, and restless than usual. As
they went through a little wood, open on all sides, along
 LIANA'S REMEMBRANCE OF CAROLINE. 419

the ridge of a hill that ran round the flute-dell, Liana

suddenly said to the Count, she heard flutes. Scarcely
could he say, he heard only far-off turtle-doves, when
she at once collected herself as for something wonderful,
fixed her eyes on heaven, smiled, and suddenly looked
round toward Albano, and grew red. Then turning to
him, she said : " I will be frank ; I hear at this moment
music within me.* Forgive me to-day my weakness
and tenderness ; it comes from yesterday." "I — you ? "
said he, passionately ; for he, about whom in sicknesses
only burning images stormed, was inspired with venera
tion for a being to whom, as if from her higher world,
low tones like golden sunbeams reach down in her
pains, and pass veiled through the rough deep.
But Liana, as if for the sake of turning aside his
enthusiasm, came upon the subject of her friend Caroline,
and told how she always hovered before her on such
days, and especially on this walk. " In the beginning I
sought her out," said Liana, " because she resembled my
Linda. She was my instructress, although she was only
a few weeks older than I. Her pure, severe, unflinching
character, and her readiness to sacrifice herself cheer
fully and in silence, made her even, if I may say so,
worthy of veneration in the eyes of her mother. She
was never seen to weep, tender as she was, for she
wished to keep her mother always cheerful. We were
going to take the veil in company, for the sake of being
always together ; I should not live to become old, she
said, and I must spend my short life happily and without
• This self-resounding — as the £olian-harp [ricten-harfe, giant-
harp, in German. — Tr.], when the weather changes, sounds without
a touch — is common in sick-headnche and other maladies of weak
ness; hence in dying; for instance, in Jacob Boehme, life, like a con
cert-clock, rung out its hours amidst surrounding harmonies.
420 TITAN.

anxiety ; but also in preparation for the next. Ah, she

herself went up before me ! Night-watching by the sick
bed of her mother, and sorrow for her death, took her
away. She received the holy supper, for which we were
preparing ourselves together, only on her death-bed.
Then did the angel give me this veil, in which I am
some time to follow her. O good, good Caroline ! " She
wept unconcealedly, and pressed, with emotion, Al-
bano's hand. " O, I should not have begun about this !
There comes already our friend ; we will be right cheer
ful ! "
They had now passed through a high wood of under
brush, which teasingly disclosed and hid by turns the
landscapes that glided around them, and had come near
to the spire which looks in upon the flute-dell, and near
which lay a solitary church and Spener's dwelling, and
in the plain below the open village. Spener came to
meet his pupil — after the manner of old men — uncon
cerned about the others ; and a young roe ran after him.
A beautiful spot ! Little white peacocks ; turtle-doves
at large ; a city of bees in the midst of their bee-flora, —
all bespoke the tranquil old man, whom the earth serves
and honors, and who, indifferent towards it, lives only
in God. He came — disappointing one's expectation of
an ecclesiastical gravity — with a light playfulness upon
the gay train, and laid his finger in benediction on the
forehead of Liana, who seemed to be his granddaughter,
as it were, a second tree-blossom in the late autumn
of life. In a daughterly way, she placed the bunch of
dwarf-roses in his bosom, and took very careful notice
whether it pleased him. She smiled quite serenely, and
all her tears seemed fanned away ; but she resembled
the rain-sprinkled tree, when the sun laughs out again,
 SPENER'S CONFESSION OF FAITH. 421

— the least agitation flings the old rain from the still
leaves.
The old man was delighted with the sympathy of the
young people, and remained with them upon the blooming
and resounding eminence, which sat enthroned between
a wide landscape and the richly laden mountain-ridge,
running away into Elysium. Since, as with one who as
cends in a balloon, the tones of earth did not reach him
from so great a distance as its forms, they let him talk
more than listen, as one spares old people.
He spoke soon of that in which his heart lived and
breathed, but in a singular, half-theological, half-French,
Wolfian, and poetic speech. One ought, of many a
mystic's poetry and philosophy to give, instead of verbal,
real translations, in order that it may be seen how the
pure gold of truth glows under all wrappages. Spener
says, in my translation : " He had formerly, before he
found the right way, tormented himself in every human
friendship and love. He had, when he was fervently loved,
said to himself, that he could surely never so regard or
love himself; and even so the beloved being could not
truly so think of itself, as the loving one did, and though
it were ever so perfect or so full of self-love. If every
one looked upon others as upon himself, there could be
no ardent love. But all love demands an object of in
finite worth, and dies of every inexplicable and clearly
recognized failure ; it projects its objects out of all and
above all, and requires a reciprocal love without limits,
without any selfishness, without division, without pause,
without end. Such an object is verily the divine being,
but not fleeting, sinful, changeable man. Therefore must
the lovesick heart sink into the Giver himself of this
and of all love, into the fulness of all that is good and
422 TITAN.

beautiful, into the disinterested, unlimited, universal Love,

and dissolve and revive therein, blest in the alternation
of contraction and expansion. Then it looks back upon
the world and finds everywhere God and his reflection :
the worlds are his deeds ; every pious man is a word, a
look, of the All-loving; for love to God is the Divine
thing, and the heart yearns for him in every heart."
" But," said Albano, whose fresh, energetic life rebelled
against all mystical annihilation, " how, then, does God love
us ? " "Asa father loves his child, not because it is the
best child, but because it needs him." * " And whence,"
he further inquired, " comes, then, the evil in man, and
whence sorrow ? " " From the Devil," said the old man,
and pictured out uninterruptedly, with transfigured joy,
the heaven of his heart, — how it was always surrounded
with the all-beloved, all-loving One, how it never desired
any good fortune or any gifts from him at all (which one
did not wish even in earthly love), but only a higher
and higher love towards himself, and how, while the
evening mists of old age were gathering thicker and
thicker around his senses, his heart felt itself, in the dark
ness of life, embraced more and more closely by the in
visible arms. " I shall soon be with God ! " said he, with
a radiance of love on that countenance of his, chilled
with life, and breaking in under the weight of years.
One could have borne to see him die. So stands Mont
Blanc before the rising moon ; night veils his feet and
his breast, but the light summit hangs high in the dark
heaven as a star among the stars.
Liana, like a daughter, had not let her eye nor her
hand go from him, and had languishingly drunk in every
• Somo disinterested love or other must from eternity have existed.
As there are eternal truths, so must there also be an eternal love.
 EVENING FROM THE THUNDER-HOUSE. 423

sound ; her brother had heard him with more pleasure

than Albano, but merely for the sake of remodelling
more clearly and fully the mystic Hero into the mimic
Mount Athos of his representation, and Rabette had
contemplated him as in a church among believing by-
thoughts.
He withdrew now without ceremony to take care of
his animals, which he loved, as he did everything invol
untary, for instance, children, as coming at first hand
from God. " Everything is divine," he said, " and noth
ing earthly but what is immoral." He could not bear
to smoke bees with brimstone, let flowers dry up with
thirst in the pot-cage, or see an overdriven wounded
horse, and he passed by a butcher's stall not without
shuddering limbs.
" Shall we," said friend Charles, " take in the glorious
evening on the magnificent mountain road, and see thy
thunder-house, and cast down every cup of sorrow into
the vales below ? " Through what a magic neighborhood
did they now pass along the sloping ridge of the thunder-
house ! On the right, as it were, the occident of nature ;
on the lefi, the orient ; before them Lilar, glittering in
the faerie of evening, — lying in the arms of the glancing
Rosana, — golden grain behind silver-poplars, and over
head a heaven filled with a life-intoxicated, tumultuous
creation, — and the sun-god stalking away over his even
ing-world, and stooping a little under the midnight to
raise his golden head in the east. Albano went forth,
holding Liana's holy hand. " O how beautiful is all ! "
said he. " How the fluttering world-map rustles and
murmurs with long streams and woods, — how the eastern
mountains bask in steadfast repose, — how the groves
climb the hills, with glowing stems ! One could plunge
424 TITAN.

down into the smoking vales and into the cold, glistening1
waves. Ah, Liana, how beautiful is all ! " " And God is
on the earth," said she. " And in thee ! " said he, and
thought of the word of the old man, that love seeks God,
and that he dwells in the heart which we esteem.
Now came rolling toward him the great waves which
the 2Eolian-harp dashed out in the thunder-house ; and
his genius flew by before him with the words, " Tell her
there thy whole heart ! "
Before the little tabernacle of yesterday's dreams his
stormy heart was dissolved ; and the sun and the earth
reeled before his passionate tears. As he entered with
her into the rosy splendor of the evening sun that filled
the apartment, and into the spirit-like din of tones dis
coursing with one another alone, he seized Liana's hands
and pressed them wildly to his breast, and sank down
before her speechless and dazzled ; flames and tears suf
fused his eyes and his cheeks, — the whirlwind of tones
blew into his blazing soul, — the mild angel of innocence
bowed herself, weeping and trembling, toward the burn
ing sun-god, and a sharp pain twined itself like a pale
serpent through the roses of the mild countenance, — and
Albano stammered : " Liana, I love thee ! "
Then the serpent turned round and clasped and covered
the sweet rosy form. " O good Albano ! thou art unhappy,
but I am innocent ! " She stepped back with dignity, and
quickly drew down the white veil over her face, and said,
beside herself, " Wouldst thou love the dead ? This is
my corpse-veil ; the coming year it will lie upon this
face." " That is not true," said Albano. " Caroline,
answer him ! " said she, and stared at the burning sun as
if looking for a higher apparition. Frightful moment!
as during an earthquake the sea heaves and the air rests
 LIANA'S DISCLOSURE TO ALBANO. 425

in fearful stillness, so was his lip dumb beside the veiled

one, and his whole heart was a storm. On the strings
swept by a sighing world of spirits, and the last ended
with a sharp scream. The beauty of the earth was distort
ed before him, and in the evening clouds broad fiery ban
ners were planted ; and the sun's eye shut-to in blood.
All at once Liana folded her hands as if in prayer, and
smiled and blushed ; then she raised the veil from her
divine eyes, and the transfigured one, tinged with the rosy
reflection, looked on hira tenderly, — and cast her eye
down, — and raised it again, — and again let it sink, — and
the veil fell again before her, and she said, in a low tone,
" I will love thee, good Albano, if I do not make thee
miserable." " I will die with thee ! " said he. " What
then? " — And now let a holy cloud veil the sun-god, who
moves flaming through the midst of his stars !
His solitude and Liana's solution of so many wonders
were suspended by the entrance of Rabette and Charles,
who both seemed more touched than blessed, — she by
the comforting nearness of the loved one, he by the singu
lar situation and the subduing evening ; for after certain
beings a storm follows, and they must, against their will,
make the steps that they take more rapid.
When Albano, with the peace-angel of his life, with the
beloved one, who, in the midst of the rush of her feelings,
heard, nevertheless, the voice of her female friend, walked
forth again once more alone upon the rocky causeway be
tween fragrant vales of Tempe in the glimmering world,
he felt as if he had struggled through his life like an eagle
through a storm-cloud, and as if the black tempest were
running far away below his wings, and the whole starry
heaven burned bright above his head. Liana, with maid
enly nobleness and firmness, gave him, before he had put a
426 TITAN.

question, the answer: "I must now tell you a mystery,

which I have hidden from every one, and even from my
mother, because it would have disquieted her. I spoke
formerly of my never-to-be-forgotten Caroline. On the
day of my sacrament, which I had wished to take with
her, I went back by night from my teacher to my mother,
and in fact through the singular, long cavern, wherein one
seems to descend, when one is in reality going upward.
My maid went before with the lantern. In the romantic
arbor, where a concave mirror stands, I turn round toward
the full moon which was streaming in, from a dread of
the wild mirror, which distorts people too horribly. Sud
denly I hear a heavenly concert, such as I often heard
again afterward in sicknesses, — I think of my blessed
friend, — and gaze, full of longing, into the moon. Then
I saw her opposite to me, beaming with innumerable rays :
in her fair eyes was a tender look, but yet something
dissolving ; the tender mouth, almost the only living fea
ture, resembled a red, but transparent fruit, and all her
hues seemed to be nothing but light. Yet only in the
blue eye and red mouth did the angel seem like Caroline.
I could sketch her, if one could paint with light. I be
came dangerously sick ; then she appeared to me oftener,
and refreshed me with inexpressibly sweet tones, — they
were not properly words, — whereupon I always sank
into a soft sleep, as into a sweet death. Once I asked
her — more with inner words — whether I should, then,
soon come to her into the realm of light. She answered,
I should not die just now, but somewhat later; and she
named very clearly the coming year, and the very day,
which I have, however, forgotten. ... 0 dear Albano !
forgive me only a few words ! I soon recovered, and
mourned over the slow, lingering passage of time ..."
 LIANA DEFENDS HER SPIRITUALISM. 427

"No," Albano interrupted her, for his feelings were

striking against each other like swords, " I revere, but
I hate her dangerous phantom. Fancy and sickness are
the parents of the air-born, destroying angel, who flies
scorching, like a dumb heat-lightning, over all the blos
soms of youth I "
She answered, with emotion, "O thou good, pure spirit!
thou hast never distressed me, thou hast ever comforted,
guided, made me happy and holy, — a phantom is it, Al
bano ? It even preserves me against all phantoms of
terror, against all ghostly fear, because it is always about
me. Why, if it is only a phantom, does it never appear
to me in my dreams ? * Why comes it not when I
will ? But it comes only in weighty cases ; then I con
sult and obey it very willingly. It has already to-day,
Albano," she added, in a lower and fainter tone, " twice
appeared to me on the way, when I heard the inner
music, and previously in the thunder-house, when the
sun went down, and has affectionately answered me."
" And what says it, heavenly one ? " asked Albano, in
nocently. " I saw it only on the way, and asked no
question," replied the childlike one, blushing ; and here,
all at once, her holy soul stood unconsciously without
a veil before him ; for she had, in the thunder-house,
received from the invisible Caroline the yes to her love ;
because that being was her own creation, and this a sug
gestion of her own. Yes indeed, heavenly one! thou
standest before the mirror with the virgin's veil over
thy form, and when thy image softly raises its own, thou
fanciest thyself still covered !
* For the same reason, perhaps, that the poet does not see his, so
often and distinctly beheld, creations pass in his dreams among the
images of the day.
428 TITAN.

No word can express Albano's veneration for such a

sanctified heart, which dreamed into such distinctness
glorified beings ; whose golden flowers only grew the
higher over the thought of death, as earthly ones do
in churchyards over the reality ; which, simultaneously
with his own, invisible hands had drawn into two simi
lar dreams ; * to which one was ashamed to give common
truths for its holy errors. " Thou art from heaven," he
said, inspired, and his joy became the pearl melted in
the eye which quenches the thirst of the human heart ;
" therefore thou wouldst go back thither ! " " O, I con
secrate to thee, my friend," said she, smilingly weep
ing, and pressed his hand to her pure heart, " the whole
little life which I have, every hour to the last, and I
will, meanwhile, prepare thee for everything which God
sends."
Before they entered the cottage of the pious father,
Albano seized his friend's hand, and the sisters joined
each other. The friends went forward for a time in
silence ; Charles looked upon Albano, and found the
peace of blessedness upon his face. When the latter saw
how Liana pressed her overfraught heart to her sister's,
then were sincerity and joy too strong in him, and he
fell without a word upon the heart of the dear brother
of the eternal bride, and let him silently guess all from
his tears of bliss. O, he might have guessed it, to be
sure, from the bridal look of love which his sister more
seldom removed from his friend, and from the heartiness
wherewith she drew Rabette to her heart ; just as if they
two would soon be related to each other, as if her brother
himself would soon speak more sweetly, since he for
• For on bis and her sacrament-day he had imagined her death by
lightning.
 ROQUAIROL MORALIZES. 429

some time had no longer called her the little Linda ;

and consecrated her thereon for the heart of her brother.
Not before the pious father did the enraptured look hold
itself much in abeyance, which Albano, standing as if
under the gate of eternity, cast into the heavens, gleam
ing like worlds one behind another ; he was still and
tender, and in his heart dwelt all hearts. O love one
heart purely and warmly, then thou lovest all hearts
after it, and the heart in its heaven sees like the journey
ing sun, from the dew-drop even to the ocean, nothing
but mirrors which it warms and fills.
But in Roquairol started up immediately, when he
saw the heavenly bliss so near, the mutinous spirit of his
past, and struck with a bloody epilepsy the limbs of
the inner man : those immortal sighings after an ever-
flying peace again tormented him ; his transgressions and
errors, and even the hours when he innocently suffered,
were painfully reckoned up before him ; and then he
spoke, (and stirred every heart, but most of all poor Ra-
bette's, which he pressed against his own to warm him
self, as, according to the tradition, the eagle does with
the dove, after which he does not tear her to pieces,) —
nobly he spoke then of life's wilderness, and of fate,
which burns out man, like Vesuvius, into a crater, and
then again sows cool meadows therein, and fills it again
with fire ; and of the only blessedness of this hollow life,
love, and of the injury inflicted, when fate with its winds
sways and rubs a flower * to and fro, and thereby cuts
through the green skin against the earth.
But while he thus spoke, he looked on the glowing
Rabette, and would fain by these warmings burst open,
as it were by force, the fast-closed flower-bud of his
• The winter stock-jellifiower.
43° TITAN.

love, and spread its leaves out under the sun. O the
bewildered and yearning one was surely not yet quite
happy even to-day, and he wished not so much to affect
others as himself.
With what blissful presentiments did they step out
again before the sphinx of night, who lay smiling before
them with soft, starry glances ! Did they not go through
a still, glimmering, subterranean world, light and free,
without the heavy clogging earth on their feet, while in
the wide Elysium the warm ether only flutters because
invisible Psyches fan it with their wings ? And out of
the flute-dell the old man sends after them his tones as
sweet arrows of love, in order that the swelling heart may
blissfully bleed of their woundings. Albano and Liana
came out upon a prospect where the broad eastern land
scape, with its light-streaks of blooming poppy-fields, and
its dark villages, ascended the soft mountains, where the
moon awoke, and the splendor of her garment already
swept like that of a spirit through heaven : here they
remained standing and waiting for Luna. Albano held
her hand. All the mountain-ridges of his life stood in
a glowing dawn. " Liana," said he, " what innumerable
springs are there at this moment up yonder on the
worlds which hang in the heavens ; but this is the fair
est ! " " Ah, life is lovely, and to-day it is too dear to
me ! Albano," she added, in a low voice, and her whole
face became an exalted, tearless love, and the stars wove
and embroidered its bridal dress, " if God calls me, then
may he let me always appear to thee as Caroline does
to me. O, if I could only attend thee thus through thy
whole dear life, and console and warn thee, I would
willingly wish for no other heaven."
But as he was about to express the fulness of his
 THE GREAT EMBRACE BY MOON-RISE. 431

love, and the anger of his pain about the death-delusion,

just then came his wild friend, who, like a Vesuvius,
pouring out at once lava- and rain-streams over the cred
ulous Rabette, had made both her heart and his own
only fuller, not lighter ; then Charles beheld the glorified
beings and the blue horizon, where already the moon
was flinging forth her glimmering light between the
bristling mast-peaks and summits, and looked again into
the splendor of holy love. Then could he no longer
contain himself; his heart, full of agony, mounted to an
eternal purpose, as if to God, and he embraced Albano
and Rabette, and said : " Beloved man ! beloved maiden !
keep my unhappy heart ! "
Rabette clung around him compassionately, as a mother
around her child, and gave up to him, in hot, gushing tears,
her whole soul. Albano, astonished, enfolded in his arms
the love-bond ; Liana was drawn to the beloved hearts
by the whirlpool of bliss. Unheard the flutes sounded
on, unseen waved the white banners of the stars over
head. Charles spoke frantic words of love, and wild
wishes of dying for joy. Albano touched trembling
Liana's flower-lip, as John kissed Christ, and the heavy
milky-way bent down like a magic wand toward his
golden bliss. Liana sighed : O mother, how happy are
thy children ! The moon had already flown up into the
blue, like a white angel of peace, and glorified the great
embrace ; but the blest ones marked it not. Like a
sounding waterfall, their rich life covered them, and they
knew not that the flutes had ceased, and all the hills
were shining.*
• Jean Paul's second volume ends here. — Tr.
 FIFTEENTH JUBILEE.

