Chapter IX…

Chapter IX

It was certainly not with the intention of stimulating me--for that was no longer needed--that my teacher in his discourses ever returned to the same theme, that free, voluntary labor, consecrated by love, the labor of all for all, was the completion of wisdom, the proper aim and highest happiness of mankind. This was the last result of his practical philosophy, to which of necessity all his reflections tended, whether their subject was the destiny of the individual or the race. And as these discourses were almost always carried on in intervals of repose from work, from which we came and to which we were about to return, they might be called significant arabesques to the earnest, and--as it now looks to me--moving pictures presented by the unresting, thoughtful master, and the industrious, eager student, in their combined occupation.

This occupation was strictly regulated. It so happened that during my convalescence, an old clerk of the office, who had long been ailing, died. As it was a fixed principle with the superintendent that all work should be done by inmates of the establishment, so far as that was practicable, he had, in spite of the opposition of President von Krossow, by means of an immediate application to the king, supported by his friend, Minister von Altenburg, obtained liberty to leave the clerk's place unfilled, and to give his work, as a special favor, to me, for which I also received certain emoluments, reduced to the proportion of other sums paid for prison-work. Deacon von Krossow congratulated me, with anything but cordiality, on my "promotion," but Dr. Snellius crowed loudly with joy, and in the family the great event was celebrated as a festival. As for me, this arrangement had lifted a load from my breast. I had now no longer to fear that the generous man who had already done so much for me, would be involved in serious inconveniences by his kindness. In the president's circle they had even talked of investigations, removal from office, of pensioning off at the very least. Now, as my relation to him bore an official character, this danger was disposed of, and I could look with a light heart through the open window by which my work-table stood, into the leafy garden, where the bees were humming around the flowers, where the birds sang in the trees, and among the flowers and under the trees Frau von Zehren took her morning walk, leaning on her daughter's arm, or in the afternoon, after school-hours, the boys played or worked in their flower-beds.

For each one, even Oscar, had his bed, which he had to keep in order; and it was always a fresh pleasure to me to see the little men with their watering-pots and other implements, which they handled with the skill of practiced gardeners. And yet the pleasure which this sight gave me, was not without a touch of sadness. It always brought to my mind my own youth, and how joyless and fruitless it had been in comparison with this, which unfolded itself before me in such fullness of beauty. Who had ever taught me to employ thus usefully my youthful strength? Who, to bring a significance even into my sports? Alas, large and strong as I was, I might have been nourished by the crumbs that fell from this bounteous table. For I had scarcely known my mother, and the deeply melancholy disposition of my father, who was naturally grave, and had been rendered still more gloomy by the loss of his deeply-loved wife, was to a vivacious high-spirited boy at once mysterious and terrible. Later I well understood what then I had but imperfect glimpses of--how deeply and sincerely he desired my welfare, and strove, according to his conscience and knowledge, to be a good father to me; but like Moses, my excellent father was slow of speech, and there was no obliging Aaron at hand to explain to me the reasons of his stern commands. My brother and sister were considerably older than myself. I was eight years old when my brother Fritz, then sixteen, went to sea, and only ten when my sister, who was twenty, was married. My brother was a lively, gay young fellow, and troubled himself about me as little as he did about anybody or anything else in the world; my sister had my father's sternness, but without his feeling. After she was called to take the place of a mother to me, she treated me always with pedantic strictness, and often with petty cruelty. So I took refuge with the old serving-woman who lived in a state of hostility with her, and who, to reward me for my partisanship, told me stories of robbers and ghosts; and when Sarah married, and with her parting kiss proceeded to give me a farewell lecture, I told her in the presence of my father, her husband, and all the wedding-company, that I wanted neither her teaching nor her kiss, and that I was glad that in future I should see and hear of her no more. This was held up as an instance of the most frightful ingratitude on my part; and Justizrath Heckepfennig, who was also present on this occasion, pronounced for the first time his deliberate conviction, which subsequent experience was only too strongly to confirm, that I "would die in my shoes."

No one can blame me, if while I looked through the window at my little friends, the wish arose in my mind that I had also been so fortunate, that I had had a father at once so wise and so kind, so gentle and tender a mother, such merry companions in work and play, and above all such a sister.

At first she always brought to my mind some old child's story, but I could not remember precisely what it was. It was not little Snow-white, for little Snow-white was a thousand times fairer than the fairest queen, and Paula was not really beautiful; it could not be little Red Riding-hood, for she, when you came to look at it, was a little stupid thing who could not tell the wicked wolf from her good old grandmother, and Paula was tall and slender, and so very wise! Cinderella? Paula was so neat that no cinders could ever be seen about her, and she had no doves at her command to help her gather the peas; on the contrary, she had to do everything for herself. I could not make it out, and concluded at last that it was no special personage of whom she reminded me, but rather that she was like one of the good fairies whom one does not see either coming or going, and only know that she has been here by the gift she has left behind; or like the friendly little goblins who, while the maids sleep, clean up parlor and kitchen, garret and cellar; and when the sleepers awake, they see that all their work is done already, and far better than they could have done it themselves.

Yes, she must be a fairy, who, out of the abundance of her kindness to those whom she befriended, had taken the form of a slender blue-eyed, blonde maiden. How otherwise could it be that from early morning to late evening she was always busy and yet never weary; that she was always at hand when wanted; that she had ready attention for every one, and that never the shadow of ill-humor passed across her sweet face, much less an unkind word from her lips? True, her look was serious, and she rarely spoke more than just what was needful, but her seriousness had no admixture of gloom, and once or twice I even heard her playfully chatting with a half-loud gentle voice, such as the fairies have when they speak the language of mortals.

I confided my discovery to my friend, Dr. Snellius.

"Keep away from me with such nonsense!" cried he. "A fairy, indeed! It is Lessing's old fable of the iron pot that must needs be taken off the fire with a pair of silver tongs. What does she do, then, that is so extraordinary? She is the housekeeper, the teacher of the children, her father's friend, her mother's companion, and the nurse of both. All good girls are all this: there is nothing so unusual in it; it all lies in system and order. But a fantastic head of twenty years naturally cannot see men and things as they really are. Do you marry her. That is the best means of discovering that the angels with the longest azure wings are but women after all."

I passed my hand through my hair, which was now perceptibly regaining its former luxuriance, and said thoughtfully:

"I marry Paula? Never! I cannot imagine the man who would be worthy to marry her; but this I know certainly, that I am not he. What am I?"

"For the present you are condemned to seven years' imprisonment, and have therefore fully that amount of time for considering what you will be when you are released. I trust that you will then be a worthy man, and I do not know what girl, nor what seraph is too good for a worthy man."

"But I know another reason, doctor, why I shall not be able to marry her then."

"What is that?"

"Because by that time you will have married her yourself."

"What a grinning, gnashing mammoth! Do you suppose a girl like that will marry an apoplectic billiard-ball?"

Whether the doctor was provoked at the contradiction into which he had fallen in scouting, as regarded himself, the possibility which he had just maintained in reference to me--or whatever the cause may have been, the blood rushed so violently to his bald head, that he really bore a striking resemblance to the remarkable object to which he had just compared himself, and his crow rose to such an extraordinary height of pitch, that he did not even make the attempt to tune himself down.

These sayings of the doctor haunted my memory for several days. I was struck with the thought that a worthy man was good enough for any girl, and therefore that in this respect there was no reason why I should not, sooner or later, marry Paula. But then again, I knew not how, my old notions returned, and when I saw her arranging and ordering all things with her heavenly patience, I said to myself--It is not true that all girls, even the so-called good ones, are like Paula; and it is an absurd idea of the doctor that I can ever be worthy of her.

The clear atmosphere, the splendid sunsets, the dry leaves that here and there fluttered down from the trees, announced the approach of another autumn. It was the season that I had spent the year before at Castle Zehrendorf; these were the same signs that I had then so closely observed, and they awakened in my soul a crowd of memories. I had believed that these memories were deeply buried, and I now found that only a thin covering had been spread over them, which every light sighing of the melancholy autumn breeze sufficed to lift. Indeed it often seemed to me that the wounds which had been inflicted on me a year before were about to open once more. I again lived over all that time, but it was as when a waking man, in full consciousness, calls back a vivid dream. What in a dream, with the incomplete activity of our intellectual faculties, seemed to us natural and reasonable, appears to us, when awake, as a strange phantasm; and what then tormented us as incomprehensible, we can now clearly understand, because we can supply the vacant steps which our dreaming fancy has leaped lightly over. I had only to compare my position at that time with the present, to see how wild a caricature my fancy had drawn. Then I imagined myself free, and was really involved in a net of the most unhappy, the most repulsive circumstances, as a fly in the web of a spider; now I slept every night behind bars of iron, and felt as calm and safe as when one steps from a swaying boat upon the steady land. Then I believed that I had found my proper career, and now I saw that that life was only a continuation, and to a certain extent the consequence of a youth spent without plan or aim. And in what light now did the persons in whose destinies I had taken such a passionate interest, now appear to me, when I compared them with those whom I had learned to love so cordially--when I compared, for instance, the Wild Zehren with his wise and gentle brother? And, as I had begun to draw comparisons, that dejected, sleepy giant, Hans von Trantow--where now was the good Hans, if he was not dead? and there were those who insisted that he was safe enough, and they knew very well where he was--had to take his place by the side of the little, intelligent Doctor Snellius, always full of life and motion; and even poor old Christian was compared with the vigorous old Sergeant Süssmilch. But most vividly was the comparison forced upon me between the beautiful, romantic Constance, and the pure, refined Paula.

A sharper contrast could scarcely be imagined; and for this reason perhaps the image of the one always called up that of the other. I felt for Paula, notwithstanding her youth, a greater respect than I had ever felt for Constance, who was several years older, and far more beautiful. True, with the latter at first I had had a certain bashfulness to overcome in myself, but this bashfulness was of a very different nature, and I had so completely overcome it, that when I left the castle that morning, I was resolved to marry her, in spite of my nineteen years. And what surprised me was the fact that I could not think of Constance, who had so cruelly betrayed me, and whom I believed myself to hate, without the wish that I might see her once more, and tell her how much I had loved her, and how deeply she had wounded me. Where was she now? When last heard of, she was in Paris.

Was she still there, and how was she living? That she had been abandoned by her lover, I knew already; I had laughed aloud when I first heard of it. Now I laughed no longer; I could not think, without a feeling of the deepest pity, of her who had been so atrociously wronged, who now perhaps--yes, beyond a doubt--was wandering homeless and friendless about the world; an adventuress, as her father had been an adventurer. And yet she could not be altogether vile; had she not with pride and scorn renounced every claim upon her father's inheritance? Did she not know that her father had never deigned to make her mother his wife? Had she perhaps known it before? And if so, did not this fact suffice to explain the hostile position she maintained towards her father? Could she love the man who had plunged her mother into such unbounded wretchedness--who had never been to her what a father should be, and who, if the reports of his gaming companions were to be believed, had only used her as a bait to allure the stupid fish to his net? Could one judge her so severely--her who had sprung from such parents, grown up in isolation and amid such associations, exposed from childhood to the clumsy attentions or the impertinent familiarities of rude country squires--if she had violated duties whose sacredness she had never comprehended?--if she had been sacrificed by a profligate who approached her with all the temptations of wealth and his exalted rank, and with the whole magic of youth? Unfortunate Constance! Your song of the "falsest-hearted, only chosen" was cruelly prophetic. Your chosen one had indeed proved false-hearted to you. And the other, your faithful George, who was to kill all the dragons lurking in your path, you scorned his service; and the mistrust which you felt in the strength and wisdom of the squire who had devoted himself to you, was but too well justified. Would he ever see you again?

I know that she had refused to be present at the family conference which was soon to be held. And yet, as the day drew nearer, the thought more frequently recurred to me, that she might still change her mind, uncertain and impulsive as she was, and suddenly stand before me, just as my friend Arthur one evening, as I was returning with Paula from the Belvedere, appeared before me in all the splendor of his new ensign's uniform.

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Chapter X

The day had been rainy and disagreeable, and my frame of mind was as dull and gloomy as the weather. In the morning the superintendent had had an attack of hemorrhage. I was for the first time alone in the office, and often looked over from my work to the place that was vacant to-day, and again listened, when a light swift step came along the corridor from the room where the superintendent was, to the nursery, where the little Oscar had been lying for a week with some infantile ailment. I was always hoping that the light swift step would stop at my door; but the fairy had today too much to do, and with all, I thought, had probably forgotten me.

But she had not forgotten me.

It was towards evening. As I could no longer see, I had put by my work, and was still seated upon the office stool, with my head resting on my hand, when there came a light tap at the door. I hurried to open it--it was Paula.

"You have not been out of the room the whole day," she said; "the rain is over; I have half an hour to spare; shall we walk in the garden a little?"

"How are they?"

"Better, much better."

She answered promptly, and yet her voice did not have a reassuring sound; and she was singularly silent as side by side we ascended the path to the Belvedere. I concealed my solicitude, as well as I could, by encouraging words. The little one, I said, was now out of all danger; and it was not the first attack of the kind which the superintendent had had, and from which he always soon recovered his usual strength. This was Dr. Snellius's opinion too, I added.

While I thus spoke, Paula had not once looked at me, and as we now reached the summer-house, she entered it hastily. I remained behind a moment to look at the clouds which the sunset was coloring with hues of marvellous beauty, and called Paula that she might not miss the splendid sight. She did not answer; I stepped to the door. She was sitting at the table, her face buried in her hands, weeping.

"Paula, dear Paula!" I exclaimed.

She raised her head and strove to smile, but it was in vain; again she covered her face with her hands and wept aloud.

I had never seen her before in this state, and the unusual and unexpected sight distressed me inexpressibly. In my deep emotion I ventured for the first time gently to smooth down her blond hair with my hand, speaking to her as to a child whom I was trying to soothe and comfort. And what was this maiden of fifteen but a helpless child to me, who stood by her now in the plenitude of my fully restored strength?

"You are very kind," she sobbed, "very kind! I do not know why just to-day I see everything in so gloomy a light. Perhaps it is because I have borne it so long in silence; or possibly it may be this gray, cheerless day; but I cannot keep my mind clear of dreadful thoughts. And what will become of my mother and the boys?"

She shook her head mournfully, and looked straight before her with eyes dim with tears.

It had begun to rain again; the bright tints of the clouds had changed to a dull gray; the evening wind rustled in the trees and the dry leaves came eddying down. I felt unutterably sad--sad and vexed at heart. Here again was I in the most wretched of positions; compelled to witness the distress of those I loved, while powerless to relieve it. It might be that Constance and her father had not deserved the sympathy I had felt for them; but I still had endured the grief and the pain; and this family--this--I knew well were worthy that a man should shed his heart's blood in their service. Alas, again I had nothing but my blood that I could give! To give one's blood is perhaps the greatest, and assuredly the last sacrifice that one man can bring to another; but how often does it prove a coinage that is not current in the market of life. A handful of money would bring rescue--a piece of bread--a blanket--a mere nothing--and yet with all our blood we cannot provide this.

And as I stood, leaning in the door of the summer-house, now glancing at the gentle, weeping girl, and now at the dripping trees, my heart swelling with sorrow and helpless indignation, I vowed to myself that in spite of all, I would yet raise myself to a position where, in addition to my good will, I should also have the power to help those whom I loved.

How oft in my after life have I recurred in memory to this vow! It seemed so utterly impossible; the object I proposed to attain seemed so far away; and yet that I now stand where I do I chiefly owe to the conviction that filled my soul at that moment. So the shipwrecked mariner, battling with the waves in a frail and leaky skiff, sees but for a moment the shore where there is safety; but that moment suffices to show him the course he must steer to escape destruction.

"I must go in," said Paula.

We walked side by side along the path leading down from the Belvedere. My heart was so full that I could not speak; Paula also was silent. A twig hung across the path, so low that it would have brushed her head; I raised it as she passed, and a shower of drops fell upon her. She gave a little cry, and then laughed when she saw me confused at my awkwardness.

"That was refreshing," she said.

It sounded as if she were thanking me, though I had really startled her. I could not help seizing the dear maiden's hand.

"How good you are, Paula," I said.

"And how bad you are," she replied, looking up in my face with a radiant smile.

"Good-evening!" a clear voice exclaimed close at hand.

The speaker had stepped out of a hedged path that opened at right-angles to the one in which we were walking, and now stood facing us in a gay uniform, his left hand on the hilt of his sword, three white-gloved fingers raised in a foppish salute to the peak of his cap, gazing curiously at us from his brown eyes, and a half-mocking, half-vexed smile upon his face, which in the pallid evening light looked paler and more worn than ever.

"Allow me to present myself," he said--his three fingers still raised to his cap--"Arthur von Zehren, ensign in the 120th. Have been at the house already; learned to my regret that my uncle is not perfectly well; my aunt is not visible; would at least not neglect to pay my devoirs to my charming cousin."

He said all this in a drawling, affected tone, without looking at me (who had released Paula's hand at once) or taking the slightest notice of my presence.

"I am sorry that it has happened so unfortunately, Cousin Arthur," said Paula. "We did not look for you before next week."

"That was my original plan," replied Arthur; "but my colonel, who is so good as to take a special interest in me, hastened the issue of my commission, so that I was able to leave yesterday, and present myself here to-day. Papa and mamma send kind remembrances to my uncle and my aunt; they will be here the beginning of next week; hope uncle will be quite restored by that time. Am curious to see him; they say he is very like my grandfather Malte, whose picture hangs in the parlor at home. Would not have known you, dear cousin; you have not the family face; brown hair and eyes is the Zehren style."

The path was not wide enough for three to walk abreast; so the two went on before, and I followed at a little distance, but near enough to hear every word. I had lately been thinking of my former friend with very mixed feelings; but now as he strutted along before me at the side of that dear child, pouring his insipid chatter into her ear, calling her thou and cousin, and just now, either accidentally or intentionally, touching her with his elbow--my feelings were very unmixed indeed. I could have wrung Master Ensign's dainty little brown head round in his red collar with extreme satisfaction.

We reached the house.

"I will see if you cannot speak with my mother for a few minutes at least," said Paula; "please wait an instant here; you have not spoken to your old friend yet."

Paula ran up the steps; Arthur saluted her--three fingers to his cap--as she went, and then remained standing with his back to me. Suddenly he turned upon his heel so as to face me, and said in his most insolent tone:

"I will now bid you good-day; but I request you to observe that before third parties we have no acquaintance--I presume I need not enter into details why this is so."

Arthur was a head shorter than I, and he had to look up in my face while he pronounced these severe words. This circumstance was not in his favor; rudenesses are much best said from above; and it struck me so ludicrously that this little fellow, whom I could have tumbled over with a light push, should puff himself up to this extent before me, that I laughed aloud.

An angry flush crimsoned Arthur's pale cheek.

"It seems you mean to insult me," he said; "happily in my position I cannot be insulted by a person like you. I have already heard on what footing you stand here; my uncle will have the choice between me and you. I do not imagine that it will be a difficult one."

I no longer laughed. I had loved this youth with more than brotherly affection; I had, so to speak, knelt and worshipped him; I had rendered him a vassal's faithful service; had good-naturedly accompanied him in all his follies, and taken--how often!--their punishment upon myself. I had guarded and protected him in every danger; had shared with him all that I possessed, only his share was always by far the larger--and now, now, when I was in misfortune and he luxuriating in the sunshine of prosperity, now he could speak to me thus! I could scarcely understand it; but what I did understand was inexpressibly odious to me. I gazed at him with a look before which any other would have lowered his eyes, turned my back upon him and went. A peal of derisive laughter resounded behind me.

"Laugh away!" I said to myself; "he laughs best who laughs last."

But when I thought of Paula's behavior during this interview, I felt that it might well have been different. I thought she might have taken my side more openly. She well knew how Arthur had abandoned me as soon as I fell into misfortune; how he had had no single cheering word for his old companion when in prison; yes, had even openly renounced me, and blackened my name with calumny like the rest.

"That was not right--that was very ill done of Arthur," she had said to me more than once; and now--I was very dissatisfied with Paula.

I was now to have opportunities enough for dissatisfaction; for in truth, all things taken together, the time which followed was an unhappy time for me. Arthur presented himself on the following day, and was received by the superintendent in his sick-room, and by all the family, in the most friendly manner. I, who had always stood so much alone, possessed in but slight degree the family feeling, the respect for the claims of kindred, and could not comprehend that the mere accident of the identity of name and origin could in itself have such importance as was manifestly conceded to it here. "Dear nephew," said the superintendent and Frau von Zehren; "Cousin Arthur," said Paula; and "Cousin Arthur," shouted the boys. And in truth, Nephew Arthur and Cousin Arthur was amiability itself. He was respectful to his uncle, attentive to his aunt, full of chivalrous politeness to Paula, and hand-and-glove with the boys. I observed all from a distance. The superintendent still had to keep his room; and I took that for a pretext for working more diligently than ever in the office, which I quitted as seldom as possible, and where I buried myself in my lists and drawings, in order to see and hear nothing of what was going forward.

