Albano said nothing, went onward, saw two, and recognized Linda by her
tall form. At length the three friends saw, found, embraced each other,
and the magnificent water-storm breathed into the delight. Linda spake
tender words of love, and felt as if she were dumb, for the beautiful
tempest of streams tore the tender syllables to pieces like
butterflies. They had not heard each other, and stood before each
other, pining for their sounds, encompassed with five thunders, with
weeping eyes, full of love and joy. Holy spot, where already so many
thousand hearts have sacredly burned and blissfully wept, and been
constrained to say, Life is great! Serenely and steadily sparkles the
city overhead in the sunshine down over the watery crater; proudly does
the rent Temple of Vesta, garlanded with almond-blossoms, look down
from its rock upon the whirlpools which undermine it; and opposite to
it the tempestuous Anio preludes at once all that earth and heaven have
of greatness,--the rainbow, the eternal lightning and thunder, rain,
cloud, and earthquake.
They gave each other signs to go, and to seek the more quiet vale. How
sounded to them therein the words, brother, sister, Linda, like new
human tones in Paradise! Here, before ascending the hill full of new
waterfalls, lightnings, and colors, they sought to report to each other
their journeys and their news. Julienne made the happy report that her
brother, the Prince, gave again hope of recovery, since he had, with
waking eyes, as he insisted, seen his dead father, who had promised him
a longer life. The fair Linda bloomed in the Paradise like a veiled
goddess who had long been seeking and at last found her beloved on the
earth. She took his hand often, and pressed it against her eyes and
lips, and whispered, hardly audibly, when he spoke to her or Julienne,
"Dear! friendly man!" As to the scenery she was silent, for she never
spoke of any till she had once come out of it.
Julienne, so happy about her brother's recovery, began all manner of
jokes,--said she regretted having sent to her Lewis, from Naples, a
vain specific against his malady, and at length asked Albano, "Dost
thou know a youth named _Cardito_? He wants to know thee." He said,
"No," but related how a little stout man had seemed to know him
hereabouts, and showed him the way to the cascade. Julienne started,
and said it was decidedly the Haarhaar Prince, who so maliciously built
his hopes upon Luigi's death and throne. He lived in Tivoli, in the
house of the Duke of Modena, and was certainly going about as a spy
upon them all. In order to tune herself again after this hated discord,
she continued her question about _Cardito_, and said, "It is a very
beautiful, sound Corsican (that living deformity is surely the Prince),
and he declares very seriously war against thee."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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