Mam and Woman.

67. CYCLE.
HAVE often in the theatre made the pleas
ant experience, that when painful scenes im
mediately followed the rising of the curtain,
I took but a slight interest in them, while
in joyful ones which, immediately after the music, came
on with their own music, I took the greatest ; man de
mands more that sorrow than that rapture should show
its motive and its apology. Without hesitation, therefore,
I begin a third volume * with blisses of which, to be
sure, the foregoing couple have been preparing more
than enough.
At the moment where our story has arrived, among all
the descendants of Adam who lifted a glad face to heaven,
and imaged in that face a still fairer heaven, there must
have been some one who had the highest heaven, — a hap
piest of all men. Ah yes ! And to be sure, among all
suffering creatures upon this globe, which our short race
makes a plain, there must also have been one most un
happy ; and may the poor man soon lie down to sleep
under, not on, his rocky road ! Although I could wish
* The Titan was originally divided into four volumes. — Tb.
 ALBAXO'S PARADISE KNOWS NO UPAS. 433

that Albano might not be the happiest of all, — in order

that there might yet be a higher heaven above his, — still
it is probable that, on the morning after that holiest night,
in hi- present dream of the riehest dream, deep in the
threefold b'.ooin of youth, of nature, and of anticipation,
he bore the broadest heaven in himself which the narrow
bosom of man can span.
He looked from his thunder-house, — that little temple
on whose walls still lingered the radiance of the goddess
who had therein become visible to him, — out over the
new-created mountains and gardens of Lilar; and it was
to him as if he looked into his white and red blooming
future, adorned with mountain-peaks and fruit-tree-tops,
a full Paradise built out into the naked earth. He looked
round in his future after any robbers of joy who might at
tack his triumphal chariot ; he found them all visibly too
weak to cope with his arms and weapons. He called up
Liana's parents, and his own father, and the host of spirits
which had hitherto been working in the air, and set them
out on the road which lay between him and his beloved ;
in his muscles glowed more than sufficient power easily
to dash through them to her, and take her with him into
his life by main force. " Yes," said he, " I am completely
happy, and need nothing more, — no fortune, only my
heart and hers ! " Albano, may thy evil genius not have
heard this dangerous thought, so a< to carry it to Nemesis!
0, in this wildly entangled wood of thy life, no step, even
in the blooming avenues of pleasure, is wholly safe ; and
amidst the very fulness of this artistic garden there awaits
thee a strange, gloomy upas-tree, and breathes cold poi
sons into thy life ! Therefore it was better as it was once,
when men were still lowly and prayed to God even in
their great raptures ; for in the neighborhood of the Ii>
19 nu
434 TITAN.

finite One the fiery eye sinks and weeps, but only out
of gratitude.
Let no mean almanac measurement be applied to the
fair eternity which he now lived, when he saw the be
loved every evening, every morning, in her little village.
As evening star she went forth before his dreams ; as
morning star, before his day. The interval both filled out
with letters, which they themselves carried to each other.
When they parted at evening, not long before they were
to see each other again, and while in the north already
the rose-bud twigs shot along low down in the heavens,
which during men's sleep speedily grew out toward the
east, in order to hang down from heaven with thousands
of full-blown roses ere the sun and love came back again,
— and when his friend Charles stayed with him by night,
and he asked, in the course of an hour, whence the light
came, whether from the morning or from the moon, —
and when he sallied forth, while moon and morning still
appeared together in the dew-dripping pleasure-woods, —
and when the road, left only a few hours before, appeared
wholly new and the absence too long, (because Cupid's
wing is half a second-hand, which shows the day of the
month, and half a month-hand, which points to the second,
and because, in the neighborhood of the loved one, the
shortest absence lasts longer than the longest when she is
far away,) — and when at last he saw her again, — then
was the earth a sun, from which rays proceeded : his
heart stood all in light ; and as a man, who on a spring
morning dreams of a spring-morning, finds it still brighter
around him when he awakes, so, after the blessed youth
ful dream of the beloved, did he open his eyes before
her, and desire the fairest dream no more.
Sometimes they saw each other, when the long summer
 HIGH NOON OF LOVE. 435

day was too long, on distant mountains, where by appoint

ment they looked upon the harvests ; sometimes Rabette
came alone to Lilar to her brother, that he might hear
something from Liana. When Liana had read a book,
he read it after her ; often he read it first and she last.
Whatever of divine the fairest, purest souls can manifest
to each other when they unfold themselves, — a holy
heart which makes one still holier, a glowing heart which
makes one still more glowing, — that they manifested to
each other. Albano was mild toward all, and the radiance
of a higher beauty and youth filled his countenance. The
fair realms of nature and of his childhood were both
adorned by love, not it by either of them ; he had
mounted from the pule, light moon-car of hope upon the
sounding, shining sun-car of living ecstasy. Even on the
galleys of wooden sciences, as if animated by the won
der-working hand of Bacchus, masts and shrouds fluttered
out into vine-stalks and clusters. If he went to the
Froulay house, he always, because he went in full of
tolerance, came back without any sacrifice of the same :
the Minister, who had returned from Haarhaar with a
veil of gay, blooming ideas on his face, imparted to him
charming prospects of the exultation wherewith city and
country would celebrate the approaching marriage-feast
of the Prince and the gain of the most beautiful bride.
And had he not, in addition to all, his friend too ?
When one stands so close before the flame of joy, one
does indeed shun men, — because they easily step be
tween us and the pleasant warmth, — but one seeks them
too ; a hearty friend is our wish and joy, who shall gently
lead on, without chasing away, the happy dream in which
we sleep and speak. Charles played softly into his
friend's dream ; he would, however, have aho done it
from sincere love for the sister.
436 TITAN.

In fact, with so much youth, summer weather, inno

cence, freedom, beautiful scenery, and deep love and
friendship, there may well be constructed, even on this
low earth, something like that which up in heaven is
called a heaven ; and a celestial chart, an Elysium-atlas,
which one should map out thereof, would perhaps look
not far otherwise than this : in front, a long pastoral
land, with scattered pleasure-castles and summer-houses;
a philanthropist's grove in the middle, the Tabor moun
tains overhead, with herdsmen upon them, long Campa-
nian vales ; then the broad archipelago, with St. Peter's
islands ; over on the other side the shores of a new pas
toral continent, all covered with Daphnean groves and
gardens of Alcinoiis ; behind that again, stretching far
inward, an Arcadia; and so on.
All the philosophy and stoicism that he now had in
him — for he held that which the arm out of the clouds
gave him as booty gained by his own — Albano applied
to the purpose of taking from his ecstasy the moderation
which they impart. Moderation, he said, was only for
patients and pigmies ; and all those anxious, evenly bal
anced sticklers for temperament* and time-keepers had,
whether in the cultivation of a pleasure or of a talent,
profited themselves more than the world ; on the con
trary, their antipodes had benefited the world more than
themselves.t
• A musical term, meaning the compensation made by transferring
to imperfect concords part of the beauty of the perfect ones. — Tn.
t Every partial development of course works well for the whole;
but only for this reason, because its opposite partial one balances it in
a higher equation and sum totnl, so that all individual men are only
the limbs of a single giant, such as the Swedenborgian man is. But
in so far as, in one individual, a want arises which helps out an oppo
site one in another, — so that the road of humanity plagues and trips
 FEAR PHILOSOPHIZED DOWN. 437

He kept in view very good fundamental principles.

Man, said he, is free and without limits, — not in respect
to what he will do or enjoy, but in respect to what he will
do without ; he can, if he will, will to dispense with every
thing. In fact, he continued, one has simply the choice,
either always or never to fear ; for thy life-tent stands over
a loaded mine, and, round about, the hours aim at thee
naked weapons. Only one in a thousand * hits ; and, in
any case, I am sure I would sooner fall standing than
bending like a coward. But, he concluded, in order to
justify himself on the subject, is then steadfastness made
for nothing better than for a surgeon and serving-maid,
and not much rather for our muse and goddess? for it
equally much by hills and by hollows, — it will bo seen that every
one-sided fulness is only a cure of the times, not their health ; and
that the higher law is, after all, a culture slower in the individual, but
still harmonious ; less in amount, indeed, but impartial, and thereby,
in the long run, even more rapid. We always forget that — as in me
chanics power and time are mutual supplements — eternity is the in
finite power.
• According to Borreux, the engineer, literally only every thou
sandth shot from small-arms hits. So is it in all cases ; fear death,
and then there stand flower-pots ready to fall from chamber-windows,
lightnings from the blue sky, nir-guus going off. polypuses in the
heart, mad dogs, robbers, every gash in the finger, aqun toffima, proud
flesh, &c, in short, all nature — that ever-going, crushing cochineal-
mill — stands with innumerable open scissors of fate round about thee,
and thou hast no consolation, save this, that — nevertheless people
grow eighty years old. Fear impoverishment : then fire, flood, fam
ine, and war, banditti and revolutions, set upon thee with greedy clawa
and fangs ; and yet, thou rich man ! the poor man — creeping along
under the same birds of prey — becomes at Inst as rich as thou.
March, therefore, boldly through the slumbering lion-herd of dangers,
lying on the right and left, and go up to the fountain, only do not wan
tonly wake them up ; of course a hell-god drags down individuals
who feared nothing; but so, too, does a higher God draw up individu
als who expected nothing; and fear and hope walk here below in one
common night.
438 TITAN.

is not surely a good, merely because it helps do without

something which we have lost, but it is intrinsically one,
and a greater than the one whose place it supplies ; even
the happiest must acquire it, even without outward occa
sion or bestowal ; yes, it is so much the better, if it is
possessed earlier than applied.
These deceptions or justifications were partly weapons
of self-defence against the tragic Roquairol, who would
fain heighten every pleasure, and even those of his friend,
by sombre contrasts ; and partly they were such as a
noble man, who hitherto has plunged into sorrow without
measuring its depth, and who would always feel his power
of swimming through life, must necessarily fall upon, when
he is inwardly aware that the centre of gravity of his
bliss and of his hell has shifted and fallen out of him
self into another being. " O, what if she should die ? "
he asked himself. He had not been wont to shudder
so at the thought of any death as of this. Therefore he
squeezed these thorns of fancy right sharply in his hand
in order to crush them. At last, when the pure country
air of love and the shepherd-dance in this Arcadia had
brought more and more roses to Liana's cheek, then his
thorns ceased to grow.
To all other vipers of life, so long as they could find
no entrance through Liana's heart, he was inaccessible.
At whatever price, — and though he should have to for
sake, give up, provoke, undertake all, — he would buy
Liana. The phantoms of terror which came threateningly
to meet him out of two houses, — Froulay's and Gas-
pard's, — he let come on, and dispelled them : let the foe
once show himself, thought he, so am I his foe too. Often
he stood in Tartarus, and found, in this still life of death
in rilievo, peace of soul. The actual world takes more
 THE EVENING-STAR PARTY. 439

quickly our image than we its ; even here he gained soft,

broad, life-illumining hopes and sweet tears, which flowed
from him at the thought of Liana's faith in her death, not
because he believed in the probability, but in the improb
ability thereof, which, through love and joy and recovery,
would daily grow greater.
Only one misfortune was there for him, against which
every weapon snapped in pieces, whose possibility, how
ever, he held to be a sinful thought, — namely, that he
and Liana, by some fault or time or the world's influence,
might cease to love each other. Here, relying on two
hearts, he boldly defied the future. O, who has not said,
when, in reliance upon a warm eternity, he has expressed
his rapture, The Fatal Sister may clip the thread of our
life, but shall she come and open the scissors against the
bond of our love ? The very next day the Fatal Sister
has stood before him, and snapped the scissors to.

68. CYCLE.

ONCE Roquairol came quite late to take Albano

with him to the " Evening-Star Party " at the
herdsman's hut, which he had arranged with Rabette.
The Captain loved to build around the warm springs of
his love and joy the well-curb of wholly select days and
circumstances ; if he could contrive it, for instance, he
made his declarations of love, say on a birthday, dur
ing a total eclipse of the sun, on a valentine's day, in
a blooming hot-house in winter, in a covered sleigh on
the ice, or in a charnel-house ; so, too, he loved to
quarrel with others in significant days and places, in the
church-pew, in the beginning of spring or winter, in
the green-room of the amateur theatre, at a great fire,
44° TITAN.

or not far from Tartarus or in the flute-dell. Albano,

however, was too young, as others arc too old, to have
to season his fresh feeling with artificial hours and situa
tions ; he preferred to beautify the latter through the
former.
With impetuous joy Albano flew along the road to the
unexpected pleasure. Last evening had been so rich, —
the four rivers of Paradise had, in one cataract, poured
down from heaven into his heart, — and this evening he
would leap into its sprayey whirlpool. The evening
heaven itself was so fair and pure, and Hesperus went
with growing splendor down his brightly glimmering path.
Rabette waited at the foot of the mountain on which
stood the herdsman's hut (the little shooting-house), in
order to lead him unsuspecting to the unprepared female
friend, who at the window, with her gleaming eye on
Hesperus, lay musing, and thought of the full, glowing
autumn flowers, which, at this late time of her life, and so
shortly before the longest night, were springing up. She
was troubled to-day about many things. She had, in fact,
sought hitherto more to deserve and to justify than to en
joy and increase her love, and more to bless with it
another's heart than her own. How indescribably she
longed to do deeds for him, — only sacrifices were to her
deeds, — and she really envied her friend who had, every
time, at least to prepare Charles a beverage. As she
knew no other way, she expressed her devoted zeal by
greater daughterly love and attention to Albano's parents
and sister ; and learned even to cook a little, which other
ministers' daughters, who make nothing but salad and tea,
must pardon her, especially when they reflect that, in
Liana's case, they themselves would not have done other
wise, but rather have made one dish more. Yes, she
 CALM DEVOTION OF LIANA'S LOVE. 44I

accounted Rabette as more virtuous, because she could be

more broadly and extensively active ; Rabette, on the
other hand, held Liana to be the better of the two, be
cause she prayed so much the more. A similar error
they repeated twofold in respect to the brothers ; Rabette
thought Charles the gentler, and Liana, Albano ; both,
according to inferences from their mutual reports.
So long as a woman loves, she loves right on, steadi
ly. A man has to do something between whiles. Liana
transformed everything into his image and his name: this
mountain, this little chamber, this, to him once dangerous,
bird-pole, became the crayon pencils for his stereotype
image. She always came back upon this, that he deserved
something better than her ; for love is lowliness, on the
wedding-ring sparkles no jewel. It touched her that her
early death affected him. There she saw still the maiden
blinded by the small-pox, whom he had once unconsciously
pressed to his heart;* and, with the quick apprehension
of sadness, she felt herself to resemble the blind one also,
in that incident, and not merely in the similar, although
shorter night, which pain had once thrown over her eyes.
As gentle as her emblem, Hesperus, dipping into the
western horizon of life, did she seem to her lover. She
never could pass immediately out of her own heart into
the startling present ; her turnings were always like those
of the sunflower, very slow, and every sensation lived
long in her faithful breast. Seldom, indeed, does a lover
find the welcome of his loved one like the last image,
which the farewell had imparted to him ; a female soul
must — so man desires — with all the wings, storms,
heavens, of the last minute, sound over into the next.
But Liana had ever received her friend shyly and softly,
* Titan, 13. Cycle.
I9»
442 TITAN.

and otherwise than she had parted with him ; and some
times, to his fiery spirit, this tender waiting, this slow
lifting of the eyelid, appeared almost as a return to the
old coldness.
To-day it seized the more ardent Count more strongly
than usual. Like a pair of strange children who are to
become acquainted with each other, and smile upon and
touch each other, the two stood beside each other friendly
and emban-assed. She told how she had made his sister
tell her of his childish break-neck adventure on this
mountain. A loved maiden knows no more beautiful,
no richer history than that of her friend. " O even then,"
he said with emotion, " I looked toward thy mountains !
Thy name, like a golden inscription, was written on my
whole youth. Ah, Liana ! didst thou haply love me as I
thee, when thou hadst not yet seen me ? "
" Certainly not, Albano," answered she, " not till long
after ! " She meant, however, her blindness ; and said
he appeared to her in this twilight of the eyes, on that
evening when he ate with her father, like an old northern
king's son, somewhat like Olo,* and she had had a cer
tain awe before him, as for her father and brother. Her
high respect for men the fewest were hardly worthy to
guess, not to say, occasion. " And how when thou hadst
* At the court of King Olaus, the royal youth Olo, dressed as a
peasant, oifered himself as a champion of the daughter against rob
bers. Then did the fire of the eyes and nobleness of form tell as proof
of a high descent; thus did Suanhita, for example, recognize King Keg-
Tier in a herdsman's guise by the beauty of his eye and face. The
king's daughter looked searchingly into Olo's ilaming eye, and came
near swooning; she essayed a second look, and was senseless; and at
the third, swooned. The divine youth therefore cast his eyelids down
hut uncovered his brow ond his golden hair and the signs of his rank.
Sec " The German and his Native Land," by Rosenthal and Korg,
Vol. I. pp. 166, 167.
 LIANA'S HUMILITY. 44.3

regained thy sight ? " said Albano. " I just told thee
that," she replied naively. " But when thou didst so
love my brother," she continued, " and wast so good to
thy sister, then to be sure I quite took heart, and am
now and henceforth thy second sister. Besides, thou
hast lost one — Albano, believe mc, I know I am sure
ly unworthy, especially of thee ; but I have one conso
lation."
Perplexed by this mixture of sanctity and coldness, he
could only passionately kiss her, and was constrained,
without contradicting her, to ask forthwith, " What conso
lation ? " " That thou wilt one day be entirely happy,"
said she softly. " Liana, speak more plainly ! " said he.
For he understood not that she meant her death and the
announcement of Linda by the spirits. " I mean after
one year," she replied, " from the date of the predictions."
He looked at her speechless, wild, guessing and trem
bling. She fell weeping upon his heart, and suddenly
gave vent to the swell of inward sighs : " Shall I not then
be dead at that time," said she with deep emotion, "and
look down from eternity to see that thou art rewarded for
thy love to Liana? And that, too, certainly in a high
degree ! "
Weep, be angry, suffer, exult, and wonder more and
more, passionate youth ! But, to be sure, thou compre-
hendest not this lowly soul! — Holy humility ! thou only
virtue which God, not man, created ! Thou art higher
than all which thou concealest or knowest not ! Thou
heavenly beam of light ! like the earthly light,* thou
showest all other colors and floatest thyself invisible,
* For what we cnll light is only «n intenser white. No one sees,
by night, the luminous stream which rushes upward along by the
earth, pouring from the sun upon the full moon.
444 TITAN.