Unhappily, I still heard and saw too much. The weather had cleared up again, and a lovely latter-autumn, peculiar to this region, followed the stormy weather. The boys had holiday, the family scarcely left the garden, and Cousin Arthur was always of the company. Cousin Arthur must have had precious little to do; the colonel deserved arrest for letting his ensigns run wild in this fashion!

Alas, imprisonment had not changed me for the better, as I sometimes flattered myself. When before had even a feeling of envy or of grudging arisen in my soul? When had I ever disavowed my motto, "Live and let live?" And now my heart beat with indignation whenever, raising my eyes, I saw Arthur in the garden stroking the little moustache that began to darken his lip, or heard his clear voice. I grudged him his little dark moustache; as a prisoner I could wear no beard, and mine would anyhow have been of a very pronounced red. I grudged him his clear voice; my own was deep, and had grown very rough since I had left off singing. I grudged him his freedom, which, in my eyes, he so shamefully abused. I almost grudged him his life. Had he not wretchedly darkened my own life, which of late had been so pleasantly lightened, and was he not joyously basking in the sunshine from which he had expelled me?

And yet I had no real ground to complain. The superintendent, who recovered from his attack less rapidly than we had hoped, but occasionally came into the office, was as sympathizing and kind as ever; and after I had persistently, for one or two weeks, declined under various pretexts the invitations to join them in the garden, I had no right to be surprised if Frau von Zehren and Paula at last grew weary of troubling themselves about me, and the boys preferred their lively cousin Arthur, who taught them their drill, to the melancholy George, who no longer played with them. In my eyes, however, they had simply abandoned me; and I should have fallen into mere despair, had I not possessed two friends who held fast to me, and secretly or openly espoused my cause.

These two friends were Doctor Snellius and Sergeant Süssmilch.

As for the sergeant, Master Ensign had got into his black book on the second day. In his familiar fashion, he had clapped him on the shoulder, and called him "Old fellow." "One is not an old fellow for such youngsters as that," said the honest sergeant, as, his face still red with anger, he told me of the affront he had just received. "One might have a major's epaulettes on the shoulders to-day, if one had chosen--will let the youngster see that one is not a bear with seven senses."

The doctor too had his complaint of the insolence of the new-comer. He was walking in the garden one evening, his hat in his hand as usual, when Arthur must show his wit in various allusions to the baldness of the worthy man, and finally asked him in the politest manner, if he had never tried Rowland's Oil of Macassar, whose extraordinary virtues he had frequently heard celebrated.

"What do you think of that?" asked the doctor. "I replied to him that I made all the jests upon my bald head myself, and desired no competition. You will say that was rude--or you will not say it, for you like this glib-tongued, insinuating, slippery specimen of his charming species as little as I do. And the Jack-Pudding will not be at the end of his part so soon, either. Our humane friend holds it his duty to practise a truly Arabian hospitality to a kinsman, especially if he be poor; and the steuerrath, I hear, is in a miserable strait. My only consolation is that this pitcher too will go to the well until it breaks."

"How about the family conference?" I asked.

"Will be solemnly opened to-morrow. Humanus has invited them all to take up lodgings with him. Our half-pay friend has accepted, naturally; but what I am surprised at is, that so has the other, the Cr[oe]sus, and not only for himself, but for his golden daughterkin and her governess. There are one--two--five persons, who will shortly enliven our solitude in the most charming manner. My notion is that one or two deserve to remain here forever."

Thus crowed Doctor Snellius, then hopped on another leg and tuned himself down. I, for my part, was not a little excited at the report of the speedy arrival of the long-expected guests. Already had Arthur's presence placed a restraint upon me; what would it be when all these came? How should I meet the steuerrath?--how the commerzienrath? The one that had so shamefully abused the generosity of his nobler brother, and the other that had traded so skilfully in the embarrassments in which his incautious nature had involved him. My aversion to the pair was of ancient date, and but too well founded. But why should I in any way come in contact with them? If I did not come to them, they would hardly hunt me up. To be sure, there was the little Hermine! Had she still the same corn-flower blue eyes as on that morning on the deck of the Penguin? And the sententious governess, did she still wear those yellow locks? It was a bright sunny day when I last saw them both; but the sun had set too soon, and the evening closed in rain--in rain and dark mist, through which the face of my father, pale with anger, looked threateningly at me.

"Why do you sigh?" asked Doctor Snellius, who in the meantime had been examining a ground-plan on which I had been working for the last few days. "Your progress is perfectly fabulous; I should never have believed that so neat and charming a piece of work could come from the hands of a mammoth. Good-by, mammoth!"

The good doctor shook my hand cordially and hopped out of the room. I gazed sadly after him, as sadly as if I had really been a mammoth, and knew that I was doomed to lie for thirty thousand years under snow and ice, and to be afterwards exhibited, stuffed, in a museum.

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Chapter XI

My wish and my hope to be allowed to keep out of sight during the family conference, were to be frustrated in the most singular manner. I was appointed to play a part, and no insignificant one, in the family drama.

The guests had arrived, and were comfortably accommodated in the superintendent's not very roomy house. In the evening all had met at the table. Doctor Snellius also being present. Early the next morning he came to me, to disburden his full heart.

The worthy doctor was under considerable excitement. I perceived that at his first word, which was pitched a full third higher than usual.

"I knew it," he said. "It was perfect idiotcy to invite this swarm of locusts; they will utterly devour my poor Humanus, who has not so many green leaves left. What sort of a company is this? You have not told me a hundredth part of the evil that even a lamb-like disposition such as mine can, and must, and will say of these people. People! It is scandalous how we misuse that word. Why people? Because they go upon two legs? Then the revolting creatures that Gulliver saw in the land of the noble horses, were people too. But the English skeptic knew better, and called them Yahoos. And such are our dear guests, or there is no such thing as natural history. The commerzienrath with his great paunch, and his cunning, blinking eyes, is one. I could but look at his short clumsy fingers; I believe the fellow has worn them off handling his gold. And the steuerrath is another, though he makes desperate efforts to appear a human being. He has long fingers, very long; but does a human being ever twist such long fingers about in that fashion, curve his back with such a cat-like pliancy, and wear such a white, smooth, smiling, false thief's face? As for the gracious born Baroness Kippenreiter, any one will believe at her first word that she has held a high place in the republic of those fascinating creatures, and only came to Europe by the last ship. She cannot deny her nature; her Yahoo origin grins unmistakably from her long yellow teeth. Hm, hm, hm!"

"And Fräulein Duff?" I asked.

"Duff?" cried he--"Who is Fräulein Duff?"

"The governess of the little Hermine."

"Of the little beauty whom I was called to attend? Her name is Fräulein Duff? A very good name! Might be Duft [perfume], and would then be still more suitable. Mignonnette blooming in pots, and dried between flannel-jackets in a bureau-drawer; faded ribbons, tarnished leaves of albums, and a little ring of gold which did not even snap when the faithless lover deserted his Elvira. Is not her name Elvira? It must be. Amalie, you say? Certainly an error of the press; nothing about her to remind one of The Robbers--unless it be her long, languishing ringlets, which assuredly are stolen."

"Why were you called into the little girl?"

"She had eaten too many apple-tarts on the road. As if such a thing could hurt a little millionairess! Oh, if it had been black bread, now! I said so to the sorrowing father. 'In all her life she never tasted a crumb of black bread,' the monster replied, patting his protuberant paunch. 'Who never ate his bread with weeping,' sighed the governess, and added, 'that is an eternal truth.' The deuce only knows what she meant."

The doctor went to visit his patients; I started for the office, keeping close to the wall, and slipped into the house through the back-door, for fear of being noticed by some one of the guests. But no one saw me.

However, in the course of the day I caught sight of them from my window. First, the commerzienrath, taking his morning promenade through the garden, a long pipe in his mouth. He seemed to be pondering over important things. From time to time he stopped, and gazed long into vacancy. Doubtless, he was calculating. I observed how with his stumpy fingers he was multiplying, and then wrote the product in the air with the end of his pipe-stem. Once his face puckered into a grin of delight; what could he have reckoned out?

The next was the steuerrath. He went an hour later, with his brother, through the garden. The steuerrath was speaking very animatedly; he several times laid his right hand upon his breast, as if in asseveration. The superintendent's eyes were dropped; the subject of the conversation seemed to distress him. When they came near my window, he looked across with apparent uneasiness, and drew his brother behind a hedge. Apparently he did not wish me to witness his brother's gesticulations.

I had bent over my work again with the painful feeling that I was a superfluity and in the way, when suddenly the door leading from the office into the garden was opened, and the steuerrath hastily entered. I was startled, as even a man of courage is startled when unexpectedly a serpent glides across his path. The steuerrath smiled very benignantly, and held out to me his white well-kept hand, which he again withdrew with a graceful wave, as I showed no disposition to take it.

"My dear young friend," he said, "must we meet again thus?"

I made him no answer; what could I answer to a phrase in which every word and every tone was a lie?

"How would I deplore your fate," he proceeded, "had not fortune brought you here to my brother, who without doubt is one of the noblest and best of men alive, and who even now, while we were walking there, has said so many kind and affectionate things of you. I was impelled to offer you my hand, although I had a presentiment that you, like your father, would turn from one whom in truth fortune has bitterly enough persecuted."

And the victim of fortune threw himself into an arm-chair, and covered his eyes with his long white hand, the ring-finger of which was adorned with an enormous signet.

"I do not reproach him for it: Heaven forbid! I have known him for so many years. He is one of those strict men, whose horror of dereliction to duty is so great, and at the same time so blind, that in their eyes an accused person always appears a guilty one."

The last observation was too just for me not to admit it inwardly; and probably my look expressed as much, for the steuerrath said with a melancholy smile:

"Yes, you can sing a sad song to that tune! Well, well, I will not chafe the wound which pains you more than all the rest; but in truth you have only early learned what sooner or later we must all learn, that we can least expect a correct construction of our views and intentions, and even of our position, from those who stand in the closest relation to us."

In this too there was truth; and I could not refrain from looking in a more friendly manner at the man.

"I have just now had proof of this. My brother Ernest is, as I have already said, one of the best of men; and yet what trouble does it not give him to place himself in my situation. To be sure, he has always lived with so much regularity that he does not know what it is in one night to lose the half of one's receipts, which are anyhow dealt out in such stinted measure; he does not know what it is to have to compromise with one's creditors--to risk one's own subsistence and that of others, alas! and what is bitterest of all, to be dependent on the good-will of a hard-hearted man of money!"

Here the white hand wiped a tear which seemed to have accumulated in the inner corner of his right eye, and then resignedly glided to his lap, while a mild smile stole over his aristocratic features.

He rose and said:

"Forgive me; but an unfortunate one feels himself irresistibly attracted to the unhappy, and you have always been a friend of my house, and the best companion of my Arthur. You must not take it ill of the poor youth, if pride in his new sword has turned his head a little. You know him; hardly once in ten times does his heart know what his tongue is saying; and he has already owned to me that in the notion that he owed it to his dignity as an ensign, he behaved very foolishly to you. You really must forgive him."

He smiled again, nodded to me, was about to offer his hand again, but remembered that I had refused it before, and withdrew it, smiled again, but very sadly, and went to the garden door, which he opened softly and softly closed behind him.

I looked after him with a mingled feeling of astonishment and contempt. Was this soft-speaking man, who in my presence could weep over his position, the same to whom as a boy I had looked up as to a superior being? And if his case was so desperate--and as far as I could learn it might very well be so--I might have behaved in a more friendly manner to him, might have afforded him a word of sympathy, above all, need not have repulsed his offered hand.

My face burned; it was the first time I had ever rudely repelled a supplicant. I asked myself again whether imprisonment had not corrupted me; and I was glad that I had kept so silent in regard to the relations between the steuerrath and his deceased brother, and especially that I had faithfully guarded the secret of that letter, even from the superintendent, in whom, in all other respects, I place unbounded confidence. Had the steuerrath a suspicion that I could have revealed something had I chosen? and had he come this morning to thank me for my silence?

The steuerrath appeared at once to me in an entirely different and much more favorable light We feel a certain inclination towards persons whom we have laid under obligation, if they are acute enough to let us perceive that they are penetrated by the feeling of that obligation.

I would also let Arthur see that I had forgiven his folly.

The steuerrath is right, I thought; not once in ten times does he know where his tongue is running to.

As I formed this magnanimous resolution, there came another knock--this time at the door that led into the hall, and I came very near laughing aloud when upon my calling "Come in!" the commerzienrath presented himself on the threshold; not this time in dressing-gown and slippers, with his long pipe in his hand as before, but in a blue frock-coat with gold buttons, a wide black neckcloth, out of which projected fiercely, at least four inches, the long points of his high-standing collar, a flowered waistcoat loose enough not to incommode his prominent paunch, nor interfere with the display of his neatly-ironed frill, black trousers which were not so long but that one might see how firmly his two flat feet stood in the shining boots. In this very costume did this man pervade all the recollections of my earliest youth; and perhaps it was because then, in my childish innocence, I had laughed at his grotesque appearance, that now, when to say the least such behavior was far more unbecoming, I was again seized with an impulse to laughter.

"How are you now, my dear young friend?" said the commerzienrath, in the tone with which one inquires into the state of some one on his death-bed.

"I thank you for your kind inquiry, Herr Commerzienrath; I am quite well, as you see."

"You are a tremendous fellow," cried the commerzienrath, taking his tone from me at once. "But that is right; we can live but once; one must take things as they come. I said as much to your father only yesterday, when I met him upon the street. 'Good heavens!' I said, 'why do you make such a terrible matter of it? We have all been young once; and young men will be young men. Why have you stopped his allowance?' I asked. 'He is not condemned to hard labor; he has not forfeited the right to wear the national cockade; he is only imprisoned. That might happen to any one; and you,' I said, 'are such an honorable man that it would be an honor to us all to play Boston with you, even if you had four sons in the penitentiary.'"

The commerzienrath's head sank again upon one side; it is possible that at his last words my face assumed a grave expression.

"To be sure," said he, "there are many that take it more easily. There is my brother-in-law. I would not be in his shoes although his father was a nobleman of the empire and mine only an ordinary needleman. The investigation let him off, but it was with a black eye. Any one would suppose he had had enough of intriguing for his life-time; but he cannot keep out of it. Great heavens, it is a shame, the amount that his family has cost me already. Would you believe it, that I had to pay for my wife's trousseau out of my own pocket? Then the one at Zehrendorf and his drafts! By the way, did he ever tell you that he had assigned all Zehrendorf to me, years ago? Try to think; he must have mentioned it to you on some occasion or other. He was not one of those that keep their mouths close shut. And there's the steuerrath! What have I not already done for the man; and now these pretensions of his! Indemnification! A man must live; and if one has not a son, who naturally could not be set to earn his own living, still one has a daughter that one does not want to let starve. You must try to get out of here, my boy. The girl asks after you ten times a day. You have bewitched her, you rascal you!"

And the commerzienrath, who had arisen and was standing by me with his hat and stick in his hand, gave me a little poke in the ribs.

"The Fräulein is very kind," I said.

"Look there now, how you blush!" said the commerzienrath; "quite right; I like that. Respect for the ladies; don't be an idle coxcomb; a fellow of that sort is worth nothing all his life. But you must not call my Hermann Fräulein; Fräulein Duff will never allow that; she must be called Fräulein herself, though she would give her two little fingers if she did not need to be called Mamsell or Fräulein any longer."

The commerzienrath winked as he said this, puffed out his cheeks, and gave me another little poke.

"I shall hardly have the opportunity," I said.

"Pooh!" said the commerzienrath, "don't be tragic. We are to ourselves here. I spoke with my brother-in-law to-day about it; you must take supper with us this evening. Hermann--you know I call her Hermann--wants particularly to see you. Adieu!"

And he kissed the tips of his clumsy fingers and left the room, giving me another wink as he passed out at the door.

What was the meaning of these visits? What did the ceremonious steuerrath and the purse-proud commerzienrath want with me, a prisoner? I might have racked my brain in vain for a solution of the enigma, had not the superintendent, who came into the office that afternoon, let fall a word which gave me the key to the mystery.

"I wish the next three days were over," said he. "You would not believe, my dear George, how repulsive to me are all these transactions, which have no material interest for me. They really only want me to act as umpire, and flatter me in the hope of influencing my decision beforehand. And if I could only decide--but how is that possible in this case where the parties themselves do all they can to obscure the matter? They count upon you, my dear George, as you are the only one who was near my unhappy brother in the latter part of his life, and thus may possibly be able to give information on some points that need to be cleared up. And now come with me into the garden. Snellius and you must help me to entertain the company. My poor wife and I will really not be able to go through with it."

Smiling as he said these words, he took my arm and let me assist him down the steps into the garden and up the path to the Belvedere, from which even at a distance there reached us the joyous clamor of children. It was the first time since my misfortunes that I had gone into society. I had learned while in prison many things of which I was proud, but also one of which I was ashamed, namely, the agitation that overcame me as I heard nearer and nearer the voices of the speakers, and saw the dresses of the ladies glancing through the hedge, already thinned by the autumn winds.

I had cause to be content with my reception: the boys rushed at me, and Kurt cried that I must play with them, for Cousin Arthur kept with Hermine and Paula, and that was tiresome; and Hermine anyhow was only ten years old, and did not need to be so proud.

"Hermine is not proud, but you are too wild," said Paula, who was holding Hermine's hand, while Arthur kept a little in the background and twirled his little sprout of a moustache with visible embarrassment.

I caught up the boys and tossed each in succession high in the air, to conceal my confusion as well as I could, while I kept my eyes fixed upon Hermine. It was really not possible to find anything more dainty and charming than this beautiful creature, in her white dress, which again was trimmed with cornflower blue ribbons, as when I saw her on the steamer. And her great blue eyes looked as eagerly at me, and her red lips were half parted, as if she had suddenly caught sight of the prince of a fairy-tale.

"Is that he?" I heard her whisper to Paula, "and can he really conquer lions?"

I did not catch Paula's answer to this singular question, for I had now to turn to Frau von Zehren, who sat between her sister-in-law and Fräulein Duff on the bench. Frau von Zehren looked paler than usual, and her poor blind eyes turned with an appealing look towards me, while a painfully-confused smile played about her lips.

She offered me her hand at once, and half arose from the bench, but remembered that she must remain sitting, and smiled yet more sadly.

I wished the born Baroness Kippenreiter, with her long yellow teeth, and the governess, with her long yellow ringlets, who were both staring at me through their eye-glasses, a thousand miles away.

The superintendent had now joined us, and said: "Will you not take my arm awhile, Elise? You will be chilled; the ladies will certainly excuse you."

"Oh, allow me to walk with our dear friend," cried the born Kippenreiter, springing up with decision. The superintendent slightly shrugged his shoulders.

"You are not one of the most robust yourself, dear sister-in-law," he said.

"I am strong whenever duty calls," cried the born Kippenreiter, drawing Frau von Zehren away with her.

"That is a grand expression!" sighed Fräulein Duff. "Happy he who can say that of himself!" and the pale governess shook her yellow locks in a dejected way, then turned her dim eyes on me, and lisped:

"Richard--ah, just as in the old story! Alas that the Blondel is wanting! But do not despair; faithfully seek, and thou shalt find at last; that is an immortal truth."

"How are you, Fräulein Duff?" I asked, merely to say something.

"And still this charming quality of taking an interest in the welfare of others, with all his own misfortunes! That is beautiful! that is great!" whispered the governess. "I must, indeed I must, make an attempt to creep into your heart----"

She laid the tips of three fingers upon my arm and pointed shyly with her parasol in the direction which the company, who had now left the place under the plane-trees, had taken.

"And how do you live here?" she again whispered, as we descended into the garden. "But why need I ask--calm and free from care as William Tell. Life here is an idyll. Do not talk to me of a prison! The whole world is a prison; no one knows that better than I."

