Chapter XVI…

Chapter XVI

The following day was unusually hot and close for the time of year. At sunrise gray storm-clouds had appeared in the east, and hung threatening in the horizon, while the sun in all his splendor was ascending the bright sky. I, who from childhood had always been peculiarly sensitive to atmospheric changes, felt uneasily the electric tension of the air. On my brow I had a sense of constant pressure, a singular disquiet agitated my nerves, and my blood seemed to course laboriously through my veins. To be sure these feelings of mine were not due to the weather alone.

Something else was in the air; something that gave me more uneasiness than the threatened storm, something that I could not define; the obscure feeling of the intolerable position in which I found myself here, and that in some way it must be brought to an end--if it had not come to an end already.

However that might be, I had time enough to-day to think it all over.

No one was here to disturb my reflections: Zehrendorf seemed uninhabited. The excursion to the Schlachtensee which had been arranged the day before, had been carried out at about ten o'clock, not without some trifling variations of the original programme. Whether it was because the last attempt to make a horsewoman of Fräulein Duff had failed so lamentably, or from some other reason, Hermine had given up her intention of going on horseback with her governess and Arthur, and the whole company had gone in three carriages. The steuerrath and the Born had also joined the party; which was another variation from the programme, introduced on account of the two Eleonoras, who had unanimously protested--they were always unanimous that they could not possibly share in an excursion to last the whole day, that was composed of young people only. The two dignitaries had vehemently resisted the honor proposed to them, but yielded at last, of course. How could they do otherwise? Not easily again would they find such another opportunity to forward their favorite scheme.

A third variation had also taken place, which, if I could credit Fräulein Duff, I had brought about. True, appearances seemed to confirm her statement, but only appearances.

When I returned to Zehrendorf from my visit to Rossow, as I went to my own room I had to pass through the parlor where the whole company were assembled. Hermine was sitting at the piano playing a noisy piece, which she suddenly stopped as, after silently bowing to the company, I had my hand on the knob of the door to pass out. Involuntarily I turned at the sound of the discord with which she closed, and in the next moment I saw her standing before me, with pale features and a strange light in her large blue eyes, and with quivering lips saying something which she had to repeat before I could understand it. They hoped I had taken the jest of to-day as it was meant, and not deprive their little party to-morrow of the pleasure of my company, on which they had certainly counted.

The company who had been hitherto conversing with especial animation, and had scarcely appeared to notice my presence, were suddenly silent, and this was probably the reason that I heard my own answer with startling distinctness, almost as if it was not I but another who had spoken with an altogether strange voice:

"I thank you, Fräulein: but you were perfectly right; I cannot be counted upon on these occasions."

Next I found myself outside in the hall, trembling in every limb of my strong body, with sharp pain in my heart and a burning desire to cry out aloud, and then I pressed both hands upon my breast, and said to myself, with deeply-drawn breath and trembling lips, "Thank heaven, it is all over."

To this thought I held fast all the long night while I paced sleepless up and down my carpeted room, or stood at the open window cooling my burning brow in the night air, or throwing myself upon the divan to sink into painful thought.

All over; all over! despite the note that Fräulein Duff sent about midnight to my room by the hands of my now devoted William, and in which in her queer fantastic way she assured me that Hermine had been looking forward for two weeks to this excursion only because she was to make it with me, and indeed had planned it with no other view; and she asked whether the good should give place to the evil, and whether love did not believe all things and endure all things, especially when it might be convinced that what occasioned its severest sufferings were themselves but love-torments?

Love? Was this, could this be love? Love, she said, endured all things and believed all things. True: but it also is not puffed up, does not behave unseemly, and thinks no evil. Is this love? Is it not rather selfishness, vanity, caprice, the caprice of a spoiled child which now kisses its doll and the next moment flings it on the ground, for which the whole world is only a bright soap-bubble that for its especial pleasure glitters in the sunshine of its fortune? Well, this may be love--one kind of love; but I do not fancy this kind and will not have it, and it is all over.

Had I not known another kind of love? A firm, deeply-rooted, beneficent love that brought blessings wherever it was given. If this love had never been bestowed on me, did I any the less know that it existed? And if she had never loved me as she was capable of loving, and would some day love another, had I not tasted a drop at least of this pure fountain of living water, and drunk from this single drop courage and refreshment, far more than from all this torrent which rushes so exuberantly to-day, and to-morrow will have vanished without a trace into the sand--the sand of her selfishness and caprice? No! it must all be over, and it was all over.

Thus all night long thoughts whirled and burned in my head and heart, until day broke--a bright day, but heavy with brooding storm--and found me feverish and exhausted; but I aroused myself with a strong resolution and said to myself:

"So be it! Let all be over and past! Perhaps it is well that all has happened thus, and that I am given back to myself and to my duties."

And I remained in my room until it was time to go to the chalk-quarry, where the machine was to be operated to-day for the first time. At about ten o'clock I returned to report to the commerzienrath, as he had requested, that all had succeeded beyond our expectations, and that our prospect of mastering the water had now become a certainty.

In the meantime the excursionists had started, as William, who remained behind to wait upon me, informed me, together with a multitude of details, which the rascal's hawk-eyes were quick to catch, and his indiscreet mouth eager to blab. The young lady had seemed in the very gayest humor, until Leo, her mastiff, could not be induced, either by caresses or threats, to go along with them. "He has been treated too badly of late," said William, "and we notice--I mean an animal notices anything like that." And at the last moment Herr and Frau von Granow drove up, though they had not been invited, and they could not avoid asking them to go along.

"I tell you, Herr Engineer, the whole thing looked more like a funeral than a pic-nic party. But the two young ladies--" here William Kluckhuhn grinned--"you ought to have seen them, Herr Engineer! All in white with green ribbons--real snow-drops, I tell you!"

I was little in the mood to hear William's report to the end, and interrupted it by asking for the commerzienrath.

"Gone to Uselin with the old justizrath to keep some appointment, and will hardly be back before evening."

This news somewhat surprised me. The commerzienrath had known nothing the previous evening of this appointment which would keep him all day, for he had appointed this very morning for an interview with me in which very important business was to be discussed. For the report which I had brought him of the precarious condition of the old prince had thrown our prospects of selling Zehrendorf into the dim distance, and indeed rendered them very improbable. What would the young prince, if he succeeded his father and came into full possession of all the property, care for one estate more or less?

"In reality, the old man cares very little about it," the commerzienrath always said; "but the young one is to win his spurs by the purchase, and show that he can manage business of the sort. The young man knows this very well, and for that reason he will take down the hook, however uninviting the bait may be; you may rely upon that."

Thus the commerzienrath had reckoned: very falsely as affairs now stood. My yesterday's intelligence had visibly caused him great alarm. It was extremely odd that he had to go to the city just to-day.

Or did he merely wish to get out of my way, now that he had so perfectly gained his point of bringing me into disfavor with Hermine? Did he need me no more, now that the machine was set up and the negotiation with the prince virtually fallen through?

Very possible; very possible; but perhaps I needed him still less; perhaps I was in a position to bid him farewell before he gave me a dismissal. This absence of the man, which seemed like a flight from me, came at this moment as a warning to accept the tempting offer of the young prince. What had I thus far attained from the commerzienrath in furtherance of my own aims? Abundance of promises, a flood of compliments--and that was all, and so it would evidently remain, especially if he did not sell Zehrendorf, and was thus released from his promise to me about the factory: yes, and very probably even though the sale were still effected.

For there were but few things that the commerzienrath held sacred, and I had good reason to believe that his word was not one of them. Thus he had promised me not to dismiss the foreman of the saw-mill, to whom he had already given notice; and as I passed the mill this morning it was not running, and a workman told me that the master had been there the previous evening while I was at Rossow, and after a short conversation dismissed the foreman on the spot.

There was an instance; but it was merely the most recent; I had caught him more than once in these breaches of his word. No, indeed, the man did not seem a likely proselyte to my religion of humanity!

And the prince? The more distinctly I recalled to memory the particulars of our yesterday's conversation, the more vividly his face arose before me, so much the more did I believe that I discovered the stamp of an honorable and kindly nature in his features, and felt confident that it would well repay me to attach myself to him. It is a hard matter to remain entirely unmoved when any one approaches us with marked good will, especially when our well-wisher is a person of high rank and great influence. Now I cannot say that either then or at any time I should have considered a prince's favor the height of earthly felicity; but neither can I deny that, at that time at least, the reverence for dignities in which I had been brought up, helped to place this behavior of the young prince in its most favorable light. I thought that I had now found the key to the conduct which yesterday had seemed so enigmatical; and I highly prized the delicacy with which he had cleared out of the way what he knew lay as a stumbling-block between us, before he disclosed his real object. He had made no allusion to the scene in Zehrendorf forest nine years before; but he had never forgotten that I had then spared him, and why I had done so, and had attempted in this way to cancel the obligation.

I had to admit to myself that, all things considered, the procedure was noble and chivalrous on his part. So he had explained to me the reason of his visit to Paula's studio, and to a certain extent apologized for his conduct there; and if his attempt on the same day to clear scores with me was premature and unbecoming, he had more than compensated for it in my eyes by his present magnanimous and important proposal.

For it was both. Magnanimous, when I considered the open loyal way in which he made it, with no man[oe]uvrings, no bargaining nor chaffering; important, when I admitted to myself, as I had to do, that if it was really his wish to provide me with a wider field of operations, he was fully in a position to realize his promises. Granting that the commerzienrath was what he pretended to be--though on this point my doubts had rather increased than diminished--but granting that he was the wealthy and influential man he was generally thought, what was his wealth and influence compared with those of a Prince of Prora-Wiek? As a schoolboy I had known, like every one else in the town, and I believe every inhabitant of our province, that upon the island alone the prince owned a hundred and twenty estates; then the small town of Prora, the residence--in which there was now probably agitation enough in consequence of its lord's sudden illness--which stood entirely upon the prince's land; then the hunting-castle Wiek with its leagues of forest; the Grafschaft of Ralow on the mainland near Uselin, where the townsfolk used to make excursions to the park in the summer; the magnificent palace at the residence, which I had often passed with strange emotions; the domains in Silesia with the celebrated iron-works, the value of which alone was estimated at several millions--what was the Cr[oe]sus of Uselin in comparison with this real Cr[oe]sus, whose revenues for two years probably amounted to as much as the commerzienrath's whole capital?

True, I had looked forward to a far different career. My passion for mathematical science, my advances in the machine-builder's art, my hope some day to be actively helpful in promoting the development of railroad industry, the plans I had so often devised with worthy Doctor Snellius for the good of the working classes--it was no pleasant thought to have to give up all this. But had I then to give it up? Was it not in reality the same thing whether I worked here or there, in this manner or in that, so that I only worked and strove in the noble spirit of my unforgotten teacher and of my truehearted friend? Assuredly I might in that spirit accept the prince's offer, and Paula would not be dissatisfied with me, for her thoughts and wishes, like those of her noble-hearted father, were only bent upon goodness in every form. I felt that it would not be difficult for me to show her how in this sphere I would have full opportunity to become more worthy of her than I had ever been. And then--I had always endeavored to hide it from myself, because it too rudely touched a painful spot in my heart; but now in this sleepless night it and many another thing stood in sharp conviction before my mind--she had not only let me go because a wider field of usefulness opened before me; she had even sent me away, because she had compassion with me, because she knew that my deep, devoted, reverential love found no echo in her heart; and as a kindly nature never takes away anything without offering, if possible, some indemnity, she had offered my loving heart, that yearned for a return of affection, the fulfilment of all my wishes in a lovely fascinating form, in the form of the beautiful wayward Bacchante who had played with me as she had played with tigers, leopards, and other forest-creatures which she was accustomed to yoke to her chariot. What did Paula's innocent heart know of this dangerous sport? What did she know of the arts of caressing with one hand while the other plies the lash?--of delighting at one moment in the free gambols of the favorite, and the next moment barring it into a narrow cage? What did Paula know of all this?

Had she known it, would she not be the first to called me back and say:

"You may and must sacrifice yourself, if nothing less will avail; but you may not throw yourself away; and as for my wishes and yours, they are all past and gone."

Thus it fermented and worked in my heated brain and my swelling heart all day long, while the sun rolled on his glowing path through the sky, and behind him clomb the gray vaporous clouds which had lowered on the horizon at his rise. I had looked up instinctively at the sky from time to time, as I wandered restlessly through the fields and the heath, tormented by my thoughts, and oppressed by the threatening storm, and so possessed by the emotions within me and the ominous preparations without, that I had lost my consciousness of place and time, found myself now in the evening twilight on the road to Trantowitz, the same road along which I had driven to Rossow, and which was also the road by which the excursionists would return, without knowing how I had got there or why I had come. Certainly not to visit Hans, who was with the party. Still I pushed on, until I reached the ill-kept broken hedge which divided Hans's famous garden, with its stunted fruit-trees, its neglected grass, and its waste potato and cabbage patches, from the road. Looking over the hedge, I thought that at the further end of this melancholy croft I saw a tall figure which could be no other than the good Hans himself. I pushed through the hedge--an operation attended with no difficulty--and went towards the figure. It was Hans, as I thought.

"I thought you were with them," I said.

"Not I," he answered, returning my grasp.

"But you were invited?"

"Oh, yes!"

"And how then are you here?"

"Well, when I saw them coming this morning, I got out of that window"--he pointed to the window of his bed-room--"and stayed in the woods until the coast was clear. And you?"

"I did not care to go, either."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Hans.

We strolled for a long time silently, side by side, up and down the grass-grown paths. The twilight had now grown so dim that color could no longer be distinguished. The air was inexpressibly sultry and oppressive, heat-lightnings flickered every now and then in the east, and from the Trantowitz woods, an angle of which reached down near us, came the song of the nightingale in long-drawn wailing tones.

"It is suffocating!" I said, turning into a sort of ruinous arbor that we had reached in our walk, and throwing myself upon one of the mouldering benches in it, I pulled off my coat and waistcoat.

Hans made no reply, but silently proceeded to his bedroom window, through which I saw his gigantic figure disappear, and re-appear after the lapse of a few minutes. He rejoined me with a couple of glasses in his hand and two bottles of wine under his arm, which he set down on the old table, drew two more bottles out of his coat pockets and laid them on the sand, pulled out his hunting-knife and uncorked the first pair, and then pushing one over to me, remarked:

"Drink off the half or the whole of that and you will feel better."

That was just the old Hans exactly, with his universal specific against all slings and arrows of outrageous fortune! Alas, it had proved but a poor panacea to the good fellow, and would probably be of little service to me, but I could not help feeling how kindly he meant it, and my hand trembled as I poured the wine for both, and my voice was unsteady as I clinked glasses with him, saying:

"To your health, dear Hans, and a better future to both of us."

"Don't know where it is to come from for me," said Hans, draining his glass at a draught, and filling both again.

"Hans, my dear good fellow," I said, "please don't speak in that dismal tone: I cannot stand it this evening: I feel every moment as if my heart was about to break."

Hans was about to push the bottle to me again, but remembered that I had already declined his universal specific, so he handed his cigar-case to me across the table.

In a minute two bright points were glowing in the dark arbor, throwing a faint glimmer upon the rickety table with the bottles, and upon the faces of two men that leaned over it in a long confidential conversation.

"It is so," said one at last.

"You will find yourself mistaken, as I was," replied the other.

"I think not. How long ago was it--yesterday, I believe--or it might have been the day before; I don't keep any reckoning of the days--I met her on the road to Rossow, and we rode together two or three miles, and the whole time she was talking of nothing but you."

"She must have been sadly in want of a topic of conversation."

"And she cried, too, poor thing! I was sorry for her, and have ever since had it on my mind to tell you that you must really bring the matter to a close."

