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
immediately 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 entirely 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 behind 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 Blumenbühl,
green living flames streamed upward, and, like golden birds, the _ignes
fatui_ danced through the moist twigs and on the eastern windows, but
the fountains still threw their white silver into the gold.
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 opportunity to withdraw herself, with the
melancholy seriousness 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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