"I should have thought, Fräulein Duff, that the education of so charming a creature----"

"Yes, she is charming," replied the pale lady, with a flush of real emotion, "lovely as a May morning, but you can understand--the undisturbed happiness of life--that this child should have such a----"

She looked cautiously around, and then continued in a hollow voice:

"Only think! he calls her Hermann, and asks three times a day why she is not a-- Fi donc! I cannot utter it. Oh, it lacerates my heart that such rough hands should clutch the delicate chords of this virgin soul! The world loves to blacken whatever is bright and fair; who knows not that? but at least her own father--but I am the last who should complain of him. He has--you are a noble soul, Carlos; I cast myself upon your breast--he has awakened hopes in me which would render giddy a soul less strong than mine. To acquire a million is great; to throw it away is godlike--and to be the mother of this child, I often think, must be heavenly; but what will you say to my always talking of myself? what will you say to your satirical friend?"

"My satirical friend?"

Fräulein Duff stepped a pace backward, shaded her eyes from the rays of the evening sun with her transparent hand, and said with a coquettish smile:

"Carlos, you are playing false. Confess now you want to escape me by this serpentine turning. There is but one here to whom this description applies, but he is a giant--in intellect! It is immense--sublime! it really overcame me! And you call such a giant your friend, and yet complain that you are in a prison! Oh, my dear friend, who would not willingly exchange his freedom for your imprisonment, to win such a friend as this!"

Fräulein Duff pressed her handkerchief to her eyelids, and then gave a loud shriek as she felt herself seized fast from behind, and turning saw Hermine's little spaniel, who had fastened his sharp teeth in the skirt of her dress, and looked at her with a malevolent expression in his great black eyes. At the same moment the whole company came up, so that the governess had suddenly quite a concourse of spectators to her combat with the little long-haired monster. I endeavored to release her, and only made matters worse; Zerlina would not let go, and shook and tore with all her strength; the boys pretended to help me, and secretly urged her on; no one could keep from laughing, and the commerzienrath literally roared. Nothing remained for Fräulein Duff, under these circumstances, but to swoon away, and fall into the arms of Doctor Snellius, who just then came up, attracted by the noise.

"Do not be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen," said the commerzienrath, "this happens three times every day."

"Barbarian!" murmured the fainting damsel, with pale lips, and raised herself from the arms of the doctor, who, despite the sublimity attributed to him, wore at this moment a very sheepish look. Fräulein Duff strove to cast, through the tears that dimmed her water-blue eyes, an annihilating look at the mocker, declined the doctor's proffered arm with the words, "I thank you, but I need no assistance to the house," and hastened away, holding her handkerchief to her face, while Zerlina capered around her little mistress with joyous barkings and triumphant flourishings of her bushy tail.

"I think she will lose her wits one of these days," said the commerzienrath, as a sort of explanation of the scene which had just occurred.

"So much the more should you spare her, especially in the presence of others," said the superintendent.

I had seized this opportunity to make my escape from the company, and was wandering about in the farther walks of the garden, when I saw Paula and Hermine approaching at a little distance. Paula had laid her hand on the little maid's shoulder, who, in her turn, had wound one arm round her cousin's waist. Hermine was looking up in Paula's face, and speaking with great animation, while Paula smiled in a friendly manner, and said from time to time something which seemed to call forth vehement opposition from the little maid.

The lovely child of ten years, with her glossy brown hair, and her great sparkling blue eyes, her bright little face beaming with animation, and the slender maiden of fifteen, with the gentle smile on her delicate lips--both these beautiful figures illuminated by the ruddy glow of an autumn sunset--how often has this picture recurred to my memory in later years!

And now they caught sight of me. I heard Paula say: "Ask him then yourself," and Hermine answered, "And so I will!"

She let Paula go, came springing up to me, stood before me looking fearlessly at me with her great eyes, and asked:

"Can you conquer lions, or can you not?"

"I think not," I answered; "but why?"

"Yes or no?" she asked, giving the least possible stamp of her little foot.

"Well then, no!"

"But you ought to," she replied, with an indignant look. "I wish it."

"If you wish it, I will do my very best, the first chance that offers."

"Do you see, Paula," said the little maid, turning to her with a triumphant look. "I told you so! I told you so!" and she clapped her hands and sprang about like a little Bacchante, and then ran scampering over the flower-beds, Zerlina following her with loud barkings.

"What did the child mean with her curious question?" I asked Paula.

"It seems that Fräulein Duff keeps comparing you to Richard the Lion-heart," replied Paula, with a smile.

"With Richard the Lion-heart--me?"

"Yes, because you are blond, and so tall and strong, and a prisoner; so Hermine has taken it into her head that you must be able to conquer lions. Whether she is in earnest or in jest, I doubt whether she knows herself. But I wanted to thank you for joining us in the garden to-day. It was kind of you; for I could see that you were not at ease in the company."

"And you, yourself?"

"I must not ask the question. They are our relations."

"Of course that excuses everything."

I said this not without some bitterness, with a reference to her friendship to Arthur; but I felt ashamed of myself when she raised her sweet, gentle eyes to my face and innocently asked:

"What do you mean?"

Happily I was spared the necessity of an answer, for Doctor Snellius came up at the moment, calling "Fräulein Paula! Fräulein Paula!" while he was yet at a distance.

"I must go in," said Paula; "there are many things to see to; and I beg you do not look so angry. You have been of late not so friendly as usual; are you displeased with me?"

I had not the courage to answer "Yes!" when I looked into the earnest fade that was lifted to mine.

"Who could be that?" I said. "You are a thousand times better than all of us."

"That she is, God bless her!" said Doctor Snellius, who had caught the last words.

He looked after her as she hastened away, and a deep and sorrowful shade passed over his grotesque face. Then with both hands he draped his hat over his bald skull down to his very ears, and said in a tone of irritation:

"The devil take it! She is far too good; she is so good that she can only meet with trouble. The time is past--if; there ever was such a time--when all things worked together for good to the good man. One must be bad--thoroughly bad; one must flatter, lie, cheat, trip up his neighbor, regard the whole world as his private inheritance which by neglect has fallen into alien hands, and which is to be won back again. But to do this one must be brought up to it, and how are we brought up? As if life were one of Gessner's idylls. Modesty, love of our neighbors, love of truth! Let any one try it with this outfit! Is the commerzienrath modest? Does he love his neighbor? Does he love the truth? Not one whit And the man is a millionaire, and his neighbors pull off caps when they meet him, and fame proclaims him one of the noblest of human-kind, because from time to time he tosses a thaler that will not go into his crammed purse, into a poor man's hat. But you will say he has his punishment in his own breast. Much of it! He considers himself a thoroughly good man, a splendid fellow, full of humor, and when at night he lies down in his bed to snore his eight hours, he says, 'This you have honestly earned.' Away with your starving, hectic honesty!"

"I did not say a word in its favor, doctor."

"But while I was declaiming you kept on smiling, as if you would have said: 'But you are dishonest.' Do you see, that is just my vexation. With this wretched bringing-up of ours, one is filled so with honest notions that one cannot be a scoundrel, however good his intentions, but has to keep honest, in spite of his better insight. And if we cannot get over this, how can women?"

The doctor looked fixedly in the direction in which Paula had disappeared, and then took off his great, round spectacles, the glasses of which seemed to have become dim.

"You must not abuse the women, doctor," I said. "Fräulein Duff----"

"Has made me a formal proposal," said Doctor Snellius, hastily putting on his spectacles, "and here comes somebody who will make you one. Beware of this Greek in uniform."

The doctor clapped his hat upon his head and hurried away, without returning the very friendly salute with which Arthur approached us from a side path.

"I am glad that he is gone," said Arthur, coming to my side and taking my arm just as in old times; "I have something to say to you, or rather I have something to beg of you; my father has already done it, it is true; but it can do no harm if I repeat it. You know what I mean."

"Yes," I answered.

"I behaved like a fool, I know," the ensign continued; "but you must really not think too hardly of me. I thought it was due to this thing here----" and he gave his sword a kind of toss with his left leg.

"Arthur," I said, stopping and withdrawing my arm, "I am not quite so clever as you, but you must not consider me an absolute fool. You separated yourself from me, long before you had that toasting-iron at your side. You did it because you had no further use for me, because it suited your purpose to join the hue and cry against me, because--"

"Well, yes," interrupted Arthur, "I don't deny it. I was in such an infernally dependent position that I had to howl with the wolves. If I had spoken out my real feelings, Lederer would have surely plucked me at the Easter Examination, and my uncle would never have paid for my ensign's outfit."

"And now," I said, "it seems the wind blows from another quarter, and we must trim our sails accordingly."

"Oh, hang it!" said Arthur, laughing, "you must not bring a fellow to book in that way. I often say things that I cannot maintain. You always knew that was a weakness of mine, and yet you used to like me. I have not changed, and why are you angry with me all at once? You may believe that I am still the same, notwithstanding my new caparison, which, by the way, I am not likely to wear so very much longer. It cost no end of trouble to get me the appointment; the colonel told me himself that he only did it out of regard for my uncle, who was his comrade in the war for freedom, and that on this account he would shut his eyes a little to his duty, and take no notice of the reports that were afloat about my father. But even as it is I am not out of the woods yet. Papa's affairs are in such a frightful condition that no creditor is willing to give him the least delay; and unless things now take a favorable turn, he is ruined, and I of course with him; my name will be struck off the list of candidates for promotion."

"What is this favorable turn to consist in?" I asked.

"Well, I don't precisely know myself," Arthur replied, decapitating some weeds with the scabbard of his sword. "Uncle Commerzienrath has to pay over to papa his share of the inheritance, left by my grandfather, which papa has never received; and also what is coming to us from Uncle Malte's estate. But the old Judas will pay nothing; he says papa has been paid already five and ten times over. As I said, I don't understand it; I only know that I never received a groschen of cash from my uncle, and I even envy my servant-fellow, who at least has enough to eat."

I took a side look at my old friend; he did look extremely pale and thin. My own appetite had long since recovered its vigor, and not to have enough to eat, struck me as a most serious misfortune.

"Poor fellow!" I said, and took his arm again, which I had previously let go.

"But that is the least," continued Arthur, in a querulous tone. "'Your father is always running in debt,' the colonel said; 'as soon as I see that you are following in his footsteps, we shall have to part.' But I ask you now, how with a couple of groschen a day can one avoid running into debt? To-morrow I have to meet a little note which a villain of a Jew swindled me out of. I spoke of it to papa and to mamma, and they both say they have not money enough to take them home, not to speak of giving me any. I must get out of the scrape as best I can. Very well; I will get out of it, but in another way."

And the ensign whistled softly, and assumed a look of gloomy desperation.

"How much do you need, Arthur!" I asked.

"A mere trifle--twenty-five thalers."

"I will give it to you."

"You?"

"I have about so much in the cashier's hands here; and if it falls a little short, he will give me credit."

"Will you really do that, you dear good old George?" cried Arthur, seizing both my hands and shaking them again and again.

"But don't make such a fuss about it," I said, trying with very mixed feelings to escape the ensign's rather too exuberant gratitude.

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Chapter XII

The two brothers Von Zehren, with the commerzienrath, were occupied for an hour the next morning in a conference which was the object of this family gathering. The session must have been a lively one. The room in which they were was just above the office, and although the house was solidly built, I had more than once heard the shrill voice of the commerzienrath. I felt a sort of disquiet, as if my own fortunes were the matter at stake. Had I not been, by the strangest combination of circumstances, held as it were perforce in connection with this family? I had taken an active part, as a friend and confident, in the most important events connected with it; and my own fate had been entirely determined by these events and my relation to various members of the family. If Arthur had not wanted to have me with him at the oyster-feast on board the Penguin that morning--if I had not met the Wild Zehren at Pinnow's that evening after the scene with my father--if----

"The gentlemen upstairs would like to see us," said Sergeant Süssmilch, thrusting his gray head in at the door.

"Well!" said I, laying the pen from my hand, not without a little quickening of my pulse.

"Well, what?" asked the sergeant, coming in and latching the door after him.

"Well, I had hoped that they would not want me," I said, getting down from my stool with a sigh.

"Want you for what?" asked the veteran, stroking his long moustache and looking at me half angrily.

"It is a long story," I answered, adjusting my necktie at the great inkstand on the table, which offered me a very distorted reflection of myself.

"Which one need not tell an old bear with seven senses, as he would not be able to understand it," answered the sergeant, with a little irritation in his tone.

"I will tell you another time," I said.

At this moment, in the upper room, two voices were raised so high, and two chairs were simultaneously pushed back with so much violence, that the sergeant and I gave each other an expressive look. The sergeant came close to me and said in a confidential hollow tone:

"Fling both those fellows down the steps, and when they get down to me, I will pitch them out of the house."

"We'll see about it," I answered, shaking the hand of the old Cerberus, who had growled these last words apparently from the pit of his stomach.

When I opened the door of the room upstairs, a peculiar spectacle was presented to my gaze. The superintendent alone, of the three gentlemen, sat at the round table, covered with papers of all sorts. The commerzienrath stood with one hand resting upon the back of his chair, and with the other gesticulating vehemently at the steuerrath, who, like one who is eager to speak, and whose adversary will not let him get in a word, stamped about the room, stood still, raised his hand, tried to speak, then shrugged his shoulders and stamped about the room again. No one appeared to notice my entrance but the superintendent, who beckoned me to him, and then called the commerzienrath's attention to my presence, but it did not interrupt his harangue.

"And so," he went on, "I am to lie out of my money for eighteen years, not receiving a groschen of interest, to have such chicanery played on me at last! You are a man of honor, Herr Superintendent; a man of honor, I say; and in the whole matter, from the beginning until now, have behaved as nobly as possible, but that gentleman there----" and he pointed his clumsy finger at the steuerrath with an energetic gesture, as if there had been any possibility of mistaking the person meant--"that gentleman, your brother and my brother-in-law, seems to have a very peculiar way of looking at money-transactions. Oh yes, it would suit me exactly to have my goods paid for two or three times over, only there happen to stand certain passages in the law of the country----"

"Brother-in-law!" exclaimed the steuerrath, taking a stride towards the speaker, and raising his hand in a threatening manner.

The commerzienrath sprang with great agility behind a chair, and cried: "Do you expect to intimidate me? I stand under the protection of the law----"

"Don't scream so, Herr Commerzienrath," I said, laying my hand upon his right shoulder, and forcing him down into his chair.

I had noticed that the superintendent's pale cheeks were growing redder and redder at every word of the furious man, and the marks of pain under his eyes were becoming more and more apparent.

The commerzienrath rubbed his shoulder, looked at me with an expression of astonishment, and was silent, just as a screaming child suddenly stops its crying when something very extraordinary happens to it.

The superintendent smiled, and availing himself of the sudden pause, said:

"I invited our young friend to come up, because I really did not know how the question which is the matter of immediate dispute could be better or more promptly decided; for no one can give us surer information on this point than he. We want to know, George, what there was in the house at Zehrendorf: the furniture, the plate, and so forth; and we should like some account of the condition of the farm buildings, and as correct an inventory as possible of the live stock and other property, if you can inform us on this point. Do you think you can do so?"

"I will try," I said, and gave them as full an account as I could.

While I spoke, the little gray eyes of the commerzienrath were fixed immovably upon me, and I remarked that as I proceeded with the description, his puckered face cleared up more and more, while the steuerrath's grew longer and more confused in the same proportion.

"You see, brother-in-law, that I was right," cried the commerzienrath, "that----"

"You agreed to leave the management of the matter to me," said the superintendent; and then turning to the steuerrath: "It appears, Arthur, that George's account agrees with the inventory which the commerzienrath had taken three years before, except such trifling differences as the lapse of time amply explains----"

"And so," cried the commerzienrath, "the money which I lent your deceased brother upon it, could scarcely have been too little. As my brother-in-law has not yet given us the proof that the sum which the deceased paid him, in the year 1818, through my hands, was not an indemnification for his interest in the estate, he must consent to admit that even during the life of his brother, I was the legal proprietor of Zehrendorf, and that his pretensions are illusory, entirely illusory----"

And the commerzienrath threw himself back in his chair, puckered up his eyes, and rubbed his hands as if with satisfaction.

"I should have thought," began the steuerrath, with an appearance of annoyance, "that these things were not precisely suitable to be discussed in the presence of a third person----"

I arose, with a look at the superintendent.

"Excuse me, my dear Arthur," said the latter, "you not only were willing but even desirous that we should call in our young friend here; of course it was to be expected that in his presence many things----"

"----would be spoken of, which would not be particularly agreeable to the Herr Steuerrath," said the commerzienrath, turning over his papers with a malicious smile.

"I must entreat you, brother-in-law--" said the superintendent.

"And I must further request," cried the steuerrath, "that these matters be handled in a more becoming tone. If I pledge my word as a nobleman that my deceased brother more than once assured me that he had parted with only a small, the very smallest part of the Zehrendorf forest----"

"So!" cried the commerzienrath; "is that your scheme? First it was the house, then the inventory, now it is the forest--here is the bill of sale."

"I beg you," said the steuerrath, pushing away with the back of his hand the paper which the commerzienrath extended to him across the table; "I have already taken note of it. This bill, moreover, is not indisputable."

"It is the handwriting of our brother," said the superintendent, in a reproachful tone.

"But expressed in such general terms," replied the steuerrath, shrugging his shoulders.

"Was I to have every tree separately described?" cried the commerzienrath. "It is unheard of, the way I am treated here. I do not speak of you, Herr Superintendent. You are a man of honor, every inch of you; but when I am told here every moment that I must respect the word of a nobleman, and a paper like this is not of more validity, which is a nobleman's word too, and written with his own hand----"

The commerzienrath had fallen into a querulous tone.

"Perhaps our young friend here can give us information on this point too," said the superintendent. "Do you remember, George, to have heard anything from the mouth of our deceased brother bearing upon the point at issue?"

The steuerrath cast a quick, anxious look first at me; the commerzienrath stealthily watched me, and then the steuerrath, as if to detect the signs of any secret collusion between us; the superintendent fixed his large, clear blue eyes upon me with a look of inquiry.

"Certainly I can," I answered.

"Well then?" cried the commerzienrath.

I told the gentlemen the expression which the Wild Zehren had used when he came to my room the morning before his death, that of the whole majestic forest no part belonged to him, not even enough to make him a coffin.

My voice faltered as I told this. That morning when I beheld for the last time the lovely park glittering in the glorious sunshine, the portrait of the strange man who knew himself utterly ruined, and gave so passionate an expression to his knowledge--his attitude, his words, the tone of his voice--all came back to me with irresistible force; I had to turn away to hide the tears which sprang to my eyes.

"The question is decided for me now, if it were not so before," said the superintendent, rising and coming to me.

"And for me too," cried the commerzienrath, with a triumphant look at his adversary.

"But not for me," said the steuerrath. "However disposed I am to place the fullest confidence in the veracity, or, more accurately, in the good memory of our young friend here, his recollections differ too widely from what I have heard from my brother's lips for me to abandon the ground I have taken. I am sorry to have to be so obstinate, but I cannot help it. I owe it to myself and to my family. The last eighteen years of my life are a series of sacrifices made to our eldest brother. But a few days before his tragical end he appealed to me in the most moving terms to advance him a considerable sum of money; I ran about the whole town to get it for him; I came to you also, brother-in-law, as you doubtless remember. You refused me--and, by the way, not in the most delicate manner. I wrote to my unfortunate brother that I would assist him, but he must wait. I adjured him to take no desperate resolution. He did not regard my entreaties. Had that letter only not been lost!"

"You have no further occasion for me, Herr Superintendent?" I said, and, without awaiting his answer, left the room, and hastened to the office in a state of agitation, at which now I can but smile. What had happened of so much consequence? A man, speaking of matters of importance, had been guilty of an audacious lie. Later I discovered that this is not of such rare occurrence, and in matters of business lying has a sort of charter; but I was then very young, very inexperienced, and, I may add, innocent, or my emotion at this moment could not have been so violent. I stood in the presence of a thing to me at once horrible and incomprehensible. I could not grasp it. I felt as if the world was being lifted from its pivots. Once before something like this had happened to me--when I heard of Constance's flight, and learned that she had deceived me and lied to me; but there was then still a kind of palliation for her in my eyes; the passion of love, which I could understand. But this I did not understand. I could not conceive how, for a few wretched hundred or thousand dollars, one could calumniate the dead, defraud the living, and roll one's self in the mire. But one thing became clear to me at that moment, and all my life since I have held to the conviction that truth is not a mere form, by the side of which another might have place, but that it is like nature, the foundation and the essential condition of human existence; and that every lie shakes and upheaves this foundation, as far as its influence reaches.

Since then I have discovered that this influence is not so extremely wide; that as water naturally seeks its level, so the moral world continually strives to keep truth erect, and to cancel the injurious effect of falsehood.