A long silence followed. The third bottle was uncorked, the bright points still glowed, while the darkness sank ever deeper, and the noiseless sheet-lightning flickered from moment to moment.

"But you are not drinking," said Hans.

I did not answer: in fact I had scarcely heard him. I was hardly conscious that he was there or where we were. In the darkness that surrounded us I saw her eyes beaming; in the rustling of the wind in the leaves I heard her voice. And the large blue eyes gazed reproachfully upon me, and the voice seemed to tremble, and the sweet lips quivered as they had done yesterday when she asked me to accompany them.

"Where are you going?" asked Hans.

I had arisen and stood at the entrance of the arbor, gazing with burning eyes into the darkness. On the western horizon there was still a thin pale streak, but elsewhere the sky seemed to cover the earth like a black opaque pall. There was a deep silence; only from time to time strange moans and whispers seemed to pass through the air, and at intervals the nightingales in the woods sent forth a plaintive sobbing sound, as if bewailing the overthrow of a beautiful world full of light and love. Now and then an electrical flame clove the darkness, and flickered strangely along the edges of the low heavy clouds; but no thunder followed to break the oppressive stillness, and no refreshing rain came down to revive the exhausted earth.

"Where are you going?" asked Hans again.

"Where do you suppose they are now?"

"Who can tell? Certainly they have not got back, for they must pass this way."

"On the heath, between your beechwoods and the Rossow pines, the way must be hard to find in this darkness."

"It is indeed," said Hans. "I once rode around there for two hours without getting out of one place, and the night was not as dark as this. To be sure, we had been drinking pretty freely at Fritz Zarrentin's. Hallo! what are you about?"

I was on the point of rushing out; and when Hans spoke I grasped at my head, which felt as if it would burst.

"They may be at that very place now," I muttered.

"Don't go without me!" cried Hans, as I set off on a run.

I stopped: he came behind me and patted me two or three times gently on the shoulder with his great broad hand, saying: "So then, so!" as if he were quieting an excited horse. I caught his hand and said, "come along, Hans."

"Of course," he said; "but we must have two or three fellows with lanterns, or we can do nothing."

"That will keep us too long!"

"Not five minutes."

Hans strode by my side across the cabbage patch, and to avoid all detours went directly to, and through, his bed-room window and through his sitting-room, and I followed close at his heels, for I knew the way of old. Once in the yard, Hans began to pull with all his might at the cracked alarm-bell which hung there in a sort of ruinous belfry, and whose unmelodious clank used to summon the men to or from work. They came fast enough at the well-known signal from their quarters and from the stables, and before five minutes were over we had left the yard and taken the path to the Trantow beeches, followed by a squad of men with stable-lanterns.

The last bright streak had faded from the western horizon, and the darkness was so intense that in the woods it seemed no darker than it had been in the open field. The oppressive sultriness of the atmosphere had increased, if possible, and now the thunder began to mutter, and the tops of the trees to toss about in the rising wind. The nightingales had hushed in expectation of the impending storm. Leaving the men with the lanterns far behind, I hurried through the wood, followed closely at first by Hans, who presently stopped, however, calling to me that there was no use for such frantic haste, as we could do nothing without the lanterns. I knew that very well, but I was urged on by an impulse that I could not withstand. What I meant to do, I could not precisely have told, nor did I pause to consider; I only hurried forward wildly as if life and death were at stake. How I got through the woods, by a wretched path, in the pitchy darkness, without breaking arm or leg, or dashing my skull against a tree, is more than I can explain at this hour.

Whether it was the blue gleam of the lightnings which flashed at intervals through the clear spaces in the wood, or the peculiarity of my eyes which could always distinguish objects a little, even in the deepest darkness, or the excitement, which in certain moments seems to awaken dormant faculties within us, I cannot say; I only know that in an incredibly short time I had traversed the woods, and by the cessation of the rustling, by the stronger blast of the wind in my face, by the altered sound of the thunder, and by the brighter glare of the lightning, I perceived that I was on the heath. This heath was about a mile wide, bounded on three sides by the Rossow pine woods and the Trantowitz beeches, and on the fourth side, to my left, joining the great moors on the coast, which ran up into it in various places in narrower or wider strips. No tree grew over this whole broad expanse; the single mark which arrested the eye was a hillock, overgrown with bushes and surrounded by large stones--doubtless an ancient barrow--which stood about midway of the distance, and served as a boundary to mark the commencement of the moor. One could hardly speak of a road here, for the way changed with every season of the year, even with every change of the weather; travellers rode, drove, or walked, wherever they found it most practicable. More than one accident had happened here; and even in my time a man who tried to cross the heath by night with an empty wagon had driven into one of the broad deep turf-pits and been drowned with his team.

While I ran rather than walked across the heath, the details of this accident, which I had long forgotten, came all back to my recollection. I remembered the man's name, and that he was betrothed to a young woman in Trantowitz, a pretty fair-haired creature, who could not be comforted for the loss of her lover, and had been seen weeks afterwards sitting on the mound with eyes fixed on the spot where he had perished. It struck me that the poor pretty creature had had a slight likeness to Hermine.

A wild terror seized me, and I suddenly stood still, listening into the night with a wildly-beating heart. I thought I had heard a faint cry at no great distance. But from what direction? Before me? to the right? or to the left? Or was I mistaken altogether, and had my excitement deceived me and changed the wailing sounds of the wind to human calls for help? There it was again! This time I was not mistaken, and I caught the direction from which the cry came. It was exactly before me--no, it was on my right--no, on my left. Certainly now it was to the right. Then I heard it again nearer, and again from another direction, as if the ghosts of those who had perished all over the desolate heath had all arisen from their marshy graves and were calling to each other. Nor could I see a single step before me: even the lightning had ceased for some minutes: it seemed as if I could touch the darkness with my hand. I cast a desperate glance around, and saw to my unspeakable joy the lights of the lanterns approaching, though still at some distance. I called with all the power of my lungs for them to make haste; then hurried blindly forward, and started terrified back, as suddenly, in the glare of a vivid flash of lightning, I saw just before me the gigantic spectrally white figure of a rearing horse. I had come upon one of the carriages, which had been abandoned by its occupants, leaving the coachman who had bravely stood to his post, and strove in vain to unharness the horses.

"Where are the others?" I cried, hastening to help the man without rightly knowing what I was doing.

"God knows," he answered. "I have had my hands full here."

"Here come men with lanterns."

"It is high time. Stand still, you devil's imp!"

Now Hans came up with several of the lantern-bearers. The horses stood still, shivering with terror, and snorting from their distended nostrils great clouds of steam in the lantern-light.

On the back seat of the carriage lay a figure stretched at full length. The light of the lantern fell on a pale haggard face--it was Arthur.

"What has happened to him?" I asked.

Hans asked no question: he knew what had happened when a young man, who has never learned to control himself; lies stretched upon the back seat of a carriage in his return from a picnic, and not all the turmoil of the unchained elements can awaken him from his stupid sleep.

"Never mind about him," said the driver; "he is safe enough."

"One of you must stay here," I said to the men with lanterns. "Forward, the rest!"

We went on, the men, of whom there were five or six, holding up their lanterns, and shouting all together at intervals, calling all who might hear to try to get to us.

We were answered from different points; it was now plain that the whole company was widely scattered. The carriages alone had kept somewhat together; and a minute later I came upon another which had been overturned and dashed to pieces by the maddened horses, so that we had no difficulty in getting them clear of what remained of the harness. Then we found the third, which had turned a little to one side and stalled, sunk up to the axle in a marshy place, and the driver had released the horses by cutting the traces.

It was a strange and weird-looking scene. The lightning flashed so incessantly that we seemed enveloped in its awful glare. Then the shouts and cries of the frightened excursionists who came hurrying up from all sides, the swearing of the coachmen and grooms, the snorting and struggling of the scared horses, and amid all, the mutterings and long roll of thunder, the whistling and shrieking of the gusts of wind that every now and then swept with frightful fury over the heath, and seemed to hold up the rain, of which only occasional heavy drops smote me in the face; the whole company, so far as they were now collected, resembling a party about to be led to execution, the men with agitated features, and the women pale as death, and all bearing abundant traces of their wanderings about the heath and the miry ground.

But if it had been difficult to get them together, I now found that it was impossible to keep them so. All were for pushing on at once, Why waste a moment here? All were together. In an instant the rain would pour down in torrents, the lanterns be put out, and what would become of them then?

"Forward, my friends, forward!" screamed the steuerrath, and Herr von Granow also shouted "Forward! forward!" and in the next moment all had started.

Amid the indescribable confusion, the calling, shouting, hurrying up and down of so many persons, I had found it impossible to make sure whether really all, as they said, were together; but I knew that I had not seen her whom alone I was looking for, nor had I seen Fräulein Duff. I had imagined for some reason--perhaps I had heard some one say it--that both ladies were in the fourth carriage, which was behind the others, and reported to be safe; but as the company set out, with the lanterns in front, this fourth carriage came up.

It was the commerzienrath's great family carriage. I sprang to it and looked in. There was a pile of cloaks and shawls which had been left behind in the hurry, and Fräulein Duff, leaning back in the corner, and looking at me, who was half wild with anxiety, with eyes from which extreme terror had banished all expression. In vain did I try to get from her where she had left Hermine. She only muttered, as if delirious, "Seek faithfully and thou shalt find," and then broke into hysterical weeping.

Now Anthony, who had in the meantime been adjusting the traces, told me that the young lady had sprung from the carriage not ten minutes before, just as the lanterns came near. He did not know why, for the young lady had not been nearly so much frightened as the rest, and had a little before said to Fräulein Duff that she might be sure she would not forsake her. He thought she went over towards the left, but he was not sure, for he had had hard work to manage the horses, that had been quiet enough all along, but now could not be kept still.

With this he mounted his seat and started to follow the others. I called to him and ordered him to stop; but either he did not or would not hear me, or else he could not hold the horses any longer--be that as it might, the next minute I was alone, while the company with the lanterns, under Hans's guidance, kept their way across the heath towards the woods.

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Chapter XVII

I was about to hurry after them, and compel them to give me some assistance, when a flash of lightning of unusual vividness showed me the hillock or "giant's barrow" which lay about a hundred paces from where I stood, and which I had not perceived before. Whether I expected to get a wider range of vision from its top, or whether it was an instinctive impulse, or both, I do not know, but in the next moment I was at the foot of the hillock among the great stones. Another dazzling flash, and a shudder seized me, and my hair began to rise on my head. There, on the top, by the hazel-bushes that were bent and lashed by the storm, surrounded by a spectral light, stood with loose-flying hair the unhappy girl looking out for her lover who was drowned in the morass. In an instant the pitchy darkness closed again, and a crash of thunder drowned my sudden cry. Had I lost my senses? And instantly, while yet the thunder crashed and the thick darkness surrounded me, it flashed upon me like a heavenly revelation, and my heart gave a great throb, and I gave a shout of joy, and in a moment I was at the top and had found her and lifted her in my arms and shouted again, and she wound her arms around me and clung to my breast, so close! so close! and I kneeled before her and she leaned over me and said:

"Quick, quick, here in the dark where I do not see you; I love you! I love you!"

"And I love you!"

"None but me?"

"None but you!"

"None but me! none but me! And if the earth should open now and swallow us both--none but me?"

"None, none!"

Again came a flash illuminating everything for a moment with the brightness of day, and she laughed and rejoiced aloud and threw herself into my arms crying:

"Now I see you: now I can look at you! Oh how lovely this is! How beautiful you are! Now carry me down the hill as far as the stones. Now let me go, my strong one, my hero, everything to me!"

"Let me carry you further; I can do it easily."

"I know you can: else would I love you so much? But now let me go; you must not think me a weakling."

I let her glide from my arms upon one of the great stones: she laid her hands upon my shoulders, and I saw for a moment her sweet defiant face and her eyes that flashed as if with indignation, as she said in a firm voice:

"Never forget that I am not weak like other women; and if you had not come to look for me here--yes, if you had not found me, I would have drowned myself here in the morass; and I will drown myself the moment you cease to love me. And now come!"

She threw herself on my breast and glided from my arms to the ground, and we went hand in hand over the heath, the incessant lightnings showing us the pathless way, while the thunder rolled, and the rain which had been delaying so long came down first in heavy warm drops, and then in torrents. What cared we for the storm and the rain? What cared we that we were alone upon the heath?

This was, indeed, our crowning joy: for me, to know that I had both the right and power to protect her, and that I had in truth the strength, had there been need, to carry my beloved to Trantowitz and to Zehrendorf; for her, to be thus protected by him she had loved so long, who now was all her own, and all had happened just as her wayward heart and romantic fancy desired. And now all came from her lips, in broken confused phrases, in thoughts and fancies that gleamed and vanished like the lightnings around us, now awakening one memory and now another, just as the objects around us momently flashed out the darkness and vanished into it again; the brown heath, the glimmering moor-water, and in the forest the bushes to the right and left and the gigantic trunks of the trees whose great boughs were wildly tossed hither and thither by the blast, with a crashing and groaning and roaring as if the world were coming to an end. But the wilder the uproar about us, the more she exulted, and laughed with delight when in the noise we could no longer understand each other's words. She even grew angry when after we had nearly traversed the woods, two lanterns appeared moving rapidly in our direction.

"Let us run off," she said, seriously, and then clapped her hands, and we now heard "Hallo! Hallo!" in the good Hans's powerful voice.

"It is he!" she cried; "my good Hans, my dear Hans, my best Hans! He shall hear it first. No one has a better right."

And now came up Hans, who had hurried on ahead of the two grooms, holding his lantern high to let the light fall on our faces, and again shouting "Hallo!" with all the strength of his lungs, but this time for joy that he had found us so happily--so happily that he set his lantern on the ground and shook both Hermine's hands and then mine, and then hers again and then mine again, all the time saying "So, so! that is right! so, so!" as if we were a pair of young headstrong horses, with which he had had great trouble, but had brought to reason at last.

The two grooms had now come up. "Poor fellows," said Hermine, "they must have pleased faces too. Give me quick what you have; and you too Hans, give me all you have, both of you!"

I emptied my purse--there was not much in it--into her hands, and Hans rummaged his pockets and found some crumpled notes which she took and gave the two men who stood open-mouthed, not knowing what to think. A couple of thalers fell on the ground, and the men said "It would be a sin to leave the good money lying there," so commenced to look for it, while we three hastened on, and Hans informed us that the whole company was at his house, and that he had harnessed up his farm-wagons--the only vehicles he had--to take them to Zehrendorf, whither he had sent already a messenger on horseback to have preparation made.

"We will both go, will we not, George?" said Hermine. "Everybody will open their eyes, of course. It will be a droll sight, and I am just in the humor for it. O, I am so happy, so happy!"

It was indeed a droll sight that presented itself to us as we entered the ruinous old mansion of Trantowitz. In the wide bare hall, in Hans's narrow sitting-room, even in the sanctuary of his bed-room, in the kitchen, which was entered from the hall, the unlucky excursionists were rambling and pushing about, calling, scolding, crying, laughing, according as they were more or less able to accommodate themselves to the situation. To the more able belonged without question Fritz von Zarrentin and his little wife, who were altogether the jolliest, most comfortable, and at the same time most good-natured people in the world, though in the storm they had not distinguished themselves by their courage any more than the rest. But now Fritz, who was in the kitchen brewing a bowl of punch with the assistance of the cook, boasted of the heroic deeds he had performed in the course of the evening, and his brisk little merry wife busied herself about the ladies, who were all in the very worst of humors, and to say the truth, in pitiable plight.

