Jean Paul

“ On a fresh, blue morning Albano stood, before the resurrection of the sun in heaven, on the high, bloom-encircled pyramid of terraces, where he had once, on awaking, seen his dear father flee without farewell; and he gazed with emotion down into the vacant, broad lake, and around on the summits of the glaciers, which already bloomed in the reflection of Aurora riding down from on high,—and no one was with him but the past. He looked upon himself and into his breast, and thought: "What a long, heavy time has already passed through this bosom since that day! ”

“ By night, when the daily rain ceased, he visited alone the great ruins of the earth, the Forum, the Colosseum, the Capitol; he became more passionate, unsocial, sharp; a deep, brooding seriousness reigned on the lofty brow, and a sombre spirit burned through the eye.
Gaspard, unobserved, kept his eye upon all secret unfoldings of the youth. A mere sorrow for Liana did not seem to be his case. In the northern winter this wound would only have frozen up, and not healed up; but here, in the temple of the world, where gods lie buried, a noble heart gathered strength, and beat for older graves. ”

“ Sister, Linda, what have I, after all, yet done upon the earth?"
"Thou hast made this question, and this is enough in the sight of God," said Julienne, moved by the proud, wounded modesty of the youth, and by his beautiful voice, which, when indignant, sounded as if he were tenderly touched. "Words! what are words?" said he. "O one surely may well be ashamed that one has even to think and speak of anything before he does it, although poor, imperfect man cannot otherwise, but every action, like a statue, must first be modelled in the miserable wax of words. ”

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

“ Here he found again his hosts, who had all quite forgotten him in the jubilee; and Dian said, "I would have awaked you soon; the night and the pleasures last a great while yet."
"Do hear and see yonder the divine Vesuvius, who joins in celebrating the festival in such right good earnest," cried Dian, who plunged as deeply into the waves of joy as any Ischian. Albano looked over toward the flame, flickering high in the starry heaven, and, like a god, having the great thunder beneath it, and he saw how the night had made the promontory of Misenum loom up like a cloud beside the volcano. ”

“ He has, after all, a bright, bold, reflecting faculty," said Gaspard. "Only effeminate, shameless, double-meaning, many-sided debility of heart he has; talks of power, and cannot tear through the thinnest mesh of pleasure," said Albano.
"Charles," said Hiort, tenderly, as if answering him, "yes, there is yet one help. When on the ground of life one fresh color after another fades,—when existence is now nothing, neither comedy nor tragedy, only a stale show-piece,—still is there one heaven open to man, which shall receive him,—love. ”

“ Not a speck of cloud, not a breath of air, stirred through the wide heaven; the stars reigned alone; earthly distances were lost in the depth of white shadows; and all mountains stood in the silvery fire of the moon. "O, how I love your serene, holy old man!" said Idoine to Albano, when she had already often pressed Julienne's hand. "How happy I am! Ah, life, like the water of the sea, is not quite sweet till it rises towards heaven." Suddenly distant bugle-tones came pealing out to them, which well-meaning country-folk sounded as a greeting before Albano's foster-home. ”

“ Out of the flute-dell came the rest of the company, the Lector and others; Julienne constrained the lovers to a separation, saying: "Here is no Ischia; without me you cannot see each other here in the palace at all; I will announce it to thee always through thy father, when I am here."
When he stood alone in Lilar with the heavy thought of Schoppe and Linda, and surveyed the lovely regions and scenes of fair hours, then it seemed to him all at once as if, in the twilight, Elysium, like a charming face, distorted itself into an expression of scorn at him and at life. ”

“ Before the night-spirit on the cloud men's time goes swiftly by, as a fleeting pair of wings without beak or tail; the spirit has near him the distant week when Albano shall see by night from the observatory how in the Blumenbühl church there burns an altar-light, how Liana kneels therein with uplifted hands, and how an old man lays his own on her serene, shining brow, which directs itself with tearless eyes toward heaven.
The spirit looks down deeper into the months; he writhes around himself for delight, and grins over all dwelling-places and pleasure-haunts of men which lie about him ”