But on this morning this consolatory thought did not present itself to calm the agitation in my heart. "Liar, hateful, disgusting liar!" I murmured over and over to myself, "you deserve that I should have you placed in the pillory; that I should reveal the real contents of the last letter you wrote to your brother."

I think that if this state of things had continued, I should not have been able to resist the impulse to revenge Truth on her betrayer, however foreign to my nature was the part of informer. But I now heard the gentlemen coming down the stairs, and the next moment the superintendent entered the office. His cheeks were now as pale as they had before been flushed; his eyes were glassy, as those of one who has just undergone an agonizing operation; he tottered to a chair, and sank into it as I hastened to support him.

After a minute he pressed my hand, assumed an erect position, and said, smiling:

"Thank you; it is over now. Excuse this weakness, but it has affected me more powerfully than I had thought. Such a dispute about yours and mine is always the most disagreeable thing in the world, even when one looks upon it as a mere spectator; how much more then when the dust raised is thrown directly into one's face! Well, the matter is ended. I had proposed a compromise before, and they have agreed to sign it. My brother, for a very moderate indemnification, gives up all his claims, which your last words deprived, with me, of all remains of credit. He calls himself a beggar; but alas! he is not one of those beggars who might take their place by kings."

The pale man smiled bitterly, and continued in a low tone, as if talking to himself:

"Thus the last remnant of the inheritance of our ancestors passes out of our hands. The old time is past--it has lasted too long! I regret the forest; one does not like to see the trees fall through whose foliage the earliest morning-ray greeted our childish eyes, and under whose branches we played our childish sports. And now they will fall; to their new possessor they are but wood, which he will convert into money. Money! True, it rules the world, and he knows it; he knows that the turn has come for him and those like him, and they are now the knights of the hammer. It is the old game in a somewhat different form. How long will they play it? Not long, I trust. Then----"

He raised his eyes to me with a long loving look----"then will come our turn, ours, who have comprehended that there is such a thing as justice, that this justice cannot be trifled with, and that we must cleave to and desire with all our souls this justice, which is equity. Is it not so, George?"

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Chapter XIII

Doctor Willibrod and I had hoped that, now that their business was at an end, the burdensome guests who had so long made the superintendent's house their home, would take their leave; but our hope was to be only partially fulfilled.

"I do not wish to travel in the company of a man who has made me a beggar," said the steuerrath.

"Fudge!" said the commerzienrath, coming into the office that afternoon, in travelling dress, to bid me good-by; "he has been a beggar all his life. Would you believe it? five minutes ago he was begging from me again; he has not the money to take him home, I must advance him a hundred thalers. I gave them to him; I shall never see them again. By the way, I must see you again. Really I like you better every time I see you; you are a capital fellow."

"You will make but little capital out of me, Herr Commerzienrath."

"Make capital? Very good!" said the jovial old fellow, and poked me in the ribs. "We shall see, we shall see. Your very first movement when you leave this place must be to my house. Will soon find something for you; am planning all sorts of improvements on the estate--here the commerzienrath shut his eyes--distillery, brick-yard, turf-cutting, saw-mill--will find a place for you at once. How long have you still to be here?"

"Six years longer."

The commerzienrath puffed out his cheeks. "Whew! that is an awful time. Can I do nothing for you? Could I help you up there? A little cash in hand, eh?"

"I am greatly obliged to you, but cannot expect any advantage from your exertions."

"Pity, pity! Would have been so glad to prove my gratitude to you. You have really done me a great service. The man would have given me much trouble. Would a little money be of service to you? Speak freely. I am a man of business, and a hundred thalers or so are a trifle to me."

"If we are to part as friends, not another word of that," I said, with decision.

The commerzienrath hastily thrust back the thick pocketbook which he had half drawn out of his pocket, and for the greater security buttoned over it one button of his blue frockcoat.

"A man's free-will is his heaven. Come anyhow and bid my Hermine good-by. I believe the girl would refuse to start if you do not come to the carriage. Perhaps you will not do this either."

"Assuredly I will," I answered, and followed the commerzienrath to the space in front of the house, where already the whole family was assembled around the great travelling-carriage of the millionaire. While in his ostentatious way he was boasting of the convenience of the carriage and the beauty of the two powerful brown horses, who were lazily switching their long tails about, and at intervals bidding farewell to the company with clumsy bows and awkward phrases, Hermine was flitting from one to another, laughing, teasing, romping in rivalry with her Zerlina, that seemed to be continually in the air, and kept up the most outrageous barking. In this way she passed me two or three times, without taking the least notice of me. Suddenly some one touched my arm from behind. It was Fräulein Duff. She beckoned me, by a look, a little to one side, and said hurriedly and mysteriously:

"She loves you!"

Fräulein Duff seemed so agitated; her locks, usually so artistically arranged, fluttered to-day in such disorder about her narrow face; her water-blue eyes rolled so strangely in their large sockets--I really believed for a moment that "the good lady had quite lost her modicum of wits.

"Don't put on such a desperate look, Richard," she said.

"'From the clouds must fortune fall, From the lap of the Immortals.'

"That is an eternal truth, which here once more is proven. She confessed it to me this morning with such passionate tears; it rent my heart; I wept with her; I might well do it, for I felt with her.

"'And I, I too was born in Arcady, But the short spring-time brought me only tears.'"

Fräulein Duff wiped her water-blue eyes, and cast a languishing look at Doctor Snellius, who with a very mixed expression of countenance was receiving the thanks of the commerzienrath.

"Both youth and man!" she whispered:

"'The rind may have a bitter taste, But surely not the fruit.'

"Good heavens! what have I said! You are in possession of the secret of a virgin heart. You will not profane it. And now, let us now part, Richard. One last word: Seek truly and thou shalt find! I come, I come!"

She turned away, and waving the company a farewell with her parasol, hurried to the carriage, in which the commerzienrath had already fixed himself comfortably, while Hermine held her spaniel out at the door and let it bark. Startled at Fräulein Duffs extraordinary communication, I had kept in the background; the wild little creature had not a single look for him whom, according to Fräulein Duff's report, she loved. She laughed and jested, but at the moment when the horses started, a painful spasm contracted her charming face, and she threw herself passionately into her governess's arms to hide the tears that burst from her eyes.

"Rid of these," said Doctor Snellius; "hope to-morrow we shall send the others after them."

But the doctor's hope was not fulfilled on the morrow, nor yet on the next day. Fourteen days passed, and the steuerrath and the born Baroness Kippenreiter were still the guests of the superintendent.

"I shall poison them if they don't leave soon," crowed the doctor.

"One could turn to a bear with seven senses on the spot," growled the sergeant.

It was in truth a genuine calamity that had befallen the house of the excellent man; and we three allies bemoaned it, each in his own way, but none louder and more passionately than the doctor.

"You will see," he said, "these people will take up their winter-quarters here. The house is not large, but the hedgehog knows how to make himself comfortable with the marmot; they are well cared for, and as for the friendliness of intercourse--though they care less for that--there is no lack of it. How can Humanus have the patience? He must have a Potosi at his disposal. For he suffers, very seriously suffers, under the hypocritical spaniel-like humility of this brotherly parasite, as does his angelic wife under the sharp claws and yellow teeth of the born Kippenreiter. Good heavens! that we should breathe the same air with such creatures--that we must eat from the same dish with them! What crime have we committed?"

"The born Kippenreiters would say the same thing of us."

"You want to provoke me, but you are right. Doubly right; for the born Kippenreiters not only say it but act accordingly, and forbid us, whenever they can, the air that they breathe and the dishes out of which they eat, without in the least caring whether we suffocate or starve; indeed most likely with the wish that these events may come to pass."

"A contribution to the superintendent's hammer and anvil theory," I said.

The doctor's bald crown glowed a lively red.

"Don't talk to me of this good-natured folly," he cried, in his shrillest tones. "Whoever is weak or good-natured, or both--and he most likely will be both--has been hammered by the strong and evil-disposed, as long as the world stands; and he will continue to be hammered until water runs up-hill and the lamb eats the wolf. Hammer and anvil! Old Goethe knew the world, and knew better."

"And what would you do, doctor, if some poor relations took up quarters with you, and became burdensome to you in time?"

"I? I would--that is a stupid question. I don't know what I would do. But that proves nothing--nothing at all; or at the most only that I, spite of all my rhodomontades, am only a wretched piece of anvil. And finally--yes, now I have it! We are neither relations nor connections of theirs; we have no consideration to observe, and we must drive them off."

"A happy thought, doctor!"

"That is it!" said the doctor, and hopped from one leg to other. "I am ready for anything--for anything! We must spoil their life here, embitter it, drench it with gall: in a word, make it impossible."

"But how?"

"How? You lazy mammoth! Devise your own scheme. The born Kippenreiter I take upon myself. She thinks that she has a diseased heart, because she has a bad one. She is as afraid of death as if she had tried a week's experiment in the lower regions. She shall believe me."

On the very same day, Doctor Willibrod Snellius commenced his diabolical plan. Whenever he was within hearing of the born Kippenreiter he began talking of the circulation of the blood, of veins, of arteries, of valvular defects, inflammation of the pericardium, spasm of the heart. He knew, he said, that such conversation must be wearisome to her ladyship, but he was writing a monograph on the subject, and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks. Indeed he could not deny that it was not entirely without a motive that he had drawn her attention precisely to this point. He could not and would not positively assert, without a previous and thorough examination, that the valves of her ladyship's heart were not performing their functions regularly; but there were certain symptoms of which probably she might have experienced one or another, and prudence was not merely the mother of wisdom, but often the bestower of, if not a long life, at least one lengthened by several years.

The gnädige was by no means a person to whom I felt an especial inclination, and yet I sometimes felt a kind of pity when I saw how the unhappy victim twisted and writhed under the knife of her tormentor. How could she escape him? As a lady who piqued herself upon her culture, she could not well avoid a scientific conversation; as a guest of the house she owed consideration to a friend of the family; and in reality this topic, which she dreaded as a child dreads goblins, had for her a frightful fascination. She turned pale as often as Doctor Willibrod entered the room, and yet fixed her small round eyes upon him with the agonizing look of the bird that sees a serpent gazing into its nest; she could not resist the attraction, and in a minute she had beckoned the fearful man to her and asked him how far he had progressed with his essay.

"It is enough to drive one mad," said Doctor Willibrod; "soon she will not be able to live without me and my tales of horror. I told her to-day of the case of a lady, exactly of her age, her mode of life, habit of body, and so forth, who, while conversing with her physician about congestions of the heart, was struck with one; she smiles upon me with pale lips, and is on the verge of fainting--I suppose she is going to ring for her carriage--and what is the result? 'You must tell me more about it to-morrow,' she says, and dismisses me with a gracious wave of her hand."

"She is sword-and-bullet-proof, doctor," I said. "You will not be rid of her so easily."

"But we must be rid of her, rid of the whole pack," cried the doctor. "I am resolved upon it as man, as friend, as physician."

I laughed, but in my heart I was entirely of the doctor's opinion. The presence of these people was a too intolerable burden for the family of the superintendent. How could I avoid seeing it, when I had so attached myself to these noble and good souls, that I had for everything that concerned them the piercing eyes of the deepest and most reverent affection? I saw how the superintendent's face wore every day a graver look; how he forced himself to answer the everlasting "Is it not so, dear brother?" or, "Is not that your opinion, dear brother?" I saw the painful contraction which passed over the beautiful pale face of the blind lady, when the harsh voice of her talkative sister-in-law smote upon her sensitive ear; I saw how Paula bore these, in addition to her other burdens, with silence and patience; but I also saw how heavy a task it was.

I was sitting one day in the office, pondering all this in my indignant heart, as I cut up a quill under pretence of making a pen, when through the window which I had left half open to admit one of the rare sunbeams, my ear caught the hateful metallic voice of the born Kippenreiter.

"I am sure you will do me this kindness, dear Paula; I certainly would not ask you, for I know how young girls are attached to their own rooms, but mine is really too triste with its perpetual outlook upon the prison-walls; and then I am afraid it is damp, especially at the present season of the year, and with my heart-complaint the least rheumatism would be the death of me. I can count upon it, dear Paula, can I not? Perhaps even to-day? That would be delightful!"

"I can hardly arrange it to-day, dear aunt; I have to-day to----"

"Well, then, dear child, to-morrow. You see I am content with anything. And then there is another thing I want to mention, and that is the wine we have at dinner. Between ourselves, it is not particularly good, and does not agree with my husband at all. He is a little spoiled in this. I know you have better in the cellar; we had some of it when we first came; did we not now?"

"Yes, aunt; but unfortunately there are only two or three bottles left, which I am keeping for my father----"

"Even if there are only two or three bottles, they are better than none. Good heavens! there's that man at the window again! One cannot take three steps here without coming across him."

These last words were probably not intended for my ear, but my sense of hearing was acute, and the voice of the gnädige very distinct in its metallic ring. That they referred to none other than myself was unquestionable; for beside the fact that I was a man, and standing just then at the window, the gnädige had stared at me with her fixed round eyes, in a very ungracious manner, and then turned sharply upon her heel.

But it made little difference to me that I displeased the gnädige, or how much I displeased her; I thought only of the poor dear girl who wiped the tears from her cheeks as she walked up the garden path alone, after her aunt had left her. In a moment I was down from my office-stool, out of the room, and had hurried to her side.

"You must not give up your room to her, Paula," I said.

"You heard, then?"

"Yes; and you must not do it. It is the only one that has a good light, and----"

"I will not be able to paint much this winter; there is too much to do."

"Do you really take it for granted that they are going to remain here all winter?"

"I know nothing to the contrary. My aunt spoke of it just now."

Paula tried to smile; but great as usually was her self-control, this time she could not succeed. Her mouth twitched painfully, and her eyes filled again with tears.

"It is only on my parents' account," she said, excusing herself. "My father just now needs rest so extremely, and you know how my mother suffers when she has to entertain them for hours at a time. But you must not give any hint of it, George; not even the least."

And she laid her finger impressively on her lips, and her great blue eyes looked up anxiously at me.

I murmured something which she probably took for acquiescence, for she gave me a friendly smile, and hastened into the house, from which resounded the shrill voice of the gnädige, who with the whole power of her lungs--which were evidently in a healthy state--was calling out of the window to the steuerrath, who was standing in the rear of the garden among the yellowing leaves on the sunny espalier, and eating one of the few peaches which the superintendent's unwearying care had won from the ungenial climate.

With long strides, betokening no good to the steuerrath, I walked up the path directly to him.

"Ah!" said he, without desisting from his occupation, "my wife has sent you, I suppose. But see for yourself if there is another decent peach on the whole espalier. And the trash is anyhow as sour as vinegar."

"Then you should not have eaten it."

"Well, at all events it is better than nothing; an official on a pension learns that lesson."

"Really!"

I accompanied this explanation with a contemptuous laugh, which rudely startled the steuerrath from the delusion that he was delighting me with his genial conversation. He looked at me with the expression of a dog who is undecided whether to fly from his enemy or seize him by the leg.

"Herr Steuerrath," I said, "I have a request to make of you."

His indecision was at an end in a moment.

"At any other time I will listen to you with pleasure," said he; "but at this moment I am rather hurried----"

And he tried to pass me, but I barred his way.

"I can tell you in three words what I have to say: you must leave this place."

"I must--what?"

"Leave this place," I repeated, and I felt the angry blood mounting to my cheeks--"and that at once; in three days at the furthest."

"Young man, I believe you have lost your senses," replied the steuerrath, making an effort to assume a dignified look, which his lips, pale with apprehension, woefully belied. "Do you know to whom you are speaking?"

"Give yourself no trouble," I said, contemptuously. "The times in which you appeared to me I don't know what awe-inspiring wonder, are long past. I have no further respect for you, not the slightest; and I will not have you stay here any longer; do you hear? I will not have it!"

"But this is unheard-of!" cried the steuerrath. "I will tell my brother what insults I am exposed to here."

"If you did that, I would----"

I could not bring myself to pronounce it, I had so long kept it sealed up in my breast. I had two more years of imprisonment for keeping it secret; it was a poisoned weapon which I was about to use against the miserable man; but I thought of the weeping face of the dear maiden, and then I looked into the face of the evil man before me, distorted with hate and rage, and I dragged out the words through my clenched teeth--"I would mention the letter which you wrote him"--I pointed in the direction of the island--"upon which he undertook his last expedition--of the letter which proves you an accomplice, yes, the chief criminal; and which would have ruined you had I not kept the secret."

The man, while I spoke, seemed to shrink into himself, as if he had trodden upon a poisonous serpent; with straining eyes he watched every movement of my hands, expecting every instant that I would carry them to my breast-pocket and produce the fatal letter. "The letter you speak of and which you have possessed yourself of by unlawful means, proves nothing," he stammered--"proves nothing at all. It is indifferent to me whether you show it to my brother, or to any one else--any one else----"

"I cannot show it to any one, for I have burned it."

The steuerrath almost bounded into the air. His fright had never given room for the thought that the letter might have been lost or destroyed. How differently the affair stood now!

A smile of defiance passed over his face, which once more began to assume its natural color.

"What are you talking of, and what do you want?" he cried, with a hoarse voice that singularly contrasted with his usual oily speech. "The devil only knows what kind of a letter it was that you saw--that you pretend to have seen. The whole affair looks exceedingly like a lie--and a very bungling one at that. Stand off, sir! don't dare to touch me, or I call for help!--and you will have to your seven years, seven years more. Do not dare to touch me, I say!"

My looks were probably threatening enough, for he had retreated before them to the wall, and squeezed himself, trembling, against the espalier. I stepped up close to him' and said in a low tone:

"I shall do you no harm, for--miserable wretch as you are--I still respect in you your two brothers; the one whom you hounded on to his death, and the other whose precious life you shall not embitter another hour. If no one else believes my word that I read and burned that letter, he will believe it--you know he will believe it. And if the morning of the third day finds you here, he shall learn whom he has so long been entertaining under his roof. You know him. He can pardon much, and does pardon much; but to be the victim of such a shameless lie as that which you have imposed upon him, upon the commerzienrath, and all the world--that he will never pardon."

The man knew that I was right; I saw it in his face, which grew absolutely sharp and thin with alarm at being thus helplessly in my hands.

And it was high time; one minute later and my victory would at least have been doubtful. For from the garden came help for the crushed one. It was the born Kippenreiter, who came calling out to us from a distance to save her two or three peaches.

A prudent general undertakes no new battle which may jeopard an already hard-won victory. I had not quailed before the wrathful looks of the steuerrath; but at sight of the yellow teeth of the born, I felt something which I should call fear, if the respect we owe to the sex could ever allow such a feeling to enter the breast of a man.

But be that as it might; when I heard the light-brown silk dress of the gnädige rustling close at hand, I considered the moment especially suitable for hastening, as rapidly as I could with politeness, along the paths strewn with dead leaves to my office, after first casting a last impressive look upon my adversary, and saluting with a silent bow his rustling reinforcement.

Would my threat prove effective?

I had given him two days respite, so the decision under all circumstances must speedily be made.

Strange enough! I was convinced that I had acted only from the most disinterested motives, and yet my soul was filled with disquiet, and my eye and ear were on the alert for any sign that might tell me what I had to hope or to fear. The next day passed--as far as I could see, all things remained as they were; Paula's room, the same in which I had lain sick, was emptied of its furniture; I saw her easel and her portfolios of sketches carried across the hall, and gnashed my teeth to see it.

But on the following morning the superintendent came into the office with an unusually grave face, and after giving me some papers, with his hand already upon the latch, turned and said:

"Tell me, George--you are quite disinterested in the matter--have you noticed anything in my behavior, or in that of any member of my family, that could give my brother or his wife reason to suppose that they are not welcome here?"

I was drawing at the time, and had just then a very delicate bit of pen-shading to do, so I could not raise my head from the drawing-board as I answered the superintendent:

"I have perceived nothing of the sort."

"I should trust not," he said, and his voice had a grieved tone. "It would give me pain, great pain, if I thought that if I thought that my brother could say, or even think, 'He cared nothing for my misfortune; he drove me away when his house was my only asylum.' For this, or very near it, is the case. His pension is very small for a man accustomed to his style of living; the compromise-money, even with our contribution, is little enough; and, besides, he has debts and must work for his living, and how was he to learn that in the wretched routine of official life? They have certainly not brightened our home--truth compels me to admit it--but he is my brother and my guest, and I would rather he were not going."

Perhaps his noble nature looked for some reassuring answer from me, but the fine lines of my bit of shading happened just then to be closer than ever, and I had to bend my head still lower over the drawing-board. He sighed deeply and left the room.

I drew a long breath as the door closed behind him, and the next moment I saw, in the black mirror of the corpulent inkstand on the office-table, my tall figure reflected in grotesque distortion, and performing, with arms and legs, movements which apparently represented a joyous dance of victory.