The Born Kippenreiter sat in Hans's high-backed chair, like a queen who had been hurled from her throne by a storm of revolution, her false hair plucked off, and the rouge all washed from her cheeks. Upon the sofa sat the two Eleonoras, locked in each other's arms and weeping freely on each other's bosom, without any one, themselves probably included, having the least idea of what it was about; unless it was for their soaked straw hats and drenched clothing, which had changed the virginal whiteness of the morning, for a color to which no name could be assigned. The stout Frau von Granow was standing before Fräulein Duff, who was crouching half insensible upon Hans's boot-box, proving to her that on such occasions it was the first duty of every one to look out for himself; and that if Fräulein Hermine was really drowned in the morass, nobody of any sense would lay the slightest blame upon her, the governess.

"No, Duffy, not the slightest blame!" cried Hermine, who, coming in with us at this moment through the door which was standing open, had caught the last word. "Duffy! dear, darling Duffy!"

And the excited girl fell on the neck of her faithful old governess, and embraced and kissed her with a flood of passionate tears.

If a sensitive nature like Fräulein Duff's had needed any further explanation of the meaning of these caresses and these tears, she found it now in the appearance of a tall form that stood in the doorway and looked at the group with flashing eyes. She reached out both arms to him, and cried out, oblivious of by-gone troubles:

"Richard, did I not tell you, 'Seek faithfully and you will find?'"

This speech, which the worthy lady had delivered in the tone of a herald announcing the result of a tournament, fell like a bombshell among the company. The two Eleonoras unclasped each other and looked in each other's face, and the second let her head fall upon the shoulder of the first, murmuring something of which I only caught the words--"the traitor!"

This was perhaps, all things considered, a moving picture, but a frightful one was offered us by the Born. The foreboding of imminent misfortune had been lying upon her low wrinkled brow, her hollow rouged cheeks, in her glassy snake-like eyes; she had seen it coming on all day. In vain had she tried with her maternal arms to protect her dear son against the shafts of ill-temper which the proud angry girl launched against him; in vain had Arthur tried to quaff from the bowl of pine-apple punch fresh courage in so sore a strait, and new fortitude to sustain him under his trials--the bolt had fallen, and the wreck was here before her eyes, before the eyes of the Born Baroness Kippenreiter, the mother of the most charming of sons, the aunt of this ungrateful creature. It was too much! The dethroned queen sprang to her feet, trembling in every limb, hurled--she was speechless with indignation--a crushing look at Hermine, who threw herself, laughing, into my arms, and tottered to the room where the bowed-down father was watching by the bed of his hopeful heir, whose wretched soul was not in a condition to comprehend what he and his house had irrevocably lost.

Away sad visions, and disturb not the bright memory of that happy evening. I will not banish you altogether--nay, I know that I cannot if I would; but crowd not upon me thus! Strive not to make me believe that it is for you that we live. You must be it is true, and well for him that comprehends it, and keeps in his firm breast a fearless laugh to mock you away when you will not be thrust aside. You must be; but it is not for the sake of the black earth that clings to its tender roots that we take up the rose of love, bear it home in our bosom, plant it in a calm sunny place, and watch and tend and treasure it as best we can. Who knows how long we can!

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Chapter XVIII

Who knows how long we can! Perhaps not long; perhaps but a short, far too short a time. It is a melancholy word, but unhappily the right word to open the record of this part of my life which I begin with a hesitating hand. It was not my intention, when I determined to write this narrative, to cast any further gloom upon the spirits of my readers, who have in all likelihood themselves borne their own share of life's sorrows. It was not my aim to dampen their courage in life's battles, when I related how the youth had erred by his folly, and how he suffered the penalty; I rather hoped to infuse into them the spirit of delight in active life, the faculty of enduring and forbearing; and thus we may together live over in memory the hard fortune which was yet to be the lot of the man. The reader, who has by this time perhaps grown to be my friend, may follow me without fear on my path of life.

And first into the room of the commerzienrath, which I entered the following morning at ten o'clock with a heart possibly not perfectly at ease, but not at all fearful. But I would not have advised any timid person to cross this man's path this morning, as he ran up and down his room like a madman, then stopped before me and surveyed me with infuriated looks, again raged about the room, and then stopped and cried:

"So! You want to marry my daughter, do you?"

"It is a wish which had nothing alarming about it ten years ago, Herr Commerzienrath. Do you not remember, on the deck of the Penguin, the day we went out to the oyster-beds?"

"Do not try any impertinence with me! I ask you once more; you--you have the audacity to aim at being my son-in-law?"

"Excuse me, Herr Commerzienrath; your first question was whether I wanted to marry your daughter."

"That is the same thing."

"You are quite right; and therefore you would perhaps do better Herr Commerzienrath, to consider me now your son-in-law--or we will say, son-in-law that is to be--and treat me accordingly."

I said this in a very grave firm tone, which I knew from experience seldom failed of its effect upon the really pusillanimous nature of the man. Instinctively he stepped back a couple of paces out of my reach, seated himself in his chair, adopted a sneering tone instead of his air of contemptuous indignation, and said in his driest business voice:

"I understand then, Herr George Hartwig, that you do me the honor to ask the hand of my daughter Hermine. The first points then to be considered, are the nature of your pretensions, the position you occupy in the world, and, in a word, your personal relations generally. You are, as far as I know, the son of a subaltern official, a young man who in his youth did no good, and for a horrible crime was punished with eight years----"

"Seven years, Herr Commerzienrath----"

"Counting the preliminary detention, and disciplinary punishment, eight years in the penitentiary----"

"Imprisonment, Herr Commerzienrath----"

"Who, thanks to the remissness or connivance of the authorities----"

My papers are all in order, Herr Commerzienrath----

"Learned the rudiments of blacksmithing for a few months in my factory, and now with the respectable capital of----"

"Fifty thalers cash, and a hundred and sixty thalers outstanding debts which I shall never collect----"

"And, I may add with future prospects corresponding; for as to what you told me day before yesterday of his highness's proposition to you, I do not attach any weight to them at all--you then, such a man as this, with such a past, such a position, such means, and such prospects, desire to marry the daughter of Commerzienrath Streber."

"To have your permission to address her, Herr Commerzienrath."

"My future father-in-law shot from under his bushy brows a searching look at my face, which probably assured him that his attempt to humiliate me availed as little as his former attempt to intimidate. He had to open another register. He rested his bald forehead in his hand, enveloped himself in a thick black cloud of silence, from which he suddenly snapped at me with the sharply spoken question:

"But if I were really not the millionaire, not the wealthy man you and every one have hitherto considered me--how then, sir; how then?"

The commerzienrath had sprung to his feet, and was standing before me, as I had taken my seat fronting him, with his hands on his back, bending forward, and his keen eyes piercing into mine.

"The circumstances would then be, as far as I am concerned, precisely what they were before; especially as your vaunted wealth has long been a matter of serious doubt with me, Herr Commerzienrath."

His piercing glances plunged into watery and uncertain mist, as he threw himself back in his chair, smote the arms of it with his hands, broke out into a crowing laugh ending in a coughing-fit, and between laughing and coughing cried:

"That is too good!--this young fellow--matter of serious doubt with him--long been so--it is too good! really too good!"

The coughing fit became so alarming that I sprang up and began to pat the old man's back. Suddenly he seized my hands and said in a lamentable lachrymose tone:

"George, my dear boy, it is my only, child! You do not know what that is; the comfort, the joy of a feeble old man who may die to-morrow! And you will not even wait those few hours? Oh, it is cruel, cruel! Have I lived to see this!"

Cassandra hit the mark indeed when she said that "it was hard to fathom the wiles of this labyrinthine old man." He had kept his grand stroke for the last. If I could not be intimidated or humiliated, I might perhaps be melted; and I was really touched, and said, while I pressed the stumpy withered hands I was holding in my own--"I will not rob you of your child."

"You really will not? God bless you!" cried the commerzienrath, springing from his chair as if touched by a galvanic battery. "You are a man of your word: I have always known you such. I hold you to your word."

"When you have heard the whole of it, Herr Commerzienrath. I say, I will not rob you of your child, because Hermine, though my wife, will not cease to love and to honor her father as she now does, and because you will gain a good son in me, whom you will have great need of if you are no longer wealthy, and in the other case perhaps still more. I think that I have already proven to you that I know other things besides the rudiments of blacksmithing, and perhaps enough to make up for my deficiency of fortune."

The "labyrinthine old man" gave me a look in which I plainly read that he had reached the end of his windings. It is very likely that at no time had he a serious intention flatly to reject my proposal, for I think I can safely say that as he had always lacked courage to offer any determined resistance to his proud wilful daughter assuredly he would not have had it now, when she confronted him with the triumphant knowledge that she was beloved with a love equal to her own. But it was not in the nature of the man to grant anything, be it what it might, as a man of an honorable spirit would do, frankly and squarely, without chaffering and higgling. So he had chaffered and higgled, and continued doing so, and hiding his real thoughts and wishes from me, until, when I parted from him after an hour's conversation, I was more in the dark as to all that I wished to know, and as to the state of his affairs, than I had been before. But one point I had attained and made clear beyond any possibility of a doubt, that Hermine was to be my wife; and as this, as every one will admit, was the main point, I thought I was not acting very inconsiderately if I took all the other contingencies very lightly indeed.

It had never been difficult for me to do this, even in the gloomiest passages of my life, and how could it be so now when I was so happy? How could the envious, hypocritically-friendly glances of others embitter my happiness when I saw the light of love and joy in Hermine's wonderful blue eyes? And yet such glances were not wanting, nor the phrases with which they are usually accompanied.

"I always knew it, and have often enough said to your late excellent father, my dear friend and colleague, that you would win distinction some day. Yes, yes, dear George--I may still call you by that old familiar name, may I not?--my prophecy has come to pass, though otherwise than I had expected. Well, well, so it had to be; and probably, all things considered, it is well that it is as it is. You have always been a good man whose hand was ever open to the distressed. You will not withdraw this generous hand from an old man who looks to you as his last hope?" And the steuerrath applied the finger on which glittered the immense signet to the inner corner of his left eye, and passed his cambric handkerchief over his pale aristocratic face.

"I have always held you up as a pattern to my Arthur," said the Born: "Do you not remember the times when you both went to school together and the teachers were always full of your praises? Ah! I can see you now, two wild high-spirited boys, always clinging faithfully together, and each ready to go through anything for the other. 'That it might always be so!' I often sighed from the depths of a mother's heart, for I felt how greatly my good easy-natured Arthur would need his strong thoughtful friend. My presentiment has become a reality. May heaven have heard my prayer; may you, dear George, never forget what he has once been to you; may you never forget the companion of your happy youth!"

And the Born pressed convulsively both my hands, and raised her face as near as possible to mine, as if she wished to afford me an opportunity once for all to gain a thorough knowledge of her whole apparatus of false hair, teeth, colors, expression and looks.

"I heard yesterday what a lucky fellow you are, as you have always been," said Arthur. "Lucky in everything, but luckiest of all with women. You could always turn them round your finger, you scamp. Don't you remember the dancing-lessons, and Annie Lachmund, Elise Kohl, and Emilie? Ha! ha! ha! Emilie! Don't you remember the quarrel we had about her on the Penguin? Poor girl! There she goes, arm in arm with Elise, bewailing the shipwreck of her hopes. I shall have to take up with the poor thing myself: an ex-lieutenant, ex-secretary of legation, who is also ex in pretty much everything else, must naturally be content with anything."

And Arthur laughed bitterly, smote his brow with his fist, and added that though he might not be worth much, he supposed he was worth as much powder as would end his miseries.

Emilie Heckepfennig had been for departing the next morning and fleeing the sight of the traitor, but remained notwithstanding, either because the scene of her ill-fortune had more attractions for her than she was disposed to admit, or else because the justizrath, who had not yet returned from Uselin, had written to her that she must on no account leave until he returned. So in the meantime the lorn maiden went about as if she was to serve the most sentimental of artists as a model for a resignation, leaning perpetually upon the arm of her friend, so that one could not enough admire the physical strength of the latter lady, who, as well known, had been pining into the grave for twenty years. At times she looked at me with the eyes of a dying gazelle, and at others cast me a look in which was plainly written "You will repent it some day."

That I did not misinterpret the meaning of this glance, I was convinced by a conversation to which the justizrath in a mysteriously confidential way invited me a few days after his return. The worthy man shook my hand again and again, assured me that my great coup, as he phrased it, would make no alteration in his friendship, then rubbed up the crest of hair which stood erect upon his head like a cock's-comb, assumed an important air--I knew this air well from the time of my old examination--and said:

"Young man! Excuse me--I mean, my dear young friend! Young as you are, life has already taught you that everything has two sides; and that all is by no means gold that glitters. If you will allow an old and true friend of your family to give you a counsel which it is my most sincere belief you will do well to follow, and which in any event is honestly meant, accept the proposal that his highness has made you, under any condition! under any condition!"

He wished to leave me after saying this, but I held him back and said: "You must feel, Herr Justizrath, that I am compelled to ask you for a more definite explanation of advice which strikes me as rather singular, coming from you."

"Ask me nothing more," said the justizrath, with a deprecatory gesture.

"You have asked me in your time so many things, and so much more than was agreeable to me, that a little retaliation may be allowed me, I think," I answered smiling.

"Would you ask an old lawyer to reveal business secrets intrusted to him professionally?" said the justizrath, and the cock's-comb trembled with the conflict of his feelings.

I was resolved not to be put off in this way, and I said:

"I will meet you half-way, Herr Justizrath. I have reasons for believing that the commerzienrath's affairs are far from being so prosperous as is commonly believed; and if you are so discreet as to withhold the grounds of advice which can only have one interpretation, the prince did not exercise the same reticence when he made me the offer you allude to."

The justizrath looked as if he was himself a sacrifice to his own inquisitorial genius, and saw no escape but in making a full and free confession.

"I will tell you but a single fact," he said. "Last Friday the commerzienrath went with me into the city to raise money on his paper to the extent of about a hundred thousand thalers, and I ran with these from post to pillar, until at last Moses in the Water street took them at a very short date for a very high discount. Sapienti sat, as we Latinists say!"

And the justizrath brushed his comb with both hands to its most imposing height, and moved toward the door, but stopped when he had reached it, came back a few steps, and said with the air of a man who can not tear himself from the grave where all his hopes lie buried:

"Do not think the worse of me that I have allowed myself to be seduced into a breach of confidence which is equally foreign to my position, my age, and I may add, my character. I have only told you what you will probably soon learn from other sources, and in any event must know before long; and George"--here the justizrath sighed, and then painfully smiled--"George, what you may not forgive to the hard-pressed man of business, you will perhaps forgive the father. I also have but one daughter, and am, heaven be thanked, a wealthy man."

The wealthy man who also had an only daughter, went out of the door at the moment that William entered it with a letter which the postman had just brought, the seal of which I broke with trembling hands.

"My dear George, my brother: Then it has at last come to pass what I have so long desired and hoped; and, since your happiness would hardly be perfect without it, let me add my wreath to the rest. I have entwined in it all the kind and loving wishes that one human soul can cherish for another, all the blessings that spring from the depths of my heart for you, for you, my friend, my brother, our brother, for the young ones too now come to their eldest and bow before him, now that he is crowned as he deserves. Wear it proudly, your beauteous crown, and may never a hand touch it less holy than that of her who now lays her hand on my shoulders and bends her face over the paper that her eyes can no longer see, and says softly to me--'He still remains to us what he always was.'"

This letter also bears traces of tears, but they were my eyes that wept them, and they were tears of joy. And when I raised my grateful looks towards heaven, the cloud had vanished, the one cloud that had darkened my sky, and all was as bright as the vernal heavens that stretched in splendor over land and sea.