“ Albano, while listening, felt himself singularly changed, which he could ascribe only to the punch,—it was less intoxication than glow; a flying blaze roared over his inner world, and the red lustre hovered about on its farthest borders; now did it seem to him as if he stood entirely on the same ground with the Baldhead, and could wrestle with this evil genius. "I had a sister, too," said Albano; "can one call up the dead?" "No, but the dying," said the Baldhead. "Ugh!" said Albano, shuddering. "Whom would you see?" asked the Baldhead. ”

“ The Charles's-wain with the beloved maidens came now into the French princely garden. Ardently did Albano and Linda press each other to their hearts, which to-day,—just as if those hearts had been a second time created and adorned for each other by destiny,—they would once more, with new hopes and worlds, give each other in exchange! All was so resplendent around them, all new, rare, tranquil; the whole world a garden full of high, fluttering fountains, which, drunk with splendor, flung their rainbows through each other in the sun. Julienne drew him aside to tell him of Linda's fair resolve ”

“ In the case of your words, Count, I cannot form any idea at all. He whom love alone does not satisfy, cannot have been filled with it. Of course, so all-forgetting with their hearts as we, so concentrated upon one idea of life, men never are. Ah, and so little is man to man, an image of man is more to him, and every little future!"
"Thou, too, Brutus!" said Albano, astonished. "Would you," he continued, collecting himself, "lay out an eternity of that elysium-life in Ischia as adequate to a man? Would you send him as a youth into the cloister of the most blissful repose? ”

“ I am reading at this moment the life of the glorious Guyon. She knows what love is,—that godlike affection for the godlike, that losing of self in God, that eternal living and abiding steadfast in one great idea,—that growing sanctification through love, and that growing love through sanctification! The book falls out of my hands, I close my eyes, I dream and weep and love thee. O Albano, come earlier. What wilt thou now seek on mountains and ruins? Shall we not come hither again? But you roving men! Only women love, whether it be God, or yourselves, alas! ”

“ When they reached the last eminence below which Linda's and Julienne's dwelling lay, and they stood near each other on the point of separation, then the maiden suddenly cried out below: "An earthquake!" Out of hell a thunder-car rolled on in the subterranean ways,—a broad lightning flapped its wings up and down in the pure heaven under the stars,—the earth and the stars trembled, and affrighted eagles flew through the lofty night. Albano had grasped the hands of the tottering Linda. Her face had faded before the moon to a pale, godlike statue of marble. ”

“ Among all parts, the Captain succeeded most perfectly in that of a world's-man; the show of coldness is more easy and true, also, than the show of warmth. Albano kept a proud distance. Roquairol could not gain in any respect by being opposite to the afflicted, faded Rabette, not even by the intercession of that form of his, full of the ruins of life. Albano found there something forever confused, and the wax wings crushed down into a lump; and it was as close and confining to him as to one who from the bright world creeps down at once into a low, damp cavern of a cellar. ”

“ Dian, who drove away the pains of others, because he, being easily movable, soon grew from a spectator to a sharer of them, made Albano and himself gay by his ardent interest in every beautiful form, every ruin, every little joy. He had the rare and beautiful gift of being cheerful upon journeys, of plucking every flower, but no thistle; whereas the majority jog along with the night-cap under the hat; from station to station, gaping as they go on, and in grumbling war with every face, they travel through whole paradises as if they were antechambers of hell. ”

“ As Albano was more smitten with edifices than with any other work of art, so did he see from afar with holy awe the long mountain-chain of art, which again bore upon itself hills; so did he stand before the plain, around which two enormous colonnades run like Corsos, bearing a people of statues; in the centre shoots up the obelisk, and on its right and left an eternal fountain, and from the lofty steps the proud church of the world, inwardly filled with churches, rearing upon itself a temple toward heaven, looks down upon the earth. ”