"You are monstrously pleased at something, it seems," said a voice behind me.

In my fright I forgot one leg which I had elevated in the air, and upon the other I made a pirouette which, had it been performed in public before connoisseurs, would have brought down the house.

Arthur afterwards became a connoisseur in these things, but he could not have been one at this time, for his face, as he threw himself into a chair, was by no means radiant with delight, and the tone of his voice was as dolorous as possible as he went on, resting his curly head upon his hand:

"To be sure, you have every reason; you have gained your point; from to-morrow you are again sole master here."

I had by this time brought my other foot down to the floor, and took occasion to plant myself firmly before my antagonist, for such I considered Arthur. But I was mistaken. Arthur had not come to pick a quarrel with me.

"I have my own reasons," he said, "for preferring that the old people should be away from here. The old man, you know, has become really disreputable since his misfortune; he sponges upon the first man he meets. By the way, I can pay you now the twenty-five you lent me the other day. Last night I had a fabulous run of luck--we had a little play at Lieutenant von Serring's quarters. Sorry I haven't the money about me, but you shall certainly have it to-morrow. What I was going to say is this: The old man carries it too far; sooner or later he would have compromised me hopelessly. The colonel watches me frightfully close. So no hostility, George! You have driven him away--don't deny it; I have it from mamma. She is furious with you; but I told her she might congratulate herself that you were so discreet and said nothing more about that business of the letter. So I did not come on this account, but merely to ask you how I stand with you."

"What do you mean?" I asked, not without some confusion.

"Let us have no quibbles about it, old fellow," said the ensign, tapping the sole of his left boot with the point of his sword, which lay across his right knee: "I have estimated you far too low. I see now that you are cock of the walk here, and I wish to be on good terms with you, not to quarrel. If uncle did not help me a little I should either have to starve or quit the service, and my colonel, moreover, would know why I can no longer visit here. You are a good fellow, and will not ruin me."

"That I certainly will not," I said.

"And I am not such a bad fellow, after all," the ensign went on. "I am a little wild, I know; but we are all so at our years, and so would you be if you had the chance, which you certainly have not in this cursed hole. But people can always get along with me, and they are all fond of me here: my uncle, my aunt, the boys, and----"

Arthur took his left foot from his right knee, and said:

"Look here, George; I would not tell you if I did not have the fullest confidence in your honor, notwithstanding--in short, I ask your word of honor that you will say nothing about it. I fancy that--but, as I said, you must keep it a secret--I fancy that I am not quite indifferent to my pretty cousin: she said as much to me yesterday, and even if she had not----"

And the ensign twisted the blackish down on his lip, and looked around the room apparently for a looking-glass, but there was none there. His only substitute would have been the great inkstand, which at this moment I would most joyfully have dashed to ten thousand pieces against his pretty head.

"Arthur!" cried Paula's voice in the garden; "Arthur!"

The ensign gave me a look that seemed to say: Do you see now what a lucky dog I am? and ran out of the door, which he neglected to shut after him.

I remained quite stupefied, and stared through the open garden-door at the long walk which they were pacing up and down, she walking in her usual composed manner, and he fluttering about her. Once they stood still; she looked at him, and he apparently in protestation, laid his hand upon his breast.

An indescribable sense of pain entered my bosom. I knew this feeling well; I had once before experienced it, at the moment when I heard that Constance belonged to another; but it was not then so poignant as now. I could have buried my face in my hands and wept like a child. I did not for a moment think that Arthur very probably lied to me or to himself, and perhaps both. His confidence, Paula's call, the walk in the garden, always empty at this hour--all came in such rapid succession, and agreed so well, that it was but too probable. And Arthur was such a desperately handsome fellow, and could be so amiable when he chose--I ought to know that best, I who had so dearly loved him! And had not Paula been changed towards me ever since he had been in the house? Was she not more reserved--less communicative? I had noticed it for some time; it had pained me before I knew what had produced this change--now I knew it!

Vanity of vanities! What claims had I? To what could I pretend, an outcast, condemned to long years of imprisonment?

My head sank upon my breast. I humbled myself deep in the dust before the fair and dear maiden, who ever floated before me like a heavenly being.

Then I sprang up indignant. Could she be all that I worshipped her for, if she loved this man?

Here was a terrible contradiction which apparently was easy to solve, and which I infallibly would have solved, or rather would have altogether escaped, had I been a grain wiser or more vain; but in which, as I was neither wise nor vain, I involved myself for years.

"Signs and wonders are coming to pass," said Doctor Willibrod, rushing breathlessly into my cell one evening, where I sat in dejected meditation before the stove, and watched the sparks that ran up and down the glowing plates. "Signs and wonders! They are about to strike their tents and shake off the dust from their feet. Hosanna!"

The doctor threw himself into a chair and wiped his bald scalp, upon which the drops of perspiration were standing.

"Heaven is mighty in the weak," he went on in a tone in which his internal excitement was perceptible. "Who would have believed that a little David like myself would be able to pierce the brazen skull of this Goliath of shamelessness; and yet such is the fact! The gnädige can endure the air here no longer; she made the last trial when she moved into Paula's chamber. The trial did not succeed, and she must go. Hosanna in the highest!"

"Did she tell you so herself?"

"She did indeed; and her spouse confirmed it, and spoke of hypochondriacal notions to which even the most sensible women are subject, and to which a gallant husband must make some concessions. Finally he drew me on one side, and on the score of temporary deficiency of funds, borrowed a hundred thalers from me to enable him to start at once."

"You will never see them again."

"The hundred, or the distinguished travellers?"

"Neither."

"Pleasant journey to them, and may they never cross our path again!"

The doctor sank into a devout silence; I think that something like a hymn of praise arose from his heart.

"Do you know, they are going!" resounded a deep voice behind us. It was the sergeant, who came in with a lighted lamp.

"Carriage to be ordered at Hopp's livery-stable to-morrow morning at the stroke of nine," continued the veteran. "Eight would not be too soon, one would think."

And he joyously rubbed his hands, and declared that he felt like a bear that itched in all his seven senses. But suddenly the laughter vanished from the thousand wrinkles of his face, and leaning over the back of the doctor's chair he said in a suppressed voice:

"Now we must drive away the young one, doctor; clean away! the brood is worse than the old ones, in my opinion."

"In my opinion too," said Doctor Snellius, springing up. "I have given the old ones their dismissal; you must do it for the youngster, mammoth; by heaven must you!"

I made no answer; my gaze was fixed on the glowing plate, but I saw it as through a veil which had somehow fallen over my eyes.

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Chapter XIV

And as if through a veil I see the years as they come and go, the following years of my imprisonment. Though a veil which time has woven with invisible spirit-hands, but not so thick but what every form and every hue is more or less distinguishable as I gaze backward.

Clearest of all is the fixed background in this long act of my life-drama. Even now, after so many years, I can almost always, by closing my eyes, recall the scene to its minutest details. Especially are there two lights under which I see it most clearly.

The one is a clear spring morning. A blue sky spreads above, the pointed gables of the old buildings soar as high into the free air as if the idea of a prison only existed in the dull brain of a hypochondriac who had not yet quite had his sleep out; about the projections of the gables and upon the high roofs twitter the sparrows; and even now, I cannot tell why, but the twittering of sparrows in the early morning makes the world for me a couple of thousand years younger; I fancy the scamps could not have been more joyously and impudently noisy about the hut of Adam and Eve in Paradise. The sun ascends higher; his beams glide down the old ivy-covered walls into the silent court; and the gatekeeper, who is just crossing it with a great bunch of keys, and is a crabbed old fellow usually, whistles quite cheerily, as if even he, who best knew, in this fresh morning-world could not believe in locks and bolts.

The other light is an evening in late autumn. Over in the west, behind the level chalk-coast of the island, the sun has set; the heavy clouds hanging over the horizon still glow with a thousand tints of sombre purple. Cooler blows the wind from the sea, and louder comes the noise of the waves, although looking from the Belvedere, out over the rampart, one cannot see the surf. Now the wind begins to rustle in the tall trees of the garden, and companies of dry leaves flutter down to those which rustle under my feet as I walk back to the house. I would be, on this as on every evening, welcome in the family circle; but I could not bear to have so many eyes looking kindly into mine. My eyes have been gazing gloomily--yes, with despair--at the evening clouds, and the old demon has awakened in me and whispered: Two more years, two long years; when one leap would take you down there, and the first skiff carry you into the wide world. And you will go back to your prison, to the narrow walls where nothing detains you but your own free will. Your free will! That has long since ceased to be free! You have sold it--go! go! pass the house--back to your cell; away out of this fading world of vapor, and get behind lock and bolt!

Sunshine of spring mornings, mist of autumn evenings; but far more morning sun than evening mist! Yes, when I think well upon it, I must admit that altogether morning sun was the rule, and evening mist only the exception. For how any portion of our life--or, indeed, how the background upon which this portion is defined--shall appear in our memory, really depends upon the fact of its having been bright or gloomy in our souls at that time. And in my soul at this time it was growing gradually brighter and brighter, like the increasing light of dawn; one knows not how it is, but what was lying before us confused and indistinguishable, now stands in the fairest order.

The wish of my fatherly friend has long been accomplished: in the workhouse I have learned to work. Work has become a necessity for me; I count that day as lost on the evening of which I cannot look back upon a vigorously prosecuted or a completed work. And I have acquired the workman's faculty in every craft; the quick comprehension of what is to be done, the accurate eye, the light forming hand. In the establishment nearly all handicrafts are exercised; and I have tried them nearly all, one by one, and for the most part soon surpassed the old gray-bearded adepts. The superintendent likes to repeat that I am the best workman in the establishment, which makes me at once both proud and humble: proud, for praise from his lips is to me the highest honor I can attain upon earth; humble, for I know that I owe it all to him. He has guided into fixed paths the rude strength that knew neither aim nor limit, and wished to spend its fury in the mastery of rough masses of stone; he has, above all, taught me to regard the share of sound understanding which nature has bestowed upon me, and which they did not know how to deal with at the school, as a precious possession which may even take the place of a bit of genius; or, as he often expressed it with a smile, is perhaps a bit of genius itself. He has never tormented me with things which he soon found out would not suit my brain; he soon discovered that I could never express myself with clearness and fluency in any other than my native German speech, and spared me the learning of foreign languages, except so far as was absolutely necessary. He knows that a sublime passage in the Psalms produces in me the deepest emotion; that I can never satiate myself with reading Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing; but ne never urges me to go beyond this, and discuss the literature of the day with him and Paula. But in recompense he allows me to drink full draughts from the inexhaustible well of his mathematical and physical knowledge; and his favorite recreation is to have me model a machine, or portion of a machine, which his inventive genius has devised, under his eye and guidance, in the little workshop which he fitted up for himself many years ago.

Under his eyes, for his hands are and must be idle the while. Already any physical exertion, however light, covers his body with a cold sweat, and might even seriously endanger his life.

"I do not know what I should do without you," he says, looking at me from his chair, with a sad smile on his face. "I live upon the superflux of your strength: your arm is my arm, your hand is my hand, your deep full respiration is my own. In the course of a year you will leave me; so I have but one year to live; for a man without arm, hand or breath is dead."

It is the first time that so hopeless an expression has fallen from his noble, pallid lips, and it gives me a painful shock. I have always seen him so full of courage, so entirely occupied with the duties of the day and the hour, living his life so completely, I look at him with alarm, and for the first time I really see the devastations which these six years have wrought in his form and in his face.

Six years! I have to think to convince myself that they are really six years, so little has changed in all this long time! So little? When I consider it, perhaps not so little either. The grape-vines, which only nodded over the window when I lay sick in Paula's chamber six years ago, have now climbed over almost the whole building; the great honeysuckle-arbor behind, where the peaches were trained against the wall, which I had at that time built and planted with the boys, has grown to a dense luxuriance, and is a favorite resort of Paula's, who from here can see the house, which cannot be done from the Belvedere.

The summer-house at the Belvedere has got rather a bad name, which would not have happened had not Benno by this time grown six years older, and read Faust, and so of necessity must have "a high-vaulted, narrow, Gothic room," which he can "cram full of boxes, instruments, and ancestral chattels;" for which purpose the ruinous summer-house with its pointed windows of stained glass seems to him by far the most suitable locality. Benno is now convinced that his father, who preferred to see in him the future physician or naturalist, is quite right; and Paula, who wished to make a philologist out of him, altogether wrong; and Benno must know, for he is at the glorious age of seventeen, in which there are but few whom we do not overtop by a head at least, in an intellectual point of view.

By so much he overtops his younger brother Kurt, in a literal sense; and Kurt has definitively abandoned the idea of rivalling his senior, who has in so marked a degree the high slender stature of the Zehrens, and will evidently be even taller than his tall father. But Kurt has no cause to complain: he has the deep chest, the long powerful arms, and, under thick curly hair, the broad brow, of the workman. He is very modest and unpretending; but his look is singularly fixed and piercing, and his lips firmly compressed when he is pondering over a mathematical problem, or trying to learn some dexterous manipulation at the lathe, in which he always speedily succeeds.

Kurt and I are great friends, and as nearly inseparable as possible; and yet to tell the honest truth, the twelve-year-old Oscar is my darling. He has the large luminous brown eyes of the Zehrens, which I used so to admire in my friend Arthur when he was a boy; he has Arthur's slender figure and graceful manners--I often seem to see in him Arthur again, as he looked fourteen years before. That ought not, really, to be any recommendation to me; but when he comes bounding to me, throwing back his long locks, and with joy and life sparkling in his great eyes, I cannot help spreading my arms to him. Often I ask myself if it really is this likeness which makes Oscar still keep his place as his sister's favorite. Paula, it is true, still says, as she used to say, that there is nothing of the sort; that Oscar is the youngest, and therefore needs her most, and the fact that he happens to have so decided a talent for painting and drawing, and so is peculiarly her pupil, is a mere chance, for which she is not responsible.

Just so Paula spoke six years ago: I distinctly remember that summer afternoon when she made that large chalk-drawing of me under the plane-trees--as distinctly as if it had been but yesterday. And when I look at Paula, I cannot believe that I have known her for six years, and that she will be twenty next month. Then she looked older than she really was, while now she looks just as much younger. She is perhaps a very little taller, and her figure is fuller and more womanly, but in her sweet face is so much childlike innocence, and even her movements have still the bashfulness, sometimes almost awkwardness, of a very young girl. But when any one looks into her eyes, he cannot venture to take her for any other than she really is. These eyes do not blaze with bold fire; their glances are not shy or languishing like those of a boarding-school girl fresh from a secret reading of her favorite gilt-edged poet--they are luminous with a calm, steady, vestal fire, unmindful of the world, and yet compassing the world, as the artist's eye must beam.

And Paula has become an artist in these six years. She has had no teacher, except a decayed genius who was in the workhouse for a short time, and afterwards was supported by the superintendent's charity to the time of his death, which happened long ago. She has attended no academy, has hardly seen a work of art, except two or three fine old family-portraits, and a magnificent engraving of the Sistine Madonna, which adorn the walls of the superintendent's house. What she is, she has become of herself, by means of her wondrous eye, which looks into the heart, not merely of men, but of all things; by means of her hand, which could not be so delicate and slender if her soul did not flow to its very finger-tip, and render it a plastic instrument; and by means of her diligence, whose energy and unweariedness appear absolutely incomprehensible when one reflects what a weight of labor, besides, rests upon these tender shoulders. But she devotes every leisure moment to her beloved art; and she knows how to find leisure at times when others would solemnly declare that they did not know whether they were on their heads or their feet. The wealth of her collection of studies of all kinds, sketches, designs, copies, is wonderful. There is not an interesting head among the prisoners or convicts that has escaped her. To sit to the young lady is an honor and favor much sought after and much envied throughout the whole establishment, and proud is the man who can boast of it. But her chief model is the old Süssmilch, whose grand head with its short gray locks, and furrowed energetic face, is really a treasure to an artist's eye. The old fellow figures under all possible characters: as Nestor, Merlin, Trusty Eckart, Belisarius, Götz von Berlichingen--even as Schweizer out of The Robbers; mere studies all for great historical pictures of which the brave girl is dreaming in the future. In the meantime but one of these has appeared upon canvas: Richard the Lion-heart, sick in his tent and visited by an Arab physician. The scene is from Scott's Talisman. In the background is an English yeoman, who looks sorrowfully at his sick lord, and a young Norman noble, who, with hand on his sword, fixes a keen and suspicious look upon the physician. Richard the Lion-heart is myself, as she sketched me, when a convalescent, at the Belvedere; in the Arab physician, a singular, fantastic, gnome-like figure--Dr. Willibrod declares he discovers his own likeness, though the Arab wears no spectacles, and his head, though bald without doubt, is wound about with the green turban of the Hadji; the yeoman is Sergeant Süssmilch, drawn to the life, though he has accommodated himself to another costume; the knight, with short brown hair and bright brown eyes--a handsome, graceful, youthfully elastic figure--is Arthur.

Is it an accident that just this figure is most fully elaborated, almost to completeness, and that it is made so lovely?

I have no means of answering this question, except what I draw from my own foreboding soul. Arthur, who has long been a lieutenant, and has been stationed this spring at the military school in the capital, has often visited the house, it is true, but the frequency of his visits diminished with every year, and I could not say that he had sought to draw any nearer to Paula. But there must have been some reason that towards me, who had done him no injury, who always treated him in a friendly manner, however little heart I had sometimes for it, he became constantly more and more reserved, and at last avoided me as far as possible. The money which he owed me, and which in the course of years had increased to a sum by no means insignificant for my circumstances, could not be the cause, for I had given it to him willingly and cheerfully--he is always in difficulties, and resolved to blow out his brains--never asked for repayment, but always assured him that I was in no hurry for it; no, it cannot be the money. Does he fear a rival in me? Good heavens! I can hardly be a dangerous rival. Who could fear a prisoner, whose future is a book with seven seals, and scarcely containing one pleasant chapter? Can he never forgive me that Paula is always as kind and friendly to me as ever? Have I not deserved that, who do all I can for her, and read her lightest wish in her eyes?

I do not know; as little do I know if it is chance that Paula, from the hour that Arthur went to Berlin, painted no more on the picture. And yet for this purpose she needs him least of all, for his knightly copy only lacks a few touches. I ponder the reason over and over. And as I venture once to ask Paula about it, she answers, not without some hesitation, which is a rare thing with her:

"I have lost all pleasure in the picture."

This leads to a question which seems even worse than the first, and which I had better leave unmeddled with, if I were prudent.

But I am not prudent, and cannot get it out of my head; and as my head can make nothing of it, I lay it before Doctor Willibrod in a quite casual manner, as if nothing really depended upon the answer:

"Tell me, doctor, why has Fräulein Paula lost all pleasure in her picture?"

"Who says that?" asked the doctor.

"She herself."

"Then ask herself."

"If I wished to do or could do that, I would not need your opinion."

"Why should I have any opinion in the matter?" cries the doctor. "What does it concern me why Paula does not choose to work on the thing any longer? Since nature herself has not thought fit to finish me, I do not care whether I am finished in the picture or not."

I see that I make no progress in this way, so I venture to hint that perhaps Arthur's absence has had an influence upon Paula's feelings in the matter.

"Does the cat come to the porridge at last?" crows Doctor Willibrod. "Oh, he thinks that we have not long seen how he licks his paws! And the porridge is so sweet--so sweet! just like the thought that such a girl can give her heart to such a fellow. 'It is impossible,' says Master Tom, and his whiskers bristle with distress. Why, impossible? What is impossible? Is the life of her father anything but a protracted sacrifice? Is she not her father's daughter? When one is once well under way, a little more or less makes no difference; and the lamb offers itself up to save the wolf. Oh, it is a merry business, that of saving wolves! But still merrier is it to stand by and look patiently on--not to seize a club and rush in--oh by no means! but merely to ask from time to time: 'Don't you think, respected sir, that the wolf will eat the Iamb at last?' Get away from me all of you that wear human faces!"

Doctor Willibrod crows so high, and looks so exactly like the apoplectic billiard-ball we have heard of, that I am sorry to have begun the conversation, and that too so unskilfully. I now recollect that lately the doctor has always seemed curiously excited whenever in any way Paula's name happened to be mentioned. Often he speaks of her in such a way that one would think he hated her, if one did not know that he worships her. If any one reproaches him with it, he lays the blame on the heat of the weather. The fiend himself, who is used to a warm climate, might perhaps keep cool in such a temperature, he says, but no one can blame mere men if they now and then lose their wits a little at eighty degrees in the shade.