Happy, radiant days were these, which now seem to me as if there had been no night at all and no darkness, but ever day and light and bliss. There were not too many of these days, and it was perhaps well that it was so. Which of us mortals, however great his powers, can long feast with impunity at the table of the gods?

But many or few, ye shall be held sacred in memory, ye happy hours, and sacred shall be held whatever was associated with you and enhanced your sweetness. The bright sun, the rustling woods through which I walked at the side of the beloved one, the twilight fields through which we strolled, the sky larks that singing soared into the blue ether until they were lost to sight, and the sweet nightingales that tried to persuade me that they were happier than we.

Yes, all shall be sacred and precious in memory, for the memory is all that is left to me of those happy days.

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Chapter XIX

Upon these happy days, whose number I cannot even give--for who counts days like these?--followed others that were as full of unrest and intervals of gloom, as those were of calm and sunlight.

We were all in Berlin: the commerzienrath, my betrothed, Fräulein Duff, and myself; the commerzienrath staying at a hotel with the ladies, I in my old den once more in the ruinous court, where my presence was now more necessary than ever. To be sure, it was not so in the eyes of Hermine, who laughingly maintained that as the rubbish had lain there so long already, it might well lie awhile longer; but I thought differently. There was really no time to be lost. I had partly persuaded and partly forced the commerzienrath, by long and urgent conversations, to agree to undertake my favorite scheme. The plan of the building had been long complete in my head, and now, with the help of a skilful architect, was complete upon paper. There was both less and more to do than I had thought; but we had arrived at the conclusion that we could get through with the main part of the work by autumn, and be able to work in the new buildings in the winter, always supposing that the necessary funds did not fail us. In reference to this last critical point, I was only half informed; by no fault of my own, however, as despite all my efforts I had not been able to bring the commerzienrath to a clear statement of his affairs. Even now I cannot think, without a feeling of pain and shame, of the interminable debates I had with him upon this point, from which I sometimes left him full of confidence and hope, and at other times weighed down with doubts and cares. Could he command the necessary funds? Of course he could, and it was ridiculous to doubt it for a moment. Had he really maturely reflected upon a determination which involved so much? Of course he had. Did I take him to be in his dotage, or suppose that he did not understand his own wishes? That was a ticklish question to which, for very intelligible reasons, I did not care to answer "yes" to his face, and yet to which, in my own breast, I could scarcely find another answer. It was plain that he was no longer the man he had been, the man he must have been to hold the threads of a hundred heavy and important undertakings at once, and draw his profit and advantage from all. In some moments he seemed to have a consciousness of the change that had come over him, but he then did not complain of himself but of the times which had changed, so that his old theories were no longer applicable. His old theories, and he might have added his old practices and his old tricks. All his life long the man had been a partisan of fortune, a buccaneer upon the high seas of traffic and life, a free-lance upon the long caravan route to El Dorado, a gamester at the green-table of chance, who had often staked copper pence for gold pieces, and, favored by fortune and time, gathered in gold pieces for copper pence. And now the time, as he clearly felt, had changed, and his luck had left him. He did not deny that he had suffered great losses, but took care never to state how great these losses really were. He had never insured either his ships or their cargoes, and, as he said, had always found his advantage in doing so. But lately two had gone down with all on board, and though he attached no great importance to this latter feature of the calamity, he felt severely the loss of the cargoes, which were unusually valuable. Then again a sudden fall in the price of breadstuffs had reduced by one-half the value of his immense stocks in his warehouses at Uselin, and then the failure of his hope of selling Zehrendorf, as the young prince, whose father still lay very ill at Prora, seemed to have given up all thoughts of it, and for which Herr von Granow, who had before been all agog to purchase, now declined to make any offer--as I suspected, at the instigation of the justizrath, who seemed to know more of his client's affairs, and to be less scrupulous in using his knowledge, than was by any means favorable to the interests of the latter. Other things were also added. The long and tortuous channel leading between the island and the firm land to Uselin, had, in consequence of the disgraceful neglect of the authorities, silted up to such a degree that it was now only passable for vessels of very light draught, and the danger of its complete closure seemed scarcely avoidable. Thus the traffic of the town, the greater part of which had been in the hands of the commerzienrath, was as good as destroyed; the large docks which he had repaired at his own private expense in part, his immense warehouses and other buildings, had partly become entirely worthless, and the remainder greatly depreciated in value. For several years trade had turned to the much more favorably situated town of St. ----, and now, since this town had been connected with the capital and the interior by the railroad, Uselin could no longer contend with its more fortunate rival. The commerzienrath quite lost his self-control every time he came upon this topic; he declared railroads to be an invention of the devil, and asseverated that it was a sin and a shame to ask him to assist with his own funds the diabolical system that was ruining him. When I pointed out to him that the bane might be made the antidote, that he must turn the altered position of affairs to his own advantage, and that he was in a situation to do this on the largest scale if we only carried resolutely out my plan for extending our works, he caught at this idea, which had seemed so hateful a moment before, with the greatest enthusiasm, but only to go over the same ground the next day.

These were trying weeks, and the dark shadow which they threw still darkens in my memory the sunshine which, heaven be thanked, even at this time brightened so many of my hours.

With what unalloyed pleasure do I recall my return to the works, which really resembled a triumphal procession! Now I reaped the reward of having been always, whatever the changes of my fortune, on brotherly terms with my comrades of the hammer and file, that I had omitted no opportunity of promoting their welfare and being serviceable to them with head and hand. No distinction nor success in later days--and my life has not been passed without a share of both--has ever made me so proud as the certain knowledge that among all these men with the knotted callous hands and the grave faces furrowed with toil and too often with care, there was not a single one who grudged me my good fortune, and that by far the most rejoiced in it with all their hearts. I still see them before me--and often has the memory brightened my hours of dejection--their friendly eyes lighted with sincere pleasure, as they looked at the "Malay" going, escorted by the manager, through the shops, and presenting himself to them privately in friendly confidence as their new chief. I still hear the cheers they gave when a day or two later I had them officially assembled and made them a speech, in which I said in few words what filled my heart to overflowing. And when the triple cheer had died away, with what importance the head-foreman cleared his throat as he commenced a reply, in which the worthy man's favorite theme, "Go ahead!" was treated with the boldest license of speech, and the peroration of which was lost without a trace in the primitive forest of his whiskers and in the emotion he could not master. And was it not the good Klaus whose voice intoned another outburst of cheering, compared with which the first both in length and vehemence, was mere child's play? I have to laugh even now when I think of the confusion in which I was plunged when an hour later the Technical Bureau, in white cravats and gloves, waited upon me in a body, and its speaker, Herr Windfang, compared me to the Khalif of Bagdad, who for a long time had lived unknown among his faithful subjects, and at last took the lofty station which belonged to him of right.

Yes, these are bright and happy memories, all the brighter and happier that the following years, so far from belying the promises made then by sanguine hope, fulfilled them all in abundant measure. At this very day, when I look at the assembled force of workmen in the establishment, I see for the most part the dear well-known faces of that time, not grown any younger, it may be, by the lapse of years, but none the less dear to me. And those whom I no longer see--all but very few--have been drawn off by that great rival whom we name Death.

"But what sort of a bridegroom is a man who has nothing but blast furnaces, pigs of iron, and frightful things of that sort in his head?" said Hermine, "and who knits his forehead into such ugly wrinkles! Let me smooth them out"--and she passed her hand over my brow and eyes--"If I had known all this, I would never have fallen in love with you, you sooty monster!" And she threw herself in my arms and whispered in my ear: "Tell me at once that you love your old ugly workmen more than you do me, so that I may know what I have to do."

"You have to go with me through the works to-day, and to be nice and kind to the ugly men, and to me more than all."

"And why to you?"

"That they may see how happy I am."

"What is that to them?"

"It is a great deal to them."

"But what?"

"It is the certainty that when they come to me to represent their distresses, they will find a man who is ready to help if he can."

"I never knew anybody with such odd notions. When shall we go?"

"At once."

So we went through every part of the whole establishment, Hermine opening great eyes of wonder and sometimes clinging tight to my arm, but she was very kind and friendly to the men, only a little cool and distant with the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau--so cool and distant that Herr Windfang's beautiful speech, which he had known by heart for a week, stuck fast in his throat.

"Why were you so ungracious to the poor fellows?" I asked.

"Poor fellows?" said Hermine, pettishly pouting. "They did not look that way to me; and Herr Windfang, or whatever his name is, struck me as a complete coxcomb. I did not promise to be gracious to men of his stamp."

"But they belong to us."

"Nobody belongs to us. We belong to one another, you to me and I to you: remember that once for all, if you please!"

I laughed, but afterwards had some serious reflections on a peculiarity of character in my betrothed, which struck me not for the first time this morning. She interpreted the expression that we belonged to each other, quite literally, and when she appeared to make an exception to it, it was only in appearance, and always in favor of persons who were really in need of help, and to whom she could condescend as a princess to her subjects. Towards such she could behave with proud, but perfectly irresistible kindness.

I shall never forget how, upon the occasion of a little tour that we made through the island in these first happy days, and in which we visited the lonely village on the coast which had played so memorable a part in my flight--how she sat by the old sailor's widow, patted her brown wrinkled hands, wiped the tears from her brown wrinkled face, and consoled her with the assurance that her son would yet come back in spite of all; told her stories, which she invented at the moment, of sea-faring men who had returned laden with riches after being supposed lost for ten or twenty years; and how in the meantime she must look upon us two as her children, and that we would take care of her and make her comfortable in her old age. So too when we went to Uselin she was friendly beyond all my expectation to my sister, who had recently increased her family for the seventh time. She gave presents to all the children, who were very far from being either pretty or amiable, offered to be godmother to the new-comer, and contrary to her custom did not ridicule even the blundering attempts at politeness and clumsy obsequiousness of my brother-in-law.

"Poor people," she said: "Seven children and such a little house and such a little father. How did you ever manage to grow so big in that house, George, without knocking a hole in the roof with your hard head? And your father was quite as tall as you, and had every bit as hard a head. I don't wonder that you two could not get along together in such a nutshell of a house. But we must take care of them, George; don't forget that."

And then again my good Klaus and his Christel with her four children--a fifth was expected soon--had occasion to rejoice in her kindness, though in a different fashion. She had not shrunk from climbing the three interminable flights of stairs, and getting Christel to initiate her into the more recondite mysteries of the washing and ironing arts, nor from listening to Klaus's long enumeration of his wife's virtues. "Even if I were not compelled to like Klaus for his faithfulness to you, he would have captivated me by the way he worships his pretty plump wife. There, George; here's a pattern for you to follow. For him the world began with the moment when the waves cast up his Christel, who must have been then just as fat and white and nice as she is now, on the beach; and if she should be so unfeeling as to die before him, he would lie down and die too. And so will I do, if you should die--" she added, and looked at me with compressed lips, and angrily contracted brows.

Towards the poor, towards all who were dependent or seemed so, her proud nature could be kind and condescending; but all who wished to win her favor must make no pretensions to my affections, claim no place in my heart which she desired to dwell in and occupy alone. The lightest apprehension that any one besides herself might take possession of what was hers alone, filled her with an alarm which the vivacity of her nature could seldom long conceal, and which found vent sometimes in gloomy anger, sometimes in hot passionate tears. But how could I, beloved by this proud beautiful creature, complain of what after all was but an excess of that in which others daily exhibited so lamentable a deficiency? No; no word of complaint shall my pen enter in these records of my life, as none ever passed your lips, you good and noble hearts that loved me well, but withdrew to one side lest an unguarded look might seem to accuse her or myself.

Hermine felt this and understood it; and said sometimes, when Paula or Doctor Snellius visited us so very seldom, and her cheeks flushed while she said it:

"I ought to be ashamed to come thus between you and your friends; it is ungenerous, it is mean, I know; I know it, George, but I cannot help it; I cannot spare a crumb that falls from the table of our love. If I could only live with you on some lonely island, in the farthest seas, and some day an earthquake came and the island sank in the waters, and no one even knew of the spot where we had been so happy! But here among all these people for whom you have to care, who take an interest in you or you in them, for whom you must work, and, worse still, those who have no claim of any sort upon you, and take a cruel pleasure in coming about us, and questioning us, and watching us, as if we were on the world for no other purpose. I already think with horror of Uselin, and the curious looks of all the population, no one of whom can spare himself the treat of seeing the great clever George marry the little stupid Hermine. And then the celestial weeping of the two Eleonoras, to one of whom you are a traitor, you monster! or Duffy's tears of joy when she hears from the good pastor's mouth what she has known for eight or nine years! It is frightful! Couldn't we slip into some church about twilight and be married by a pastor, who would see us both for the first, and, as far as I am concerned, for the last time, and get for witnesses two or three old men or women who might happen to be about, who would not know us the next day, if they should meet us on the street?"

I cannot say that this wish of Hermine's was very strongly opposed to my own feelings--rather the contrary. But my father-in-law declared that he felt it incumbent upon him as the first citizen of Uselin, that his daughter's marriage should take place in that town. He held to this with an obstinacy which he was not wont to display to his daughter; and so we had to yield the point.

Nor can I say that the fateful day proved by any means so terrible as we had fancied it. The discourse of the good pastor, who was the same that had officiated at my confirmation, and must even then have been an aged man, was very long and very rambling, it is true; the St. Nicholas church looked as bald and bare as ever, and the hundreds of eyes that were all fixed immovably upon us, all with the identical look as if we were presently to be executed before them, made the bleak space by no means more comfortable; the great dinner at the commerzienrath's villa was pompous and ceremonious to the last degree, and the healths and speeches a little flat and stupid--all these facts I admit; but then on the other hand it was the church among the timber-work of which I had performed so many neck-breaking gymnastic feats, and from whose belfry I had so often gazed longingly over land and sea into the blue distance; and among the indifferently-curious faces there was here and there one that I should have been sorry to miss on this day; and then the day itself, one of the brightest days of summer, was so fair, the sky so blue, with great white motionless clouds, the air so crystal-clear, that the old town looked really young in the splendid sunlight, and the threadbare uniforms of Luz and Bolljahn, those energetic guardians of the peace, who had held the youth of the streets assembled in front of the church in check in a most masterly manner, seemed absolutely new; and in the harbor, where all the ships had run up their colors, the bright pennons fluttered so gaily in the fresh east wind; and upon the wide expanse of waters the wavelets were dancing so merrily, beyond the strait the white chalk-cliffs of the island glittered so brightly, and upon the island was Zehrendorf, for which we started as the sinking sun began to tinge with red the edges of the white clouds.

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Chapter XX

Perhaps that isolated life which is the ideal of a young married pair, when from any causes its realisation by an abode upon a desert island is found to be impracticable, can nowhere be better realised than in a very large, populous city. It all depends upon one's possessing the secret of creating an isle here, past whose shores the restless tides of social life roll away. The thorough mastery of this art is greatly facilitated to the adept, when the great world, as often happens, has no special motive to trouble itself about him; the heart of the mystery lies in the other and harder condition, that he shall not trouble himself about the world.

The first of these conditions had already been very satisfactorily fulfilled in my case. The world had interested itself amazingly little about the young machinist while he pursued his laborious but valuable studies in the ruinous house standing in the ruinous court. He resembled at all points Lessing's wind-mill which went to nobody and nobody came to it, and which simply ground the corn that was thrown into the hopper. But now the case was very different; that court was no longer a wilderness of rubbish. The ruins had been cleared away, or built up into stately buildings; the wall which had separated the two lots was pulled down and the old factory united with the new into a single great arena for industry and activity. This was a great change, which was much discussed, gladly welcomed by some, scornfully criticised by others, but which still made scarcely so much talk as the change in my own fortunes.

