The Campaner Thal, and Other Writings. Jean Paul

he entreated him to follow speedily. Karlson replied: "Fate had separated him from their beautiful feast by the Alpine Wall, but as it would, like the Campan Vale, ever renew its springs, he hoped to lose nothing but time by his delay."

      Now that the next world had cast its supernatural light on Gione's countenance, Karlson loved her too much to be capable of assisting at the ceremony of losing her forever. I will give you the opinion I formed of her by listening to his description.

      Even by a love and a praise in a person's absence we may be won; how much more, then, if both are thrown to us as farewell kisses after the ascent to Heaven! Therefore the idea of the future funeral procession behind my gay, richly decorated dust, onion and relic box is only another incentive, not only to drug, but also to absolve myself, for when older we are less missed. And even you, who so seldom hang us, or drive us all to the Devil, I mean, how seldom soever the tempest of anger sours the beer-barrel of your breast! Even you have no more efficacious morsel of white chalk, no better oleum tartari per deliquium,^[5] with which you can sweeten your internal fluids, than the thought how we shall all turn pale round your death-bed, and be dumb at your grave-mound, and how none will forget you! I cannot possibly believe that there exists one being who, when death draws him into the diving-bell of the grave, will not leave one weeping eye, one bending head behind, and therefore each one can love the soul which will some time weep for him.

      When I think now of the convalescent Gione, with her wounded heart, which had received a new sensitiveness in the hot electric atmosphere of the sinking thunderbolt of Death, I need not measure her emotion at Karlson's poem, by the dew and hygrometer, nor with the loadstone of her love. But not Wilhelmi's brilliant riches, nor his still more brilliant conduct, her first choice, her first promise, forbade her even to touch the diamond scales.

      When Karlson told me all this, he turned Gione's ring-portrait upwards on his finger, and pressed the hard edge of the ring-finger with his tearful eyes, till the adorned hand was unconsciously touched by the lip's kiss. The bashfulness of his grief moved me so much, that I offered to take another route into the Vale, under the pretence that the dreams of it had lessened the desire for the reality, and that we should disturb the newly-affianced in their first rose-honey days, as they had probably waited for the mild late spring. He divined my intention; but his promise to come to-morrow dragged him by chains. Right gladly would I have missed the new spring-filled Eden, and drawn from my friend's feet the Jacob's ladder from which he might gaze on his former glad heaven, but could not ascend to it. On the other hand, I rejoiced at his firm, promise-keeping character, which opposed its strong nature to the thorns and boring-worms of sorrow; as with the increase of moonlight, tempests decrease. Unperceived, I now added Gione, not only Karlson, to the list of rare beings, who, like Raphael's and Plato's works, uncloud themselves only on earnest contemplation, and who, as both, resemble the Pleiades, which to the naked eye seems only to have seven suns, but with a telescope discloses more than forty.

      On the 20th, we started towards the Vale. On the way, I looked too often into Karlson's faithful, heavenly, deep-blue eyes. I descended into his heart, and sought the scene of the day on which the holy church tie would tear the noble Gione forever from out his pure muse and goddess-warmed heart. I confess I can imagine no day on which I regard my friend with deeper emotion that on that never-to-be-forgotten one, on which Fate gives him the brother kiss, the hand-pressure, the land of love and Philadelphia and Vaucluse's spring, united in one female heart.

