502d STATION.

       Table of Contents

      The Thundering Morning.--The Short Trip after the Long One.--The Sofa-cushions.

      Through the whole night, a half-lost thundering was heard, as though it murmured in its sleep. In the morning, before sunrise, Karlson and myself stepped out into the wide cloud-tapestried bridal-chamber of nature. The moon approached the double moment of its waning and its fulness. The sun, standing on America as on a burning altar, drove the cloudy incense of its feu de joie high and red into the air; but a morning tempest boiled angrily above it, and darted its fierce lightnings to meet his ascending rays. The oppressive heat of nature drew longer and louder plaints from the nightingales, and evanescent aroma from the long flower-meads. Heavy warm drops were pressed from the clouds, and beat loudly on the stream and on the foliage. Only the Mittagshorn, the pinnacle of the Pyrenees, stood brightly and clearly in the heavenly blue. Now a gust of wind from the waning moon dispersed the raging storm, and the sun stood victoriously under a triumphal arch of lightnings. The wind restored the heaven's blue, and dashed the rain behind the earth, and around the dazzling sun-diamond there lay only the silvered fringes of the once threatening clouds.

      O my Victor, what a new-born day was now on earth, encamped in the glorious valley. The nightingales and the larks loudly sung its welcome, the rosechafers rustled round its lily garlands, and the eagle, riding on the highest cloud, surveyed it from mountain to mountain. How rurally all things surrounded the serpentine field-embracing Adour. The marble walls, not raised by human skill, surround its flower-beds like large vases, and the Pyrenees, with their high tops, watch over and protect the lowly scattered shepherd huts. Tranquil Tempe! May a storm never disturb thy gardens and thy murmuring Adour. May a stronger one never visit thee, than would gently rock the cradle of nature, or dash a bee from the honey-dew of the wheat-sheaf, or force but a single drop from the waterfall upon the flowers of thy shores.

      You must not think that I am placing my paintbrushes at my side to copy the heavenly rounded valley by the measure of art for you; I will let you peep into this picture-book of nature as chance shall turn each succeeding page. My stations will lead you through its different chambers, in which the rich dowry of Spring, like that of a king's daughter, is placed for show. But truly it is a more glorious thing to see the whole dowry disposed over the person of the royal bride herself.

      A servant seeking the chaplain, roused us both from our reverie. We saw him advance towards a gentleman standing on the banks of the Adour, who slowly turned down his rolled-up shirt-sleeves. It was the chaplain, who had been catching crabs during the storm, and had subsequently fished. As I knew that his hairy hand had worked for the food of the critical, as well as his own philosophy, with trowel and mortar, with pen and ink, I boldly advanced towards him, and told him what I was writing. But the coarse, obstinate, yet timid free-mason, coldly welcomed me in a language as broad as his own frosty visage.

      He despises biographers; for the windows of a philosophical audience are too high,--perhaps, as in ancient temples, in the roof,--so that they cannot see into the streets of real life, as, according to Winkelmann, the Roman windows were architecturally as high. Lord Rochester is said to have been continually drunk during a whole quintennium; but such a chaplain is capable of being sober for an entire decennium. A man like this bites the buds of all powerful truths, experiences, and fictions, as ants bite the buds from corn-seeds, that they may not fructify, but wither and die and form building materials.

      When the Chaplain left me to join the Baron, as consecrator of the marriage sacrament, I found Karlson in the dustrain of a near cascade. Round him, almost close to our windows, the hermitages of the farmers waded in green foliage, with the fresh harvest wreath roofed by faded ones; and inside, there bloomed families, outside, elms. He showed me Gione's card, which, he said, she had given him before her marriage. But it was not so; he had found it on the moss near the cascade. It represented a Roman landscape, and beside the living fountain was the pictured one of Tivoli, and on a stone in the foreground Gione's name was written. Such a printed trifle, a beloved name shortly before its sublunar annihilation, moves the whole heart with a succession of pleasing reflections.

      Karlson went to the ceremony. I remained alone under the splendid blue heaven, and rejoiced that all the inhabitants of Campan wore its livery, the blue, which we had yesterday mistaken for black.

      I will not hide from you that during the coupling, softened by the many beauties of spring, I lost myself in Nadine's equally charming ones, which were an undiscovered Central Africa for me, while I wished she were as warm. After eight or ten dreams, I saw the beautiful couples cross my path. How earnestly glad and serene we all stood under the spring music of flutes and pipes, and harps and warbling, which were living around us, with and without wings. Gione and Karlson concealed an equal emotion, as at an almost equal fate. Wilhelmi, who is, as a comet, sometimes in the burning, sometimes in the freezing point of a sun, requires no joys than those of others to make him happy. But a tear stood in Nadine's bright eye, which could not be smiled or looked away. Her heart seemed to me to resemble the earth, whose exterior is cold, but which carries in its centre a latent heat. And yesterday her whole being seemed so mirthful and so gay!

      We never make more erroneous conclusions in our opinions on any subject than on woman's cheerfulness. Oh! how many of these charming beings there are, who decay unvalued, who, while jesting, despair, and while joking, bleed to death; who hide their merry laughing eyes behind a wall, as behind a fan, to give glad vent to their long-restrained tears; who pay for a merry day by a tearful night, just as an unusually clear, transparent, and fogless air betokens rain. Remember the beautiful N. N., and also her youngest sister. In the mean time, the charming, sun-variegated dew-drop under Nadine's eye was balanced by a wart of half the size, the solitaire among her personal charms.

      Wilhelmi's lyric and dithyrambic head was filled with projects for pleasure, and with the eagerness of delight, he demanded a hasty determination concerning the proper use and enjoyment of the day. "O yes," said I, quickly and impertinently, "life flies to-day on a minute-hand, like an alarum it winds off; but how shall we form a plan, a good plan?" Nadine, who had arranged everything beforehand with the bridegroom, replied: "I think we need none for such a delightful day, and such a charming valley. We will pilgrimize carelessly along the banks of the Adour, the length of the Vale, and rest at every new flower, and at every bud, and in the evening we will sail back by moonlight! That would be quite Arcadian and shepherd-like in this Arcadia. Will you all? You certainly will, dearest sister?" "O yes," said Gione, "for I think we are as yet all strangers to the charms of this paradise." The Baron seemed to hesitate before giving his consent, and said: "It depends whether the ladies can walk two and a quarter miles in one day."^[7] I was mad with joy, and cried, "Charming!" Such a long horizontal heaven-journey, such a melodious Arpeggio through the chords of delight was an old innate wish of my youth. I imparted my delight to the Chaplain, to whose feelings this voyage pitturesque was as repugnant as a Good Friday procession, and to whom, instead of this heaven-way, that of Höfer^[8] would have been more acceptable, because he would rather have remained at home to read, and because