From the obscure chrysalis of an ordinary machinist, had been developed that splendid butterfly, the ruling chief of this great new establishment, and this enviable butterfly was the son-in-law of a millionaire, the husband of a young wife whose striking beauty excited the envy of women, the admiration of men, and attracted the attention of all wherever she appeared. To so notable a metamorphosis even the blasé public of a metropolis could not be indifferent, and when so remarkable a person, over whose past life there circulated the most various and scarcely credible legends, determines to baffle the curiosity directed to him from all sides, he must understand and practise arts undreamed of by him in his former obscure pupa-state.

I cannot say that in the practice of an art so new to me I always succeeded, or was at all times favored by fortune.

After spending a fortnight at Zehrendorf, we had returned to the city and rented a set of apartments by no means expensive, but still pleasant and roomy, the only objection I had to which was that they lay too far from the factory, but which by no means suited Hermine, who had always been accustomed to having a house of her own. Now, as I knew and shared Hermine's wish in this respect, I thought I would please her, and at the same time realize a favorite dream of my own, if with the assistance of my good friend the architect, I very quietly, but with as much expedition as possible, restored the house I had so long occupied, to its original design, and by help of the old plan, turned it into a charming little villa. I had to use an infinity of stratagems to keep the secret a month, and I felt really childlike, as after returning from a winter trip with Hermine to Zehrendorf, I found everything complete and according to my wishes. In the joy of my heart I embraced my friend the architect who had shown himself so tasteful a decorator, and blessed the day when I should bring Hermine from her hated city lodgings to this little paradise.

"You dear boy," said Hermine, as on the day after her return I showed her with triumph my new creation, "you dear boy, that is all very pretty and nice, and in the summer, for a couple of weeks or months which we have to pass in this wretched town and not in Zehrendorf, it will be a very nice place to stay; but now, in the middle of winter--no, George, it will never do! It makes me shiver to think of it. And then the great bare buildings around, and the tall chimneys that look as if they would topple over on our heads every minute--that one does lean a little--just look at it--I could not sleep here a single night in peace. And you are already too fond of the horrible noise and confusion around us here, so that the thought will come into my head that you might change into some frightful great machine yourself. No, you must mix more among men, go into society; you must begin at last to have a little pleasure of your life, you poor, overworked man! And you can do this better in our old lodgings; so I think we will spend the winter there. The rent is paid in advance, anyhow, and we must be economical, as all young beginners should. Have I not heard that out of your own distinguished mouth, sir? And now put down your distinguished mouth and give me a kiss, and that settles the matter."

Of course that settled the matter; for I had really planned the whole for Hermine's sake rather than my own. And if she really wished to make a pleasure-trip or two from our lonely island upon the sea of city life, I was certainly not the man to say no. Indeed I saw perfectly that in my present position I was in duty bound to perform certain social duties, if not for my own pleasure, at least in the interest of my business, and that I had already some derelictions in this respect to make good.

So I returned without a sigh to our city-lodgings, and while we were at dinner we drew up, with much merriment, a list of the influential persons upon whom, as Hermine said, we would make our first social experiment.

I cannot say that this experiment was crowned with very brilliant success. True we were most kindly met, and I for my part took all possible pains--and as I flattered myself, not unsuccessfully--to play the agreeable host; and Hermine had really no need to take pains to be the most charming of the company. Upon this point there seemed, so far as a young husband can judge in such a matter, to be but one opinion. The gentlemen were full of sincere admiration of her beauty, her manners, and whatever else is attractive in a young and charming woman; and if the admiration of the other sex was not altogether so sincere, they knew how to give it so enthusiastic an expression that it needed a much readier wit than I could boast of to find always a fit answer to all the handsome things that were whispered to me about my wife.

"What makes you so charming?" I used to say to her sometimes, when we came home after one of these social experiments, and Hermine was walking up and down our sitting-room in her full evening dress, as she had a way of doing, stopping now and then to strike a few chords on the piano, while I leaned back in the rocking-chair smoking my beloved cigar.

Then she would suddenly stop, and begin to take off the company we had just left, in the most amusing and wittiest style of caricature. There was Privy-Councillor Zieler, our banker, who kept perpetually glancing down at three family-orders at his button-hole, which had been graciously bestowed on him by three small princely houses in return for his services in negotiating a loan for them; there came his lady rustling along in the heaviest of satins, her snub nose turned up to the chandeliers, in whose light the diamonds that decked her bosom glanced so splendidly; and behind the corpulent mamma floated the sylph-like daughter, all gauze and Ess. Bouquet and fond memories of the three court-balls at the three princely houses. Here was the Railroad Director Schwelle, who would not talk before supper, in order not to excite himself, had no time to talk during supper, and after supper was in no condition for talking. Here were the two Misses Bostelmann, the intellectual daughters of our host--a wealthy contractor for building-stone--between whom Hermine had sat awhile, during which time the one entertained her unremittingly with Heine, while the other, with equal persistence and enthusiasm discoursed of Lenau.

"Heine--Lenau; Lenau--Heine! It was enough to drive one wild!" cried Hermine. "And that they call pleasure! Would you venture to maintain that doctrine, Sir?"

"I made no assertion of the kind, Madam!"

"Indeed! And why then do you drag your poor little wife among these horrible people, and rob her of the happy hours that she might spend in a delightful tête-à-tête with her monster of a husband? Is that right? Is that the love that you vowed to me in the St. Nicholas church at Uselin before all the assembled population? Heine--Lenau; Lenau--Heine! Oh!"

I laughed, and then suddenly became grave, and the remark rose to my lips that it was perhaps not difficult to prove that we could find no pleasant people to live with, if we did not choose to live with those that we really liked.

And where were at this time the people who were really dear to me?

The good Fräulein Duff, Hermine's most faithful friend, was with her relations in Saxony. She had only gone on a short visit, for eight weeks at the furthest, and the eight weeks had lengthened to as many months. Where was Paula? Eight hundred miles away, under another sky, which I trusted shone as brightly on her as she deserved. It had been now five months since Paula, with her mother and her youngest brother, Oscar, and accompanied, as a matter of course, by old Süssmilch, had taken a journey to Italy.

"Had to go," said Doctor Snellius. "What would you have, sir? It was an unavoidable necessity. An artist like Paula cannot possibly develop her talents here, in this small, petty, narrow, dark land of fog. Sunshine, light, air, those were what she needed. Venice, Rome, Naples, Capri--what do I know? I was never there; shall never go there; wouldn't know what to do there; but she knows well, and we shall know it and see it at the next Exposition, when people will make pilgrimages to her pictures as if they were miracles. Her mother too, that angel of a woman, will feel the benefit of a residence in a milder climate, and as for that young fellow Oscar, a young crocodile like him cannot be put into the water too soon. It is only in the water that one learns to swim, sir! Only in the water, even when one is born a crocodile, that is, has such an incredible talent as that youngster has. It will cost a fabulous sum, to be sure; but she can afford it now, thank heaven, and after all it is golden seed which will bring forth fruit a hundred and a thousand fold. She felt some hesitation on this point, but I persuaded her into it, and she writes me in her last letter--where did I put it? I want to show you what she says; well, it is no matter; I will show it to you the next time, if you remind me--anyhow she writes me so happily, so very happily, that it even made me happy. God bless her!"

This was the way the doctor talked to me, shortly after Paula's departure, which happened early in October, when I had been married three months, during a journey which I had to make to St. ---- on business, and on which Hermine accompanied me. "For you know," said the doctor, "in such cases one must take advantage of an opportunity, as Nature does, when for example she separates soul and body by a stroke of apoplexy or paralysis of the heart while the patient sleeps, or when the band connecting both has been sufficiently loosened by long sickness, so that the parting is scarcely painful, and sometimes is even longed for. It would perhaps have been a hard trial for poor Paula to leave you, had she gone from your presence direct to the railroad-car; but it happened that you were not there, and whether there are eighty or eight hundred miles between you makes very little difference."

"When she separates soul and body." This was one of the physiological illustrations which the doctor was fond of introducing into his discourse, but it struck me strangely. I looked him fixedly in the eye, and by an energetic effort he tuned down his voice a couple of octaves, and continued in a more indifferent tone:

"And then a temporary separation will not only be beneficial to them, but it will be a good thing for the boys that stay behind. It is time Benno and Kurt were cutting loose from their sister's apron-strings. Young men must learn to think and care for themselves, and to stand upon their own feet. I know that from my own experience. Had my old father sent me to Bonn or Heidelberg, instead of shutting me up here for four years under the shadow of his church-steeple in the old worm-eaten superintendent's house, I might have spread my wings better, and would not have been the cross-patch I am now; that is, if any man who has been christened Willibrod--Willibrord it should be correctly--out of love for an ancestor who has been in his grave these two hundred years, has any chance left to be anything but a cross-patch and oddity."

The letter in which Paula wrote to the doctor how happy she felt in that far-distant land, I never succeeded in getting a sight of. The next time he had forgotten it; and after awhile I grew used to the doctor's regularly wanting to show me the letters which Paula wrote him from Venice, Rome, and Naples, and as regularly leaving them at home.

I do not know why it was that I always felt a singular confusion whenever the doctor began one of his fruitless searches for Paula's letter, and why I always tried to get him upon another subject as soon as possible. Not that I had any doubt of Paula's alleged happiness. The short and unfrequent letters which she wrote to Hermine and myself conveyed no intimation to the contrary; but I was by no means quite assured as to the source from which that happiness flowed, and the letters, whether addressed to myself or to Hermine, had all the same physiognomy, in which I could only here and there recognize a trace of the beloved features of Paula. And the longer the separation lasted, the shorter and fewer were these letters, so that they were nearly as brief and rare as the doctor's visits.

"It must be so," said the doctor, as I once assailed him with friendly reproaches on this point; "a young married pair is like a young plant, which thrives best when put under a bell-glass, and meddled with as little as possible. Men call Love a goddess;[9] but to me it appears a god; a stern, inapproachable, jealous god, that will endure no rivals, and who puts to the sword all colleagues that he may find in his chosen realm, be they lovely Astartes or hideous Mumbo-Jumbos. And he is quite right to do so; the human heart is a stubborn, cross-grained affair, and takes a frightfully long time in learning merely to spell through the ten commandments."

The doctor always said things of this sort in a very kind tone, the same that I heard him use in speaking to his patients, and was at all times full of friendliness and attention, even more towards my wife than myself. Indeed a peculiar relation seemed to have been established between Hermine and him. She, with her usual impulsiveness, had at first made no secret of the dislike with which she regarded my old friend, and often enough ridiculed, even in his presence, his odd eccentric ways. But the man who on other occasions had the keenest arrows in his quiver ready for any aggressor, let him be who he might, and who did not lightly grant quarter to an antagonist, on no occasion used his powerful weapons against her; and this gentleness which nothing could change, and which was assuredly not always easy for the hot and caustic temper of the man, succeeded at last, however she might resist, in touching and captivating Hermine. Perhaps this happy result may have been in part owing to the fact that lately she had received the doctor not only as my friend, but as her medical adviser.

"He is really too good!" she said more than once, looking thoughtfully at the door through which the odd figure of my old friend had just vanished.

"There is not much the matter with your wife," said the doctor to me, when I expressed some uneasiness at Hermine's altered looks. "But she has been used from childhood to freer exercise and fresher air than can be had in a city like this."

"I would with pleasure take her to Zehrendorf," I said; "but now it is winter; and how can I possibly leave here?"

"Well, as it is an impossibility, we will not rack our brains any more about it," replied the doctor. "We must do the best we can. Sometimes mental activity may, to a certain point, make up for the deficiency of physical. It is a pity that your wife was so soon satiated with the bustle of society. Why do you not take her sometimes to the theatre or the opera? She is so great a lover of music."

"I do not care to go to the opera any more," said Hermine, after we had tried it a few times. "They sing badly and play worse. Now could you call that a Zerlina? And that Don Juan! You might have waited for me long enough, if you had been such a stick of a lover as that! And with such monstrous self-conceit to boot! Masetto was really the better man."

"Try the theatre once," said the doctor.

I looked him full in the eyes.

"The Bellini has been back a week," he added, and brought his round spectacles to bear upon me. We looked at each other awhile in silence.

"Your wife does not know that Fräulein Bellini and a certain other lady are one and the same person?" he presently asked.

"No," I answered.

"And you are not willing to tell her? Not willing to tell her what I know, who am your friend, and what very probably others know, who are not your friends?"

"It is a peculiar sort of thing, doctor."

"There are many peculiar things, especially in a new married life."

"Which one would do more wisely to keep to himself."

"Not in all cases," replied the doctor. "Whatever can be communicated, should be, always; and there is but little, hardly anything, which a young husband should not tell his wife. In a river crawling sluggishly between sandy shores to the end of its course, every stone lies unmoved; but a stream bursting fresh and joyous from the mountain will roll and whirl along heavy masses of rock, its young strength sweeping everything before it. Think it over, my dear friend."

I had thought it over, but I could not bring myself to follow the doctor's advice. It was not cowardice that kept me silent, but rather a feeling of shame that I could not overcome, and a fear of the consequences upon a character so peculiar as Hermine's, and in her present state of health. And yet the revelation hovered more than once upon my lips, but crept back again to my heart, that beat uneasily when in almost every number of the papers I came across the ominous name, and Hermine once or twice said casually. "We ought really to see this Bellini they talk so much about."

They did indeed talk much about her. "Are you a Bellinist or an anti-Bellinist?" was the question in all salons: "the Bellini is a marvel," "the Bellini is nothing at all," said the papers. I did not know which party was right, nor wish to know; and right glad was I that Hermine seemed as little curious in the matter as myself, until one day, when I had replied, in answer to her question, that I was disengaged that evening, she startled me by saying:

"Then we will go this evening and see the Bellini."

"If you wish," I answered, with the determination of a man who sees that he has met a fatality that is too strong for him.

And we went to the theatre and saw Ada Bellini as Juliet in Shakespeare's tragedy. I cannot assert that I felt any inclination to join in the enthusiastic applause that was lavished upon the actress by the crowded house, nor in the hisses that were occasionally heard, but only to be overwhelmed by fresh plaudits. Nor can I say that in the course of the evening I found myself able to pass a critical judgment upon the artist. However attentively I watched the stage, I saw little more than if I had gazed at vacancy, dreaming of times long past, and wishing at intervals that this evening also belonged to past time, I remember that once arousing from this unpleasant reverie and looking at Hermine, I caught her eye fastened upon me with a mysterious expression; but she only jested at my indifference as we drove home, and declared that the question of Bellinist and anti-Bellinist was settled for her.

"With what result?" I asked, lighting my cigar from the lamp.

"And are you going to smoke now, you unfeeling man? Do you suppose that Romeo would have poisoned himself if he had had a cigar in his pocket with the fatal flask? Much good may your cigar do you, dear Romeo: Juliet will bid you good-night."

This evening for the first time I smoked my nightly cigar alone; and never did I smoke one in deeper reflection.

"The doctor was right," I said to myself, as I threw the stump into the dying coals on the hearth, and rose with a sigh from my easy-chair; "perfectly right. I must wait for a favorable opportunity."

But as it usually happens in such cases, a week passed, two weeks passed, and the opportunity did not occur. Nor did the necessity seem very urgent, as Hermine had not spoken again of going to the theatre. She still felt unwell, and the doctor's visits were more frequent than formerly.

"Have you told your wife yet who the Bellini is?" he asked me one day.

"Not yet."

"She knows it."

"Impossible!"

"She knows it; I give you my word upon that."

"Has she said so to you?"

"No."

"How then----?"