“ Albano sank away into musing,—the autumnal wind of the past swept over the stubble,—on this holy eminence he saw the constellations, Rome's green hills, the glimmering city, the Pyramid of Cestius; but all became past, and on the twelve hills dwelt, as upon graves, the lofty old spirits, and looked sternly into the age as if they were still its kings and judges.
"This in remembrance of the place and the time!" said the Princess, returning and handing him the laurel and the flower. "Thou mighty one, a colosseum is thy flower-pot; for thee nothing is too great, and nothing too small!" ”

“ O Linda, I love thee with pangs, both when near and when far,—O with what yet unfelt pangs should I lose thee? Why am I, then, so certain of thy love? Or so uncertain? Softly does thy heart speak to me. Soft music or love is like a distant,—and the distant again is like the soft. Has the sublime pedestal of the thunder-god beside me agitated me so much, or do I think too vividly of the hollow, dead Herculaneum under me, where one city is one coffin? Weeping and oppressed, I look over the sea to the still island whereon thou dwellest. ”

“ Overhead swept great worlds; on every one dwelt a human being; he stretched out his arms imploringly after another, who also stood on his world and looked across; but the globes ran with the hermits round the sun-sickle, and the prayers were in vain. I, too, felt a yearning. Infinitely far before me reposed an outstretched mountain-ridge, whose entire back, looming out of the clouds, glittered with gold and flowers. Painfully dragged the skiff through the flat, lazy waste of the shallow stream. Then came a sandy tract, and the stream squeezed through a narrow channel with my jammed-up skiff. ”

“ Her peace, her bliss, her fair aspiration, shall be ever holy to me, and her form hidden from me, and remote as that of her heavenly sister; but when the battle for right begins, and the tones of music flutter with the banners in the air, and the heart beats more eagerly, to bleed more profusely, then let thy form, O Idoine, hover before me in the heavens, and I will fight for thee; and if, in the tumult, an unknown destroying angel draws the poisoned edge across my breast, then will I hold thee fast in my fainting heart till the earth is to me no more.". ”

“ Of what avail to thee is death in the dissolved ice-sea? Has, then, no man ever yet experienced the pain of lost love, that he may know what a thousand times harder desolation it inflicts upon a woman? Who of them has fidelity, the genuine, which is neither a virtue nor a sensation, but the very fire which eternally animates and sustains the kernel of existence?
"I am sick, Albano, else I know not how I come by these gloomy ideas. I am so tranquil in my innermost heart; I have shown only the chords, not the tune. We must work and look, not upon the future, but upon the next coming present. ”

“ Only Vesuvius now reddens in the lingering sun. The islands slowly fade away in the dark sea. I behold now, without speaking to thee, the great evening, but, O God, so otherwise than in Rome! Blissfully shall I fix my eye only on thy island as it is about to be extinguished in the glittering din of the evening twilight, and yet long shall I look thitherward, when already the summit of Epomeo is dissolved in night; and then shall I look cheerfully down into the grave of colors encircled with lights below me. Happy songs will steal through the twilight; the stars will glimmer affectionately ”

“ So played a divine world around man! "O here in this great scene," said Albano, "where everything finds place, Paradises and dark Orcus-coasts of lava, and the yielding sea, and the gray Gorgon-head of Vesuvius, and the playing children of men, and the blossoms and all,—here where one must glow like a lava,—could not one, like the hot lava round about him, bury himself in the waves, in all his glow, if one knew that anything of this hour could pass away, even so much as a remembrance thereof, or a throbbing of the pulse for a loved heart? ”

“ Thou holy earth, thou wilt still often quake, but no more shall he quake with thee who sleeps in thy bosom; and ye good, far-off beings who loved me, and ye near ones whom I so loved, may you fare better than I, and condemn me not too harshly! I do verily punish myself, and God immediately judges me. Farewell, my dear, offended, but very hard Albano, and thou, thou even unto death ardently loved Liana, forgive me, and weep for me! Liana, if thou still livest, then stand by thy brother in the last hour, and pray for me before God! ”