colorless, in heaven ! Let no one profane thy uncon

sciousness by instruction ! When thy little white blos
soms have once fallen, they come not again, and around
thy fruits only modesty then spreads her foliage.
Painfully did the heart in Albano split into contradic
tions, as if into two, his own heart and Liana's. She was
nothing but pure love and lowliness, and the splendor of
her talents was only a foreign border-work, as white
marble images of the gods have the variegated border
only as decoration : one could not do anything but adore
her, even in her errors. On the other hand, she had, in
conjunction with tender, susceptible feelings, such firm
opinions and errors ; his modesty fought so vainly against
her humility, and his clear-sightedness against her visionary
tendency. The hostile train which this propensity drew
after it he saw too clearly sweeping along over all the joys
of her life. His ever-besetting suspicion, that she loved
him merely because she hated nothing, and that she was
always a sister instead of a lover, again charged home
upon him like an armed man. Thus did all things fight
together in this case, — duty and desire, fortune and
place. Both were new and unknown to each other, be
cause of love ; but Liana divined as little as he. O how
strange to each other and unlike each other two human
beings, kindred souls, become, merely because a Divinity
hovers between the two and shines upon both !
Something remained in him unharmonious and un
solved. He felt it so sadly, now that the summer night
glimmered for higher raptures than he possessed ; now
that, deep in the ether, the trembling evening star pressed
on after the sun through the rose-clouds under which he
was buried ; now that the meadows of grain breathed
perfume and murmured not, and the closed pastures grew
 LIANA'S DEVOTIONS. 445

green and did not glow, and the world and every nightin
gale slept, and life below was a still cloister-garden, and,
only overhead, the constellations, like silver, ethereal
harps, seemed to tremble and sound before the spring
winds of distant Edens.
He must needs see Liana again to-morrow, by way of
tuning his heart. Rabette came up from the mountain
with her friend, infinitely animated. Both seemed almost
exhausted with laughing and joking ; for Roquairol car
ried everything, even mirth, to the degree of pain. He
had converted the evening star, for which he had given
the invitation, into a hothouse and homestead of pleasant
conceits and allusions. At first he would not come home
with her, even to-morrow ; but at last he consented, when
Rabette assured him " she understood the fine gentleman
well enough, but he must nevertheless just let her take
care of things."
When the ruddy dawn arose, Albano, accompanied by
him, came again ; but the garden-gate of the " manor-
garden " was already open, and Liana already in the
arbor. A stitched book of public documents (so it seems)
lay in her lap, and her folded hands beside it ; she looked
rather straightforward, as in thought, than upwards, as in
prayer ; yet she received her Albano with so mild and
distant a smile, as a man, greeting a guest who comes
right into the midst of his prayers, smiles upon him, and
then continues his devotion. The Count had hitherto
been obliged always to prepare himself for a certain re
serve in her reception of him. A misunderstanding,
which returns quickly, however often it is removed, acts
again and again as deludingly and freshly as at the first
time. He felt very strongly that something more fixed
than that first virgin ba<hfulness, wherewith' a maiden
446 TITAN.

will always invent for the dazzling sun of love, besides

the dawn, a twilight too, and again another for that, hin
dered the fiery melting together of their souls.
He asked what she was reading ; she hesitated, cover
ing it up. A thought, suddenly darting upon her, seemed
to open her heart ; she gave him the book, and said it was
a French manuscript, — namely, written prayers, drawn
up by her mother several years before, which touched her
more than her own thoughts ; but still there was ever
more looking through her tenderly woven face a cloistral
thought, which sought to leave her heart. What could
Albano object to this Psalmist of the heart ? Who can
answer a songstress ? A praying female stands, as does
also an unhappy one, on a high, holy place, which our
arms cannot reach. But how miserable must most prayers
be, since, although in earlier life possessing the attraction
of charms, like the rosary, which is made out of sweet-
smelling woods, yet afterward in advanced age they act
only as blemishes, and like the relic or the death's-head
with which the rosary itself ends !
Without waiting for his question, she told him at once
what had disturbed her during her prayer ; namely, this
passage in it : 0 mon Dieu,fais que je sois toujours vraie
et sincere, &c, whereas she had hitherto concealed her
love from her dear mother. She added, she would come
now very soon, and then the closed heart should be
opened to her. " No," said he, almost angrily, " thou
mayest not ; thy secret is also mine ! " Men are often
hardened by that in prose which in poetry softens them ;
for example, woman's piety and open-heartedness.
Now no one hated more than he the clutching of the
parental writing-finger, forefinger, and little finger into
a pair of clasped hands ; not that he feared, on the part
 SHALL LIANA TELL HER MOTHER? 447

of the Minister, wars or rivals, — he rather presupposed

open arms and feasts of joy, — but because, to his mag
nanimous spirit, at once claiming and granting liberty,
nothing was more revoking than the reflection, what
smutty turf now for the kindling of the fire the parents
might lay on the altar of love, or what pots they might
set. on to boil ; how easily, then, even poetic parents
often transform themselves with the children into prosaic
or juristical ones, the father into an administrative, the
mother into a financial board ; how, then, to say the
least, the court atmosphere makes one a bondsman, just
as only the poetic heaven's ether makes free ; and what
perturbations his Hesperus might expect from the attract
ing world, the old Minister, who found nothing more
unprofitable about love than love itself, and to whom the
holiest sensibilities seemed about as useful for marriages
of rank as the Hebrew is for preachers, namely, more
in examination than in actual service. So ill did he
think of his step-father, for he knew not something still
worse.
But the good daughter thought far higher of her
mother than did a stranger, and her heart struggled
painfully against concealing from her her love. She
appealed to her brother, who was just entering. But
he was wholly of Albano's mind. " Women," he added,
not in the best humor, " are more fond of speaking
about love than in love ; men, the reverse." " No," said
Liana, decidedly ; " if my mother ask me, I cannot be
untrue." " God ! " cried Albano, with a shudder, " and
who could wish that ? " For to him, also, free truth
was the open helmet of the soul's nobility ; only he
spoke it merely from self-respect, and Liana out of
human affection.
448 TITAN.

Rabette came with the tea-things and a flask, wherein

was tea-juice and elementary Are, or nerve-ether for the
Captain, — arrack. He never liked to visit people in the
morning, with whom he could not drink it till evening ;
Rabettc had yesterday guessed this naughtiness, and to
day gratified it. " How can the soul," said the sound
Albano to him often, "make itself a slave to the belly
and the senses ? Are we not already bound closely
enough by the fetters of the body, and thou wilt still draw
chains through the chains?" To this Roquairol had
always the same answer : " Just the reverse ! Through
the corporeal itself, I free myself from the corporeal ;
for instance, by wine from blood. As long as thou canst
never escape servitude to the bodily senses, and all thy
consciousness and thy thinking can only, through a bodily
servitude, attaching itself to the glebe of the earth, abide
in their nobility ; I cannot perceive why thou dost not
properly use these rebels and despots as thy servants?
Why must I let the body only work ill upon me, and
not advantageously as well ? " Albano stood to it, that
the still light of health was more dignified than the
poppy-oil flame of a slave of opium ; and the fate of
being prisoner of war to the body, which one spirit has
to bear in common with the whole human army, more
honorable than the cramping confinement of a personal
arrest.
To-day, however, not even the spirituous brimstone-
smoked tea-water could wash away a certain discontent
from Roquairol, whom night-watching had colored more
pale, as it had the Count more red. He could not be
reconciled to it, that the manor-garden was all shut in
with a board-fence as high as a man, which was less in
tended as a billiard-table border, not to let the eye-ball
 SUNRISE IN THE MANOR-GARDEN. 449

go out, than as a mountebank's booth, to let nothing in,

and which of course insured no other prospect than the
prospect proper ; quite as little did the pleasure-garden
commend itself to his favor by the fact that the turf-
benches on which they sat in the arbor had not yet been
mowed, that in all the beds only vegetables for the
trimming of cooked meat flapped about, that nothing
ripe yet hung there but one or two moles in their hang
ing death-beds, that on a bowling-green, whereupon one
rolls into u tinkling middle-hole, the crooked return-alley
let the balls run home again, much more easily than
they could — unless one threw them — be made to pass
over the earth-bottom of the main alley, and that no
orangery was anywhere to be seen, excepting once, when
fortunately the garden-gate stood open, just as a blooming
orangery box passed by in a wheelbarrow on its way to
Lilar.
The Captain needed only to bring forward these par
ticulars satirically, and thereby inwardly to wound the
outwardly laughing Rabette, — because no woman can
bear to hear fault found with Iter bodily offspring, whether
it be children, clothes, cakes, or furniture ; * and then
his mountain-heights could gradually disencumber them
selves of their clouds again, and Rabette become still
more uncommonly gay.
Albano, in this morning hour of the day, and, as it
were, of childhood, and in this little paradise-garden of
• This warmer, tenderer, more timid, ever-praised sex, living more
in the opinion of othcrs than in its own, is poisonously pierced by a
reproach which only pricks iu so as to draw a little blood, as noxious
beasts, in warm countries and months, poison, and in cold ones only
wound. Therefore let the girls' schoolmaster consider that a dose
which is satire upon the boy — who, besides, must withstand opinion
— becomes a lampoon, when it lights upon his sUter.
CO
450 TITAN.

his childish years, was inwardly glad, — for in the first

love, as in Shakespeare's pieces, nothing depends on the
wooden stage of the performance ; but to-day's after-
winter of yesterday's chill would nevertheless not melt.
The morning-blue began to be filled with brighter and
brighter golden fleeces ; as the garden, like small cities,
had only two gates, the upper and the lower, he opened
like an aurora that of the morning sun ; the splendor
gushed in over the smoking green ; the Rosana gliding
below caught lightnings, and flung them over hitherward ;
Albano departed fmally full of love and bliss.
But the love was greater than the bliss.

69. CYCLE.
FLYING Spring ! (I mean love, just as one calls
the after summer a flying summer) thou hurriest
away of thyself over our heads with arrowy speed ;
why do authors again hurry over thee ? Thou art the
German blossoming season ; which is never a blossom
ing month long. We read all winter in almanacs and
similes much about its magnificence, and we pine for
it; at last it hangs thick on the dark boughs six days
long, and beside that, under cold May showers, sweeping
bliss-month * storms, and with a dumb-session of half-
frozen nightingales, — and then, when one comes out at
length into the garden, the footpath is already white with
blossom?, and the tree at most full of green ; then it is
over, till in winter we again hear with exaltation of heart
the beginning of a talc : "It was just in the lovely season
of the blossoming." Even so do I see few authors, at
the long session-and-scribbling-table of romance, working
• Poetic name for Mav. — Th.
 SUNSET WALK TO BLUMENBUHL. 45 1

right and left for the benefit of the reading-desk, who,

after the long preface to love, do not so soon as, like a
war, it is declared, forthwith conclude it ; and really,
there are more steps to love than in it; all that is
coming to be, — for instance, spring, youth, morning,
learning, — opens out more widely and in a richer variety
of hues than fixed being ; but is not this latter in turn a
progress, only a higher ; and this, again, a state of being,
only a quicker ?
Albano would fain lead along more beautifully the
fleeting, divine season, when the heart is our god ; he
would have it rather fly upward than fly away. He was
angry the next day with nobody but himself. He tore
his way through such petty and yet closely entangling
troubles, through a condition like that of men during an
earthquake, when an invisible vapor holds the heavy
foot as a snare. " I would rather let myself be rained on
upon mountains," said he, " than in valleys." Men of
quick fancy more easily reconcile themselves to the loved
one when she is absent, than when she is present.
Afier some days, he went again to Blumenbiihl just
before sundown. A burning red cut through the night
like gloom of the foliage. His darkening, woody road
was made, by the flames which danced about therein, an
enchanted one. He transferred his illuminated present
deep into a future, shady past. O, after yean:, thought
he, when thou returnest, when all is gone by and changed,
the trees grown up, human beings passed away, and only
the mountains and the brook left, then wilt thou con
gratulate thyself that thou couldst once in these walks
so often journey to thy sweetest heart, and on either
hand the music and the glory of Nature went along with
thy joyful soul, as the moon seems to the child to run
452 TITAN.

after him through all streets. An unwonted rapture

flung through his whole being the long, broad streak of
sunshine ; the farthest flowers of his fancy opened ; all
tones came through a brighter ether, and sounded nearer.
The flowers around him, too, exhaled a keener fragrance,
and the peal of the bell sounded nearer ; and both are
signs of foul weather.
Thus inwardly happy, he made his appearance, — and,
indeed, without Roquairol, who in fact came more and
more seldom, — and found his beloved up in his child
hood's study, her guest-chamber, which was now the
usual scene of his visits. In a white dress, with dark
trimming, as in a beautiful half-mourning, she sat at the
drawing-table with her eyes sharper than usual, buried
in a picture. She flew to his heart, but only to lead him
back presently to the dear form upon which her heart
hung as in a mother's arms. She related that her mother
had been here to-day with the Princess, and had showed so
much pleasure in her improving color, such infinite kind
ness toward her happy daughter. " She was obliged,"
continued she, " to let me take a slight sketch of her,
in order that I might only look upon her so much the
longer, and have something of her to keep by me. I
am just finishing the outline of the face, but it is abso
lutely too poor a likeness." She could not tear her
fancy away from the image, and still less from the origi
nal. To be sure, no more beautiful medallion can hang
on a daughter's heart, or in fact in it, than that of
a mother; but, nevertheless, Albano thought to-day the
hanging-ring took up too broad a space.
She talked only of her mother. " I certainly sin," said
she ; " she asked me in such a friendly way whether
thou eamest often, but I said only yes, and nothing
 LIANA'S PRESENTIMENTS OF DEATH. 453

further. O good Albano, how gladly would I have given

up to her frankly my whole soul ! "
He answered, that the mother seemed not to be so
frank ; she perhaps knew already the whole through the
Lector, and the pure draught of love would now be
continually disturbed by foreign substances. Against
Augusti he declared himself very strongly, but Liana
quite as strongly upheld him. Through both that coun
terfeiter of the coin of truth, namely, suspicion, — the
suspicion that she perhaps loved him as she loved every
thing, since she grew as by a living tie to everything
good, — gained, under Albano's sensibilities, which be
sides had been to-day so warm and glad, more and more
mint-stamps and currency.
She suspected nothing, but she came back to the sub
ject of her secrecy. " But why, then, does it make me
unhappy," said she, " if it is right ? Beloved one, my
Caroline too appears to me no longer, and truly that is no
good sign." This spectral-machinery always came on as
oppressively and gloomily to him as a thunder-cloud in
the outer world. His old exasperation against the teas-
ings practised in his own case by apes of the air, whom
he could not lay hold of, passed over into a similar feeling
against Liana's optical self-deception. That veil pre
sented her by Caroline, wherewith, in the beginning, she
had so sublimely arrayed herself for the cloister of the
tomb, — that travelling veil for the next world, — had
long been to this Hercules a. burning garment, drenched
in the poisonous blood of a Nessus ; therefore she no
longer dared to wear it before him. The conclusion that
the fancy of being destined to death laid the seed of the
reality, and that in the deep overhanging cloud an acci
dent might easily attract the striking-spark of death, fell
454 TITAN.

like a mourning into his love festival. So are all strange

sea-wonders of fancy (like this death-delusion) desired
only in fancy (in romance), but not in life, except once on
fantastic heights ; but then must such comets, like others,
soon recede again from our heaven.
He spoke now very seriously, — of suicidal fancies,
of life's duties, of wilful blindness to the fairest signs
of her recovery, among which he reckoned as well the
disappearance of the optical Caroline as the blooming of
her color. She heard him patiently ; but through the
Princess, who, notwithstanding her love, seldom left be
hind with him pleasant impressions, her fancy had to-day
taken quite another road, far beyond herself and her
grave. She stood only before Linda's image, of which
Julienne had this afternoon communicated to her sharper
outlines than maidens are wont to give of maidens.
" She is a very good girl." they say of each other.
Linda's manly spirit, her warm attachment to Gaspard in
connection with her contempt of the mass of men, her
inflexibility, her bold strides in manly knowledge, her
masterly and often severe letters, more pithy than flow
ery, and, most of all, her probably approaching arrival,
took a powerful hold of Liana's tender heart. " My
Albano must have her," was the constant thought of this
disinterested soul ; and if the Princess had had the inten
tion of humiliating comparisons, she remarked it not, but
fulfilled it. The good creature found, too, so much of a
higher providence here, — for example, that her brother
need now no longer be the rival of her lover and of his
friend, — that she herself could portray beforehand her
vigorous Albano to the proud Romeiro, and that certainly,
despite all opposition, all the ghostly prophecies strikingly
connected and coincided with each other. All this she
 FORESHADOWING OF LOVE'S TRIAL. 455

now said (because she concealed only her sorrows, not

her hopes) right to the Count's face.
What a gnashing bite did an evil genius at this moment
make into his tenderest life ! That glowing love which
neither divides nor is divided possessed his heart, he
thought, not hers. He came very near to showing up
his inner being just as it was, all kindled at once, as if
by a lightning stroke, into a lofty blaze. Only the inno
cent white brow, with festive roses in its little ringlets ;
the childishly bright looking-up of the pure blue pair of
eyes, and the soft face, which even at a musical fortis
simo, and at every vehemence in movement or laughter
on the part of another, caught a sickly redness from the
beating heart ; and his indignant shame at the levity with
which a man can abuse his omnipotence and his sex, to
the terror of the tenderer, restrained him, like guardian
spirits ; and he said merely, in that noble anger which
sounded like a tender emotion, " O Liana, thou art hard
to-day ! "
" And yet I am indeed so tender ! " said the innocent
one. The two had hitherto been standing at the window,
before the dark tempest which came rolling on out of
Lilar. She turned suddenly round ; for since the day of
her blindness, when a dark cloud had seemed to fly
towards her, she had never been able to look at one long ;
and Albano's tall form, with his whole live-glowing face
and his soul-speaking eyes, stood illumined by the evening
light before her. With the hand which he left free she
softly and playfully swept aside the dark hair from his
defiant forehead, smoothed the contracted eyebrow, and
said, as his look stung like a sun, and his mouth shut
with determination, " O, joyfully, joyfully, shall this fair
face one day smile ! " He ?miled. but sad'y. " And then
456 TITAN.

shall I be still more blest than to-day ! " said she, and
btarted, for n lightning-flash darted across his earnest face,
as over a jagged mountain, and showed it, like that of
the god of war, illuminated with war-flames.
He hurried away ; would not be held back; spoke of a
weather-cooling ; went out into the storm ; and left Liana
behind in the joy that she had spoken to-day merely out
of pure love. From the last house in the village Rabette
flew to meet him ; the torrents of the restrained tears
rolled down his cheeks. " What dost thou want ? why
weepest thou ? " she cried. " Thou art dreaming ! " cried
he, and hurried, without further answer, out into the tem
pest, which had suddenly, like a mantle-fish, flung itself
stiflingly over the whole heaven. There, under the rain
drops and lightning-flashes, he began, first of all, to reckon
up for himself the best proofs that Liana had saintly
charms, divine sense, all virtues, especially universal phi
lanthropy, daughterly, sisterly, friendly affection, only not,
however, the glowing love for one person, — at least, not
for him. She is so entirely and exclusively — such
is always his conclusion — possessed and absorbed with
the present object, whether it be myself or a broken arm
of the little Pollux, that it hides from her heaven and
earth. Hence the setting of her life's day, with all the
attendant partings, is no more to her than the setting of a
star. Hence it was that I stood beside her so long, with
a heart full of the pangs of love, and she saw not into my
love, because she found none in her own bosom. And
this is what makes it so bitter, when man, pining in pov
erty among the common hearts of earth, is rendered by
the noblest only unhappy at last.
The rain pattered and trickled through the leaves, the
fire darted through the woods, and the Wild Huntsman
 SOBER SECOND THOUGHT. 457

of the storm drove his crazy chase. This refreshed and

rejoiced him like the cooling hand of a friend taking his
to guide him. As he ascended, not through the cavern,
but outside over the back of the mountain to his high
thunder-house, he saw a thick, gray night of rain settle
down heavily upon the green Lilar, and on the winding
Tartarus rested under the flashes the illuminated storm.
He shuddered, on entering his little house, at a cry which
his iEolian-harp emitted under the snatches of the wind ;
for it had once, gilded by the evening sun, ethereally
clothed his young love like starlight, and had followed it
with ever-varying tones, as it went out over this suffering
life.
70. CYCLE.