      The day before yesterday, at ten in the evening, we arrived at Wilhelmi's Arcadian dwelling, which pressed its straw roof against a green marble wall. Karlson found it easily from its proximity to the famed Campan Cave, from which he had often broken stalactites. The sky was clouded with colored shadows, and on the green cradle of slumbering children night threw her star-embroidered cradle-cover, fastened to the summits of the Pyrenees. From out Wilhelmi's hermitage advanced some men in black attire, with torches in their hands, who seemed to be waiting for us, and told us the baron was in the Cave. By heaven, under such circumstances, it is easier to imagine the most circumscribed, than the largest and most beautiful Cave! The sable attendants carried the flame before them, and drew the flying smoke-picture from oak-top to oak-top, and led us, stooping, through the catacomb entrance. But how splendidly was arched the high and wide grotto,^[6] with its crystal sides, shining like an illumined ice Louvre, a gleaming sub-terrestrial heaven vault. Wilhelmi threw away a handful of gathered spars, and joyfully hastened into his friend's arms. Gione, with her sister, advanced from behind a connected stalactite and stalagmite. The gleaming of the torches gave her an undecided outline, but at length Wilhelmi advanced to her, and said, "Here is our friend." Bending low, Karlson kissed the warm living hand, and was dumb with emotion. But the firm features of Gione's earnest face, which wanted but Nadine's juvenile bloom, changed into a shining joy, greater than he dared to return or reward. "We have long expected and missed you in this paradise," she said, with unshaken voice; and her clear, calm eye opened a view into a richly-gifted, steadfast soul. "Welcome to the infernal regions," said Nadine; "you believe in reunion and Elysium now?" Though she received him with an assemblage or Flora of wit, or was it grace? for they were difficult to distinguish, this cheerfulness of character and acquirement seemed not to be the cheerfulness of a contented or reposeful mind.

      My friend introduced me properly, that no supermember or hors d'[oe]uvre should remain in this corporation of friendship.

      To all of us--even to me--for around me never before seen beings floated in silver reflections--it seemed as if the world had ceased, Elysium had opened, and the separated, covered, sub-terrestrial regions cradled only tranquil, but happy souls.

      There was a certain heartfulness in the joyous interest which this affectionate trinity took in Karlson's appearance, which generally accompanies the last step before the disclosure of some hidden plan, but this plan was concealed. To speak something also to me, Nadine said, that there was a critical philosopher and arguer with them, who would rejoice to hear any one for or against his opinions,--namely, the house-chaplain. When we stepped from the illumined diamond and magic cave into the dark night, we saw the cloak of Erebus hang in thick cloudy folds over the earth, and pale lightning shot from the nightly mist, the flowers breathed from covered calysses, and under the fast approaching storm the nightingales raised their melodious voices behind their blooming hedges.

      Suddenly Gione walked more slowly by Karlson's side, and said, with much warmth, but without hesitation: "I heartily love truth, even at the expense of stage-like effect: I must, in the name of the Baron, discover to you that he and I will to-morrow be forever united. You must forgive your friend that he would not celebrate this ceremony without his."

      I think that now, in Karlson's heart, the cooled lava immediately became fluid and glowing. Suddenly lightning flashed from a cloud around the rising moon, and illumined the rain-drops, intended for darkness, in Gione's and in Karlson's eyes. Wilhelmi asked, "Can you not forgive me?" Karlson pressed him warmly and lovingly to his grateful heart: this lofty confidence of friendship, and this affectionate proof of it, raised his strengthened soul above all desires, and another's virtue spread in his breast the calm tranquillity of his own. We took shelter for the night in three Thabor huts,--the ladies in the first, Wilhelmi with the critical philosopher in the second, Karlson and myself in the third,--which the Baron had hired for us. The fatigue of the journey, and even of our feelings, deferred our joys and confidences for another night. But I cannot tell you how nobly sorrow changed into exaltation in my friend's countenance, how grief fell like a cloud from his heaven, and discovered the serene blue beneath. The sacrifices and virtues of our beloved ones belong to the inexpressible joys which the soul at least can count and appreciate; which it can imitate.

      His and my eyes overflowed with holy gladness from a singularly elysian mood of harmony in anticipation of the coming day. Ah, my Victor! nations and men are only the best when they are the gladdest, and deserve Heaven when they enjoy it. The tear of grief is but a diamond of the second water, but the tear of joy of the first. And therefore fatherly fate, thou spreadest the flowers of joy, as nurses do lilies in the nursery of life, that the awakening children may sleep the sounder! O, let philosophy, which grudges our pleasures, and blots them out from the plans of Providence, say by what right did torturing pain enter into our frail life? Have