And really during the latter part of the summer the heat has grown absolutely intolerable. Day after day the sun traverses a cloudless steel-blue sky, and its beams prostrate everything they touch. The grass has long been burnt up; the bastion and ramparts are yellow-brown; the flowers have prematurely withered; the foliage rustles from the trees before the time. All living things creep about with heavy gaze fixed upon the earth, and the air quivers as above a heated oven. The health of the town has been seriously affected, and we are glad that the boys who now have holiday, are on a visit to some friends of the family at a neighboring country-place. The state of things in the prison is by no means satisfactory to the superintendent and the doctor, who vie with each other in attention to the sick, though the doctor steadily maintains that it is the height of folly to risk one's skin for the sake of other people.

"And then beside, when, like Humanus, one has but half a lung, and a blind wife and four children, and not a shilling of capital--what will come of that?"

I remember that the doctor put this question to me in this very same conversation, and that I repeated it to myself an hour later as I stood alone before the Belvedere, and, without either seeing or hearing, stared out at the evening sky, which I could see from over the rampart extending down to the sea. I did not see that over the sky, which for weeks together had shown not the slightest haze, a vapor had now spread itself through which the evening light had a ghastly, pallid look; I did not hear that strange wailing sounds were passing through the air; I did not even turn round when a deep voice close at my ear growled out the very question which I was occupied in trying to solve:

"What will come of that?"

It was the old Süssmilch, who coming to my side pointed with his right hand to the sulphurous glare in the west.

"A storm, what else?" I replied, scarcely noticing what I said.

I felt that the oppressive sultriness, which was weighing down my soul as well as all nature, must expend itself in a storm.

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Chapter XV

And there came a storm such as had not raged along this coast--which yet throughout the year heard many a fierce gale sweep over its low beach of sand and chalk--within the memory of man.

It was about midnight, when I was awakened by a crashing as of thunder, making the old house quiver to its foundations, and followed by a rattling and clattering of falling tiles, and of slamming doors and shutters, like the crackle of musketry following the heavy discharge of a battery.

This was the storm that had so long been announcing its coming. My first thought was of those in the house in the garden. With a single bound I was out of my bed and dressed, as the sergeant thrust his gray head in at my door.

"Already up?" said he; "but this is enough to rouse a bear with seven senses. He will be awake, too."

The old man did not say who would be awake; between us two it was not necessary.

"I was just going to him," I said.

"Right," said the old man. "I will stay here the while. Somebody will be needed here who has his head on his shoulders. It is a most diabolical state of things; worse than eight years ago; and then the men would not be kept in their dormitories. A little more and we should have had murder done."

During this brief conversation, the tremendous shocks had been twice repeated, and, if possible, with still greater violence. Add to this a howling and an uproar--we had to speak almost in a shout to make ourselves heard. This was in the room--what must it then be outside?

This I learned a minute later, as I crossed the prison court. A pitchy darkness lay like a thick black pall over the earth; not a star, not the faintest gleam of light. The hurricane raged between the high walls like a beast of prey that finds himself for the first time in a cage. Despite my strength and the momentum of my heavy frame, I had to struggle with the monster that flung me this way and that. Thus I fought my way through the thick darkness, among the tiles that came clattering from the roofs, to the superintendent's house, out of the windows of which here and there a light was visible.

In the lower hall I met Paula. She was carrying a lighted taper in her hand, and its light fell upon her pale face and large eyes, which filled with tears as she saw me.

"I knew you would come," she said. "It is a fearful night. He insists on going over to the prison; and he has been so very unwell lately. I dare not ask him to stay. Indeed, he must go if his duty commands. It is very kind of you to come."

The tears that had glistened in her eyes now slowly rolled down her pale cheeks.

"Do not laugh at me," she said, "but for several days I have felt as if some misfortune were about to happen."

"We have all felt so, dear Paula. It is merely a bit of egotism to fancy that a thunder-storm which is now hanging over thousands and thousands is to smite precisely us."

I meant to say this very courageously; but my voice quivered, and at the last words I was forced to turn away my eyes.

"I will go to your father, Paula," I said.

"Here he comes now," said Paula.

The superintendent stepped out of his room. Before he had gently closed the door, I caught a glimpse of a white figure which he seemed by gentle words and gestures to be urging to remain in the room. It was Frau von Zehren. Had she also the feeling that some calamity was impending? Perhaps even more strongly than we. Who among us who see, hears the faint spirit-voices that whisper and murmur through the night of the blind?

A deep melancholy lay upon his features; but it instantly gave place to a surprised smile as he saw us both standing there. It was as when one walks through a dark rocky ravine whose sombre shadows spread a gloom over his face, and suddenly, at a sharp turn of the dusky path, he sees the open valley at his feet, and a wide flood of golden sunlight streams all about him.

"See there, both my dears ones!" he said.

He extended both hands to us.

"Both my dear ones," he repeated.

Did he really see us? Did he, out of the rocky gorge, catch a gleam of sunny vales in the future? I have often asked this question of myself, when thinking of the happy spirit-like look with which at this moment the father saw his beloved daughter at the side of the man who was dear to him as a son.

But this was but for a moment, and the present then resumed its rights.

"You will go with me, George," he said; "I must go through the prison. It cannot be but that the excitement which has been growing on us all lately has also seized the poor prisoners. And with them excitement means howls, and shrieks, and gnashing of teeth. Do you remember that September night, eight years ago, Paula? It was not so terrible as this, and the men were like maniacs."

Paula nodded assent. "I remember it well, father," she said. "How could I help it? You suffered so much from the consequences afterwards. Here comes Doris with the lantern," she hastily added, while a flush of shame suffused her cheeks at having for a moment attempted to dissuade her father from his duty.

She took the great lantern with its two lighted candles from the hands of the frightened girl, and gave it to me. The superintendent gave her a kind look from his large grave eyes, buttoned up his coat, fixed his hat firmly on his head, and turning to me said: "Come, George."

We stepped out into the raging, thundering night. In my left hand I carried the lantern; my right arm I gave the superintendent. I had thought that I should have to carry or almost to carry him, as he had been completely prostrated by the heat of the last few weeks; and indeed his first steps were heavy and tottering as those of a man who has for the first time risen from his bed after a long illness. All at once he let go my arm and stood firm and erect:

"Do you hear, George? I said so!"

We were just passing under the windows of one of the great dormitories, in which fully a hundred prisoners were shut up at this hour. The light-colored wall was faintly defined against the darkness; from the windows came a feeble light; the storm raged against the wall and whistled shrilly through the gratings; but louder than the howling and whistling of the storm were the horrible noises that came from the interior of the building. Such sounds might come from lost souls in the night of Tartarus.

"Light! light!" was the cry. "We want light!"

"Quick, George!" said the superintendent, hastening on before me with such rapid strides that I had difficulty in keeping up with him. We passed through the open door into the wide hall, where we found the sergeant in lively dispute with the inspector and half-a-dozen overseers.

"He will tell you that I am right," I heard the brave old man cry. "One must be a bear with seven senses; not able to tell a tooth-pick from a barn-door! In the name of three million devils, light all the lanterns!"

"Yes; light all the lanterns," said the superintendent, coming up.

The men stepped respectfully back, only the Inspector said sullenly: "There is no reason for breaking the regular rule of the house, Herr Superintendent; and the men know that there is no reason; but they take advantage of the chance--that is all."

"Perhaps not quite all, Herr Müller," said the superintendent. "We two, you and I, have not been sitting with a hundred others in a locked room in the dark--or as good as in the dark--and in a night like this when it is as if the end of the world had come. Fear, like courage, is contagious. Follow me, you and Süssmilch, and two others to light the lanterns."

He did not name me: he may have thought it a matter of course that I would follow him. We turned into the corridor and reached the door which led to the great ward, the windows of which we had passed. "Light! light!" they were still shrieking inside, and heavy blows fell upon the oaken door, which cracked at intervals as if they were trying to burst it open.

"Open!" said the superintendent to the turnkey.

The man cast a stealthy look at the inspector, who looked sullenly at the ground.

"Open!" repeated the superintendent.

With hesitation the man placed the key in the lock, and drew the heavy iron bar from the staples. With hesitation he threw back the first and then the second bolt. As he laid his hand upon the third, he gave a furtive glance at the superintendent, upon whose lips played a smile.

"Why, your heart is usually in the right place, Martin," he said.

In an instant Martin had thrown back the bolt; the doors were opened. The frightful spectacle that was then presented to my eyes I shall never forget, though I should attain the age of the most patriarchal raven.

Three or four feet behind the door was another, a grating of iron, reaching as high as the ceiling; and behind this grating was a frightful entanglement of men piled upon one another, conglomerated together--here a pair of arms thrust out, there a pair of legs, as out of a heap of corpses, flung together into a promiscuous grave upon a field of battle; with the difference that this mass moved, writhed internally, and out of it, here and there and everywhere, glared living eyes, terrible, fierce, desperate, maniac eyes.

"Men!" cried the superintendent, and his usually soft voice rose with a power that overbore the tumult, "are you not ashamed of yourselves? Would you rush upon destruction to avoid a danger which nowhere exists but in your own heads, and in the darkness around you?"

Was it the courageous voice? Was it the look of the man? Was it the effect of the strong light which was thrown upon the mass from the lanterns of the turnkeys? the coil disentangled itself, arms found their way to bodies, legs stood again upon their feet, even the eyes lost their frenzied glare, and here and there a man, either dazzled or ashamed, cast them down.

"Make room for the door to be opened, men!" said the superintendent.

They fell back: the grating was opened; the superintendent entered, and we followed.

"Now see, children, how foolish you are," he continued, in a friendly tone. "There you stand in you shirts, freezing, shivering--you really ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Get to bed again, or else dress yourselves and sit up; I will have your lanterns lighted, so that each one of you can see what a chicken-heart his neighbor is, and what a bold fellow he is himself."

The men looked at one another, and over more than one face that had been distorted with terror there came a smile. In the rear two laughed out loud.

"That is right," said the superintendent, "laugh away; no devil can hold his own against an honest laugh. And now good-night, children, I must look after the others."

By this time the overseers had let down and lighted the four great lanterns that were drawn up to the ceiling. A cheerful brightness filled the large room. Outside, the storm was raging and howling as before; but a kindly word falling into these dark spirits had appeased the storm within.

"Let us see after the others," said the superintendent.

And we traversed the echoing corridors, in which this night the noise from without overpowered the sound of our steps. Wherever we came we found the prisoners in a state of the most fearful excitement--excitement beyond all proportion to the causes which produced it; everywhere the same; sometimes vented in wild curses, and sometimes in the most piteous supplications; but everywhere the cry of the poor wretches for light, only more light in the fearful night. But everywhere the superintendent succeeded in quieting the wild creatures with his calm words, except the occupants of one ward, who either would not or could not be quieted. This ward lay in a wing of the building which was more exposed to the violence of the blast than any other, and here, in consequence, the storm burst with all its fury. The terrific detonations, like peals of thunder, with which the tempest burst against the ancient walls, the furious howling with which it whirled around the angles, after striving frantically for minutes together to sweep the obstruction out of its path; the wailing, lamenting, gasping, sobbing tones that came, no one knew how or whence--all was frightful enough to fill the soul of even a free man with secret horror. And even while the superintendent was speaking to them, a chimney on one of the higher buildings adjacent was blown down, and in falling broke through the roof of this wing, sending clattering down hundreds of tiles, increasing the uproar, if not the danger. The men demanded to be let out; they would come out at every cost; they were resolved not to be buried alive.

"But, children," said the superintendent, "you are safer here than anywhere else; there is not another part of the building so strong as this."

"Very well for him," muttered a square-built, curly-headed fellow; "he can go home and sleep in his soft bed."

"Give me your mattress, friend," said the superintendent.

The fellow looked at him in amazement.

"Your mattress, friend," he repeated. "Lend it to me for to-night: I will see if it is so hard, and if it is such dreadful sleeping here."

A deep silence suddenly succeeded the wild tumult. The men looked at each other in confusion; they did not know whether this was jest or earnest. But the superintendent did not move from the place. He stood there silent, thoughtful, with head depressed; no one, not even I, ventured to speak to him. All eyes were turned to the audacious fellow, who looked as if he had been condemned to death, and was about to be led to execution. His mutinous spirit was broken; silently he went and took up his mattress and brought it to the superintendent.

"Lay it there, my friend," said the latter. "I am tired; I thank you for providing me a resting-place."

The man spread out the mattress upon the floor; the superintendent laid himself upon it and said:

"Now lie down, all of you. You, Herr Müller, go to the infirmary and see if I am needed there. You remain with me, George."

The inspector went, with the turnkeys; the door was closed and locked; we were alone.

Alone among about eighty convicts, for the most part the worst and fiercest criminals in the whole prison.

The lanterns that hung from the ceilings cast a dim light over the rows of beds which were arranged along the walls, and in three long lines, extending the length of the ward. The men had either lain down, or were crouching upon their beds. The man who had given his mattress to the superintendent might have done the same, for there were some half-dozen of vacant beds in the ward; but he seemed afraid to occupy any one of them, and crouched upon the bare floor in a dark corner. I stood with folded arms against the stone pillar which supported the centre of the roof, looked at the strange spectacle before me, and listened to the storm which raged without with unabated fury. The superintendent lay quite still, his head supported by his hand. He slept, or seemed to sleep; and yet I fancied that from time to time a shiver shook his frame. The room was warm, but we had been thoroughly drenched by the rain in crossing the court; he had no covering, and had just risen from a sick bed. What will be the end? I sighed in the depth of my heart.

Suddenly a man near me, who had several times turned his head towards the superintendent, arose from his bed, walked softly with bare feet to me, and whispered:

"He must not lie there in that way; it will be his death."

I shrugged my shoulders: "What can we do?"

And then another came up, and another rough voice whispered:

"He must go home. Why should he lie here freezing for the sake of that shock-headed rascal? It shall not be our fault."

"No, it shall not be our fault," murmured other voices. In a moment a crowd has collected around me, and increases every moment. Not one of these men was sleeping, any more than myself. All had the same thought in their rude hearts. They want to repair their misbehavior, and do not know how to go about it. One finds a way at last:

"He shall go himself and beg him."

"Yes; that shall he!"

"Where is he?"

"Back yonder."

"Bring him along!"

They rush to the corner where the fellow is crouching, a dozen strong hands lift him to his feet; they drag him to the superintendent, who raises himself from his hard couch as they approach. The light of the nearest lantern falls full in his pale face, shadowed by his dark hair and beard. A happy smile plays about his mouth, and his large eyes beam with strange light.

"I thank you," he said, "I thank you. The hours which your kindness bestows upon me shall be devoted to you. But one thing more, children! This man here is myself: what you do to him, you do to me."

The man had sunk upon his knees before him; he laid his hand, as in blessing, upon his bushy head; and then we turned to the door. I cast a look back: not one of the men had moved from his place. All eyes are fixed upon the superintendent, who is leaving the ward, supported by my arm. But I doubt whether all see him; for in many eyes are glistening tears.

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Chapter XVI

It was two o'clock when we re-entered the house. At the first touch of the bell Paula appeared in the hall; but the superintendent only gave her an affectionate smile and a pat on the cheek, and kept on to his chamber, whither I followed him. He did not speak to his daughter, because he could not speak. His face was of a corpse-like paleness, and deep red spots burned in the hollows of his cheeks. With a motion of his hand he asked my assistance, and I helped him to undress. As soon as he was in bed he turned his eyes upon me with a look of gratitude, and then closed them in death-like exhaustion.

I took my seat by his bedside, and could not avert my eyes from the pale, noble face. A sublime calm lay upon it; even the red spots had vanished from the cheeks; no movement betrayed that in this breast, that scarcely moved, a heart was beating, that under this lofty brow dwelt a spirit; I felt as though I was watching by a corpse.

Thus solemnly and slowly passed the hours of that night. In all my life I have never met with a stronger contrast than that of the calm face of that sleeping man with the wild fury of the storm that raged without with unabated violence. Well might he sleep; the mightiest pinion of an earthly storm could not soar to the blessed heights where his spirit was floating.

Involuntarily my thoughts recurred to the night when the smuggler, who had just become a murderer, lay wounded in my arms in that hollow in the ruin, writhing, cursing God, himself, and all the world. And that man was the brother of this? It seemed incredible that one mother could have brought forth two such different beings; that the same sun could shine on two men so unlike; and then again it seemed to me that both, the wild one and the gentle, the hater and the friend of men, were one and the same person; as if I had once already seen the pale face before me; as if it were the same face upon whose brow, pallid in death, the morning sun shone, as it rose ruddy out of the sea after that night of horror in the ruin on the cliff.

But these thoughts were but the wild fancies of one overcome by weariness. I must indeed have really slept for a while, for as I raised my head again the gray twilight was glimmering through the lowered curtains. The superintendent was still lying there as he had lain all night, his eyes closed and his white hands folded over his breast. I softly arose and crept out of the room. I had to breathe fresh air; I felt that I must try to shake off the weight that pressed upon my heart.

As I crossed the silent hall I was surprised to see that the hand of the great clock at the foot of the stairs pointed to eight. I had supposed, from the dim light, that it was not more than five or six. But as soon as I stepped out of doors, I saw why it was no lighter. The black pall which had lain over the earth in the night was now changed to a gray one--a pallid twilight, that was neither night nor day. And the fury of the storm was still unabated. As I turned the sheltering corner of the house, I had to plant myself firmly on my feet in order not to be dashed to the earth. Thus, crouching down, I made my way through the garden, now a scene of devastation. There lay trees torn up by the roots, and others broken off but a few feet from the ground. The path was strewn with branches and twigs, and the air filled with whirling leaves. Only the old plane-trees at the Belvedere still resisted the storm, and their majestic boughs were lashed wildly about by the blast. I made my way to the Belvedere, the only spot from which one could obtain a view, though but a limited one, of the stormy quarter. I feared that the old summer-house would not have been able to resist the tempest; but there it still stood--doubtless the high bastion had protected it. I hurried into it for shelter; and as I hastily threw open the door I saw Paula standing at one of the narrow windows, on the side facing the sea.

"You here, Paula?" I cried in alarm. "You here in this weather, when the house may come down at any moment!"

"How is my father?" asked Paula.

"He is sleeping," I said. "You have not slept."

I saw that by her pale cheeks and the dark circles round her eyes. She looked away from me, and pointed out of the window at which we were standing, which now was but a window-space, for the storm had blown in all the stained panes except one in one corner.

"Is that not terrible?" she said.

And it was terrible indeed. Sky and sea of a leaden gray, and between sea and sky whirling white specks like snowflakes driven by a November wind. These white specks were gulls, and their dismal cries reached us at intervals. Upon the high bastion, opposite us, the storm had beaten down the tall grass which used to nod so lightly in the wind, as flat as if heavy rollers had passed over it; and over the long, low rampart from time to time appeared streaks which at first I could not account for. Could they be the crests of waves? The thing seemed impossible. The rampart, as I knew, was more than twelve feet high, and in front of it was a wide sandy beach, on which a popular bathing-establishment had been erected. Over the rampart a glimpse of the sea might always be caught, but it was at a considerable distance; but these streaks, if they were waves, were not dancing out at sea; I saw plainly how they rose, fell, tumbled over, and beaten to foam and spray flew over the rampart. It was the surf, and the surf had risen to the crest of the rampart!

"What will come of it?" asked Paula.

It was the very question which I had asked myself yesterday evening at this identical place, though in another and very different sense. I was then only thinking of her who now stood before me, and looked up to me with large, terrified eyes; but in my spirit, confused by the sleepless night I had passed, nature and human destiny mingled inextricably together:

"Paula," I said.

She glanced up to me again.

"Paula," I repeated, and my voice trembled and my hand sought hers, "if the storm of life ever rages around you as that is raging--will you turn to me for help and protection? Will you, Paula? say!"

A bright flush reddened her pale cheeks; she drew her hand, which I did not venture to detain, out of mine.

"You are one of those good men, George, who desire to help all, and upon whom, therefore, all think they have claims."

"That is not an answer, Paula," I said.

She opened her lips to speak; but I was not to learn if the unfavorable construction I had given her words was the right one or not, for at this moment a blast smote the summer-house, tearing off the roof, and driving in the remaining sashes, that fell in shivers around us. I caught Paula around the waist and sprang with her out of the house, which fell with a crash the instant we had quitted it. Paula gave a shriek of terror, and clasped me convulsively. My heart bounded with joy when I thus held the dear maiden in my arms; but she released her hold immediately.

"What weaklings we women are, after all!" she said. "You men must think that we exist for no other purpose than to be protected by you."