ON the morning after both storms were dissolved into

a still cloudiness. — And out of the great griefs
came only errors. Weaklings that we are ! when at our
sham execution fate touches us with the rod, not with the
sword, we sink impotently from the block, and feel the
process of dying reach far into our life ! All fevers, in
cluding spiritual ones, are cooled by the freshness of a
new morning, just as sad evening stirs all their embers
into a glow. Who of us has not at evening, — that prop
er witching hour of tormenting spectres, house-haunting
ghosts and hobgoblins, — caught in the threads which he
himself had spun, but which he took for a web spread by
other hands, entangled himself more and more deeply the
more he turned about and tried to extricate himself, till
in the morning he saw his turnkey before him, namely,
himself?
Albano saw on the whole theatre of yesterday's war
nothing left standing but a pale, kindly figure in half
20
458 TITAN.

mourning, who looked round after him with innocent

maidenly eyes, and toward which he could not help look
ing over, albeit she was now more a bride of God than
of a mortal. He felt now, to be sure, more strongly how
high his demands upon real friends rose, than he once did,
when he could heighten at pleasure the highest which he
made upon the beings of his dreams, whom he always cast
exactly into the temporary mould of his heart ; and how
he was possessed by a spirit that spared no one, that would
stretch the wings of every other according to its own,
because it could bear no individuality except that which
was copied.
He had hitherto experienced from all his loved ones
too little opposition, as Liana had too much ; both ex
tremes injure one. The spiritual as well as the physical
man, without the resistance of the outer atmosphere, is
blown up and burst by the inner, and without the resist
ance of the inner is crushed by the outer; only the equi
librium between inner resistance and outer pressure keeps
a fair play-room open for life and its culture. Besides,
men — since only the best of them appreciate in the best
of their own sex strong conviction — can hardly tolerate
it in women, and would have them not merely the reflec
tion, but even the echo, of themselves. They want, I
mean, not merely the look, but also the word, that says yes.
Albano punished himself with several days of voluntary
absence, till the unclean clouds should have cleared away
from within him which had overshadowed the gnomon of
the sundial of his inner man. " When I am quite cheer
ful and good-natured," said he, " I will go back to her,
and err no more." He errs at this moment. Whenever
a strange, uncomfortable semitone has repeatedly intruded
itself between all the harmonies of two natures, it swells
 ALBANO SEEKS ROQUAIROL. 459

more and more fatally till it drowns the key-note, and

ends all The dividing tone was, in this case, the strength
of the man's pitch in connection with the strength of the
woman's. But the highest love is most easily wounded
by the slightest difference. O, little avails it then for
man to say to himself, I will be another man ! Only in
the finest, only in unimpaired enthusiasm, does he propose
to himself such a thing ; but it is just when the feeling
m impaired, when he were hardly capable of the purpose,
that he has to rise to the fulfilment of it, and then he can
hardly make the achievement.
The Count went in the morning, as usual, to his lecture-
rooms and parlors in the city. In the former it was hard
for him to fix his instruments and his eyes upon the stars
of the sciences, and to take sight, sailing as he was on
such a sea of emotion. In the latter he found the Lector
colder than ever, the Bibliothecary warmer, the household
more inflated. He went to Roquairol, whom he to-day
loved and treated still more cordially, as if by way of
atonement to his offended sister. Charles said at once,
with his sudden and tragical flinging up of the curtain of
futurity, "All was discovered, — in the highest degree of
probability ! " As often as lovers see that their Calypso's
island — which, to be sure, lies free on the open ocean —
has at length come to the eyes of the seafaring world,
and that they are making sail for it, they are astonished
to an astonishing degree ; for is there any one Paradise
which has such a loose and low palisado, allowing every
passer-by to see in, as theirs ?
For a long time, he related, had the Doctor's children
always had something to fetch from the Architect's wife
at Lilar, — flowers, medicine-phials, &c. ; certainly as
spy-glasses and ear-tubes of Augusti, who again was the
460 TITAN.

opera-glass of his mother. In short, his father had, at

least, been at the Greek woman's yesterday, but had
luckily found only an empty package * from Rabette to
him (Charles), which, according to the liberties of the
ministerial Church, he had opened and closed.
" Why luckily ? " said Albano. " I will justify and
honor my love before the world." " I referred to my
self," he replied ; " for never was my father more friendly
to me than since he broke open my last letters. He is
this aflernoon in Blumenbiihl, and it may well be more
on my own account than my sister's."
Albano had no fear that the city could drill mining-
galleries under his childhood's land, so as to blow up in
one conflagration the blessed isle, — could he not trust his
character and courage and Liana's own ? — but it pained
him now that he had so needlessly robbed the childlike
Liana of the joy and merit of a childlike open-hearted-
ness. How he longed now for the atoning and recom
pensing moment of the first meeting again, after the next
morning !
He stayed by his friend as by a consolation, and did
not go back till the evening redness floated about in the
rain-clouds. When he came, he found already awaiting
him a letter from Liana, written to-day.
• • • • •
"O good Albano, why eamest thou not? How much
I had to say to thee ! How I trembled for thy sake on
Friday, when the frowning cloud pursued thee with its

• In which were always enclosed letters from Liana to Albano.

Let every one see here, by two examples, how on the harmonica of
love a brother must stand in front as key-bank for the sister, who
would reach the bells. There should, therefore, always be a couple
of couples, diametrically connected in sisterhood and affection.
 LETTER FROM LIANA. 461

thunder ! Thou hast wearied me too much from sorrow,

so strange and heavy has it become to me now. I was
inconsolable the whole evening ; at last, when night fell,
the thought sank into my mind that thou hadst been
oppressed as with presentiments, and that the lightning
loved to strike the thunder-house. Why, indeed, art thou
there ? I hurried up, and knelt by my bed, and prayed
to God, although the storm had long been dispersed, that
he would have preserved thee. Smile at my tardy prayer;
but I said to him, 'Thou knowest indeed, all-gracious
One. that I would pray.' I was consoled, too, when I
looked up to the stars, and the broken ray of joy trembled
within me.
" But in the morning Rabette made me sad again. She
had seen thee weeping on the road. A thousand times
have I asked myself, whether I am to blame for that.
Can it have come from this, — for she says so, — that I
afflict thee too much with my death thoughts ? Never
more shalt thou hear them ; the veil, too, is laid away ;
but I calculated upon thee according to my brother, to
whom, as he himself says, the dusk of death is an evening-
twilight, in which forms seem to him more lovely. Truly,
I am quite blest ; for thou art even so, and yet hast so
little in having me, — only a small flower for thy heart, but
I have thyself. Leave me my grave-mound ; therefrom,
as from a mountain, comes better, more fruitful soil into
my valley. O how one loves, Albano, when all around
us crumbles and sinks and melts away in smoke, and when,
still, the bond and splendor of love stand firm and invio
late on the fleeting ground of life, as I have often seen
with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a rainbow
hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting,
impetuous floods ! O, would that the nightingales were
ifil TITAN.

yet singing ; now I could sing with them ! Thy iEoIian-

harp, my harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my
hand ! My father was with us, and more cheerful and
friendly toward all than ever. Lo, even he is kindly
disposed ! My parents surely send no tempest into our
feast of roses. I readily did him the pleasure, therefore,
— forgive it ! — of promising him, that I would receive
no visits from strangers in a strange house — because,
he said, it was improper. I must go home for some days
on account of the Prince's marriage ; but I shall see
thee soon. O forgive I When my father speaks softly,
my soul cannot possibly say, No. Farewell, my noble
one I L.
" P. S. Soon a little leaf will come fluttering again
over to thy mountain. Only continue in perpetual joy !
O God ! why am I not stronger ? What beings shouldst
thou then take to thy heart ! — Thou dear one ! "

How was he shamed by this full-blooming love, which

never rightly knows when it is misunderstood, and which
presupposes no other fault than its own ! How sadly did
the thought of the commanded separation affect him now,
after the voluntary one ! He could now love her as a
guarding angel before Paradise, how much more as a giv
ing angel in it ! But it is hard for a man, as the youth
felt, clearly to distinguish in the female heart, especially
in this one, intention from instinct, ideas from feelings,
and in this dark, full heaven to count and arrange all the
stars. Everything like hardness, every unpromising bud,
arose at last as a flower; and her worth unfolded itself
piece-wise like spring; whereas, generally, from other
maidens, a traveller who visits them carries away with
him directly at his first evening's departure a little com
 SUNDAY VISIT FROM LIANA. 463

plete flower-catalogue of all their charms and arts, as a

Brocken-passenger gets at the tavern a neat nosegay
of the various kinds of mosses which are found on the
mountain.
He supposed she was now with her parents ; and he
followed, not as a pouting schoolboy, but as a harmonious
man, the giant of destiny. In the garden rainy weather
held sway, the crop of every heavy tempest, which, like
a war, always devastates the scene of conflict.
The promised leaflet appeared : " Only be happy. We
shall see each other very, very soon, and then most bliss
fully. Forgive me ! Ah, I long exceedingly ! "
Now he experienced what days they were which had
once — that is, only a few days ago — passed before him
as divine apparitions, and which now again were to come
up in the East as returning stars ! Why does a blessing,
not till it is lost, cut its way like a sharp diamond so
deeply into the heart? Why must we first have lamented
a thing, before we ardently and painfully love it ? Albano
threw both past and future away from him, that he might
dwell wholly and purely in that present which Liana had
promised him.
71. CYCLE.

ON Sunday morning, when all the blue heavens stood

open, and the earth was festally decked with pearls
and twigs, a gentle finger tapped at Albano's door, which
could belong to none but a female hand. It was Liana
who entered at so early an hour ; Rabette and Charles
without uttered a loud greeting. On his exulting breast
fell the beautiful maiden, blooming from her walk, with
blessed, bright eyes, a freshly bedewed rosebud. It was
his finest morning; he had a clear feeling of Liana's love.
464 TITAN.

As the iEolian-harp sounded in, she looked towards it,

remembered with a blush that fairest evening of the cov
enant, and listened in silence, and dried her eyes when
she turned them again towards Albano. But he could
not enter into this temple of joy without having cleansed
and healed himself by a frank confession of his late
errors. What a sweet rivalry ensued between them of
confessing and forgiving, when Liana lovingly exclaimed
and owned that she had not understood him lately, that
only she was the blamable one, and that she would begin
this very moment to speak better. She could not give
herself any comfort about the secret pangs which she had
caused her friend. As mahogany furniture cracks in no
temperature, and contracts no spots, and needs no polish
ing, so was it with this heart, Albano's felt, as he now
swore to himself always, even when he did not understand
her, to say to himself, She is right.
She solved for him the riddle of her appearing to-day
with those friendly looks which a good nature redoubles,
when it has anything to sweeten, — namely, she was going
back to Pestitz to-day ; but the carriage would not come
till late, till evening, in fact, about tea-time, and so there
remained a whole day before them ; and she hoped her
father would not take this circuitous route through Lilar
as a breach of her promise. A loving maiden grows un
consciously more bold. Thereupon she sought to make
him quite calm about the peaceful intentions of her father,
and represented his strictness, in subjecting himself and
others to convenience, as the reason of his prohibition, as
well as of her being summoned back to the wedding-
festival. Albano, so soon after the oath which he had
just sworn to himself, kept it, and said, She is right.
The Captain came in with the red-cheeked Rabette,

X
 DINNER IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. 465

whose eyes glistened with joy. The small apartment

did not, by narrowness and confusion, make the pleasure
less. Charles, generally so much like Vesuvius, which
in the first hours of morning is still covered with snow,
presented already a warm summit ; he seated himself at
the instrument and thundered into the noisy presence
with a prestissimo (which lay open) of Haydn's, — that
true hour-caller of rejoicing hours, — and played, to the
astonishment of the females, the hardest part so easily, at
sight, that he rather played into it, than from it, and kept
composing much (for instance, the bass) himself; whereas
Albano, with almost comic fidelity, gave you the exact
truth in music quite as much as in history, which, again,
always became in Charles's mouth a piece of his own per
sonal biography. The morning added wings to all their
souls, whereas noon always binds men's wings down, —
hence Aurora goes with winged steeds, and the god of
day with wingless ones. " But how now are our seven
pleasure-stations to be made out?" inquired Charles, "for
the day lies like a garden-hall, with nothing but pleas
ure-avenues on all sides open before us." " Charles, is it
not, then, a matter of indifference where a man loves ? "
said Albano. Blessed one, whose heart needs nothing but
one heart more, no park into the bargain, no opera seria,
no Mozart, no Raphael, no eclipse of the moon, not so
much as moonlight, and no read or acted romance !
" First, I must see my Chariton," said Liana. " Yes,"
added her brother, immediately, " she can bring our din
ner after us into the gothic temple." He proposed,
namely, on this lovely day, to dine in the twelfth century,
and to sit by a sombre, motley window-light, and on sharp-
cornered, heavy, thick furniture, and, as it were, darkly
under the earth of a green present, glistening overhead,
20* DD
466 TITAN.

to sit with blooming faces ; for thus did he overload the

fullest enjoyments with external contrasts, and enjoyed
every happy present most in the near gleam and reflec
tion of the sharpened sickle which was to mow them
away.* " God forbid and avert it, friend ! " said Rabette.
Albano, too, deemed the friendly Greek, her laughing
children, and the neighboring rose-fields far preferable,
and, with the aid of Liana, prevailed. Before the em
bowered cottage the children came running to meet them,
Helena, with her little apron full of orange-blossoms,
which she had picked up, for the breaking of them off
had been forbidden her, and Pollux, in the last, light
bandage of his broken arm, the hand of which had now
been obliged to work with its companion, the right hand,
at puckering up and cracking the rose-leaves. Both gave
notice : " Mother was not ready yet, and had dressed them
first." But presently, neat and simple as a priestess des
tined to dance around the altar of gods of joy, sprang
Chariton to meet her Liana, and, as she came, continued
adjusting her hastily donned clothes by a light hitching
and twitching. "This," said Roquairol, after he had easily
obtained from Rabette a nodding assent thereto, because
she had not understood his French request for the same,
" is my spouse since yesterday," — and he enjoyed with
out further circumstance the right of showing her, which
she, since the friendly encouragement of the Minister,
accepted the more fondly with maidenly presentiments.
• " Such a character," writes HafenrefTer in this connection, "were
desirable for romancing Kotzcbues, for they, as he always will, ac
cording to his nature, create and raise the dignity of the situation by
the accidental place thereof, might, under the cloak of his personality,
humor entirely their own and disguise the weakness of the poet under
the weakness of the hero." Mcthinks this is, so far as a biographer
of romancers can docido, very striking.
 THE QUEEN IN THE KITCHEN. 467

When Liana kindly announced four noonday guests

for Chariton, there stood in the dark eyes of the Greek
gleams of joy, and the little face, with great arched Italian
eyebrows, became a stereotype smile, which was not culi
nary embarrassment, but merely tongueless joy, which
only made her white semicircle of teeth shine more
broadly, when Charles spoke right out: "Surely thou
canst help her, wife ! " " Of course ! " said Rabette, quite
delighted ; because her heart had no longer any other lips
than her two hands, for which, if they could only lay hold
of hard work, it was full as much as if they were pressed
by the hand of a lover. Did she not again and again
curse her awkward, hesitating throat, when Roquairol, in
her presence, poured out his sounding and fiery torrents
of speech? On this occasion, when he had again set
off the surroundings with artificial, shadowy refinements,
he insisted upon it, of course, that Chariton should be
executive secretary, and Rabette only corresponding sec
retary. Liana, too, out of a like womanliness, would fain
do something for her darling ; but since she, as a maiden
of rank, could not cook anything, but only bake a little,
accordingly it was assigned her, — but reluctantly on the
part of her friend, who never loved to see the sweet form
anywhere else than, like other butterflies, by his side
among the flowers, — at a quite late moment, and for a
space of ten minutes, with her eyes and in extraordinary
cases with her three writing-fingers, to co-operate in mak
ing the snow-balls, which were to close and crown the
dessert.
Never had kitchen ball-queen a broader canopy, or a
more beautifully carved sceptre and apple, or fairer dames
cTatour * than Chariton, and vessels and fire were quite
thrown into the shade thereby.
* Tiring-women. — Tr.
468 TITAN.

