Liana

“ Liana and Albano attended her through all the walks of her withered, stale Arcadia, and held their shattered hearts mutely and steadfastly together. True to her word with her parents, she gave him no warmer look or tone than any other, but no colder one neither; for her soul would not torment, but only suffer and obey. He made—he thought—all his looks and tones gentle, nor did the noble man avenge himself by a single manifestation of coldness, or in fact of any insincere making-of-friends with the princely female-recruiting-officer of crowns and hearts. ”

“ 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 [Pg 424] down into the smoking vales and into the cold, glistening 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. ”

“ And Lina pointed to a liana of the _"cipos"_ kind, twisted round a gigantic sensitive mimosa, whose leaves, light as feathers, shut up at the least disturbance.
"Well?" said Benito.
"I proposed," replied Minha, "that we try to follow that liana to its very end."
"It is an idea, and it is an object!" observed Benito, "to follow this liana, no matter what may be the obstacles, thickets, underwood, rocks, brooks, torrents, to let nothing stop us, not even----"
"Certainly, you are right, brother!" said Minha; "Lina is a trifle absurd." ”

“ 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! ”

“ Wearily she let her head fall over on the other arm of the chair, which was nearer to her; then did her life-tired blue eyes look right closely upon his wet and fiery ones; how did each find the other's countenance paled and ennobled by one and the same long sorrow! Red-cheeked and in full bloom, and with a load of sorrows, had Liana entered the strange, cold death-realm of sore probation for the higher world, and without color and without sorrows had she come back again, and with heavenly beauty on the face from which earthly bloom had faded. ”

“ Liana stood, far from the latter, with face turned half aside, and a little discolored by the moon, near a white statue of the holy Virgin, and looking out into the night. All at once [Pg 346] 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 felt." ”

“ 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 suddenly 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? ”

“ 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 philanthropy, 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. ”

“ 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, steadily. 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. ”

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

“ 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, assuredly not!" Quite as tenderly did she far overlook the darkly-sketched future refusal of Don Gaspard, because to her faith the earth was only a blooming grave-mound hanging in the ether. ”

“ At first, for some time the quarrel with her parents, that poetic hardening, as it were, of Liana's nerves, had been to them wine of iron, but afterward they melted in the soft water of renunciation, autumnal rest and devotion. There is a bland calm which loosens men as well as ships; a warmth in which the wax-figure of the spirit melts down. Every day, too, came the pious father and spread her wings, loosed her from earthly hopes and earthly anxieties, and led her up into the glory of the throne of God. ”

“ 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 [Pg 183] night struck deep roots into her wounded eyes, and the affrighted soul could only say, "Ah, brother, I am blind!" ”

“ 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, Klosterdorf, 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. ”

“ How brightly lay the coasts of the future before them, with thick, high green, and nightingales flying around the shores! Rapture 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 ”

“ And if hitherto joy had taken her harvest-wreath and made it a wedding-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 linking of souls should at once painfully distend and blissfully exalt the heart of your friend Albano, as the aerostatic 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! ”

“ 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 at 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 [Pg 474] love has arisen. ”

“ 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 embroidered. 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 travelled, they were at once free from discord and from the visiting Charivari. ”

“ This cruel allusion to the 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? ”

“ 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 [Pg 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 white swan, floating, tinged with rosy redness, through the evening glow of Phœbus, several loud, and to the Count annoying signs of approbation. ”

“ They took the nearest, 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 certainly hoped to find them friendly. Liana, as a daughter and a lover, retouched all his hopes with her own. ”

“ 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, contrary 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. ”

“ Even under bodily maladies, therefore, unwonted new ones, whose last moment stretches away beyond our power of prediction, appear to us more ominous and oppressive than recurring ones, which, as neighboring frontier-enemies, are ever attacking us, and find us in arms.
Thus stood the dumb Liana in a cloud, when the exulting 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. ”

“ 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 contemplates 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. ”

“ The birds sing and the stars move in majesty over the wildernesses, and no man sees the splendor. In fact, everywhere, 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. ”

“ Do not detain me here about the beauty of her handwriting,—besides one writes better on parchment 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 Sundays of the soul, and whose leaves resemble in sanctity the Epistles which, in the Middle Ages, fell from heaven upon the earth. ”