As she said this there was an indignant expression in her large eyes and her brow; but her lips twitched with hardly-repressed weeping.

What was passing in her thoughts at that moment?

I did not learn this until years later.

We went--or rather, struggled--back to the house. No further word was spoken between us, nor did she take my arm, which I, for my part, did not venture to offer her. Would she have rejected the arm of another as well? I asked myself.

With a sadness that I had never felt before, I was sitting an hour later in the office. How could I work with this disquiet in my heart, with this weight upon my brain, and on such a day as this? But "first do your work, everything else will come in in its place," was the word of the superintendent, and in accordance with this word I seated myself at my work, and copied lists and examined accounts without making a single error in my figures. I had well spent my long apprenticeship: I could now say that I had learned to work.

It was noon when I went to the superintendent to place the papers I had prepared before him for his signature. When I reached the ante-room of his cabinet I stopped, for through the half-opened door I heard some one speaking within.

"It is a grand opportunity," said an unctious voice, which of late years had been less frequently heard in the superintendent's house--"a glorious time, a time of the Lord, who reveals himself in storm and tempest, to awaken the heart of sinful man from its obduracy. Let us rightly understand this time, Herr Superintendent, and not let the Lord appeal to us in vain."

"You will excuse me if I do not share your view, Herr von Krossow. I have this night had an example of the frenzy to which superstitious terror drives these wild souls. If you wish to explain to the men these phenomena of nature, I am most willing to aid you in the undertaking; but I see no advantage in a general prayer-meeting, and must therefore, I regret to say, decline to permit it."

The superintendent said this in his calm, convincing manner, but it did not seem to convince his antagonist. A brief pause succeeded, and the soft voice began again:

"I forgot to mention that the president, from whom I have just come, and to whom I imparted my intention, entirely agreed with my views, and even expressed the wish that the bells might be rung in all the churches, and the congregations assembled for prayer. He cannot fail to feel it very sensibly if here--just here--his authority is--what shall I say?--disregarded."

"I am afraid," replied the superintendent, "that many more will find themselves to-day compelled to refuse the customary respect to the authority of the president; I fear that the bells will be rung, not to call the people to the churches, but to summon them to work. Unless the storm soon abates there will be much work and hard work to do before night."

At this moment, through the roar of the storm, was audible a lamentable tone as if coming from the clouds, followed by other dismal sounds of wailing and crying, and suddenly the door leading into the hall was thrown open, and the doctor rushed breathlessly in.

"It is as we expected," he panted, hurrying past me into the superintendent's room, into which I followed him in excitement which had something better in it than mere curiosity.

"It is as we expected," he repeated, taking off his spectacles and wiping from his face the wet sand and other drift with which he was covered from head to foot. "In an hour, or two hours at most, the water will be over the rampart, unless a breach first happens, which is to be feared, in more than one place."

"What precautions are being taken?"

"They are sitting with hands in their laps--is not that enough? I hurried to the chief of police and to the president to entreat them to send every man that could use his arms to the rampart, and to order back the battalion, which marched out to parade two hours ago, because no countermand arrived--can you conceive such madness!--and is now struggling and buffeted upon the road, unless the storm has blown them all into the ditches long ago, which is more probable. Under all the circumstances they cannot be far, and would soon be back if a couple of mounted couriers were sent after them. They are more wanted here than in the ditches. All this I laid before the gentlemen. What do you suppose the chief of police answered me? He had been a soldier himself, and knew that an officer must obey his orders. It was not to be supposed that the battalion would be recalled at his request. And the president--that pretended saint--what is it? O, Herr von Krossow, you here? I am sorry that you have had to hear the opinion I have of your uncle; but it is out now, and I can neither help myself nor him. I cannot see that the sanctity is anything but a pretence, which in such a calamity talks of the judgments of God, and that it is vain to kick against the pricks."

"I shall not fail, as in duty bound, to notify my uncle of the friendly opinions which are so frankly expressed of him here," said Herr von Krossow, seizing his broad-rimmed hat with hands that trembled with rage, and hastening out of the door.

"A pleasant journey to you!" cried the pugnacious doctor, running a few steps after him, like a cock whose adversary has left him master of the arena. "A pleasant journey!" he called once more through the open door, which he then, snorting wrath and scorn, flung furiously to.

"You have lost your place here," said the superintendent, seriously.

"At all events, the fellow will know my opinion of him," crowed the doctor.

"What does that matter?" asked the superintendent. "But that you should be physician here matters much, and to me most of all. We must try to repair this in some way."

The superintendent walked up and down the room with slow steps, his hands clasped behind his back, as was his custom; the doctor stood first upon one foot and then upon the other, looking greatly ashamed and confused.

"What is it?" asked the superintendent of a turnkey, who entered at that moment with an agitated face.

"There is a crowd of people here, Herr Superintendent."

"Where?"

"At the gate."

"What kind of people?"

"Mostly from the Bridge-street, Herr Superintendent. They say they will all be drowned. And since the prison stands so much higher----"

Without a word the superintendent left the room and crossed the court. We followed. He had on a short silk coat he usually wore in the house, and was without hat or cap. As he strode on before us, the storm, which was furious in the court, dishevelled his thin, dark hair, and the ends of his long moustache fluttered like pennons in the wind.

We reached the gate which the growling porter was ordered to open. The previous evening the opening of a prison door had exhibited to me a frightful spectacle, and I now had to behold a most moving and pitiable one, which has remained no less indelibly impressed on my memory.

There were outside probably fifty persons, mostly women, some men, both old and young, and children, some even in the arms of their mothers. Nearly all were carrying in their hands, or had placed upon the ground, some of their little possessions, and these apparently the first that came to hand, caught up in haste and alarm. I saw a woman with a great wash-tub on her shoulders, which she clutched as firmly as if it would fall to pieces if let go; and a man carrying an empty bird-cage, which the wind was whirling about. The gate was no sooner open than they all rushed into the yard as if pursued by furies. The turnkey wished to oppose their entrance, but the superintendent took him by the arm.

"Let them in," he said.

We had stepped on one side, and let the mad torrent pour by us, and it now spread over the court, and in part rushed up to the door of the building.

"Halt!" cried the superintendent.

They all stopped.

"Let the women and children enter," he said, to his subordinates, "also the old and the sick. You men may go in to warm yourselves, but in ten minutes you must all be here again. This is no time for men to be sitting behind the stove."

Here came new guests through the open gate.

"Let them in--let all in!" said the superintendent.

A young woman with a child in her arms, who had rushed in after the others, went up to the superintendent and said:

"I want my husband! Why do you keep him locked up? I can't carry all the brats at once! If I don't find the rest, you may drown this one too!"

She was just going to lay the child on the ground, when she suddenly turned upon the doctor, who was standing by, pushed the child into his arms, and sprang out of the gate. The woman had wonderfully long blond hair, which had fallen loose, and as she rushed off in frantic haste it fluttered behind her in a thousand strings.

"Get rid of your little burden," said the superintendent, smiling, to the doctor. "You must take command here in my place. Look after the women and children, my friend, and see that the men are through with their dinner in a quarter of an hour; then let them come out here, all of them, without exception, but the sick."

The doctor cast an inquiring look at his chief. Suddenly a light seemed to flash across his grotesque physiognomy, and holding the wailing child close to his breast, he ran with his queer tripping steps into the house to carry out the orders he had just received.

"Stay here, George," said the superintendent to me, "and talk to the people, as thou knowest how. I shall be back in ten minutes."

He went: I remained staring after him. What was the meaning of this? For the first time he had called me thou. His eye had been steadily fixed upon me; it was not a trip of the tongue, and yet he had not spoken it intentionally; I felt this instinctively; I felt, indeed I knew, that it was because at this solemn moment the little barriers which conventional life had thrown up between us, in this man's eyes, shrivelled up into nothing. And I knew what was in his mind: I knew that he was preparing himself for a battle of life and death, and that he had gone to take farewell of his family. A shudder ran through me; my breast swelled high; I raised my head proudly.

"Good people," I said, "take courage: he will help you if a man can."

They crowded around me, bewailing their great peril; how the water had been rising since yesterday midnight at the rate of nearly a foot an hour; that had now been going on for twelve hours, and the rampart in the lowest part was only twelve or thirteen feet high; that the Bridge-street and Sweed-street next to it were but very little above the ordinary level of the sea, and if the rampart gave way, all were lost. Master-Pilot Walter, who understood these things well, had always said something would happen; but there was no money for anything of the sort--that was all spent on the bastions and casemates on the land-side.

"And they have clapped my two boys into uniform," said an old man, "and now they are out on the road and cannot help us."

"But he will," I said.

The old man looked at me incredulously.

"He is a good gentleman," he said; "every child knows that; but what can he do?"

Here the superintendent came again out of the house, and at the same time out of three several doors which opened from the different wings of the main-building streamed forth the convicts, and work-house men, about four hundred in number, all more or less stalwart men, in their gray working-jackets, the most already provided with spades, picks, axes, ropes, and whatever else likely to be of service, that they had been able to find in the establishment. The men were headed by their overseers.

Thus they came on in military order and step. "Halt! Front face!" commanded the overseers, and the men halted in three companies, steady as a battalion under arms.

"This way, men!" cried the superintendent, in a sonorous voice. The men obeyed. All eyes were fixed upon him, who stood with his head bent down as if reflecting. Suddenly he looked up, his eye flashed around the circle, and with a voice that rose strong and clear above the storm, he cried:

"Men! Each one of us has had some one hour in his life which he would give much to be able to recall. To-day a great good fortune is granted you: every one of you, whoever he may be and whatever he has done--every one of you may now buy back that hour, and become again what he once was, before God, himself, and all good men. You have been told what you are wanted for. It is to risk your lives for the lives of others--for the lives of helpless women and children! I make you no vain promises; I do not say what you are about to do will make free men of you; on the contrary, I tell you that you will return here just as you left. Neither freedom nor any other reward awaits you when the gate closes behind you this evening after your work is over--nothing but the thanks of your superintendent, a glass of stiff grog, and a comfortable rest upon your beds, such as an honest fellow deserves. Will you stand by me on these conditions? Whoever will, let him raise his right hand and give a hearty Aye!"

Four hundred right hands flew up, and from four hundred throats came the shout AYE!

At once the crowd, which had been joined by the fugitives from the town, was divided into three companies, of which Süssmilch was to command the first, I the second, and a convict named Mathes, formerly a ship-builder, and a very active, intelligent man, the third. The overseers had fallen into the ranks with the rest.

"Every man is his own overseer to-day!" said the superintendent.

Thus we marched out of the gate.

The short street upon which the principal prison-gate opened was soon traversed, but at the old and rather narrow gate at the end of the street we met with a singular resistance, which, more than anything hitherto, exhibited the might of the storm. The old gate was in fact only an open arch in the wall, and yet it took us longer to get through it than if we had had to burst heavy doors of oak plated with iron, so violently did the blast press through the narrow opening. Like a giant with hundred arms it stood without and thrust back like a helpless child each one that endeavored to force his way; only our combined exertions, holding each other's hands and clinging to the rugged surface of the arch, enabled us to force the pass. Then we hastened along the way, between the high bastion on one side and the town-fosse with the prison-buildings on the other side, until we reached the place where our help was needed.

It was that low rampart which immediately joined the bastion, over the crest of which I had so often cast a longing eye from the Belvedere towards the sea and the island. Its length was perhaps five hundred paces, and then came the harbor with its high stone breakwaters reaching far out into the sea. At the first sight I perceived why this place was exposed to such terrible peril in a storm like this. The sea, driven in by the force of the storm, was caught between the high bastion, that rested upon immense foundations of solid masonry, and the long breakwater, as in a cul-de-sac, and as it could escape on neither side, it spent all its force upon the barrier that here barred its way. If the rampart gave way, the whole lower part of the town was gone. No one could avoid seeing this who looked from the rampart into the narrow streets on the water-side, where the ridges of the roofs for the most part scarcely reached the height of the rampart, so that one could see over them into the inner harbor which lay on the opposite side of the harbor-suburb, where now the masts of the ships were swaying like reeds in the wind.

I think that I did not take more than a quarter of a minute to have a distinct comprehension of the situation as I have just described it, and indeed no more time was allowed me. My senses and feelings were too powerfully seized by the sight of the danger we had come to contend with. I, who had passed my whole life upon the coast, who had been tossed for days together by the waves in small or large craft, who had watched, from the shore at least, many a fierce storm with unwearied attention and sympathetic terror--I thought that I knew the sea; and now saw that I no more knew it than any one knows a bomb, who has not seen one explode and scatter death and destruction around. Not even in my wildest fancies had I ever approached the reality. This was not the sea which was an expanse of water forming greater and smaller waves; this was a monster, a world of monsters rushing upon us with wide-open jaws, roaring, howling, ravening for prey; it was no longer anything definite or distinguishable--the destruction of all form, of all color--chaos that had broken loose to engulf the world.

I believe there was not one of the whole company who was not similarly affected by the sight. I can see them now standing there--the four hundred as they had rushed to the crest of the rampart, with pale faces, their terrified eyes now turned upon the howling chaos, then upon their neighbors, and then upon the man who had led them here, and who alone was able to say what was to be done, what could be done.

And never had a hesitating crowd a better leader.

With the true eye of love that thoughtfully gazes into the past, I see him in so many situations, and always do I behold him noble and good; but at no moment better and nobler than in this, as he stood upon the highest point of the rampart, one arm wound round the strong flag-staff which he had hastily erected, as firm upon his weakened limbs as the bronze statue of an ancient hero! And hero-like was the look of his eye which in one glance took in the danger and the remedy; hero-like was the gesture as he raised his hand, and hero-like was the voice which in clear incisive tones gave the needful orders.

One detachment was ordered into the low streets to bring up all the empty casks, boxes and chests they could find; another to go with spades, baskets and wheelbarrows upon the bastion, where there was earth in abundance; another into the adjoining glacis with ropes and axes to fell the trees which for years had been awaiting the enemy which--though in an unlooked-for form--had now come; another into the neighboring dock-yards to summon the ship-builders to help us, and to procure, either by persuasion or force, twenty or thirty large beams which we absolutely needed. Before half an hour had elapsed, the work, so well directed, was in full activity. At one place, baskets of earth were lowered into the rents which the sea had made in the rampart; at another, posts were driven in and wattled with boughs; at another, a wall of timbers was built up. And all worked, and hurried, and dug, and shovelled, and hammered, and wheeled, and dragged great loads, with a diligence, with an energy, with a cheerful, dauntless courage, that even now the tears start to my eyes as I think of it; when I think that these were the men whom society had spurned out; the men who, perhaps for the sake of a few groschen or a childish craving, had become common thieves; the men whom I had so often, with disgust, seen sulkily slouching across the prison court to their work; the men whom the storm of yesterday, beating against the walls of their prison, had driven to a frenzy of terror. There lay the town at their feet; they might rush into it, rob, burn, and murder to their heart's content--who was to hinder them? There lay the wide world open before them; they had only to escape into it; who could restrain them? Here was a work more difficult and more toilsome than any they had ever done; who was it that compelled them to it? This was the storm before which they had yesterday trembled in its most appalling form; why did they not tremble now? Why did they go, jesting, laughing, into the very jaws of death, when they had to secure and bring in a great mast which had been drifted in from the harbor, and which the waves were driving like a battering-ram against the rampart? Why? I believe if all men answered this why as I answer it, there would no longer be masters and serfs; no longer would men sing the sad old song of the hammer that would not be an anvil, for--but wherefore answer a why that only the world's history can answer? Wherefore lay the secrets of our hearts before a world which passes by indifferent, unnoticing, or only noticing to mock!

Whoever looked on at this work--how these men let the skin be torn from their flesh and the flesh from their bones in their terrible work--did not laugh; and those who looked on were the poor people of the water-streets--women and children for the most part, for the men had to help in the work--who stood below sheltered by the rampart, and with frightened and astonished faces looked at the gray-jackets, whom they had usually only watched with timid, suspicious glances as they passed through the streets in small parties led by overseers from out-door work. To-day they were not afraid of the gray-jackets; to-day they prayed that heaven's blessing might go with the food and drink that they brought to strengthen and refresh those who were exhausted with the toil. No, they were not afraid of the four hundred; gladly would they have seen their numbers doubled and tripled.

But there were men living far out of the reach of the danger, whose lives or property were nowise at stake, and who thus were in a position acutely to feel the irregularity and illegality of these proceedings.

I remember that, one after the other, the Chief of Police von Raubach, President von Krossow, the Lieutenant General and Commandant of the Fort, his excellency Count Dankelheim, came storming our leader with entreaties, commands, threats, to place his dreaded brigade under locks and bolts again. I remember that they came together in the evening to make a combined attack, and I have still to smile when I recall the cheerful calm with which the good, brave man repelled the assault.

"What would you have, gentlemen?" he said. "Would you really prefer that hundreds should lose their lives and thousands their property, rather than that a dozen or a couple of dozen of these poor rascals should decamp and gain the liberty which they have honestly earned to-day? But I shall bring them back when the danger is over. Before that time no man shall move me from here, unless he does it by force; and happily no one of you is able to do that, gentlemen! And now, gentlemen, this interview must terminate; night is coming on; we have at most only a half hour to make our preparations for the night. I have the honor to wish you good day!"

With these words he waved his hand towards the three high functionaries, who made an extremely poor figure as they stole off, and then turned all his attention where he was needed.

Where he was needed at this moment more than ever; for just now, at the approach of night, it seemed as if the storm had rallied all its force for a last and decisive assault.

I feared that we should have to succumb; that our desperate toil of six hours was all in vain. The giant-waves no longer were hurled back; their crests were torn off and flew far over the rampart into the streets. Shrieking with terror, the crowd below fled in all directions; scarcely one among us workmen could hold his place on the summit: I saw desperate fellows, who had played with the danger hitherto, now turn pale and shake their heads, and heard them say: "It is impossible: nothing more can be done."

And now came the most terrible act in this awful drama.

A small Dutch ship which had been moored in the roadstead broke loose from her anchors and was hurled about in the frightful surf like a nutshell, now tossed aloft, now engulfed in the trough of the sea, but driven with every wave nearer the rampart we were defending. We saw the despairing gestures of the crew, who were clinging to the spars and rigging: we almost fancied that we heard their cries for help.

"Can we do nothing--nothing?" I cried, turning to the superintendent with tears of anguish in my eyes.

He shook his head sadly. "This one thing, perhaps," he said, "that when she is thrown up thus high we may try if we can grapple her so that the surf may not sweep her back. If it does not succeed they are lost, and we with them, for she will make a breach in the rampart which we cannot possibly fill. Let them drive in strong posts, George, and make fast one end of our thickest rope to them. It is but a feeble possibility; but there is still a chance. Come!"

We hastened to the spot on which the ship, now but a few hundred feet distant, was driving. The men had left the crest of the rampart, and were sheltering themselves as well as they could; but now, when they saw their leader himself take an axe in his hand, they all came up and worked with a sort of fury, compared with which all that they had hitherto done was child's play.

The posts were planted, and the rope fastened. Four of the strongest men, of whom I was one, stood upon the rampart watching the right moment.

And what we thought scarcely possible, succeeded! An enormous wave came rolling up bearing the vessel with it. The wave breaks--a deluge bursts over us, but we stand firm, clutching the posts with the grip of desperation; and as soon as we can see again, there lay the ship like a stranded whale, high upon the rampart. We spring to it; a hundred hands are busy at once making fast the ropes to the masts; a hundred others in releasing the pale men--five of them from the yards. All is done before the next wave breaks. Will it carry off our prize? It comes, and after it another, and another; but the ropes hold; each wave is weaker than the last; the fourth does not reach the crest; the fifth falls far behind. In the fearful incessant thunder, which for so many hours has been deafening our ears, there comes a sudden pause; the pennons on the rocking masts of the ships in the inner harbor, which have been flying towards the east, now droop, and then fly out to the west; the wind hauls, the storm is over, the victory is ours!

The victory is ours. Every one knows it in a moment. A cheer, that seemed as if it would never end, bursts from the throats of these rude men. They grasp each other's hands; embrace each other--Hurrah! and Hurrah! again and again!

The victory is ours; but it is dearly purchased.

When I looked for him--him whom all had to thank for all--he was no longer standing on the spot where I had seen him last. But I see the men running to the place, and I run with them; I outstrip them all, driven by a fear which gives me wings. I force my way through the assembled crowd, and find all with bowed heads gazing at a man who lies upon the ground, his head upon the knees of the old sergeant. The man is pale as death, and his lips are covered with bloody froth, and all around him the earth is drenched with fresh blood--his blood--the heart's blood of that noblest of living men.