Now the happy couples — and the children too — went

out into the joyful day, into the youthful garden, in order,
like planets, with their moons, to stand now near each
other, now far off, now in opposition, and now in con
junction, on their heavenly orbit around the same sun.
" We will launch out at a venture," said Charles, in port,
" and see whether we do not meet." Albano went with
Liana after the children, who were already skipping along
on the little houses through the rose-walks, on the bridge
over the singing wood. He whose heart beats in such
calm blissfulness, seeks in the invisible church no visible
one : the whole temple of nature is the temple of love,
and everywhere stand altars and pulpits. On the smooth
ly descending life-stream man stands without rudder,
happy in his skiff, and leaves it to its own will.
Then the children, mindful of the maternal prohibition
against excursions, led the way up along the right, over
the bridged eminence, to the western triumphal arch ; and
Helena, merely as guide of the little convalescent, ran
forward quite unexpectedly and wildly with his hand.
How gladly did Albano follow the little pilots and pointers I
Heavens ! when they looked round them on the magnifi
cent height, and into the rich outspread day, and then
into each other's eyes, how freely and broadly did the
arches of their life-bridge rear themselves, and ships,
with swollen sails and proudly towering masts, sail
away beneath ! Rose-trees clambered up the triumphal
arches, the children reached up, snatched roses from their
summits, and trudged away (working out and proving
the unusual obedience) over four gates, in order, from
the fifth, to look down into the smooth, shining lake, and
to descend into the " enchanted wood," where art, like
the children, played her pranks.
 THE GARDEN WATER-WORKS. 469

Out of the entrance of the wood came forth Charles

and Rabette, on their way back to Chariton over the
arches, the former bound to the wine-cellar (he had
something empty therefrom in his hand), and she in
tending to run a moment into the kitchen. He went
blissfully, as if on wings, and said : " Life travels to-day
in the constellation of the wain, far away through the
blue." He turned round, however, to let the Pleiades
rise before them, that is, the so-called "inverted rain,"
which ascends only for the space of five minutes, and
properly only in an illumination. He led them all into
the wondrous wood, through a light that lay in noonday
slumber, glowing under free trees, whose stems, standing
far asunder, only tendered each other their long twigs.
At the focus of the picturesque paths, he let them await
the play of the rain. The children sprang after him with
their hopes, and, backed by the courage of the grown
ones, sat down by them, on designated seats of the gods,
or children's seats, between two little round lakes.
While Charles ran swiftly up and down in zigzag, at
tending to the hydraulic and other mechanism, — nearly
according to the points of the labyrinth-garden in Ver
sailles, — they could fly about through the magic wood
that rose everywhere. An all-powerful arm of the
Rosana, which swept by without, struck in among the
flowers, and bore a heavy, rich world ; now the water
was a fixed mirror, now a winding, beating vein, now a
gushing spring, now a flash of lightning behind flowers,
or a dark eye behind leafy veils ; tapering shores, short
beds, children's gardens, round islands, little hills, and
tongues of land lay between : they held their motley,
blooming children on arm and bosom, and the blue eyes
of the forget-me-not, and the full tulip-cheeks, and the
47° TITAN.

white-cheeked lilies played together like brothers and

sisters apart from strangers, but roses ran through all.
Now they heard a murmuring and purling; the lakes
beside them bubbled up ; on a peeled May-tree, fenced
in on an island, the yellow fir-needles began to drop from
above ; from the hanging birches on the tongue of land,
an inner rain dripped and glided down ; out of the two
lakes beside them water-jets flew like flying-fishes to
ward heaven. Now it gushed everywhere, and rows of
fountains, those water-children, played with the flower-
children. Like birds, streams fluttered with broad wings
out of the laurel-hedges, and fell into the groups of
roses. On a hill full of oaks, a water-snake crawled up ;
victoriously shot out from all the mouths of the shores
besieging arches to the summits ; suddenly the cheated
spectators found themselves overhung with rainbows, for
the lakes flung their waters high across over them, so
that the wavering sun blazed through the lattice-work
of drops, as through a shivered jewel-world. The chil
dren screamed with a terror of joy. The scared birds
cruised through the shower ; night butterflies were cast
down ; the turtle-doves shook themselves on the ground,
beaten down in the torrents ; the banks and the beds
held their blooming little ones beneath the heavens.
After five minutes the whole was over, and nothing
remained, save that in all flowers and eyes the moist
radiance trembled, and on the waves the stars continued
to glisten. The children ran afier the wonder-worker,
Charles. " All is over outwardly," said Albano, " but not
within us. I am to-day perfectly and peacefully happy ;
for thou lovest me, and the whole world, too, is friendly.
Art thou, too, happy, Liana ? " She answered, " Still
more happy, and I must needs weep for joy if I told how
 WINGED LIFE OF THE GARDEN. 471

happy I am." But she was weeping already. " See !

drops ! " said she, naively, as he looked upon her, and
wiped his, which were the sprinklings of the rainbow,
softly from his cheeks. His lips touched her holy, tender
eye, but the other remained open, and her love looked
out from it at him, and never did her holy soul hover
nearer to him.
After a few minutes this inverted heavenward shower
was also over. They went across the middle of the free
gardens to the eastern parts and gates. How brightly lay
the coasts of the future before them, with thick, high
green, and nightingales flying around the shores ! Rap
ture makes the manly heart more womanly. The voice
of his full bosom spoke but softly to Liana, on whose
countenance, turned sidewise and heavenward, lay a still,
pious gratitude ; his fiery glance moved but slowly, and
rested on the beautiful world ; and he went without hasty
strides around the smallest points of land. The young
nightingale whet her well-fed bill against the twig, and
shook herself merrily ; the old one sang a short lullaby,
and skipped chanting after fresh food ; and everywhere
flew and screamed across each other's paths the children
of spring and their parents. Little white peacocks ran,
without their pride, like little children in the grass. Bliss
fully floated the swan between her waves, with the white
arch over the eyes that dipped under, and blissfully hov
ered the glistening music-fly, like a fixed star, undisturbed
in the air, over a distant, flowery bell. The butterflies,
flying flowers, and the flowers, fettered butterflies, sought
and sheltered each other, and laid their variegated wings
to wings ; and the bees exchanged flowers only for blos
soms, and the rose which has no thorns for them they
exchanged only for the linden.
47* TITAN.

" Liana," said Albano, " how I love the whole world
to-day, on thy account ! I could give the flowers a kiss,
and press myself into the very heart of the full trees ; I
could not tread in the way of the long chafer down there."
" Should one," she replied, " ever feel otherwise ? How
can a human being, I have often thought, who has a
mother, and knows her love, so afflict and rend the heart
of a brute mother ? But Spener says, we do not forgive
beasts even their virtues." " Let us go to him," said he.
They came out through the eastern gate on the moun
tain-way behind the flute-dell, up to the house of old
Spener, which lay in noonday brightness ; but, as they
heard loud reading and praying, they chose rather to
walk by at n great distance, in order not to throw so much
as their shadow into his holy heaven.
They gazed into the fair, still flute-dell, and would fain
go directly in ; at length it spoke up to them with one
flute. Their friends seemed to be down below there.
The flute continued long to complain, as if lonely and
forsaken ; no sisters and no fountains murmured in with
it. At last there rose, panting, in company with the flute,
a timid, trembling singer's voice, struggling forth. It was
Rabette, behind the tall bushes. She stirred both to the
dopths of the soul, because the poor creature, with the
labor of her helpless voice, was rendering her loved one
the meek sacrifice of obedience. " O my Albano," said
Liana, twining around him with ecstasy, " what sweetness
to think that my brother is happy, and has found peace
of soul, and that through thy sister ! " " He deserves all
my peace," said he, with emotion ; " but we will not dis
turb the two, but go back the old way." For Rabette's
tones were ofien cut short, but it was uncertain whether
by fear, or by kisses, or by emotion.
 THE DINNER-PARTY. 473

"When they came in again through the eastern gate, the

songstress and Charles came out of the green portal to
meet them, both with wet eyes. Charles, stepping impet
uously over living beds, and with wandering eyes, grasped
a hand of both with his, and said, " This is, for once in
this rainy world, a day which does not look like a night.
Brother, but when one is so deeply blest, and catches the
music of the spheres, the tones are such as were once
heard in token that from Mark Antony his patron deity,
Hercules, was departing." Thus are joys, like other
jewels, mechanical poisons, which only in the distance
shine, but, when touched and swallowed, eat into us. But
Albano replied, smiling, " Since thou now fearest, dear
friend, thou hast nothing to fear ; for thou art not per
fectly happy. I, however, alas ! fear nothing." " Bravo ! "
said Charles ; " now go into your kitchen, maiden ! " He
went into the so-called " Temple of Dreams," but soon
hastened after her into the forbidden kitchen.
Albano visited Liana's spring chamber. Here he
painted to himself from memory that bright Sunday when
Liana led him through Lilar, and he let the past sooth
ingly glimmer into the present ; but the latter overpowered
the former with its beams. Out in the garden stood and
shone, so it seemed to him, the pure pillars of his heaven,
the supporters of his temple, the trees ; and all that he
here saw near him belonged again to his happiness,
Liana's books and pictures and flowers, and every little
mark of her tender hand.
At last the saint of the Rotunda herself— suffused with
a virgin blush nt this nearness and at his blushing —
stepped in, to take him away into the cool dining-room. It
was small and dusky, but the heart needs not for its heaven
'much space nor many stars therein, if only the star of
474 TITAN.

love has arisen. To the table-talk, — whereby alone an

eating becomes a human one, — and to the jokes, — the
finest entremets, the powdered sugar of conversation, —
the children contributed their share, especially as they,
unqualified to ascend from the forbidden thou to you,
always used thou-you at once. The deeply-red Chariton
made extracts from Dian's letters and from the history
of her life, and from the surgeon's bulletins in relation
to Pollux's broken arm ; she sought to extol the snow
balls, listened with a half-credulous, half-cunning look to the
Captain, who spun out the sportive marriage-thou toward
Rabette into five acts, and smiled with pleasure just where
it was required. Especially did that music-barrel of all
souls, Charles, spin joyously round ; that Jupiter, around
whom the eclipses of so many satellites were always flying,
could show a great, serene splendor, when he and others
wished. As often as Albano, according to the old way,
would not come to his tragedy, he drew up the curtain of
a comedy. To the good Rabette a word was as good as
a look from him, although she only returned the latter, so
as neither to fall into the Thou nor into the You. Albano,
knit with ears and eyes to one soul, could not produce
with his lips much more than a smile of bliss ; he could
more easily have made a hymn than a bon-mot, a grace at
meat than a dinner speech. For his Liana was to-day
too affectionate, so contentedly and exhilaratingly did the
sweet maiden look round with such hearty play, acting
the chatty, bantering hostess, that a man who saw it and
thought of her firm death-belief, would only have been so
much the more deeply affected by this dance around the
grave with flowers on the head, though he should remark
— or rather for the very reason of his remarking — that
she was here merely carrying on a joke with jocoseness
 THE LOVERS AT THE THUNDER-HOUSE. 475

itself for the sake — according to her new moral funeral

arrangement — of sweetening for her beloved every part
ing-hour, as well the next as the last of all. But this
was hard to perceive, because in female souls every
show easily becomes reality, whether it be a sad or a
gay one.
How happy was her friend and every good being to
think that the saint pronounced herself blest ! And then
she became, in turn, still more so. Thus does the radi
ance of joy dart to and fro between sympathizing hearts,
as between two mirrors, in growing multiplication, and
grows without end.

72. CYCLE.

THE hour of departure came rolling on with swifter

and swifter wheels; more constellations of joy
went down than came up. Thus do the blooming vine
yards of life always grow green on the ups and downs of
a mountainous way, never on a smooth plain. The two
lovers needed quiet now, not walks. They took the near
est, the path to the thunder-house. They stepped into the
glimmering vesper-grounds as into a new land ; at mid
day man is awakened from one dream after another, and
has always forgotten and sees things always new. In
Albano the golden splendor of the strings of joy still
lingered under the declining sun ; he told her gladly, how
often he would visit her at her parents', and how he cer
tainly hoped to find them friendly. Liana, as a daughter
and a lover, retouched all his hopes with her own. But
now she let her hitherto light heart, which had been rock
ing itself on the flowers of sport, sink back upon the solid
ground of earnest.
476 TITAN.

When there is peace and fulness in a man, he wishes

not to enjoy anything else but himself; every motion,
even of the body, jostles the full nectar-cup. They has
tened out of the loud, lively garden into the still, dark
thunder-house. But when, as if parted from the world,
which lay out around the windows, brightly glistening
and far receding, they stood alone together in the little twi
light, and looked upon each other, — and when Albano's
soul became like a sun-drunken mountain at evening, light,
warm, firm, and fair, and Liana's soul like an up-gushing
spring on the mountain, which glides away purely bright
and cool and hidden, and only under the touch of the
evening-beam glows in rosy redness, — and now that these
souls had just found each other in the wide, unharmonious
world, — then did a mighty joy thrill through them like a
prayer, and they cast themselves upon each other's hearts,
and glowed and wept and looked upon each other ex-
altedly in the embrace ; — and, on the JE,olian-harp, sud
denly the folding doors of an inspired concert-hall flew
open, and outswelling harmonies floated by, and suddenly
again the gates shut to.
They seated themselves at the breezy eastern window,
before which the mountains of Blumenbuhl and Lilar's
hills and paths lay in the sunlight. Around them was
evening shade, and all was still, and the JEolian-harp
breathed low. They only looked at each other, and felt
joy to their innermost being that they loved and possessed
each other. How ecstatically did they look, from the
protection of this citadel, down into the sounding, stirring
world ! Down below the wind blew the blaze of poppies
and tulips far and wide, and in among the heavy, yellow
harvest. The silver-poplars, wearing eternal May-snow,
fluttered with uptossing splendor ; a flock of pigeons went
 THE STREAM OF LOVE ROUGHENS. 477

rustling away, and dipped into the blue ; and overhead,

amid flying clouds, stood those round temples of God, the
mountains, in rows, beside each other, bearing alternate
nights and days ; and the pious father stood alone on his
hill, and handed his roe tender branches.
" Thus may we ever remain ! " said Albano, and pressed
her dear hand with both of his to his heart. " Here and
hereafter ! " said she. " Albano, how often have I wished
thou wert at the same time my female friend, that I might
speak with thee of thyself! Who on the earth knows
how I esteem thee, except myself alone ? " " Here
and hereafter ? Liana, I am happier than thou, for I
alone believe in our long life here," said he, all at once
changed.
Whatever, now, may have been the reason, — whether
that man is not at all accustomed to be happy in a pure
present, severed from all future and past, because his
inner heaven, like the natural one, directly over his head
and close to him, always looks dark-blue, and only round
about the distant horizon radiant ; or that there is a bliss
so tender and unearthly as, like the moonshine, to be made
too dark by every passing cloud, whereas a sturdy one,
like daylight, can bear the broadest ; or that Albano was
too much like men who always in joy feel their powers
so strongly that they would rather kick over the table of
the gods than see a dish or a loaf of the heavenly bread
left thereupon, rather be perfectly miserable than not per
fectly happy ; — suffice it, he could not and would not
be guilty of longer fear and concealment.
So, when Liana, instead of answering, only embraced
him, and was silent, because she meant to remain the
whole day true to her promise not to dash the festal tap
estry of fair days with a shade of mourning-cloth, then,
478 TITAN.

as if urged on by a strange spirit, he spoke out : " Thou

answerest nothing ? Only joys, not sorrows, shall I share ?
Thou hast not thy veil ? Wilt thou spare me as a weak
ling? and thee alone shall thy death-belief continue to
oppress ? Liana, I will have pangs, too, and all thine, —
tell all ! "
" Truly, I only meant to keep my promise," said she,
" and no more. But what then shall I say to thee,
dear ? "
" Dost thou believe, then, that thou art certainly to
die after a year, superstitious one ? — heavenly one ! "
said he.
" In so far as it is God's will, certainly," said she. " O
my good Albano, how can I help my belief, much as it
pains thee too ? " And here she could no longer restrain
her tears, and all the crucifixes of memory started up
alive in the fair soul, and bled intensely.
" God's will ? " asked he. " Quite as well might he at
this moment precipitate a winter as an iceberg, into this
happy summer. God ? " he repeated, looked up, knelt
down, and prayed, " O thou all-loving God — But thou
shalt not die to me ! " He turned, as if in angor, towards
her, incapable of continuing his prayer, for the cry of his
heart, and wiping hastily with both hands over his moist
face. Now he prayed on, with a soft, trembling voice :
" No, thou all-loving One ! kill not this fair, young life !
Leave us together long in purity and in peace."
She knelt involuntarily at his side ; — to-day more ex
hausted with pleasures and unknown inner victories, even
with long walking, so much the more intensely struck by
a moving reality that she had been spoiled and softened
by moving fancies, and inexpressibly afflicted at Albano's
sorrow; — she could not speak; her head and neck bowed,
 THE BITTER PARTING. 479

as under a burden suddenly laid upon them ; and thus, as

one heavily overclouded by a whole life, she looked down
upon the floor. The embracing death-flood sounded with
one arm around her ; then did she see, without looking up,
her Caroline pass by somewhere in bridal dress, and with
the white, gold-spangled veil trailing along far over life :
and she saw clearly how the celestial shape, whenAlbano
begged for her life, shook its head slowly to and fro.
" Cease to pray ! " she cried, inconsolably. " But listen
to me, thou cold apparition, and only make him happy ! "
she prayed, but she saw nothing more ; and, with inex
pressible love, she hid her face, marked all over with the
lines of agony, upon his breast.
Here her brother called up, that the carriage was
ready. She threw down a quick, thin-voiced " Yes."
" Must we part ? " asked Albano ; the fiery rain of ecstasy
had now fallen back into his open soul, in the shape of
a darker rain of ashes ; and so he went on without any
bounds to his anguish. " Then have we seen each other
for the last time ? " and under the closed eyelid his noble
eye wept.
" No ! in the name of the All-gracious, no ! " said she,
and rose to go. " Stay ! " said he, and she staid, and
embraced him again. "But do not accompany me ! " she
entreated. "Not!" said he, and held her for some time
as she withdrew, by the tips of the fingers ; it pained
him so much, when he saw the sufferings which had
been brought upon this still form, that these white wings
of innocence had beaten themselves bloody against his
cliffs and mountain-horns. He drew her again to him
self, ere he let her and his salvation go from him. He
looked after her as she slowly stole down along the
sunny mountain, drying her eyes under she twigs, and
480 TITAN.

went with bowed head along all the gay, blooming

paths of the forenoon's walk. But he gazed not after,
when her carriage rolled away across the joyous wood ;
he stood at the eastern window, and saw his child
hood's mountains tremble, because he had forgotten to
dry his eyes.
 SIXTEENTH JUBILEE.

The Sorrows of a Daughter.

73. CYCLE.

LOUDS like these last consisted with Albano

less of falling drops than of settling dust.
His life was yet a hothouse, and stood there
fore toward the sunny side. Every day
brought a new apology for the absent sweetheart, till
at last she needed one no longer. But still he gave to
every day its letter of indulgence for her silence ; by
and by they grew into letters of respite (moratories) ;
finally, when she never let anything at all be heard or
read from her; then he began to re-examine the afore
said apologies, and strike out many things therein.
Quite as little could he find for himself, or for a note,
a way of access to her. Even the Captain had been
gone for some days on a journey to Haarhaar. With
faint hands he held the heavy, drained cup of joy, which,
when empty, weighs the heaviest. The wild hypotheses
which man in such a case trots * through him — as in this,
for instance, that of Liana's being sick, having caught
cold, her imprisonment, absence on a journey — are, in
their alternation and value, to be compared with nothing,
except with the quite as great wildness and number of
• This is Jean Paul's own image. — Tr.
21 BE
 482 TITAN.

the plans which he enlists and dismisses, — that of ab

duction, of hate, of a duel, of despair.
The terrible motionless time had no gnomon on its
dial-plate. He stood as near his fate as man does to
his dreams, without being able to recognize or prepare
for its form, any more than one can for that which dreams
will take. He went often into the city, through all whose
streets there was riding, running, and driving, because
they were about bringing and nailing together the beams
for the grandest throne-scaffolding, on which the princely
bride at her introductory compliment in the land, might
look round the farthest; but he heard nothing there of
his own bride, except that she quite often visited the
picture-gallery with the Minister.
Hereby two distressing hypotheses, that of her sick
ness, and that of her being at war with her family,
seemed to lose their stings. The best, though the hardest
thing was, to go straight to the Minister, as to Vesuvius,
in order there to have the fairest prospect. He visited
the Vesuvius. In fact this volcano was never more still
and green. He asked after everything, and expressed
himself upon much which immediately concerned the
marriage festival ; nor did he seek to conceal his hopes
and wishes that the Count would help welcome the ad
mirable bride.
At last the latter, too, must venture to unfold Ms hopes
and wishes about the ladies. The Minister replied, with
uncommon pleasantness, that the two had just carried
back the "charming Mademoiselle von Wehrfritz" to Blu-
menbiihl ; and indulged himself forthwith in a eulogium
of that " unsophisticated nature." Albnno soon took his
leave, but much happier than when he came. A few
street-lamps * certainly were now burning on his path.
• That is, of course, some lights of hope. — Tr.
 THE LITTLE REINDEER'S MESSAGE. 483

But in the morning he fell into a little obscure alley,

where there was not a single one; in other words, Ra-
bette, the little reindeer, came running to Lilar, as she
yesterday had to Pestitz, — for what is a race of a mile
to a country-girl, else than a simple Allemande ? * — and
shook and shook her heart before him, even to its very
ears, but nothing fell out of it except pleasant images,
a few heavens, a complete wedding-day, a couple of
parents-in-law, and a Captain's wife. " The Minister had
been so courteous toward me, but — the mother after
ward still more so toward my parents ; and they have
mentioned and praised the Captain so much, — in short,
they of course know all, my glorious, heartily-loved
brother ! " said she, — but of Liana she had nothing to
bring to her glorious brother, except a bill of her health ;
her joyous eye had not turned toward any dark region
whatever. " We were not alone a minute, that is the
reason of it," she added, and came again upon the subject
of her Captain, whom the Minister had sent out on the
Haarhaar road, as chief marshal of the escort of the
Princess ; yet she referred him to the illumination night
in Lilar, when she and Liana, and the parents on both
sides, had arranged to be there. Thou good creature!
who is so cruel as to begrudge thee the glittering ring
of joy, which thou contemplatest on thy brown and hard-
boiled hand, and who does not fondly wish that its stones
may never fall out ?
Soon after, the brother of the past festivals flew to the
heart of the deserted one, — Charles. He repeated al
most exactly Rabette's deposition, although not her rap
ture ; he said, — but without special emotion, — that his
father actually threw him the brotherly hand kiss through
• A German or Suubian dunce. — Ta.
484 TITAN.