"How then? A physician, my dear fellow, has sharp ears, and a physician who is the friend of the family, as he should always be, has them doubly sharp. He hears between the words that are spoken; and I can only repeat to you that I have heard between the words of your wife, and learned that she knows the Bellini to be Constance von Zehren, and that she knows more beside. Whether she knows all, and whether she knows the real truth, is only known to the person that told her."

"And that is----?"

"Our common friend Arthur."

"Arthur has not been in the city for eight weeks."

"Our postal system forwards with admirable fidelity all letters intrusted to it, even anonymous ones."

"But good heaven, doctor, what interest could Arthur have----?"

"Revenge is sweet," said the doctor.

"In this case it would be stupid too, for----"

"It is often stupid too."

"For the steuerrath lives almost exclusively upon my father-in-law's purse, and I bought a considerable place for Arthur only yesterday, and upon the table there lies a letter in which he asks me again for a large loan of money."

"All that makes no difference. And my dear George, don't take to moping. You are a man, and there is no occasion here for despair. We must not take things harder than they are; the really hard ones cannot be made any lighter so, and with this latter article I should think you were already sufficiently supplied."

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Chapter XXI

And in this the good doctor was perfectly right, in a wider sense than he had himself any idea of.

It was not merely that without sufficient experience I had to a certain extent to find my way in a vast domain of industry, at that time scarcely explored by us Germans. I shared that plight however with all my rivals, who, however great their experience in other branches, in the construction of locomotives were as much novices as I was myself. And any advantage that they might have over me in more extended knowledge, could perhaps be equalized by diligence. In this point, in truth, I had no slight confidence in myself; indeed I was conscious that notwithstanding the load which now rested upon me was far from being a light one, I could still take additional weight upon my shoulders. But a man who carries a heavy burden must at least see clearly the way that he has to follow, or all his strength and endurance cannot preserve him from stumbling and possibly falling. So was it here. I was confused in all my plans, hampered in my movements, and checked in my resolutions, because at all times I had to look around for the man who should stand at my back and upon whom I was forced to rely, and who often in the most critical moments was no more to be found.

Not to be found, in the literal sense of the words. The commerzienrath had always been a restless man, as could hardly have been otherwise with the multiplicity of business that he had in various places, and with his maxim that nothing was well done unless you do it yourself. "I am," he used to say in confidential moments over a bottle, "like Cæsar, or whatever the fellow's name was, with whom to come, to see, and to conquer, were all one. To come, to see, to conquer--that is the art of success!"

And now he came and went more frequently than ever; to-day in Uselin, to-morrow in St. ----, then here again, and the next day in hot haste to Zehrendorf, where my following letter did not reach him, because in the meantime he was at St. ---- again, or heaven knows where. This had now become a regular thing; and I made besides the unpleasant discovery that he was always hardest to find and had covered his tracks most carefully, precisely when he was most needed. Was this his old cuttle-fish man[oe]uvre which he was so fond of using in conversation, now applied in a practical form? was it more than this?

Yes, the commerzienrath came and went enough, but the seeing and conquering by no means corresponded. His blue eyes were now too often dimmed by a watery mist, and however grand his vauntings, his appearance was by no means that of a conqueror. The impression that had struck me when I first saw him again at Zehrendorf, that the commerzienrath had become an old man, was now most painfully confirmed, and not to me only, his old business friends were struck with the change that had taken place in him.

"Your father-in-law has grown strangely irritable of late," said the banker Zieler. "The commerzienrath ought to give himself more rest," occasionally remarked the Railroad Director Schwelle. "My honored patron, the Herr Commerzienrath, is in a very bad humor to-day," whispered to me the landlord of the hotel where he used to stop, for he never stayed at our house; and even the waiters privately shrugged their shoulders when the old man over his bottle stormed at them like a madman for some real or fancied neglect.

No; the man with the blinking watery eyes, and the petulant temper, doubly noticeable and disagreeable in a man of his years, did not look like a conqueror, nor was he one.

Long as our intimate relations had now continued, I knew of no triumph that he had won. It was assuredly no triumph for the Cr[oe]sus of Uselin that he had been compelled to close his vast grain-trade, nor was it any triumph that even after this retreat in good order, as he termed it, no order could be brought into our financial arrangements. On the contrary, we were more pressed for ready money than ever; so hardly pressed that I struggled from one embarrassment to another, and was really often brought to the verge of despair. Not only was I most seriously hampered in my business operations by the perpetual uncertainty in which my father-in-law kept me, I also was harassed by the equally painful feeling that I had not been able to introduce a single one of those improvements in the condition of my workmen over which, in by-gone hopeful times, the doctor, Klaus, and I had so often laid our heads together, and drained so many a glass of grog. A chief who does not know how he shall meet his pecuniary obligations the next day is in no position to make concessions to his workmen to which he is not pledged, to which he is not bound by the letter of any contract, only by the voice in his own heart pleading for the poor. There were even times--and I think of them now as one recalls a peculiarly frightful dream--when I felt that I would close my heart against a cry of distress, even against a timidly murmured complaint, and when the example of my rivals, who had lowered the daily wages a groschen, seemed one that I ought to follow. I remember that at these times it was as if a gray veil had been spread over the world, that neither food nor drink were pleasant to me, that I tossed sleepless upon my bed as if I had a murder upon my conscience, that I went to and fro by the most unfrequented streets, and if I met an acquaintance, pulled my hat over my face and crossed to the other side. Once, as the load upon my heart was almost unbearable, I hastened to my friend, as the tortured patient hastens to the physician, and poured my sorrows into his faithful breast. He listened to me with kindness, and said:

"I have seen this coming, my dear George; so it is nothing which lies outside of human calculation, and consequently need not be despaired of, for the fault may be repaired by time and endurance. He who desires to preserve the freedom of his resolutions must not attach himself to any point on which others have fastened their unclean and dishonorable webs, and where there cannot fail to be confusion and entanglement. Wealth which, like your father-in-law's, has not been acquired with perfectly clean hands, cannot be kept without some soil. He who wishes to remain impartial in the cause of Hammer versus Anvil--no one can keep free from participation in it--must not place himself decisively on either side; and to a certain extent you have done this. Your father-in-law is a knight of the hammer, and you--you are his son-in-law, that is, the first of his followers, revolt as much as you may against this unpleasant truth. And my friend, I see, as things now are, no escape from this labyrinth but one, and that is that the case shall be brought as soon as possible before that higher tribunal of the great laws of economy, and there be decided promptly and finally, that you may become the free man you were before. This sounds very hard, very cruel; but my dear friend, you cannot take it amiss of a disciple of Hippocrates if he holds fast to that saying of his master: Quod medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quod ferrum non sanat, ignis."

The higher tribunal to which the doctor had referred me, was to decide for the Hippocratic fire-method in my case, sooner than perhaps the doctor himself expected.

When the commerzienrath complained to me again and again how hard it was just now to raise the very considerable amount of funds which I needed for the works, I had repeatedly and urgently entreated him to undertake seriously the sale of Zehrendorf. Heaven knows how hard it was for me to press this upon him. Zehrendorf had grown more dear to me than I can express. There was scarcely a clod on which my foot had not rested, no tree, no bush, that I had not become attached to. The prospect of being able to spend a day at Zehrendorf made every labor light, and bore me over many a care; the hope of passing my old days in the place where for the first and only time in my life I had been really young was dearer to me than any other. And I knew that Hermine felt the same. There she had dreamed her dream of love, and there it had become reality. Had she not been most seriously offended with me when her father intentionally gave her to believe that I was the originator of the project? Had I not breathed freely, and had she not loudly exulted when the sudden sickness of the old Prince Prora cut short the negotiations; and should I now be really the man who was to deprive her and myself of this treasure? Not I! It was the circumstances that were stronger than I; circumstances which I had not caused and was not responsible for, but which I could not allow to remain as they were, or the responsibility would really fall upon me. This I knew perfectly well; so I urged the matter upon my father-in-law again and again.

Strange to say, he now most obstinately resisted my urgency, as if the project had not been of his own devising. Did he really fear the unfavorable conjuncture of events? Did he really believe that he could retain the property? Did he fear what malicious tongues would say, remembering that when he closed his grain business he gave it out that he was tired of work and was going to retire to his countryseat for the rest of his old age? Was it simply despotic obstinacy, and an old man's waywardness? I did not know; and could not even say with certainty. At such times I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps the storm would blow over; his affairs must be in a better condition than I thought: perhaps he has grown a miser in his old days, and is holding back his hoarded treasures; for it is impossible that he can be as short of money as he pretends: what could he possibly have done with it?

"Your father-in-law has had an unlucky day to-day," said the banker Zieler to me, as coming from the Exchange one day, he met me on the street.

"How so, Herr Privy-Councillor?"

"Well, he had to pay a difference of a hundred thousand thalers upon a speculation he had made for a rise in alcohol: a curious miscalculation in so experienced a man of business."

A hundred thousand thalers at a moment when I was perplexed to raise a thousand, and in an operation of which he had never spoken to me, and which lay entirely outside of his regular business! I could not altogether keep my face from indicating the alarm that this piece of news caused me, and the councillor must have seen it, for he added with a smile:

"Well, well, your father-in-law can afford himself these little amusements. I have the honor to wish you a very good day."

I did not take this view of it: I wrote at once to Uselin and entreated him to let me know if the information, which I had received from a very good source, was really true; and I concluded with pressing him once more to give me at last a clear insight into his affairs, since as a man of honor I could no longer endure the present condition of things.

In answer came a long letter, full of complaints of my want of confidence, and of the hard fate of an old man who was deserted by his children, and crammed with wordy boastings about his fifty years' experience in business, about his well-proved good-fortune, and ending with the recommendation than in any event I should write to the prince at once, and ask him if he was still thinking of the purchase of Zehrendorf, or not.

I let the rest of the letter pass, and held to the single fixed point that it contained. I wrote at once to the young prince, who was still with his sick father in Prora, and received in reply an autograph letter to the effect that he had been intending to come to the city, and would carry out this intention at once. He would arrive on Friday at four o'clock, and would be very glad to see me an hour later at the palace, where we could talk over the matter at length.

And so it was to be then. My heart felt heavy at the thought, but I suppressed the emotion and repeated the doctor's aphorism: "what medicines and iron cannot cure, must be cured by fire."

In this half-dejected, half-resolved mood, I went at the appointed day and hour to the palace of the prince.

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Chapter XXII

The prince received me with politeness which I might almost call cordial. He had arrived half an hour before, and the journey through the cold winter's day seemed to have done him good; he looked fresh and youthful as I had never seen him before, and in his whole bearing there was such elasticity, such vivacity in his discourse, that I could scarcely recognize in him the wearied dreamer in the old hunting-lodge of Rossow. I could not refrain from congratulating him on this change, which I attributed to his improved health. He seemed pleased to hear it, and said it was high time for him to have outgrown childish distempers.

"I have always resolved," he said, "that when the time came, it should find me a man; and I believe that the time has come. May God long preserve the life of the prince, my father; but by all human reckoning his days are numbered. It may justly be demanded of me that an event which influences the destinies of thousands shall not find me unprepared."

The prince said these words very earnestly. He had been walking up and down the room, and stopped before a portrait which represented a young and very handsome man in a rich and fantastic dress.

"Strange," the prince went on, "that life can play with us thus! See here; this is the portrait of the prince, my father, in his twenty-eighth year. He wore that dress at a masked ball at court, and created an immense furore, and the late queen insisted that he should have his portrait taken in it for her. This is a copy of the original. Do you not find----"

He suddenly checked himself threw himself into an easy chair, giving me a sign to be seated, and continued:

"But I did not come to talk with you about myself and my affairs. Your own have changed very much since we last met. Why sir, you are a great diplomatist! To let me talk and talk, and make you heaven knows what well-meant proposals, without indicating by word or look that you were, so to speak, over the mountain, at the foot of which I thought we both were standing! How you must have laughed in your sleeve! And poor Zehren! He pretended to be as much astonished as I was myself. But I believe he knew perfectly well how things stood, for though I have always considered him half fool, I have a strong suspicion that he is whole knave. I should be glad if anybody will take him off my hands; he is sometimes a real annoyance to me, and yet I do not want to send him away. I have been thinking that if I buy Zehrendorf from you, I might make him the bailiff of it, or rent the estate to him; but it has occurred to me that you might not like that arrangement. Am I right?"

"Your highness," I replied, "Arthur is certainly not the proper person for such a trust. In his hands all the excellent and most useful improvements that have been made at such heavy expense, would go to ruin. I confess that if I believed it to be your serious intention--instead of being, as I am sure, only the suggestion of your generous heart--I would even now at the twelfth hour endeavor to retain Zehrendorf in my father-in-law's possession, greatly as I desire, on other grounds, to effect a sale of it."

"You are right--it was only an idea," said the prince. "But why do you accord me this so flattering preference? You know that I have no longer the same interest in obtaining the property, that I had last spring, and that in consequence you will find me hard to deal with."

"But easier than Herr von Granow, at all events."

A pleasant smile played about the prince's refined lips.

"You may be right there," he said. "That fellow is a fox, despite his bulldog-face. He has sounded me once or twice through Zehren and the justizrath, to find out if I have still any thoughts of buying Zehrendorf. It seems that he wants to get all competitors out of the way, to be the only one upon the field, and then at the right moment, of which the justizrath will no doubt give him the sign, step in and secure the place for a song. No, sir, you shall not fall into the dirty hands of that rascal if I can help it."

"I thank your highness," I answered.

"I have to thank you," the prince replied, "that you again give me an opportunity to discharge an old debt that I owe you. Since you wrote to me I have reflected much upon your position: indeed I may say that at no time have you been entirely out of my mind, thanks to the good friends of your father-in-law. You yourself probably do not know how much is said about him, and how deeply he is sunk in general estimation. I am very sorry to say this; and I say it only because I feel it is due to you as the person nearest concerned, to let you know what others perhaps have not the courage to tell you, or conceal from you from malicious motives. The commerzienrath's credit seems to me greatly shaken; there is talk of immense losses that he has lately incurred; they say he speculates on 'Change and in all sorts of hazardous enterprises. I can assure you he is considered half insane and more than half ruined; though it is true that others maintain the old man was never clearer-headed than now, and never richer; and that if he plays the fool and the bankrupt, it is only one of his old feints, which have always been successful. What is your own opinion?"

I felt that the prince's kind advances to me deserved to be met with all sincerity, and so I stated to him in detail, as well as I could, the singular position in which I found myself placed with the commerzienrath, the subterfuges, equivocations and concealments of which he had been guilty to me; that I believed that while he was not yet the ruined man his enemies declared him to be, if he kept on in this way he would of necessity ruin himself sooner or later.

The prince listened to me attentively, here and there interposing questions which, if they indicated no great familiarity with business, showed a clear understanding and rapid comprehension. We had come back to the original point, the sale of Zehrendorf, and had already agreed upon the principal conditions, when the old white-headed servant, whom I had already seen at Rossow, entered and standing by the door gave his master a sign.

"Ah," said the prince, "is it already so late? That is unfortunate. I have to go to the theatre: her Royal Highness the Princess, my patroness, who was informed of my arrival, has sent me word that she wishes to speak with me a moment, in her box, and learn the state of the prince, my father. But perhaps we can combine the useful with the agreeable. I should like to know how soon I can command the requisite funds, and Henzel"--this was the prince's banker--"will be at the theatre also. I know that the great Mæcenas of all singers and actors--actresses and ballet-girls not forgotten--never misses a first representation. I shall find an opportunity to speak with him. The best thing would be for you to come too: we might then arrange all the preliminaries this evening, and have a draft of the conveyance made to-morrow morning by my solicitor. Will you come?"

"I have the evening at my disposal," I said.