"Is he dead?" I hear one of the men ask.

But the hero could not die yet: he has one duty more to perform. He summons me with a look, and I bend over him as he moves his lips, from which no sound now issues. But I understand him. I clasp both arms around him and raise him up. Thus he stands erect, leaning upon me, the lofty kingly form. They can all see him--the men whom he has led here and whom he is going to lead back. He glances at his hand, which hangs helpless, white as wax, at his side; I raise it, and it points in the direction of the way that we had come at noon. There is not one who dares disobey this dumb, solemn command. They assemble, fall into rank and file; the sergeant and I bear their dying leader; and thus we return in long, slow, sad procession.

Night has come on; and but a few occasional gusts rush by to remind us of the frightful day we have all passed through. The convicts are sleeping upon the pillow of a good conscience, which the superintendent had promised them. Their superintendent sleeps too, and his pillow is as soft as death in a good and great cause can make it.

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Chapter XVII

It was a year after these events that a solitary traveller was ascending the slope of one of the hills of the heath which surrounded the town of Uselin on the land side. He journeyed slowly, like one who is wearied with a long march, and laboriously dragged his feet through that coarse sand with which the sea loves to bestrew its threshold. But the traveller was not by any means weary; he had journeyed but few miles that day, and for him twice the exertion had been but child's play. The little bundle which was slung from a stick over his shoulder could not overburden him; and yet he went slower and slower as he approached the three pines which crowned the summit of the hill; indeed he stopped from time to time and pressed his hand upon his heart, as though his breath failed him for the few steps that were yet to be taken. And now he stood on the summit under the pines; the stick with the bundle slipped from his grasp, and he stretched out his arms toward the little town which from the strand glittered in a light blended with the glitter of the sea. Then he threw himself--tall and powerful man as he was--upon the heather under the pines, weeping and sobbing like a child, but presently half raised himself, and lay for a long time, propped by his elbow, steadily gazing at the little sea-port at his feet, with its peaked gables and steep roofs reddened by the sunset.

What thoughts were passing through the mind of this solitary man? What emotions were filling his heaving breast?

Many a poet who has carelessly brought his hero into a similar situation probably finds the answer to this question no such easy task; but fortunately for me I myself am the wanderer lying under the pines, and since that time not so many years have flown that the place, the hour, and what they brought me, could have escaped my memory.

What did they bring?

A host of memories from the years when the man was a light-hearted boy, and all that he saw around him now but the scenes of his wild sports: the town, from the depth of the half-filled-up fosse to the tops of the spires; the gardens, fields, meadows and heaths that surrounded it as far as these very hills; the harbor with its ships, and the glistening sea on which he loved to row in a frail boat when the towers, as now, glowed ruddy in the evening light.

Hither and thither strayed my looks, and everywhere they encountered objects that greeted me as old acquaintances; but they did not dwell long upon any one; just as when we search a well-known book for some especial passage, turning leaf after leaf, and every line that meets the eye is familiar, and yet we can not light upon the place we are looking for.

But in truth it was so small and lowly, the old one-storied house with the painted gable on the narrow harbor-street, and the street lay so low, covered by the larger houses of the higher part of the town,--how could I expect from this spot to distinguish the little house with the narrow gable?

And yet for what other purpose had I made the journey hither, the sixteen miles from the prison--my first journey after regaining my freedom--but to see that house, and, if fortune would permit, perhaps through a crack in the shutter to catch a glimpse of its occupant? For to go to him, to gaze into his eyes, to throw my arms about his neck, as my heart yearned to do--this, after what had happened, I dared not hope. In the short notes with which he had answered my letters, there had never been, during all the seven years of my imprisonment, one single word of love, of comfort, of forgiveness.

And my last letter, written a week before, in which I congratulated him in advance on his sixty-seventh birth-day, told him that this would be the day of my liberation, and asked if I--now another, and, I hoped, a better man--might venture to come to him on that day--this letter, which I had written with wet eyes and a trembling hand, had never been answered.

The red glow had at last vanished from the high roofs and peaked gables, from the fluttering pennons of the ships in the outer harbor, and from the two church-towers; a light mist arose from the meadows and fields which stretched from the hills upon the heath to the city. The mail-coach came along the road lined with stunted fruit trees; and I watched it as it slowly passed tree after tree, until it disappeared behind the first houses of the suburb. Here and there upon the narrow foot-path between the fields were seen the figures of laborers moving toward the town, and these also disappeared. The twilight faded away; denser grew the mists in the hollows; nothing living was to be seen except a brace of hares sitting up on their haunches in a stubble-field, and a great flock of crows, which came croaking from the pine-forest where I used to play "Robbers and Soldiers" with my comrades, their black bodies flapping distinct against the lighter sky, as they bent their course to the old church-towers.

The hour had now come.

I arose, hung my bundle once more over my stick, slowly descended the hill and took my way through the misty fields to the town. In an obscure spot in the suburbs I stopped again for awhile--it was not dark enough for me yet. I neither feared nor had reason to fear any one. Even before my great enemy, Justizrath Heckepfennig, or those redoubtable public servants Luz and Bolljahn, had I met them, I need not have cast down my eyes, or stepped aside; and yet it was not dark enough.

Now the night breeze rustled louder in the half-stripped boughs of the maple against which I was leaning, and looking up I saw a star twinkling through the sprays--now it would do.

How hollow sounded my footsteps in the empty streets, and how heavily beat my heart in my anxious breast! As I passed the Rathhaus, Father Rüterbusch, the night-watchman, was standing, bare-headed and without his weapons, at his post, and looking pensively at the empty table and barrel-chair of Mother Möller's cake stand, while above us the clock in the tower of St. Nicholas's church struck eight. Was Mother Möller dead, that Father Rüterbusch thus gazed at the empty barrel, and had not even a glance for his old acquaintance from the guard-house?

Dead? Why not? She was an old woman when I last saw her--just the age of my father, as she told me once when I was spending my pocket money at her stall. As old as my father! A chill wind blew through the hall; I shivered from head to foot, and with a rapid stride, almost a run, I hurried over the little market-place down the sloping streets leading to the harbor.

Here was the Harbor-street, and here was the house! Thank heaven! A light was glimmering through the shutters of both windows on the left. Thank heaven once more!

And now would I do and must do what on that other evening I wished to do and should have done, and yet did not: go in and say to him "forgive me!"

I grasped the brass knob of the door--again it felt cold as ice to my hot hand. The door-bell gave a sharp clang, and at its summons appeared at the door of the right-hand chamber--just as on that evening--the faithful Friederike. No, not just as on that evening; her little figure, bent with age, was dressed in black, and a black ribbon fastened the snow-white cap with its broad ruffle, which formed a ring of points around her wrinkled face. And out of the wrinkled face two eyes, red with weeping, stared at the strange visitor.

"Rike," I said--it was all that I could utter.

"George! good heaven!" the old women cried, tottering towards me with uplifted hands.

She grasped both my hands, and gazed at me, sobbing and speechless, with quivering lips, while the tears streamed down her furrowed cheeks. She had no need to speak: I did not ask what had happened: I only asked "When?"

"A week ago to-day," sobbed the old woman. "He did not even live to see his birth-day."

"What did he die of?"

"I do not know. Nobody knows. Doctor Balthasar says he cannot understand it. He has never been quite well since you have been away; and kept growing worse and worse, though he would never own it; and two weeks ago he took to his bed, and kept perfectly still, looking always just before him, only that sometimes he would write in his house-book, and that on the very evening before; and when I came in the morning he was dead, and the book was lying on the bed, and I took it myself and showed it to nobody when they came and sealed up everything. I thought I ought to keep it for you: he used so often to say your name to himself when he was writing. What he wrote I don't know; I cannot read; but I will get it for you."

She opened the door into my father's room. It was neat as ever--painfully neat, but even more uninhabitable. The white slips of parchment, fastened with seals over the keyholes of the secretary and the old brown press in the corner, had a spectral look to me.

"Why is the lamp burning on the table?" I asked.

"They are coming this evening."

"Who are coming?"

"Sarah and her husband, and the children, I believe. Did you not know?"

"I know of nothing--nothing whatever. And there still lies my letter--unbroken! He never read it!"

I sank into the chair that stood by the writing table. I had never sat in this chair, had scarcely dared to touch it. A king's throne had seemed less venerable to me. This thought at once struck me, and was followed by many, many other painful thoughts: my head sank into my hands: gladly would I have wept, but I could not weep.

The old woman returned with the book of which she had spoken. I knew it well; it was a thick quarto volume, bound in leather, with clasps, and I had often seen it in my father's hands of an evening when he had done his work; but never had I ventured to cast a look into it, even had I had the opportunity, which but rarely happened, as my father always kept it carefully locked up. Now it lay open before me: one after another I turned the thick leaves of the rough coarse paper, their pages covered with the neat, pedantically straight hand-writing of my father, which I knew so well. The hand had not changed, although the entries extended over more than forty years, and the ink on the first pages was entirely faded. Only upon the last did this steady strength seen to fail. The traces of the pen grew ever more angular, feebler; they were but the ruin of what had formerly been; the last word was just legible and no more. It was my name.

And everywhere upon the first leaves, those of some twenty-seven years back, stood my name.

"To-day a son has been born to me--a sturdy little fellow. The nurse says she never saw in her life so stout a babe, and that he is like St. George. So he shall be called George, and shall be the joy of my life and the staff of my old age. May God grant it!"

"George comes on finely," was on another page. "He is already larger than the Herr Steuerrath's Arthur, who is not small either. He seems to have a good head of his own. Though only three years old, it is wonderful what ideas he has. He must soon go to school."

And again on another:

"Clerk Volland is full of praise of my George. 'He might get on better with his learning,' the old man says; 'but his heart is in the right place; he will be a fine man some day. I shall not live to see it, but you will, and then do you remember that I said so.'"

And so it went on, page after page--"George that splendid fellow! My noble boy, George!"

Then came other times. George's name was not now in almost every line, and George was no longer the splendid fellow and noble boy. George would not do right, neither in school, nor at home, nor on the street, nor anywhere. George was a good-for-nothing! No, no; that was too much to say; only he could do better if he would, and he certainly would do better--he certainly would!

Then came many pages and George's name was not mentioned at all. Many a family event was noted; my mother's death; the terrible news of my brother's loss; that his daughter Sarah had again--for the third--for the fourth time--presented him with a grandson or a grand-daughter; that he had been promoted to an accountant's place; that his salary had been raised; but George's name appeared no more.

Not even upon the last leaves, which again had references to "him;" that "he" was so well liked by all in the prison, and that the Herr Superintendent von Zehren had asked today again if "he" was not yet found worthy of his father's forgiveness.

"I have tried to-day to write to him what the feelings of my heart are; but I cannot bring myself to it. I will tell him all when he comes back, if he cares for the love of an old broken man; but write it I cannot."

And upon the last page were the words:

"It is not true! It certainly is not true. Six years and a half he has behaved well, yes, exemplarily, and in the second half of the seventh to become worthless at once! I hear little good of the new superintendent. The one that is gone was a noble-spirited man, and he was always full of praise of him--no, no, whatever they may say of him, my boy is not worthless, not worthless!"

And last of all:

"In a week he will be free; he will find me upon a sick bed if he finds me at all. For his sake I wish it; for it would be a great sorrow to him to see me no more. I have thought all these years that my boy did not love me, or he would never have given me so much pain; but I had just now a dream that he was here and I held him in my arms. I said to him, George----"

I stared with burning eyes at the blank which followed, as if there must appear upon it the words which my father had said to me in his dream; but gaze as I might, the words appeared not, and at last I saw nothing more for the flood of tears that burst from my eyes.

"You must not cry so, George," said the good old woman. "I know he always loved you more than the rest--very much more. And if he died of grief and heart-break on your account, why he was an old man, and now he is dead and with our Heavenly Father, and he is well there, much better than here, though the good Lord knows that I have had no other thought these twenty years than to make it all right with him."

"I know it, I know it, and I thank you a thousand times," I cried, seizing her brown withered bands. "And now tell me, what are you going to do, and what can I do for you?"

She looked at me and shook her head; it probably seemed strange to her that George, just out of the prison, should offer to do anything for her.

I repeated my question.

"Poor boy," she said, "you will have enough to do to provide for yourself, for what he has left does not amount to much; he was too good; he would help everywhere that he could, and he bought a place in the Beguines for me, for the year or two I may still be spared. This will come out of it, and Sarah made fuss enough when she heard it. They thought they would get it all'; but it is to be divided equally between you both. I have that from his own mouth, and I can swear it, and will swear it, if they raise any dispute, because he left no will."

At this moment there was a loud ring at the front door.

"Good heavens!" cried the old woman, clapping her hands together, "there they are already!"

She hurried out of the room, leaving the door open after her. I remembered that I had never loved my sister--that I had parted from her with unfriendly feelings long years before, and that in the interval I had by no means learned to love her--but what difference did that make now? Now, when she and I had lost our father, when we might lean and take each other's hand across his grave?

I went into the little hall, which was nearly filled by the newcomers--a tall, lean, pale woman in black; a short, fat, red-faced man, in the uniform of an officer of the customs; and so far as I could make out at a glance, a half-dozen children, from ten or twelve years old to an infant, which the tall, pale woman clutched more firmly as I appeared at the door, and looked at me with a hostile rather than a startled look in her large cold eyes. The short, fat man in uniform stepped between me and the group of mother and children with a confused expression in his face, and, rubbing his plump hands in an embarrassed manner, said:

"We were not expecting you--ahem!--brother-in-law ahem! but we are very glad to meet you here--ahem! My dear wife will only put herself to rights a little--ahem! In the meantime, suppose we go into our late father's room, where we can talk over matters undisturbed. Don't you think so, my dear?"

The little man turned upon his heel to face his dear wife, who, instead of answering, pushed the children before her into old Friederike's little room. He turned back to me, rubbed his hands with still more embarrassment than before, and said again "Ahem!"

We entered my father's room. I took my seat in his chair, but my brother-in-law was too disturbed in spirit to be able to sit down. He paced up and down the room with short quick steps, stopping for a moment every time he passed the door, with his head thrust forward a little on one side, listening if his dear wife had called him, and every time, to fill up the pause with propriety, he said "Ahem?"

It was a long detail that the little man went into during his restless wandering from door to stove and from stove to door, and what he said was as clumsy and awkward as himself. It seemed that he and his dear wife had cherished a half hope that I would never be discharged from prison, especially since I had been detained half a year over my time for alleged breaches of discipline. He rejoiced exceedingly, he said, that his fears and those of his dear wife had not been justified; but that I must admit that it was a hard thing for a public officer to have a brother-in-law who had been in the House of Correction. Did I think, now, that an officer with such kindred was likely to gain promotion? It was frightful, unpardonable, so to speak, and if he could have foreseen it----

The little man suddenly gave me a furtive look. I was standing perfectly still, looking steadily at him, was a giant in comparison with him, and had just come out of prison. It seemed to strike him that it was not altogether prudent to take this tone with me, so now there came a long litany of the dolorous life that a petty subaltern with a large family has to lead on the Polish frontier. True, in conformity with the wishes of his dear wife, who wanted to nurse her old father, he had procured his removal to this place; but now the old gentleman, who no doubt would have taken it kindly of them, must needs die, and living here was so much more expensive, and then the journey had cost so much with all these children, and the baby was only sixteen weeks old, and though the inheritance was left, still two was a heavy divisor when the dividend was not large, and----

I had heard enough, and more than enough.

"Do you know this book?" I asked, laying my hand on the cover of my father's diary.

"No," replied the little man.

"Give me this book, and I make no other claim upon my father's estate. It is his diary, which has no interest for you. Do you consent?"

"Certainly--that is, ahem! I don't know whether my dear wife--we must first see about it--," answered my brother-in-law, rubbing his hands in an undecided way, and looking askance at the book out of his little puffy eyes.

"Then see about it"

I now commenced on my side pacing up and down the room, while the husband of his dear wife seated himself at the table, to submit this mysterious book to a closer inspection.

It seemed to excite no especial interest in him by the ordinary process of reading; so he tried another plan with it, taking it by the two covers and letting the leaves hang down, which he shook vigorously for half a minute. As this proceeding also led to no result, he gave up the matter as hopeless, laid down the book again, and said "Ahem!"

"Are you agreed!" I asked.

"Yes, certainly--to be sure--so to speak--of course; that is, we must put it down in writing--only a couple of lines--just by way of a memorandum--we might have it afterwards drawn up by a notary----"

"Whatever you wish, whatever you wish," I said. "Here then!"

The little man glanced at the paper and glanced at me, while I tied up the book in my bundle, and took bundle and stick in my hand. Either he did not know what to make of me, or--as from the expression of his countenance was more probable--considered me simply insane; in either case he was beyond measure glad to be rid of me.

"Off so soon?" he said. "There's my dear wife, won't you----"

He checked his invitation to see his dear wife. I muttered something that might pass for an excuse, left the room, pressed old Friederike's hand as I passed through the hall, and stood in the street.

I have but a dim recollection of the hour that followed. It is not a dream, and yet it seems like a dream, that I went to the grave-yard in the mill-suburb, roused up the old sexton, who was just going to bed; that I kneeled by a recent grave, and afterwards gave the old man, who stood by me with a lantern, money to cover the hillock next morning with fresh sods; that I went back again, and near the gate passed the villa of the commerzienrath, where all the windows were illuminated, and I could see couples gliding past them in the dance to a music which I could not hear, and that I thought the little Hermine might be among the dancers, and then remembered that the pretty child would now be seventeen years old, if she were still alive.

I felt an irrepressible sadness; it seemed as if all the world had died, and I was the only living being left, and the shades of the dead were dancing round me to inaudible music.

Thus I went back with unsteady steps to the town, and passed along the empty silent streets towards the harbor, mechanically following the way which I had always taken when a boy.

The sea-breeze blew in my face, and cooled my fevered brow, and I inhaled deep draughts of the invigorating air. No, the world was not dead, nor was I the only living being left; and there was a music, a delicious music, sweeter to me than any other: the music of the wind whistling through spars and cordage, and the waves plashing upon the harbor-bar and before the prow of the ship. Yes, there were still those who loved me, and whom I with all my soul could love again.

Upon the wharf, where the steamboat for St. ---- was now lying at her moorings, there was standing a crowd of people. It struck me that I could best commence my journey to the capital by this steamer.

Considering this, I was standing at the head of the pier, when a litter, such as is used to transport the sick, was carried past me towards the crowd. The litter was without the usual cover, which had probably been forgotten in their haste, or, as it was night, not considered necessary.

"What is the matter?" I asked the men.

"The fireman of the Elizabeth has broken his leg." growled one in reply, in whom I now recognized my old friend, officer Luz.

"And we are to take him to the hospital," said the other, who was no other than the redoubtable Bolljahn.

"Poor fellow!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," said Luz, "and his wife has just been brought to bed."

"And they had eight already," growled Bolljahn.

"No, seven," said Luz.

"No, eight," said Bolljahn.

The group upon the pier began to move.

"There he lies now," said Luz.

"No, eight," said Bolljahn, who was not the man to drop a disputed point so soon.

They had brought the man out of the ship to the pier. He was a remarkably large and powerful man, whom six found it no easy task to carry, and who, strong as he was, groaned and cried with pain. The two men put down the litter; the bearers set about lifting the man into it, very awkwardly as it seemed, for he screamed with anguish. I thrust a couple of gapers aside and came up. They had laid him upon the ground again; I asked him how he wanted to be placed, and took hold myself with the others, showing them what to do.

"Thank God!" murmured the poor fellow, "here is one man with some sense."

They carried him off, and I went a little distance with them to see how they got on. Was he warm enough? Yes he was. Did they carry him well? Well, they might shake him a little less.

"Here is something for you too," I said, putting a piece of money into the hand of each of my old acquaintances, "and now carry him as if he were your brother or your child;" and then I bent over the injured man and whispered something in his ear that it was not necessary for Luz and Bolljahn to hear, and gave him something which it was equally unnecessary for them to see; and then I turned again to the group which was standing by the gang-plank of the steamer, discussing the remarkable accident.

At this moment the captain came out upon the gang-plank, and called to the group:

"Will any one of you take Karl Riekmann's place for this trip? I will pay him good wages."

The men looked at each other. "I can't, Karl," said one, "can't you?" "No, Karl," said the one addressed, "but can't you, Karl?" "Neither can I," said the third Karl.

"I will," said I, stepping up to the captain.

The captain, a short, square-built man, looked up at me.

"Oh, you will do," he said.

"I think so."

"Can you go on board at once?"

"There is nothing to detain me here."

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