several rooms, distinguished and designated him quite

particularly, and kindly made use of him for business
purposes ; and all this merely since he had become ac
quainted with his love for Rabette, and the silent assent
of the parents ; for with his father, though the heart was
of no account, yet Rabette's fief was, especially as one
could not trust, with all the romantic stock-jobbing of his
heart, that he would not himself one day realize the
poorest result.
With a sighing breast, which would gladly have im
parted more to an expecting one, Charles merely related
that he had found Liana well and quiet, but not alone for
one minute. The association of another's want with his
own open, rich fortune was, so Albano believed, the fair,
tender reason why Charles glided with such cool, fleeting
pleasure over the parental benediction of his soul's bond.
O, how he loved him at this moment ! Could he have
loved him ever so much more, he would have done it,
though Liana had been actually lost to the sum of his
happiness, merely to show himself and him that holy
friendship wants no third heart in order to love a second.
This cloud of silence lay fixed for weeks, and grew
more and more dark around his fairest heights ; and the
guiltless one went round and round through the darkness
in a circle of contradictions. How must this youth have
harassed himself when he thought, as he soon did, that
the parents would, in all probability, reject an alliance
with him, as he, indeed, thought himself obliged rather to
forget than to reciprocate their advances, and that they
might sacrifice two hearts to political heartlessness ; or
when he let fall upon the innocent Liana the suspicion of
giving way before parental assaults, which suspicion re
ceived reinforcement from the past through the conjecture
 ALBANO IMPATIENT FOR HIS SENTENCE. 485

that she had embraced him rather in poetical enthusiasm

and from goodness, and more with wings than with arms,
and that, in fact, accustomed to such long submissions, she
could hardly distinguish sacrifices and inclinations, and
might take one for the other ; or when, as he soon and
oftenest did, he turned the point of all these weapons
against his own breast, and asked himself why he had
such a firm confidence in friendship, and such a wavering
one in love. Then this reproach led him to a second,
upon every previous one, which he had cast upon the
good soul merely for the sake, according to the proselyting
system and reforming mania which men exercise more
upon their wives than upon their friends, of melting her
down for his own mould. This last he might rue ; as
Holberg* observes that men do not keep estates so
well as women, because the former are always wanting
to improve them more than the latter; on the same
ground, also, lovers spoil women more than these do
them.
For the sake merely of getting more expeditiously
from the tedious tribunal of the future his sentence of
death, or a more agreeable document, he went again to
the ministerial house. He was again smilingly received
by the Minister, and seriously by the mother ; and, in
reply to his question, Liana was not quite well. He laid
before old Schoppe (who now pressed his friendship upon
him more warmly, and who, for some time near the dis-
secting-knife of the Doctor, had not studied any other
heart than that which was to be spattered to pieces and
prepared) a short question about the Doctor's visits at the
Minister's. How was he astonished when he heard that
no one out of the house any longer made any visits to it,
• HU Moral Treatises, Vol. II. p. 96.
486 TITAN.

(while Liana, quite blooming, went into all circles,) except

merely the Lector, who made very frequent ones !
He well comprehended that only the Medusa's-heads
of the parents could turn the softest heart into stone
against him ; but even this he found not right. He boldly
demanded that she should love him more than her parents,
" not from egotism," said he to himself, " not on my ac
count, but on her own." A lover wishes a great, inde
scribable love, of which he thinks himself always only
the accidental and unworthy object, merely for the sake
of tendering the highest himself.
Even the silent Lector, who generally placed all newly
rising lights behind light-shades and fire-screens, commu
nicated unbidden to the Count the novel tidings that
Liana would be, under the administration of the coming
Princess, something — • maid of honor. His old jealous
suspicion of Augusti's wishes or relations allowed him no
answer to that.
Now his spirit manned itself, and he wrote straight to
the soul that belonged to him, and sent the letter to her
brother for delivery. The latter came the next day, but
seemed to him not to have any answer yet, because he
would otherwise have given it with the first greeting.
Charles introduced him to the Haarhaar court, where he
had lately been ; said every nerve there had on jack
boots, and every heart a hoop-petticoat; then went on
to eulogize the youngest, but most unpopular Princess,
Idoine ; declared she possessed, in addition to all her
other advantages, — for instance, purity, kindness, decision
of character, which even on the throne selects for itself
* The Germans call the dash the stroke of thought. Here it implies
»n emphatic pause, as much as to say, " What do you think is com
ing?"— Tr.
 ALBANO'S LETTER COMES BACK. 487

its own lot and life, — the further grace of amiableness,

since even the princely bride, who loved no one else,
hung upon her heart, and — last, not least — the advan
tage of a very deceptive similarity to Liana.
" Has Liana received my letter yet ? " asked Albano.
Charles handed it back to him. " By Heaven ! " said he,
ardently, and yet ambiguously, " I could not get it to her
just now. But, brother, canst thou believe, only for one
minute, that she does not remain forever most thine ? "
" I do not believe anything at all ! " said Albano, offended,
and tore his leaf on the spot into little bits no bigger than
the letters. " Only we will," he continued, with a tone
of emotion, " remain, as we are, firm as iron, and flexible
as iron when it comes out of the furnace." The deeply
touched friend sought to console him with the following :
" Only wait, I pray, the illumination evening ; * then she
will speak with thee. She must certainly appear, and
thou wilt wonder in what character, and for whom." He
nodded silently; he easily gathered her part from her
resemblance to Idoine, and from her expected office at
court. But what help was it to his fortune ?
With the return of his note, which he despatched
against his pride, that same pride came back in renewed
strength. Now was a hot seal stamped on Albano's
bleeding lip ; he had now nothing for and before him,
except time, which was now his poison, and would by and ,
by, as he hoped, be his antidote. Nothing was ever
master over his sense of honor, when it was once roused.
He could look forward to a scaffold on which blood
spurted out, but he could not look upon a pillory where,
under the heavy, poisonous, murderous pain of scorn and
self-contempt, a downcast, distracted face hung on the
sinful breast.
• At the Prince's marriage.
488 TITAN.

Charles sometimes approached with a few lights the

long night-like riddle ; but Albano, however much he
wished them, staggered him by opposition, and sought not
even to hear him, much less to ask him questions. So he
lay on hard, youthful, thorny rose-buds, which a single
hour can open into tender roses. Victories beget victories,
as defeats do defeats ; he found now, if not a complete
relief from the emotions which besieged him, neverthe
less a mountain-fortification against them, provisioned for a
little eternity, in the shape of an astronomical observatory.
With an entire and firmly collected soul he threw himself
upon theoretical astronomy, in order not to see daylight,
and upon practical astronomy in order not to see night.
The watch-tower stood indeed upon a mountain interme
diate between the city and Blumenbuhl, and commanded
a view of both; but he cast his eyes only upon the constel
lations, not upon those rosy-red spots of the earth, where
they now could have sucked out of the cold flower-cups
only water instead of honey. Thus amid the festive prep
arations in Lilar did he go armed to meet the long de
laying evening when the presence of the fairest soul
should either bless or destroy him, vainly looking from
time to time at the distant telegraph of his destiny, which
was constantly moving, uncertain whether with peaceful
or hostile significance.

74. CYCLE.
TO remove the seals from the enrolled acts of the
foregoing history for the purpose of looking into it,
— or to push back the blinds and shove up the windows
of the same, — or to uncover so many covered ways and
vehicles, — or, in fine, the whole matter, — all that is mere
 FBOULAY PRAISES THE PRINCESS. 489

metaphors, — and the most inappropriate ones, too, —

which cannot serve any other purpose than only to hold
off still longer and more tediously the long-expected solu
tion, which they would fain describe ; much rather and
better, methinks, will the whole war and peace position
in the ministerial palace be at once freely laid bare as
follows: —
Herr Von Froulay had, as has been already mentioned,
come home from Haarhaar with a BeUe-vue in his face,
and with a mon-plaisir in his heart (provided these tropes
do not seem more elaborate than exquisite). He told his
lady openly, what had hitherto detained and enchanted
him so long, ;— the future Princess, who had conceived for
him a more than ordinary fancy. He threw a full, glori
fying light on her enriched understanding, — he never
praised anything beyond this in ladies,* — as well as a
faint streak of shade upon his own her's ; and pronounced
himself fortunate in the possession of a person whoso
fine, persistent coquetry (he said) he for his part could
recommend as a model, and whose attachment he, in fact,
(that he pretended not to conceal,) reciprocated half-way,
but only half-way, for it was perfectly true, what the
Duke of Lauzunt asserted: in order to keep the love
of Princesses, one must just hold them in right hard and
short. In the old man accordingly there shoots up, as we
see, quite late, — not unlike the case of fresh teeth, —
which oftentimes old men do not cut till they are nonage
narians, — a lover's heart beneath the star ; only it is
more to be wished than hoped, he will especially play the

• With the Egyptians the enchanters wero only learned men; with
him the learned women were enchantresses.
t Memoires secrets mr les Mgites dt Louis XIV., etc. Par Duclos.
Tom. I.
21*
49° TITAN.

ridiculous in the matter. For as he all the week long

holds the helm of state, either on the rower's bench, to
keep it in motion, or on the cabinet-maker's bench, to trim
it down into a fine and light shape for the Prince ; the
consequence is, he is so tired when Saturday comes, that no
Virgil and no tempest could persuade him — and though
his feet had not more steps to take for the purpose than
the number of feet in Virgil's hexameter, or of command
ments in the Decalogue of Moses — to accompany a
Dido out of the storm into the nearest cave. He does
no such thing. He remains quite as free from sentimen
tal and pathetic love as from sensual, especially as he ap
prehends that the former would in the end entangle him
in the latter, because like a minor-tone it has quite a dif
ferent returning scale from its ascending one. The iron
ical and stinging element in the man made every mar
riage — even that of souls — to him as well as to other
world's people as disagreeable in the end as the spines of
the hedgehogs make theirs. He lays up, therefore, in the
future for the Princess only a cold, politic, coquettish,
courtly love, such as she herself haply has, and such as
he has occasion for, in order less to gain her than to gain
from her, and to gain first of all the entire Prince. I
promise myself cosmopolitan readers, who, I hope, find
no offence to this personage in Froulay's partiality for
his lady ; for so soon as the court-preacher has but once
laid his joining hand on the Princess, then has this house-
steward made, as it were, the cut in the pea-hen,* and
she can then be taken off untouched, and be feasted on in
other places.
* It is well known that a cut is made in a fowl left whole as a sign
that it has been upon the Prince's table, so that it may not be set on
again, but otherwise enjoyed.
 FROULAY EAVESDROPPING. 491

I hare already (in the second volume) intimated the

anxiety of the Minister's lady lest the Minister, if he
should (in this volume) come back and not find Liana at
home, should chafe ; but, contrary to expectation, he ap
proved ; her use of the country air-bath fell in exactly
with his design of sending her into the vapor-bath of the
court atmosphere. He told her mother that it by no
means displeased him that she should now be entirely
well, since the new Princess would select her for her
maid of honor, whenever he should say the word. He
could not for three minutes see a sceptre or a sceptrelet
lying by him without proving its polarity for himself,
and either attracting or repelling something with it. As
the famous theologian, Spener, — a predecessor of our
Spener, — prayed to God so beautifully thrice a day for
his friends, one finds with similar pleasure that the cour
tier daily prays a little for his friends before his god, the
Prince, and seeks to obtain something.
The Minister's lady, never opposing his changeable
plans in the sketch, but only in the execution, easily be
came reconciled with his latest one, because it at least
seemed rather to stand in no auxiliary relation to the
old one of the bethrothal to Bouverot.
One evening, unfortunately, the fatal, anxious Lector
— who pasted the smallest visiting-card to a Fulda's his
toric chart — arrived in her presence with his packet-
ship, and came ashore having under his two arms the
state and imperial advertisements of her two children ;
he had one of them under each ; and yet why do I fly
out upon the man ? Could a double-romance, especially
when played in the open air, remain better concealed
than a single one ?
Her astonishment can be compared with the greater
492 TITAN.

astonishment of her husband, who happened to have just

been screwing on in the third chamber his tin ear, —
made by Schropp of Magdeburg, — in order to listen
to the servants, and who now caught a number of things.
Nevertheless, the double-ear, with the broad meshes of
its nocturnal lark-net, had only fished up from Augusti's
low, whispering, courtly lips single, long, proper names, —
such as Roquairol and Zcsara. Hardly had the sofi-
spoken Lector gone out, when he stepped gayly into the
chamber, with his ear in his hand, and demanded of her
a report of the reports. He held it beneath his dignity
either to patch up or disguise his suspicion, — which, even
in the friendliest and gayest mood, would never shut its
Argus ears and eyes, — or to dissemble his eavesdrop
ping, with so much as a syllable or a blush of shame ;
the fair lilies of the most colorless impudence were not
painted, but branded on him. The Minister's lady im
mediately seized upon the female expedient, of telling the
truth — half-way ; namely, the agreeable truth of Roquai-
rol's well-received advances at the house of Wehrfritz,
whose estate and provincial directorship had been cast
into a very fitting shape for a father-in-law. Meanwhile
the Minister had seen in his lady's face the mourning-
border around this pleasant notification-document, far too
clearly and broadly not to inquire about that prominent
word " Zesara," which his delicate tin searcher had also
caught up, but he inquired in vain ; for the mother held
her good daughter too dear to set this wolf on the scent
for her into her Eden ; she hoped to get her out of it
in a gentler way, by a divine voice and angels ; and so
evaded his question.
But the wolf now ran farther on in his track ; he got
the gout in his stomach, — so it was reported to Dr.
 EPISTOLARY RIGHT OF SEARCH. 493

Sphex, — demanded of him speedy aid, and also some in

telligence of his tenant, the Count. Doctor and Madam
Sphex had already a grudge against the inflated youth ;
through their four juvenile envoys, as enfans perdus in
every sense, as four hearing-organs of every city rumor,
much might be brought in on advice-yachts from Blumen-
biihl and Lilar. In short, the auricular organs fitted in
so well to those of others, that Froulay, in a few days,
was in a situation to ask, with his lily brow, the Greek
woman for a letter to his son, which he offered to take
along with him.
He found one, which he broke open with great joy,
without, however, finding anything therein from Albano's
or Liana's hand, but only some stupid allusion of Rabette
to that couple, which, to the Minister, were as much as
if, with his sharp exciseman's-probcs, he had bored into
Liana's heart and lighted upon contraband there. With
out any long, slavish copying of the former seal, he set
a second upon the letter, and went away enlightened
by it.
We can all follow him, when we have detained our
selves only a few minutes for his justification, with my

Apology and Defence * in the Matter of the Second Seal

upon Letters in State Affairs.
Whether the examination of other people's letters per
tains to old Froulay as minister or father, — (although the
latter presupposes the former, the father of the country
implying every other father and his own too,) — I will
not decide, except by the parenthesis just inserted. The
• In German, Schutz- und Stich-blatt, — literally, a plate to defend the
hand in parrying and thrusting, — Blalt, meaning ltaf(o( paper) also,
conveys a pun not easily translated. — Tr.
494 TITAN.

state which tackles on the post-horses before letters has,

it should seem, the right to examine more narrowly,
under the closed visor of the seal, these not so much
blind as blinding passengers,* in order to know whether
it is not using its horses in the service of its enemies.
The state, an ever-drawing light-magnet, means ' certainly
only to have light in the case, and particularly light upon
all light in general ; it requires only the naked truth,
without cover or covering. All that rides and fares
through its gates must, though it were dressed in a
surtout, just open its red mouth, and say what name
and business.
As the common soldier must first show his letters to
his officer, the garrison-soldier of the Bastile to the gov
ernor, the monk his to the prior, the American colonist
his to the Dutchman,')' — in order that he may burn them
up, if they find fault with him, — so, surely, can no
statesman, whether he regards the state as a barrack, or
as an Engelsburg, or as a monasterium duplex, or as a
European possession in Europe, deny it the right to keep
all its letters as open as bills of lading, patents of nobility,
bills of sale, and apostolic epistles are. The only mistake
is, that it does not get hold of the letters before they are
enveloped and sealed. That is immoral enough ; for it
necessitates the government to open and shut, — to draw
the letter out of the case, and put it back again, as the
cook with pains turns the snail out of his shell, and then,
when he is once taken off from the fire, shoves him back
again into it, to serve him up therein.
This last is the point of the compass and cardinal wind
• The blind-passenger in the German stage-coach corresponds to
our dead-head in stage or steamboat. — Tr.
t See Klockenbring's collected Essays.
 HINTS TO THE GOVERNMENT. 495

which is to guide 113 onward ; for universally acknowl

edged as it is, just as custom and observance are, that the
government, on the same ground on which it opens the
last will, must have the power to unseal also the last but
one, and the one before that, and finally the very first,
before its heir can do it, and that a prince must be able
still more readily to bring servants' letters into the same
deciphering chancery (and into their antechamber, the
unsealing chamber), wherein the letters of princes and
legates fly open before the caper-spurge,* nevertheless
the cork-drawing of letters, — the joint seal, the vicariate
seal, the laborious imitation of the L. S., or loco sigiUi,
— all this is something very annoying and almost detesta
ble ; out of the wrong a right must therefore be made by
constitutional repetition.
Something of the kind might be brought about, I flatter
myself, if it were commanded to write letters only on
stamp-paper. An inspecting and stamping office appointed
for that purpose would then read everything over before
hand.
Or one might prohibit in future all private seals, just
as they do mint-stamps for private coin. A seal-depart
ment would then interfere, with full rights, and seal up,
as they now do the legacies of the deceased, so in that
case those of the living.
Or — which is perhaps preferable — an epistolary cen
sorship must commence. Unprinted newspapers, nouvelles
a la mainfi — that is, letters, — can never, inasmuch as
they divulge still greater mysteries, demand a greater
freedom of censorship than printed newspapers ; espe-
• (In German, Spring-wvrxtl.) The juice of some plant (perhaps
Devil's-milk) highly and quickly corrosive. — Ts.
t News by hand. — Tr.
496 TITAN.

cially as every letter, now-a-days, so easily becomes a

circular, going everywhere. A catalogue of prohibited
letters (index expurgandarum) would always be, in that
case, a word to correspondents.
Or let the postmasters be put under oath that they will
be faithful referendaries of whatever they find weighty or
considerable in the letters, which, before despatching, they
have laid in the mental letter-balance, and closed again,
with the hope, according to the Leibnitzian principle of
the non-distinguishable seal, of speeding them far and
wide.
If the State finds all these ways of reading and closing
letters new and difficult, then it may go on in its own
way — of opening them.