"A proud word for a young husband!" said the prince, laughing. "But why not bring your wife along? I have long desired the pleasure of making her acquaintance. I could not do it at Rossow, for I had pledged myself not to go more than a mile from the castle. Well, what do you say? You seem to hesitate and look confused. Sir, those old times are past: you need never more feel any hesitation in presenting Prince Prora to a virtuous lady!"

"I have not the least doubt of that, your highness," I replied; "but my wife--I really do not know----"

"Ah, indeed!" said the prince. "I understand. Well, you can see. Au revoir, then, and bring your lady if possible."

The prince gave me his hand as we parted. I had neither said yes or no, because I did not wish to accept his suggestion, and of course could not with any show of reason decline it off-hand.

"But what a miserable thing it is when a man does not know whether to say yes or no," I said to myself, as I went through the darkening streets to my not very distant lodging; "a thing to which I am not yet used, and must not learn to be." And while I thus spoke, I was on the point of crossing the street to a corner where I saw by the light of a streetlamp a play-bill pasted up, but I checked myself. "No, no," I muttered, "you must not give your cowardice a respite; for cowardice it is, and nothing else."

So I reached home, where Hermine was expecting me with impatience. I had told her of my appointment with the prince, but not of its object, not reflecting that this concealment of an affair which was about to be decided at once, could only increase her secret uneasiness. I perceived this as I caught her eyes bent anxiously upon me. Should I not now tell her at once all that I had hitherto so carefully concealed from her? A confusion that embarrassed my reason, and a fear that seemed to weigh down my heart, suddenly seized me, I wished to free myself from this painful embarrassment, as one strives to escape from a room in which he feels himself suffocating; and as in such a case he takes the first mode of escape that offers, though it be a leap through a window, I said, as if reciting a lesson:

"The prince wishes to see me at the theatre; he has a communication to make to me which can not well be postponed until to-morrow. He expressed the wish that you would accompany me, if you can. He has been very kind to me, and I feel myself under great obligations to him. I should be glad to show him an attention, if you have no objection."

"Ah, she plays to-night then!" said Hermine, her lips quivering and brows contracting darkly.

"What is that to me--what is that to us, Hermine?"

I opened my arms, and my wife lay upon my breast. The whole long pent-up passion burst forth at once: she sobbed, she laughed, and cried: "Yes, yes, what is that to us? what is that to us?"

Her sweet face that lately had looked so pale and often so sad, now beamed with life and happiness: I thought I had never seen her so beautiful.

"You will create a furore," I said, playfully.

"So I mean," she answered. "There is no art in being fair when one is so happy."

And she threw herself again into my arms, and then hastened into her dressing-room, from which she presently returned in a simple charming toilet, such as she well knew how to make.

"Do you think I can let the prince see me so?" she asked, archly.

"Yes; any king in the world!"

"Even when----?"

"Even when----!"

The distance to the theatre was short, yet in this short drive I had time to tell her everything that had passed between the prince and myself; the negotiations about Zehrendorf, and the causes which rendered the sale necessary. And the fair creature agreed contentedly to everything. Ah, the doctor was indeed right when he said: "A young husband can tell his young wife everything;" but I was also right that he must choose a fitting opportunity.

We reached the theatre. The prince had told me that there would be places in his box for us, and it was well that it was so, for the house was full. A new piece was played, the work of a young poet who had a considerable reputation at that time, a conversation-piece, in which Constance had no part, as I convinced myself by a glance at the play-bill. It was not yet late, but pit and galleries were already filled, and the boxes were filling up. The prince was not there yet, and only appeared towards the close of the overture, accompanied by an officer of high rank, whom he presented as his cousin, Count Schlachtensee. He looked exceedingly handsome and distinguished in evening dress, with a blue ribbon around his neck, to which was attached the star of some foreign order set in brilliants; and exhibited the most perfect and engaging courtesy towards Hermine, to whom he apologized for his late arrival, and then seated himself beside her, conversing very pleasantly for a few moments, until he perceived that the royal princess who had summoned his attendance, had entered her box, when he left us.

Lieutenant-colonel Count Schlachtensee, when his cousin had departed, seemed not quite to know what to do, until he hit upon the happy idea of offering me his opera-glass, which I politely declined. So he applied it to his own eyes, fixing it upon a box opposite to us so long that I involuntarily turned my own looks in the same direction. Directly fronting us was a lady who at the moment had her head turned to a gentleman sitting behind her, but in whom I at the first glance recognized Constance. I do not know what effect this discovery would have had upon me, had I not just before had that precious understanding with Hermine: even as it was my heart beat violently as I observed that my wife also turned her glass in that direction; but I breathed freely, and murmured a "thank heaven!" from the bottom of my heart, when she lowered her glass again, and looked at me with an indescribable arch smile. As the curtain rose she fixed her attention upon the stage without ever casting another glance at the woman whose form had no doubt floated lately often enough through her melancholy reveries. Constance on the other hand seemed to take less interest in what was going on upon the stage. I observed her glass fixed almost constantly upon us when she was not engaged in conversation with her companion, who had now taken his seat by her side, and in whom I recognized the actor Von Sommer, who went by the name of Lenz, or else turned to a couple of younger gentlemen, in elegant dress and of aristocratic, though foreign appearance--two Wallachian noblemen as I afterwards learned--who were behind her chair, and evidently belonged to the party. It was plain that they were talking of us, and in no friendly manner; and I thought that more than once I perceived the pale face of Herr Lenz contract with a bitter smile, while the others, who kept their glasses steadily levelled at us, sometimes laughed openly.

Whether it was the too conspicuous interest which the beautiful actress and her party took in the lady in the opposite box, or whether it was Hermine's charming appearance, the public, between the acts, followed the example set them, and their unpleasant curiosity increased still further when the prince returned and resumed his place by Hermine. Persons stood up in the pit to see better: they looked from Hermine to Constance and from Constance to Hermine, and evidently instituted very interesting comparisons between the two, both beautiful, though with beauty so widely different. No doubt the prince had observed Constance, but in vain did I secretly watch his face for any mark of the impression which this unexpected and unfortunate meeting must have made upon him. Not in vain had he moved from his early youth in circles where it is the first law to keep the features under perfect control. He laughed and jested in the most natural and easy manner with Hermine, named to her various distinguished persons in the proscenium-boxes whom he knew, turned to speak with his cousin and myself, and behaved as if altogether he was enjoying himself greatly.

This scene was repeated in the second entr'acte, but this time a chamberlain of the princess came to our box, charged by her to learn from the prince the name of the lady whose beauty and grace, as he said, had charmed her highness.

The prince told us this, laughing, as the stately gentleman left us, and said it was not unlikely that her highness might summon us to her box, and that I should hold myself in readiness for a councillor's title, or the order of the fourth class.

I confess that though I did not altogether believe this peril so imminent, a feeling ever more strongly impressed me that some serious disaster was close at hand, as if floating in the hot atmosphere of the place. I also thought that I perceived that the heat, animated conversation, and the fact that she was the object of general observation, had too much excited Hermine, so after exchanging a look with her, at the conclusion of the third act, I begged to take leave of the prince, especially as the banker Henzel had not arrived, and thus nothing could be done in the matter of our business. The prince rose at once and offered Hermine his arm to conduct her into the lobby, into which a great crowd was now pressing from all the box-doors, out of the intolerably hot theatre.

There was a good deal of crowding, and we were soon separated from the prince, who had taken leave of Hermine at the moment when Constance pressed by me on the arm of Herr Lenz, and followed by the two Wallachians. She saluted me in a manner that masked a stinging mockery under a show of great cordiality: but the pale face of her companion was turned towards us for a moment, and his eyes, which appeared to be looking for some one, had a fixed and ominous expression. He pushed on through the crowd as rapidly as he could with the lady, towards the place where I had last seen the prince. Other persons then came between us, and I lost sight of the party; Hermine, who was busy taking care of her dress, had luckily not seen Constance; and she now asked me to help her to get out as quickly as possible. We had descended the stair a few steps, when suddenly there was a tumult behind us in the lobby. Hermine stood still, and leaned half-fainting upon my arm; and during this delay, the tumult became louder. There was a buzz of many voices speaking at once, and then loud words, apparently from persons in authority who were striving to restore order. A gentleman came hurrying past me, and I stopped him:

"What is the matter?"

"Prince Prora has just been most outrageously insulted by Lenz the actor!"

The gentleman hurried on.

I looked at Hermine: she had not heard it, she had fainted. I carried her down the stairs, placed her in a carriage and drove home, where she arrived in a rather weak state, but otherwise completely restored. I must not be uneasy about her, she said; and she had had a delightful evening, for which she thanked me a thousand times. And now she would go to bed, and I must positively go back to the theatre, that the prince should not think she kept me tied to her apron-string.

I pretended to yield to her wishes, and promised to go back. But in reality I had already determined to do this if possible. Suppose it were true, what the gentleman on the steps had told me! and how could I doubt it? Then the disaster which I had felt impending in the sultry atmosphere of the theatre, had come to pass. I remembered the scene in the Zehrendorf wood, so many years before, and how the boy preferred to die, to receiving a blow from my hands, of which there would have been no witness but the moon. Would the man feel differently? Would he not risk everything to avenge an insult offered him, the Prince of Prora, before the eyes of a crowd of spectators?

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Chapter XXIII

But I scarcely had quitted my house when I reflected that after what had happened, it was scarcely possible that the prince could still be in the theatre, and I turned my steps towards his palace. It was about nine o'clock; the evening was cold and raw, though we were at the beginning of March; the snow was blowing about in the wind and eddying around corners; pedestrians were hurrying along with pulled-up collars and bent heads; and I could not help remembering the evening a year before, when I saw the unhappy girl in the yellow light of the lamps at the door of the palace, which I now reached all out of breath. For the revenge which had then blazed in her dark eyes and breathed from her mouth, the revenge to which she had in vain endeavored to entice me, for this sweet, this terrible revenge she had found the right man at last.

I was possessed with the feeling that all this had to come so; that a destiny long-appointed, which neither I nor any one could baffle, had now reached its accomplishment. I asked myself--What brings me here? What do I mean to do? I could find no answer to this question; not even when I stood in the ante-chamber and besought the old servant, who had been called, to lead me at once to his master.

"I can admit no one," the old man replied.

He seemed greatly agitated, his voice trembled as he spoke, and his withered hand, which he raised as if to keep me off, trembled visibly.

At this moment the door leading to the room in which the prince had received me in the afternoon opened, and Count Schlachtensee came out and passed us with the same fixed look I had observed on him in the theatre. Evidently it was not pretence; he really did not see me. So what I had feared, was now rushing down. I could not restrain myself longer, and regardless of the old servant, rushed through the door through which the count had come, traversed a second large ante-chamber towards the inner room, through the open door of which I saw the prince sitting at a writing table.

"This to Herr Hartwig at once!" he said, holding out to me a letter in his left hand, while he leaned his head on his right.

"I am he," I said, taking the letter, and holding his hand firmly in mine.

His hand was cold, and the face which he now turned to me was pale as death; only on the right cheek glowed a crimson spot, as if branded there.

"You here?" he asked, in surprise. "That is very well; now I can tell you what is in the letter, which I will ask you to take care of. It is a written memorandum of our agreement to-day, with the addition of a request to the prince, my father, to carry out this agreement, whatever happens."

I still held his hand, and endeavored in vain to speak a word. If I had needed any explanation of the irresistible sympathy with which this man inspired me, I had it now in my very hands. And this man must be the sacrifice of a base piece of treachery! This man, who through all temptations had preserved so pure his native generosity and kindness of heart, must be entangled in the snare which his rash youthful foot had touched years before!

This, or something like this, was what I said to him when I found words at last, and I added that I could not endure the thought, and eagerly asked if there were no possible way--none--to escape from the toils?

"Sit down," said the prince, bringing me to the fireplace in which a comfortable fire was burning, offering me an easy chair and taking another himself "Did I not say that you were an original? For none but a man who has preserved to his thirtieth year a considerable share of the innocent philosophy of his childhood, could hit upon the idea of asking a prince of Prora if it is not still possible to carry patiently through his whole life an insult offered him before a score of witnesses."

He said this in a very friendly manner, and with an attempt to smile, but his pale lips quivered and the spot on his cheek glowed a deeper red.

"I am no child," I said; "but it may well be that a man who has lived so solitary a life as mine, is an incompetent judge of the customs and principles that rule the great world. I only know that in my heart a voice cries: this must not be! Must it be then? Are those laws which I confess I do not understand, as inflexible as fate?"

"Yes; it must be," the prince replied. "I also have considered it--not for my own sake, but for the sake of those to whom I would gladly have been something--but it must be."

"And your rank----?" I began.

"Does not excuse me," he answered, with a smile like that of a teacher who dissipates the crude and futile objections of a pupil, "I am not a sovereign prince, though my ancestors were sovereigns. I am a nobleman like other noblemen, and subject to the same laws. My antagonist is noble too: the house of Sommer-Brachenfeld, of which he comes by direct descent, is an ancient race, nearly as ancient as my own."

"But a notorious profligate, a miserable adventurer like this man--has he not dispossessed himself of the right of being challenged to the field by a prince Prora?"

"I fancy not," the prince replied, still with the same good-natured smile. "The man is an adventurer, it is true; but I saw in Ireland a fellow who descended from the legitimate kings of the green isle of Erin, and who was a keeper of hogs; and in Paris, in a cafè chantant, I saw the genuine scion of an ancient ducal house, who was singing indecent songs to the guitar before an audience of men in blouses and women of the streets. Now an actor at a Royal Theatre is quite a respectable person. And again, have I been no profligate in my time? And can I know what would have become of me if the family council had really cut me off from the succession, and thrust me out into the world with an indemnity in money? However large the sum might have been, it would not have lasted long, and then--no, no, I have no right on this ground, not even an excuse, to avoid a duel, supposing that I looked for an excuse; but I look for none."

We both remained silent. Without, the winter wind swept through the streets and howled and whistled around the palace, like a hungry wolf around the fold; and here in the room the light beamed so soft from the lamps upon the marble tables, over the splendid furniture, on the hearth the fire glowed and sparkled so cosily, and surrounded by all the splendor, and illuminated by the soft light, at the fire upon his own hearth, sat the master of this house, who did not even look for an excuse to avoid a duel with an adventurer who had nothing at risk but his own bare life.

"I look for none," said the prince again. "Indeed I believe that though there were the most indisputable justification of such a course, I should decline to avail myself of it. I will say nothing of the fact that it is impossible for me to live in the consciousness that such an insult is unavenged--as impossible as for me to live by picking pockets--but I have a feeling which I cannot shake off that this is a doom which has fallen upon me, against which all resistance is unavailing."

He raised his eyes as he said this, and his look fell upon the portrait of the young cavalier in the fantastic costume, which he had told me represented his father, and which hung at some distance from us, brilliantly illuminated by the light of a large lamp.

"Altogether unavailing," he repeated, with a deep sigh, turning his face from the portrait to the flame on the hearth, upon which his eyes remained vacantly fixed, while his pale lips moved as if uttering words which I could fancy I heard, though they were unspoken: "altogether unavailing!"

This was the same fatal presentiment that had laid its spell upon me from the first. The events that had just now taken place, had been prepared long, long ago; they had stood already written in the stars that glittered on that autumn night when the young prince stole through the park of Zehrendorf to his love. I sat there, my fevered brow resting on my hand, and thought of that night, and how I was summoned to guard her who did not wish to be guarded, who even then was planning and weaving the web of treachery, and was even then a wanton, who, if I could believe what the good Hans told me, had been in this case the betrayer and not the betrayed, and who yet like a vengeful fury pursued the man who was guilty of no wrong towards her, except that of being her first lover, if he was the first.