Froulay flew, laughing, to his lady, and assured her

her falsehood towards him was no news to him at all. Her
present plan, merely to work against Herr von Bouverot
and himself, he understood full well. Hence it was that
Rabette had had to come in, and the daughter to go out.
Meanwhile he would show the hypocrite and bigot, or who
ever it might be, that she had not merely a mother, but
a father too. " She must immediately come home ; je la
ferai darner* mats sans vous et sans M. le Compte," he
concluded, with an allusion to the office of court-dame.
But the Minister's lady began, in accordance with her
vehement contempt of his projects and powers, with that
coldness which would have more exasperated every ardent
one than this cold one, to say to him that she must needs
disapprove and oppose Liana's and the Count's love still
more than he did ; that she had merely, in an excessive
* The King had to darner, or make a dame of an unmarried maiden
of rank, before she could go to Versailles to court.
 THE FROULAY OBJECTIONS TO ALBANO. 497

and otherwise never disappointed confidence in Liana's

openness of soul, believed her rather than herself, and,
notwithstanding so many signs of Albano's partiality, let
her go to Blumenbiihl ; that she would, however, give
him her word on the spot to act with as much energy and
spirit against the Count as against the German gentleman,
and that she was, as surely as she knew Liana, almost
certain of the easiest and happiest result.
Of course this was unexpected to him and — incredible,
especially after the previous concealment ; only the finest
man's soul distinguishes in the female the blending boun
daries of self-deception and wilful delusion, weakness and
deceit, accident and intent; besides, the Minister's lady
was one of those women whom one must first love in
order to know them, a case which is generally reversed.
He readily accepted on the one hand the confession of her
agreement and co-operation, — merely for the sake, here
after, of turning it as a weapon against her ; —but he could
not conceal, on the other hand, that there again (that was
always his phrase) she had, according to her own con
fession, neglected to watch over her children from a want
of jealousy. He retained the habit, when an open-hearted
soul showed him its breaches, of marching in upon it
through those breaches, as if he himself had made them.
The penitent who knelt before him for forgiveness he
would crush still lower, and instead of the key of absolu
tion draw forth the hammer of the law.
I owe it here to the Spaniards, who will one day be
come acquainted with me through miserable translations,*
and to the Austrian knighthood of the Golden Fleece,
who perhaps read the original in a counterfeit edition, to
* Not so miserable perhaps as a French mangling the translator re
members to have seen. — Tit.
498 TITAN.

assign the reasons why the house of Froulay did not be

speak feasts of joy — instead of court-mourning — on the
occasion of these advances by a son of their order, a
Spanish Grandee, who often lays upon himself a German
princely sceptre as a yardstick to measure himself withal.
For every Spaniard must have hitherto wondered about
this.
I answer every nation. The Froulays had, in the first
place, nothing against the union except the — certainty
of separation ; since on the same ground, which the
Knights of the Fleece and the Spaniards have opposed to
me, old Gaspard de Zesara can in no wise suffer a bridge
to be thrown over from his Gothard to the Jungfrau [vir
gin]. Secondly, on this very ground the Minister could
oppose to this romantic love a much older, wiser, which
he bore toward the German gentleman and his moneys
and liaisons, as well as the old grudge of the Knight of
the Fleece. Thirdly, the Minister's lady had, beside these
same grounds, — and besides several in favor of the Lec
tor, perhaps, — one quite decisive one, and that was, she
could not endure the Count; not merely and solely for
the reason that she discovered a painful similarity between
him and her son, and even husband, in pride, in excita
bility, in the characteristic fierceness of genius against
poor married women, in want of religious humility and
devoutness ; but the principal reason why she could not
well endure him was this : that she could not bear him.
As the system of Predestination sentences some men to
hell, whether they afterward deserve heaven or not, so
a woman never takes back an enmity to which she has
once doomed any one, all that country and city, God,
time, and the individual's virtues may say to the con
trary, notwithstanding.
 PLOT AGAINST THE LOVERS. 499

In the treaty of peace, concluding the usual chamber-

war, the following private articles were adjusted between
the married couple : The Count must be, on the Father's
and Director's account, treated with the most courtly con
sideration, and shoved aside, — and Liana gently and
gradually drawn away from Wehrfritz's house, — the
whole dissolution of the engagement must seem to happen
of itself without parental interference, merely through
the breaking off of the daughter, — and the whole affair
remain a mystery. Froulay hoped to keep the whole
interlude or episode concealed from Liana's earlier-in
tended, the German gentleman, particularly as he, just
now, in August, was more at the card-tables of the baths
than at home.
So it stood ; and into this cold, awful pass the friendly
Liana moved on, when on that warm living Sunday she
left the blessed, open Lilar. Refined and sanctified by
joy, — for every Paradise was to her a purifying Purga
tory, — she came nobly to her mother's bosom, without
remarking the strange seriousness of the reception by
reason of the earnest warmth of her own. Her easy
confession of the garden-company opened the trying scene,
— almost in the coulisse. For the mother, who would
fain have begun otherwise, had to mount the thunder-
car at once, in order to thunder and lighten against such
incomprehensible forgetfulness of female propriety ; and
yet she held in the thunder-steeds in mid-career, in order
to enjoin upon Liana immediately, as the Minister might
come any moment, a perfect silence on the subject of to
day's garden-party. Now she cast the deepest strength
ening shade upon her previous mute falsehood towards a
mother ; for she arbitrarily transposed in her story the
sowing and blossoming time of this love, even into the
SOO TITAN.

days preceding the journey to the country. How did the

warm soul shudder at the possibility of such an unkind-
ness ! She led her mother as far as she could up along
the pure, light pearl-brook of her history and love, and
told all that we know, but without giving much satisfac
tion, because she left out precisely the main point ; for,
out of forbearance toward her mother, she felt obliged to
let the apparition of Caroline, who in the beginning had
been the image-stormer of her love and then its inspiring
muse and bride's-maid, together with the death-certificate
of the future, remain out of sight in the narration.
She held, with fervent pressure, her mother's hand
amidst more and more cheerful assurances, how she had
always been disposed to tell her everything ; she thought
hopingly, she needed to save nothing but her open heart.
O thou hast more to save, thy warm, thy whole and living
heart ! Her mother now, from old habit, half believing
her, found fault with nothing more than the whole affair,
its impropriety, impossibility, folly. " O good mother,"
said Liana, simply remaining tender under the harsh
picturing of the future Albano ; " O he is not such, as
suredly not ! " Quite as tenderly did she far overlook
the darkly-sketched future refusal of Don Gaspard, be
cause to her faith the earth was only a blooming grave-
mound hanging in the ether. '' Ah ! " said she, meaning
how little time she was for this world, " our love is not
so important!" Her mother took this word and the
whole gentleness of her resistance, as preludes of an
easy victory.
At this moment Albano's father-in-law came in with a
kettle-drum, alarm-bell, fire-drum, and rattlesnake, in his
girdle, in order therewith to make himself audible. First
he inquired, — for he had been listening in vain, — in a
 FROULAY AS A SIAMESE PHYSICIAN. SOI

very exasperated manner, of the Minister's lady, where

she had stowed away his ear (it was the tin duplicate
ear, wherein, as in a Venetian lion's-head, all mysteries
and accusations of the whole service and family met) ;
he said, he had a little occasion for it just now, particular
ly since the newest " adventures of his worthy daughter
there." The Siamese physicians begin the healing of a
patient with treading upon him, which they call softening.
In a similar manner Froulay loved to soften, by way of
moral pre-cure ; and accordingly began, with the above-
mentioned speaking-machines in his girdle, to declare his
sentiments explicitly on the subject of degenerate chil
dren ; upon their arts and artifices ; and upon intrigues
behind fathers' backs (so that no father can accom
pany a volume of love-poems with a prose preface) ;
backed up many points with the strongest political
grounds, which all had reference to himself and his in
terest, and wound up with a little cursing.
Liana heard him calmly, as one already accustomed
to such daily returning equinoctial storm-bursts, without
any other emotion, except that she often raised her down
cast eye pityingly upon him, out of tender sympathy for
the paternal dissatisfaction. In a calm he became loud
est. " You will see to it, madam," said he, " that to
morrow forenoon she sends the Count what she has of
his, together with a farewell, and notifies him of her new
office, as an easy excuse ; thou art to be court-dame to
the reigning Princess, although thou didst not deserve
that I should labor for thee ! "
" That is hard ! " cried Liana, with breaking heart,
falling upon her mother. He supposed she meant the
separation from Albano, not from her mother, and asked,
angrily : " Why ? " " Father, I would so gladly," said she,
502 TITAN.

and turned only her face away from the embrace, " die
near my mother!" He laughed; but the Minister's lady
herself shut to the hell-gates upon the flames which he
still would fain have vomited forth, and assured him it
was enough, Liana would certainly obey her parents,
and she herself would be surety for it. The preacher
of the law came down his pulpit-stairs with an audible
ejaculation about a better security, calling back, as he
went, that his ear must be produced to-morrow, and
though he should have to search for it in all chests and
cupboards.
The mother kept silence now, and let her daughter
softly weep on her neck ; to both, after this drought of
the soul, the draught of love was refreshment and medi
cine. They came out of each other's arms with cheered
spirits, but both with entirely delusive hopes.

75. CYCLE.

A HARD, black morning ; only the outward at

mospheric morning was dark-blue ; there was
nothing loud and stormy, except perchance the swarms
of bees in the linden-thicket ; the heaven's ether seemed
to flutter away high over the stony streets, so as to settle
down low in the bright open Lilar upon all hill-tops and
tree-tops, and, blue as peacock's plumage, to play its hues
over the twigs.
Liana found on her writing-table a billet, folded in
large quarto, wherein the Minister, ever-working, like
a heart, sought even at this early hour of the morning,
before raising out of the public documents for the sev
eral administration and exchequer counsellors the tran
sient tempests which were necessary to fruitfulness, to
 LIANA FLIES TO HER MOTHER. 503

descend upon his shuddering daughter with a cold morn

ing rain-gust. In the decretal letter referred to, he de
veloped more in detail, upon a sheet and a half what he
had meant yesterday, — separation on the spot; and of
fered six grounds of separation, — first, his uncongenial
relation with the Knight of the Fleece ; secondly, her
own and the Count's youth ; thirdly, the approaching
place of court-dame ; fourthly, that she was his daughter,
and this the first sacrifice to which he, her father, for
all his previous ones, had ever laid claim ; fifthly, she
might perceive, by his indulgent "Yes," to the love of
her brother, whose apparent improvement he held out
to her as a model, that he lived and cared only for the
welfare of his children ; sixthly, he would send her to
Fort * * * to his brother, the commandant, in case she
were refractory, by way of exiling, punishing, and bring
ing her round ; and neither weeping, nor falling at feet,
nor mother, nor hell should bend him ; and he gave her
three days' time for reflection.
Mutely, and with wet eyes, she handed to her who had
' been hitherto her comforter the heavy sheet. But the
comforter had become a judge : " What wilt thou do ? "
said the Minister's lady. " I will suffer," said Liana, "in
order that he may not suffer ; how could I so sorely sin
against him ? " The mother, whether actually under the
old notion of her easy conversion, or from dissimulation,
took that " He " for the father, and asked : " Say'st thou
nothing of me ? " Liana blushed at the substitution, and
said : " Ah ! poor me, I will not indeed be happy, — only
true ! " How had she during this night prayingly lived
and wept amidst the fearful wars of all her inner angels !
A love so guiltless, consecrated by her holy friend in
heaven, — a fidelity so exceedingly abridged by early
 504 TITAN.

death ; so sound-hearted a youth, shooting up with high,

fruit-bearing summit heavenward, whom not even ghostly
voices could scare or allure out of his faithful childhood's
love toward her, insignificant one ; the everlasting dis
comfort and grief which he would experience at the
first, greatest lie against his heart ; her short, straight
path through life, and the nearness of that crossway,
at which she should wish to throw back, — not stones,
but flowers upon the other pilgrims; — all these forms took
her by one hand to draw her away from her mother,
who called afier her with the words : " See how un
gratefully thou art going from me, and I have so long
suffered and toiled for thee ! " Then came Liana back
again out of the dusky, warm rose-vale of love into the
dry, flat earth-surface of a life, wherein nothing breaks
the monotony save her last mound. O how imploringly
did she look up to the stars, to see whether they did not
move as the eyes of her Caroline, and tell her how she
must sacrifice herself, whether for her lover or for her
parents ; but the stars stood friendly, cold, and still in
the steadfast heavens.
But, when the morning sun again beamed upon her
heart, it beat hopefully, newly strengthened with the res
olution to endure this day for Albano full many sorrows,
— ah yes, even the first. Could Caroline, thought she,
approve a love to which I must be untrue ?
Hardly had she left the lips of her mother with the
morning greeting, when the latter sought, but more ear
nestly than yesterday, to draw up the roots of this stead
fast heart out of its strange soil by a longer use of yes
terday's flower-extractor. In her comparative anatomy
of Albano and Roquairol, from the similarity of voice even
to that of stature, she grew more and more cutting, till
 LIANA'S MOTHER LABORS WITH HER. 505

Liana, with a maiden's wit, at once asked, " But why may
my brother, then, love Rabette? " " Quelle comparaison! "
said the mother. " Art thou nothing better than she ? "
" She does, strictly speaking, much more than I," said
she, quite candidly. " Didst thou never quarrel with the
wild Zesara ? " asked the mother. " Never, except when
I was in the wrong," said she, innocently.
The mother was alarmed to perceive more and more
clearly that she had to pull up deeper and stronger roots
than light flowers strike into the soil. She concentrated
all her maternal powers of attraction and lifting-machines
upon one point, for the upturning of the still green myr
tle. She disclosed to her the Minister's dark plan of an
alliance with the German gentleman, her hitherto con
cealed strifes and sighs on the subject, her thus far
effectual resistance, and the latest paternal stratagem, to
make her a garrison-prisoner with his brother, and thereby
probably Herr von Bouverot a besieger of the citadel.
For some readers and relicts of the heavy, old-fash
ioned, golden age of morality, the remark is here intro
duced and printed, that a peculiar, cold, unsparing, often
shocking and provoking, candor of remark upon the
nearest relatives and the tenderest relations is so very
much at home in the higher ranks, that even the fairer
souls, among whom, surely, this mother belongs, cannot,
absolutely, understand or do otherwise.
" O thou best mother ! " cried Liana, agitated, but not
by the thought of the rattle and the snaky breath of
Bouverot, or of his murderous spring at her heart, — she
thought with as much indifference of being betrothed to
him as any innocent one does of his dying on a scaffold, —
but by the thought of the long building over and crowding
out of sight of the motherly tears, the streams of motherly
22
506 TITAN.

love, which had hitherto flowed nourishingly deep down

under her flowers. She threw herself gratefully between
those helpful arms. They closed not around her, because
the Minister's lady was not to be made weak and soft by
any washing wave and surge of sudden emotion.
Into this embrace the Minister struck or stepped in.
" So ! " said he, hastily. " My ear, madam," he con
tinued, " cannot be found again at all among the domes
tics ; I have that to tell you." For he had to-day posted
himself upon a law-giving Sinai, and thundered into the
ears of the service assembled at its foot the inquiry after
his own ear, " because I must believe," he had said to
them, " that you, for very good reasons, have stolen it
from me." Then he had swept like a hail-storm, or a
kitchen-smoke in windy weather, through the servants'
apartments and corners, one by one, in quest of his ear.
" And thou ? " said he, in a half-friendly tone to Liana.
She kissed his hand, which he, as the Pope does his foot,
always despatched for kisses, as proxy and lip-bearer,
agent, and de latere nuncio of his mouth.
" She continues disobedient," said the severe lady.
" Then she is a little like you," said he, because the mis
trustful one looked upon the embrace as a conspiracy
against him and his Bouverot. Upon this, his ice-Hecla
burst out, and flamed and flowed, now upon daughter,
now upon wife. The former was absolutely a miserable
creature, he said ; and only the Captain was worth any
thing, whom he luckily had educated by himself alone.
He saw through all, heard all, though they had hid away
his ear-trumpet. There was, accordingly, as he saw, (he
pointed to his unsealed morning-psalm,*) a communica-
* He refers to the letter he had left on Liana's table, and which she
had shown to her mother. — Tr.
 FROULAY HEARS THE GHOST-STORY. 507
tion between the two colleges ; but he invoked God to
punish him if he did not — " my dear daughter, pray
answer at last ! " he begged.
" My father," said Liana, who, since the fraternization
of Bouverot and the ill treatment from her mother, had
begun to feel her heart wake up, which, however, could
only despise and never hate, " my mother has to-day and
yesterday told me all ; but I have surely duties towards
the Count ! " A bolder liveliness than her parents had
ever missed or found in her beamed under her upraised
eye. " Ah, I will truly remain faithful to him just as
long as I live," said she. " Cest bien peu," replied the
Minister, astounded at such pertness.
Liana listened now, for the first time, after the word
which had escaped her ; then, in order to justify the
past and her mother, she conceived the pleasant and
ridiculous purpose, of moving and converting the old
gentleman by her ghost-visions or dream-seeings. She
begged of him a solitary interview, and afterward —
when it was reluctantly granted — intreated him therein
for his sacred promise to be silent towards her mother,
because she feared to show to that loving one the clock-
wheels of her death-bell rattling so near to the fatal
stroke. The old gentleman could only, with a comic ex
pression, — which made him look like one who with a
bad cold wants to laugh, — vow that he would keep his
word so far as was necessary, because never, so far as
he could recollect, had his word been kept by him, only
he had been often kept by his word. In such men, word
and deed are like theatrical thunder and lightning, which,
though generally occurring in close connection, and simul
taneously in heaven, on the stage break forth out of
separate corners, and by means of different operator*.
508 TITAN.

But Liana would not rest till he had put on a word-

keeping, sincere face, — a painted window. Thereupon
she began, after a kissing of the hand,* her ghostly history.
"With unbroken seriousness, and firmly contracted
muscles, he heard the extraordinary narration through ;
then, without saying a word, he took her by the hand
and led her back into the presence of her mother, to
whom he handed her over with a long psalm of praise
and thanksgiving about her successful daughter's-school.
" His boy's-school with Charles had not been blessed to
him, at least in this degree," he added. As. a proof, he
frankly communicated to her — cold-bloodedly working up
all Liana's pangs, as the coopers do cypress-branches into
cask-hoops — the little which he had promised to bury in
silence, because he always prostituted either himself or
the other party, generally both. Liana sat there, deeply
red, and growing hotter and hotter, with downcast eyes,
and begged God to preserve her filial love towards her
father.
No sympathizing eye shall be further pained with the
opening of a new scene, when the ice of his irony broke,
and became a raging stream, into which flowed tears of
maternal indignation, also, at the thought of a precious
being, and her feverish, fatal, dreaming of herself away
into the last sleep. The object and the danger almost
united the married couple for the second time ; when
there is a glazed frost, people go very much arm in arm.
" Thou hast sent nothing to Lilar ? " asked the father.
" Without your permission I certainly should not do it,"
said she ; but she meant her letters, not Albano's. He
took advantage of the misunderstanding, and said, " Thou
hast, however, surely." "I will gladly do, and let be
* FUt in the original. — Tb.
 FROULAY'S PARTING VOLLEY. 509

done everything," said she, "but only on condition the

Count consents, in order that I may not appear to him
disingenuous ; he has my sacred word for my truth ! "
At this mild firmness, at this Peter's rock overgrown
with tender flowers, the father stumbled the hardest.
In addition to this, the transition of a haughty lover from
his own wishes to those of his enemies, supposing they
had allowed Liana the question to the Count, was so
impossible on the one hand, and the solicitation of this
change, whether it were granted or refused, absolutely
so degrading on the other, that the astounded Minister's
lady felt her pride rise, and asked again, " Is this thy
last word to us, Liana ? " And when Liana, weeping,
answered, " I cannot help it ; God be gracious to me ! "
she turned away indignantly toward the Minister, and
said : " Do now what you take to be convenable ; I wash
my hands in innocence ! " " Not so entirely, ma chere ;
but very well ! " said he, " thou wilt stay after to-morrow
in thy chamber, till thou hast corrected thyself, and art
more worthy of our presence I " he announced, as he went
out, to Liana; firing at her meanwhile two eye-volleys,
wherein, according to my estimate, far more reverberat
ing fires, tormenting ghosts, eating, devouring medica
ments, brain and heart-borers, were promised, than a man
can generally hold to give or bear to receive.
Poor maiden ! Thy last August is very hard, and no
harvest-month day ! Thou lookest out into the time,
where thy little coffin stands, on which a cruel angel
wipes away the still fresh flower-pieces of love running
round it, in order that it may, all white, as rosy-white as
thy soul or thy last form, be consigned to the grave !
This banishment by her mother into the desert of her
cloister-chamber was quite as frightful to her, only not
510 TITAN.

more frightful than her anger, which she had to-day, only
for the third time, experienced, though not deserved. It
was to her as if now, after the warm sun had gone down,
the bright evening glow had also Bunk below the horizon,
and it grew dark and cold in the world. She remained
this whole day, which was yet allowed her, with her
mother ; gave, however, only answers, looked friendly,
did everything cheerfully and readily, and — as she
quickly dashed away, with her tiny finger, every gather
ing dew-drop out of the corner of her eyes, as if it were
dust, because she thought, at night I can weep enough, —
she had very dry eyes ; and all that, in order not to be
an additional burden to her oppressed mother. But she,
as mothers so easily do, confounded a timid, loving still
ness with the dawning of obduracy ; and when Liana,
with the innocent design of consolation, wished to have
Caroline's picture brought for her from Lilar, this inno
cence also passed for hardness, and was punished and
reciprocated with a corresponding on the part of the
parent, namely, with the permission to send. Only the
Minister's lady demanded the French prayers of her
again, as if she were not worthy to lay them under her
present heart. Never are human beings smaller than
when they want to plague and punish without knowing
how.
As every one who rules, whether he sits on a chair of
instruction or a princely one, or, like parents, on both,
when the occupant of its footstool once leaves off his for
mer obedience, imputes that obedience to him, not as a
mitigation, but as an aggravation of his offence, so did the
Minister's lady also toward her hitherto so uniformly
docile child. She hated her pure love, which burned
like ether, without ashes, smoke, or coal, so much the more,
 LIANA'S DESOLATE EVENING. 511

and held it to be either the author or the victim of an in

cendiary fire, particularly as her own married love hitherto
had seldom been anything more than a showy chimney-
piece.
Liana at last, too heavily constrained, since on the other
side of the wall-tapestry the serene day, the loveliest sky
was blooming, ascended to the Italian roof. She saw how
people were travelling and riding back contentedly from
their little places of pleasure, because the earth was
one ; on Lilar's bushy path the walkers were saun
tering with a blissful slowness home, — in the streets
there was a loud carpentering at the festive scaffold
ings and Charles's-wains for the princely bride, and
the finished wheels were rolled along for trial, — and
everywhere were heard the drillings of the young music,
which when grown up was to go before her. But when
Liana looked upon herself, and saw her life alone standing
here in dark raiment, — over yonder the empty house of
her loved one, here her own, which to her had also be
come empty, — this very spot, which still reminded her of
a lovelier, rarer blossoming than that of the Cereus serpens,
— and oh ! this cold solitude, in which her heart to-day,
for the first time, lived without a heart ; for her brother,
the chorister of her short song of gladness, had been sent
off, and Julienne had for some time been incomprehensibly
invisible to her, — no, she could not see the fair sun go
down, who, so serene and white, was sinking to slumber
wish his high evening star, — or listen to the happy even
ing chorus of the long day, but left the shining eminence.
O how does joy die a stranger in the untenanted, dark
bosom, when she finds no sister and becomes a spectre
there ! Thus does the beautiful green, that spring color,
when a cloud paints it, betoken nothing but long moisture.
512 TITAN.

When she entered, soon, the asylum of day, the bed

chamber, the heavens without flashed heat-lightning ; O
why just now, cruel fate ? — But here, before the still-life
of night, when life, covered with her veil, sounds more
faintly, — here may all her tears, which a heavy day has
been pressing,* gush forth freely. On the pillow, as if it
bore the last, long sleep, rests this exhausted head more
softly than on the bosom which reproachfully reckons up
against it its tears ; and it weeps softly, not upon, only for
loved ones.
According to her custom, she was on the point of open
ing her mother's prayers, when she recollected, with a
startled feeling, that they had been taken from her. Then
she looked up with burning tears to God, and prepared
alone out of her broken heart a prayer to him, and only
angels counted the words and the tears.

76. CYCLE.

THE father had made this chamber-imprisonment a

punitory mark of her refusal. With deep anguish
she uttered this mute no, in the very fact that she volun
tarily stayed in the chamber, and denied her mother the
morning kiss. She had, in the course of the night, cast
many an ardent look at the dead image of her counsellor
Caroline, but no original, no fever-created form had ap
peared to her. Can I longer doubt, she inferred from
this, that the divine apparition, which has spoken the
assenting word to my love, was something higher than my
own creation, since I must otherwise have been able to
form it again over against her picture ?
She had Albano's blooming letters in her desk, and
• I. o. as in a wine-press. — Tr.

_^
 LIANA AND HER CORNUTE. 513

opened it, in order to look over from her island into the
remote orient land of warmer times ; but she shut it to
again ; she was ashamed to be secretly happy, while her
mother waa sorrowful, who into these melancholy days
had not even come, like her, out of pleasant ones.
Froulay did not long leave her alone, but soon sent for
her ; not, however, to sound her or pronounce her free,
but for the purpose — which, as may well be conceived,
required an unvarnished brow and cheek, whose fibrous
network was as hard to be colored as his with the Turk
ish red of shame — of appointing her his mistress in
artistic language, and taking her with him to the Prince's
gallery, in order to learn from her the explanation of
these frontispieces (for such they were to him) in this
private deaf-and-dumb institution so well that he might
be in a condition, so soon as the Princess should come to
inspect it, to represent something better than a mute
before the beauties of the pictures and the image-worship
ping Regentess. Liana had to transfer an impression of
every pictured limb, with the praise or blame appertaining
thereunto, over into his serious brain, together with the
name of the master. How delightedly and completely
did she give this kallipaideia to her growling old cornute,*
and would-be connoisseur in painting, who paid her not a
single thankful look as instruction-money !
At noon, for the first time, did the daughter find her
longed-for mother, among the kitchen-servants, very seri
ous and sad. She ventured not to kiss her mouth, but
only her hand, and opened upon her her love-streaming
eyes only timidly and a little. Dinner seemed a funeral-
feast. Only the old gentleman, who on a battle-field
* Alluding to the homed hat once worn by graduated printers' ap
prentices. — Tr.
22 • 00
514 TITAN.

would have danced his marriage-minuet, and celebrated

his birthday, was in good spirits and appetite, and full of
salt. In case of a family jar, he usually ate en famille,
and found in biting table-speeches, as common people do
in winter and in famine, a sharper zest for food. Quarrel
ling, of itself, strengthens and animates, as physicians can
electrify themselves merely by whipping something.*
Laughable, and yet lamentable, was it that poor Liana,
who was all day long to keep a prison, was always called
out of it just for to-day, — this time into the carriage
again, which was to set down the sad heart and the
smiling face before nothing but bright palaces. She had
to go with her parents to the Princess, and look as happy
as they, who, on the melancholy road, regarded her as if
she were to be envied. So does the heart which has
been born not far from the throne never bleed, except
behind the curtain, and never laugh but when it rises ;
just as these same distinguished ones were formerly exe
cuted only in secret. The Prince, who was ridiculously
loud on the subject of his marriage ; Bouverot, just
returned from card-tables or privateering planks, whom
Liana now, since the latest intelligences, could only endure
with a shudder ; and the Princess herself, who excused
her previous absence from her on account of the distrac
tion of preparing for the festival, and who very strangely
jested at once about love and men, — only to a Liana
who guessed so little, suffered so much, and endured so
willingly, could all these beings and incidents seem any
thing but the most intolerable.
Ah, what was intolerable, but the iron unchangeable-
ness of these connections, the fixedness of such an eternal
* Beseke discovered it. See " On the Elemental Fire," by him,
1786.
 RABETTE MAKES NEW TROUBLE. 515

mountain-snow ? Not the greatness, but the indefiniteness,

of pain ; not the minotaur of the labyrinth, its cellar-frost,
sharp-cornered rocks, and vaults, make the breast contract
and the blood curdle therein, but the long night and wind
ing of its egress. Even under bodily maladies, therefore,
unwonted new ones, whose last moment stretches away
beyond our power of prediction, appear to us more om
inous and oppressive than recurring ones, which, as neigh
boring frontier-enemies, are ever attacking us, and find
us in arms.
Thus stood the dumb Liana in a cloud, when the exult
ing Rabette, with a bosom full of old joys and new hope,
came running into the house, — that sister of the holy
youth who had been torn away from her, that confederate
of such glorious days. She was honorably received, and
constantly attended by a guard of honor, — the Minister's
lady, — because she might, indeed, as likely be an ambas
sadress of the Count as an electress of her son. The cun
ning girl sought to snatch some solitary moments with
Liana by boldly begging for her company to Blumenbuhl.
The company was granted, and even that of the mother
freely offered, into the bargain. Liana led the way to
Blumenbuhl over the still-blooming churchyard of buried
days. What a torrent of tears struggled upward in her
breast when she parted from the still happy Rabette !
She had innocently left to the house one of the greatest
apples of discord for the evening meal which the Min
ister had ever plucked for his fruit-dish with his apple-
gatherer. Therefore he supped again en famille. That
is to say, a silly word had escaped Rabette about the
Sunday's meeting at Lilar. " Of that," said Froulay, in
a very friendly manner, " thou hast not made one word
of remark, daughter." " I did to my mother imme
516 TITAN.

diately," she replied, too fast. " I should be glad, too, to

take an interest in thy amusements," said he, saving up
his fury. In the pleasantest mood imaginable did this
raftsman of so many tears and hewn-down blossoming
branches, which he let float down thereupon, take his
seat at the supper-table. He first asked servants and
family for his auxiliary ear. Thereupon he passed over
to the French, although the plate-exchangers found a
rough translation thereof for themselves, a versio inter-
Unearis, on his face, by way of giving notice that the
distinguished Count had been there, and had inquired
after mother and daughter. " With good right he asked
for you both," continued the moral glacier, who loved to
cool his warm food. " You are conspired, as I heard
again to-day, to keep silence towards me ; but why, then,
shall I still trust you ? " He hated from his heart every
lie which he did not utter himself; so he seriously re
garded himself as moral, disinterested, and gentle, merely
for this reason, that he inexorably insisted upon all this in
the case of others. With an abundant supply of the
stinging nettles of persiflage, — the botanical ones also
come forward best in cold and stony soil, — he covered
over all his opening and closing lobster-claws, as we
keep brook-crabs in nettles, and took first his tender child
between the claws. Her sofi, submissive smile he took
for contempt and wickedness. How comes this soft one
intelligibly by his paternal name, unless one assumes the
old hypothesis, that children are usually most like that for
which the pregnant mother vainly longed, which in this
case was a soft spouse ? Then he assailed, but more
vehemently, the mother, in order by his mistrust to set
her at variance with his daughter ; yes, in order, perhaps,
to torment the latter, by means of her mother's sufferings,
FROULAY'S ATTENTION TO HIS EXTEBIOR. 517

into childlike sacrifices and resolutions. He very freely

declared himself — for the egotist finds the most egotists,
as love and Liana find only love, and no self-love —
against the egotism around and beside him, and concealed
not how very cordially he cursed them both for female
egotists (as the old heathen did the Christians for atheists).
The Minister's lady, accustomed to live with the Minister
in no wedlock so little as in that of souls, — as Voltaire
defines friendship, — said merely to Liana, " For whom
do I suffer so ? " " Ah, I know," she answered, meekly.
And so he dismissed both full of the deepest sorrows, and
thought afterward of his business matters.
This general distress was increased by something which
should have lessened it. The Minister was vexed that
he had daily, in the midst of his wrath, to consult the
taste of the women upon his — exterior. He wanted, at
the marriage festival, — for the sake of his beloved, — to
be a true bird of paradise, a Paradeur, a Venus a belles
fesses." Of old he had loved to act the double part
of statesman and courtier, and would fain, by way of
monopolizing pride and vanity, grow into a Diogenes-
Aristippus. Something of this, however, was not vanity ;
but that tormenting spirit of the male sex, the spirit of
order and orthodoxy, would not go out of him. He was
a man who would flourish against his very livery the
clothes-switch wherewith the servant had let a few par
ticles of dust settle on the state coat ; still more dan
gerous was it — because he sat between two looking-
glasses, the frizzling-glass and the large mirror in the
stove-screen — to lay the dust rightly on his own wool ;
and hardest of all was it for him to be satisfied with
the fixing of his children. Liana, as artist, had now to
• Venus with beautiful thighs. — Tr.
518 TITAN.

suggest the proper color of a new surtout. Sachets, or

smelling-bags, he directed to be filled, and with them his
pockets ; and a musk-plant pot placed in his window, not
because he wished to use the leaves for perfume (that he
expected of his fingers), but because he wished to anoint
his fingers by rubbing the leaves together. Patent po
matum for the hands, and English pressed ornamental
paper also for the same (when they wished to use a
billet-doux pen), and other knickknacks, excited less at
tention than the snuff which he procured for himself;
not, however, for his nose, but for his lips, in order to
rub them red. In fact, he would have rendered himself
quite ridiculous in the eyes of many a merry blade, if
such a one had seen him draw privately out of his
souvenir the hair-tweezers, and with them the hair out
of his eyebrows, just where the saddle of life, as upon
a horse's back, had worn it white ; and only the Minis
ter himself could look serious during the process, when
he sat before the looking-glass, smiling through all the
finest ways of smiling, — the best one he caught and kept,
— or when he tried the most graceful modes of throwing
one's self on the sofa, — how often he had to practise this I
— and finally, in short, through all his operations upon
himself.
Fortunately for the mother, the good Lector came ;
from the hand of this old friend she had so often taken,
if not a Jacob's ladder, yet a mining-ladder, upon which
to climb out of the abyss ; hopefully she now laid before
him all her trouble. He promised some help, upon the
condition of speaking with Liana alone in her chamber.
He went to her and declared tenderly his knowledge and
her situation.
How did the childlike maiden blush at the sharp day
 AUGUSTI'S KIND COUNSEL. 519

beams which smote the scented night-violet of her love !

But the friend of her childhood spoke softly to this smit
ten heart, and of his equal love for her and her friend ;
of the temperament of her father, and of the necessity
of considerate measures ; and said the best was to make
him a sacred vow that she would yield to her parent's
wish of her strictly avoiding the Count, only until he
had received from his father, to whom he himself, as
attendant of the son, had long been obliged to communi
cate intelligence and inquiries about the new connection,
the yes or no in respect to it ; if it were " no," — which
he would not answer for, — then Albano must solve the
riddle ; if it were " yes," he himself would stand security
for a second on the part of her parents ; at the same
time, however, he must lay claim to her profoundest
silence toward them in relation to his inquiries, where
by they might perhaps find themselves compromitted.
Thereby he rooted himself only the more deeply in her
confidence.
She asked, trembling, how long the answer would tarry ?
" Six, eight, eleven days after the nuptials at most ! " said
he, reckoning. Yes, good August i ! "Ahl we are all
suffering, indeed," said she, and added, confidentially,
and out of a weeping breast : " But is he well ? " " He
is diligent," was the reply.
So he brought her, burdened with two secrets, and for
the present consenting to an interim-separation, back to
her mother ; but she bestowed only upon the Lector the
reward of a friendly look. He desired, meantime, — after
his Carthusian manner, — no other reward than the most
good-natured silence toward the Minister on the subject
of his interference, since the latter might hold his deserts
in this connection much greater than they were.
S20 TITAN.

The eight days' improvement and abstinence was

announced to the Minister. He believed, however, —
keeping in reserve a mistrust towards his lady, — that
he could carry the war farther into the enemy's country
with his own weapons ; nevertheless, he contented him
self, at the same time, with the new respite and Liana's
disincarceration, for the sake of driving his daughter be
fore him to his beloved at the nuptial festival, blooming
and healthy as a sparkling pea-hen.
Roquairol at this moment came back, and ushered
into the house a cloud or two full of beautiful, bright
morning redness. He delivered to his father tidings and
greetings from the Princess. To Liana he brought the
echo of that beloved voice, which had once said to her
heaven : « Let it be ! " — ah ! the last melody among the
discords of the unharmonious time ! He guessed easily —
for he learned little from his mother, who neglected him,
and nothing from her daughter — how all stood. When
he was actually on the point of slipping Albano's letter
to her, in the twilight of evening, into her work-bag, and
she said, with an ah ! of love, " No, it is against my word,
— but at some future time, Charles ! " — then he saw, as
he expressed it, " witq crying indignation, his sister, in
Charon's open boat, sailing into the Tartarus of all sor
rows." About his friend he thought less than of his
sister. The friendly, flattering Minister — he presented,
as a proof of it, a valuable saddle to the Captain —
informed him of Rabette's visit, and gave hints about
betrothment and the like. Charles said, boldly : " He
postponed every thought of his own happiness, so long
as his dear sister saw none before her." By way of
drawing the old gentleman again into more interest for
Liana, he suggested to him a romantic invention for the
 PROPOSED TABLEAU VTVANT. 521

marriage festival, which Froulay did not dream of, when

he already stood quite close to it; namely, Idoine (the
sister of the bride) was strikingly like Liana. The Prin
cess loved her inexpressibly, but saw her only seldom,
because on account of her strong character, which once
refused a royal marriage, she lived in a village built and
governed by herself, in a courtly exile from court. He
now proposed to his father the poetic question, whether,
on the illumination night, Liana might not for a few min
utes, in the dream-temple, which was entirely suited to
this beautiful illusion, delight the Princess with the image
of her beloved sister.
Whether it was that love toward the Princess made
the Minister bolder, or he was intoxicated by the desire
of brilliantly introducing Liana to her office of court-
lady ; suffice it, he found in the idea good sense. If
anything supplied tobacco for the calumet of the ex parte
peace which he had made with his son, it was this the
atrical part. He hastened immediately to the Prince and
the Princess with the prayer for his permission and her
sympathy ; and then, when he had secured both, he
hastened on to his Orestes, Bouverot, and said : " 11 triest
venu une idee tres singuliere qui peut-etre rest trop ;
cependant le prince Va approuvie" etc., — and finally —
lor he must not forget her either — to Liana.
The Captain had already sought to persuade her be
forehand. The mother opposed the dramatic imitation
from self-respect, and Liana from humility ; such a rep
resentation seemed to her a piece of presumption. But
at last she gave in, simply because the sisterly love of
the Princess had seemed to her so great and unattain
able, just as if she did not cherish a similar sentiment in
her own heart ; thus she always regarded only the image
52a TITAN.

in the mirror, not herself, as beautiful ; just as the as

tronomer thinks the same evening, with its red splendors
and night shadows, more sublime and enchanting, when
he finds it in the moon, than when he stands in the midst
of it on the earth. Perhaps, too, there entered another
element of secret sweetness into Liana's love for the
Prince's bride, namely, a step-daughter's affection ; be
cause she should once have been the bride of the Knight
Gaspard. Women regard relationship more than we ;
hence, too, their ancestral pride is always several ances
tors older than ours.
Thus, then, did she make ready her oppressed heart
for the light plays of the shining festival, which the
coming Cycles are to present on the New-Year's holi
day, as it were, of a new Jubilee.

END OF VOL. I.

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