I must have spoken aloud some part of the thoughts that were passing through my mind while the prince was walking up and down the room, and at last stopped beside me and laid his hand upon my shoulder:

"True heart," he said, "how true you are, and how you increase the debt which I have never yet paid you, and which I would so gladly pay before it is too late. Perhaps it will be something if I do for you what I would do for none other: if I try to justify myself to you for the part I have played in this unfortunate affair. Perhaps too I owe it to her; and I would fain settle all my debts: I would wish that one man lived who will know, if Prince Carl von Prora falls, how and why it was that he died."

He checked me with a gesture as I was about to speak, and proceeded, his soft beautiful eyes fixed upon the fire which was now dying out on the hearth:

"You think that Constance never loved, neither me nor any other; that it was not in her nature to love, and that therefore no one could be a traitor to her. In this way you attempt to justify me; but you are wrong. Constance really loved me, and still I did not betray her. Whether I loved her or not is another question, which I cannot affirm--which I would not for much be able to affirm. I was very young when I first saw her at that unlucky watering-place; scarcely more than a boy; and I may have loved her as boys love, romantically, passionately, and yet not deeply. I know I behaved like a madman when my father came and said that I could never marry the daughter of a professional gamester and notorious smuggler, especially when the girl was not even the legitimate child of this dishonored father. But this you know: I told you all this; and this was all the prince then told me. But this was not all that he might and should have told me. And his telling me but half the truth while he concealed that which was of most importance, out of what I must call false shame of appearing to his son in the light of an evil example, and out of prudery to the world which had long known him as a pious man and protector of the church, this is the evil seed from which has sprung this disaster for me and for himself.

"I cannot say that the prince's warning was altogether fruitless, nor can I say that I was convinced by it. I was a boy, a wild spoiled boy, accustomed to having my own will because it was my will--my own will often against my will. So was it here. The prince, convinced of my obedience, committed the imprudence of sending me, accompanied by my tutor, to Rossow, to hunt there, to recover my injured health, and to pay court to the fair Countess Griebenow, who was allotted to me by common consent of both families. How easy it is for a youth with money enough in his pocket, to bribe his servants, I need not say. I spent the morning at Griebenow, and the evening--you know where. But you do not know, and probably would not believe upon any other authority, that my courtship was carried on in very nearly the same style and tone in both places. I repeat it, I was young, very young, and youthful modesty and a certain chivalrous sense of honor, which is perhaps native to me, always restrained me, even in the secrecy of Constance's apartment. Whether it was female modesty, or calculation--probably both; for I have rarely found women in which both were not present together--she always knew how to keep me in limits, and scarcely at rare intervals allowed me to kiss her hand. She maintained this rigor so firmly that I was more than once convinced she loved some other; and you can conceive whom I believed this other to be. Thus the play went on which had very nearly been brought to a sudden end by our meeting in the wood, and on the very day following I succeeded in realizing a long-concerted scheme, and carrying off my beloved. I had made her no promises, but she asked none, and no doubt thought all would come right if she played her part well. And she played it just as before; and while we were looked upon by all the world as a pair of unlawful lovers, and were pursued in all directions by my father's letters and couriers, I had received no favor from her beyond the privilege of kissing her hand.

"I had made my preparations so skilfully that I escaped all the prince's researches, though he moved heaven and earth to find the fugitives. He would have started in pursuit himself, no doubt, only his alarm at what had happened, brought on a violent attack of his old gout. And well had he cause to be alarmed."

The prince suddenly arose from his chair, and walked once or twice across the room, stopping again before the portrait of his father, at which he looked with a darkened countenance. He then resumed his seat, and proceeded:

"I had already got as far as Munich, when the old servant whom you have seen overtook us. He was the bearer of a letter in cipher, in which there was important information from various members of my family, and a few lines in my father's own hand, upon reading which I had laughed aloud. They ran: 'I adjure you by all that you hold sacred, to part from her at once if you do not wish to load yourself with a horrible crime: Constance von Zehren is your sister.'"

"Great heavens!" I cried.

"As I said," continued the prince, "I laughed; laughed madly at the thought, and then felt a shudder run over my whole body and seem to settle in my heart.

"The letter referred me to the old servant for further particulars, until the prince was in a condition to write me more fully. He, who from his youth had been attached to the prince's person, and had accompanied him upon all his travels, was better able than any other to explain the matter. He had been with the prince in Paris at the time when Herr von Zehren arrived there in his wild flight from Spain with his beloved. The two gentlemen had been very intimate friends, and at our court the two handsome stately young men went by the names of Orestes and Pylades. But it seems that this friendship was much shaken when the prince married my mother, whom Herr von Zehren had also courted. Whether the prince could never forgive his friend this rivalry, or whether Herr von Zehren, who was a man of fierce and uncontrolled passions, gave the prince afterwards any cause of offence--I do not know: but it appears that the prince was not only fascinated by the charms of the young Spanish lady, who tormented by her conscience, and perhaps as weak-minded as she was beautiful, bestowed upon her lover's friend a confidence which he abused, and perhaps also a love which he only did not refuse.

"Was the prince the father of the child which passed for Herr von Zehren's? It could not be certainly known; and the doubts which the prince himself had on this point might never have been removed; for when a few years later the unfortunate woman came to Rossow, where the prince was then staying, and threw herself, with dishevelled hair at his feet, crying that he was the father of her child, imploring him to protect her and her child from their pursuer, and to tell her the way to Spain--at this time she was a mere maniac. But there were other confirmatory circumstances. An old female servant--the same horrible old woman who was with Constance later, and whom you probably knew--declared that her young mistress had told her the secret from the first. She may have lied; but nature rarely deceives, and the prince found in the child, which he contrived to see privately, a likeness of which perhaps a trace may still be discovered in that picture yonder."

The prince pointed with trembling hand to the portrait of his father; but he only told me what I had discovered for myself while he was telling me this frightful story. He must have read in my looks what I did not venture to express, for he continued, fixing his beautiful melancholy eyes upon me:

"You see it too, do you not? We easily discover the truth when it is pointed out to us; and I perceived it while the old woman was making her terrible confession, and I blessed a merciful heaven that had saved me from an awful crime. But how to free myself from this wretched entanglement? Perhaps I should have disobeyed the prince's orders and told Constance the whole truth; but I cannot too often repeat that I was very young, and not in a condition to judge what might be all the consequences of my hasty resolution. So I thought I should be managing with great adroitness if I could continue to inspire Constance with hate of me, or at least aversion, for the love that I now regarded with horror. The means of attaining this end she had herself supplied me in her arts of keeping me at a distance, in which I now was disposed to see more than mere calculation. I returned her caprice with caprice, her obstinacy with obstinacy, her coldness with coldness; I played my game so well that I could not fail to win. What she suffered, I never heard her say; but I saw it in her face which grew paler day by day, in her eyes in which there often seemed to be the fire of madness.

"At last came the catastrophe. After a violent scene, which I had provoked, in Naples, whither we had come on our travels--I do not now know why or how--I parted from her, in the firm conviction that she would employ the ample means I had left at her disposal, either in returning, or in the flight with which she had often threatened me. But this would have been insufficient for the revenge which she conceived such treachery as mine deserved. She, whom I had held to be the proudest of the proud, who refused to belong to the Prince of Prora unless he made her his wife--she cast herself into the arms of the first comer, a wretched coxcomb whose acquaintance we had made by the way. I shudder when I think what this first step must have cost the unhappy girl; but I shudder still more when I think how little all subsequent steps have cost her."

He sighed deeply, and his sigh awakened a terrible echo in my own breast. I sprang up and took a stride towards the door.

"Where are you going?" asked the prince.

I grasped my temples with both hands; my brain seemed on fire.

"I do not know," I said, "I only know that this duel must not take place."

The prince smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"It is a queer business, altogether," he said.

"And is there no remedy--none?" I cried.

"Not that I know of," the prince answered with the same kindly melancholy smile. "The young man would have to declare that he was out of his senses. And that would not help; for any one who declares his own insanity is not insane--ah, there you are, dear Edmund!"

I had not seen that Count Schlachtensee had entered the room behind me. The prince advanced to meet him, and took his hand: the count said "I come----" and then checked himself and fixed a surprised look on me whom he now observed for the first time.

"I must now take leave of you," said the prince. "I thank you heartily for your visit--heartily," and he grasped my hand firmly in his own which was small and delicate as a woman's. "Farewell!"

I was at the door when he followed me and gave me his hand again. "Farewell," he said once more, and added in a low tone, "perhaps for ever!"

I stood in the street, with the snow driving into my face. I turned back to look at the palace, and saw upon the lowered curtain the shadows of two men who were pacing up and down the room. They were the prince and his cousin; and I knew what they were conversing about, and that there was not a moment to be lost. I called a hackney-coach that was passing, and ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible to the lodging of the actor Von Sommer, who went by the name of Lenz.

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Chapter XXIV

I have often in later days tried to recall the state of mind in which I was on this miserable night: but have never been able perfectly to do so. So I am conscious than any account I can now give of it must be a most imperfect one. I can only say that I was overpowered by an emotion which was probably the intensest form of pity--a feeling always peculiarly strong with me, and which on far lighter occasions is aroused in my breast to an extent which must appear absurd and childish to shrewder and more coldblooded persons. Perhaps the extraordinary statements which I had just heard might have affected me differently, had the persons concerned been entire strangers to me; but this they were not. Constance had played an important and fateful part already in my life; the young prince had come into contact with me at eventful moments; and I had loved Constance, and the prince had inspired me with interest and sympathy such as an older brother might feel for a younger. What had happened appeared to me awful, and what was to happen, terrible. True I had again a dim consciousness that I could do nothing to hinder the march of fate, that I had started upon an idle, an insane expedition; but what was this to the voice that cried within: It must not be! it must not be!

In this intense excitement which now seems to me to have bordered on insanity, I reached the lodgings of the actor. He was greatly surprised at seeing me, but received me with politeness, and conducted me from the room in which I found him with one of his companions at the theatre, into another apartment to hear what I had to say.

But what had I to say? Good heavens, there was so much to be said, or else so little! The much I could not tell him, for I felt that I had no right to disclose the secret, and that if I had revealed it, he would have considered it a wretched device suggested by the prince's cowardice. And the little--that the duel must not take place--what good could that do? What could the man do but shrug his shoulders and look sharply into my eyes to see if I was quite in my senses? He was a young man with a face wasted by a life of dissipation, and yet handsome, and with very expressive large dark eyes, and I felt how my cheeks flushed under their steady gaze. Under their gaze, and at the words which almost forced their way through my lips, the words that if he desired vengeance on Constance's lover--one who had been her lover at a time when he claimed her as his own--he should select the right man--he should come to me rather than the prince. And though I bit my lips to restrain myself from saying this, the words forced their way through my teeth in a hoarse hissing tone, which the other probably took for the accents of rage that could scarcely be controlled.

"That is your business then," he said, rising from his chair. "A favored or a betrayed lover, I do not know which. Very well: I shall meet you, sir, you may rely upon it; and every one who has or pretends to have any claim upon the lady's favor. But each in his turn, sir, each in his turn; you have come some hours too late; and you will perceive that I can settle with my antagonists only in the order in which they present themselves. Is there any other way in which I can serve you?"

He made me a polite bow, as he finished, and added: "Through this door"--indicating by a gesture--"you can pass at once into the hall."

I had also arisen and stood facing him. I could have stricken this slender delicate man, feeble and nerveless from a life of dissipation, to the earth with a single blow; the puny arm which he extended towards the door with a theatrical gesture as I hesitated, I could have crushed in my hand. It was the only time in my life that I was ever tempted to abuse my physical strength; but I withstood the temptation, and forced myself out of the room and out of the house.

The coach was still standing at the door.

"Where am I to drive now?" asked the man.

I directed him to Constance's lodging, and we drove off. It was bitter cold, and the glass of the coach-window was encrusted with sleet, the crystals of which sparkled and glittered in the light of the street-lamps as we passed them. I noticed it, and mechanically counted the seconds that elapsed until we passed another lamp, when I again observed the sparkling and glittering, and recalled to mind certain optical laws which seemed to bear upon this phenomenon, as if I had nothing else in the world to do on my way to see Constance von Zehren, Prince Prora's sister.

The coach stopped.

Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour--it was now probably eleven o'clock--the door was opened at once; the hall and stairway were lighted up: they seemed in this house to be accustomed to late arrivals and departures. As I rang at the door upon which stood, in great golden letters, "Ada Bellini, Actress at the Theatre Royal," I heard the rustling of a dress inside, and the next moment Constance stood before me. She had doubtless expected a different visitor, and started back with a cry. I closed the door, caught her by the hand as, with a face white with terror, she endeavored to escape, and said:

"I must speak with you, Constance."

"You want to murder me!" she said.

"No; but I intend to prevent another being murdered on your account. Come!"

I drew her, half by force, into the brightly lighted, almost gorgeous parlor which she had just left, leaving the door open after her, and led her to a chair in which she took her seat, her eyes uneasily watching all my movements.

"Have no fear," I said. "Do not be in the least alarmed. Once in long-past days you called me your faithful George, who was to kill all the dragons lurking in your path. Hitherto I have had no opportunity; or did not use it if I had. The hour is now come; but I cannot do it alone: you must help me and will help me."

"Are you assured of that?" she asked.

Her face had suddenly assumed another expression; the terror which had been previously imprinted upon it, had vanished and made way for a look of dark hatred, the same look that it wore that night when she adjured me to avenge her on the prince.

I do not know how I found the words, but I said what I had come to say.

"What does the prince pay you for it?"

This question was her reply.

It was the same reply that I had expected from the actor, and it was not to hear this that I had held my tongue before him. Here it was different: it was the sister to whom I was speaking: she must believe me: I must find the place in her heart: nature could not so belie herself.

And whether it was that I succeeded in touching the mysterious bond that unites two beings whose veins flow with the same blood; whether it was that Constance's clear intelligence could not reject the proof that I offered, I saw that the dark look passed away from her face, and gave way to a confusion, an astonishment, that passed into actual horror.

"It was that, then!" she murmured; "that was the reason! And that then was the reason that I hated my father--no, he was not my father--and that he hated me! That--but then she must have known it! no, no, it cannot be!"

She had sprung from her chair.

"Where are you going?" I asked, seizing her hand.

She tore herself loose and rushed from the room.

I remained, hesitating what to do; I feared for a moment she was going to kill herself; and then I heard her coming back, not alone.

She re-entered, dragging after her the decrepit form of an old woman, whom under other circumstances I should have taken for a housekeeper or something of the sort, and in whom I recognized, with a shudder of disgust, old Pahlen.

How this horrible creature, after her escape from prison, found her way to her mistress, I never learned; but the closer the relations that had existed, as mistress and servant, between them, the fiercer was the rupture, and more frightful the reckoning.

"Here! here!" cried Constance, dragging the woman almost to my feet, "here she is! George. I adjure you by heaven and all that is holy, kill this monster who would have plunged me into horrible crime."

Constance's words, her passion, my presence, all combined overwhelmed the wicked woman. I saw in her old wrinkled face, in the sidelong look of her evil eyes, that she knew her guilt; and Constance saw it as well as I; for as the creature with faltering words tried to frame some excuse, she cut her short with a cry of rage, almost a yell, that long after sounded in my ears; "Begone! out of my sight! wretch! monster!"

The wretch was no doubt glad of the chance of escape for which her sidelong eyes had been searching before, and rushed out of the door. I never saw her again, and know not how long afterwards she dragged out her wretched existence, nor when and how it ended.

Constance was pacing up and down the room, with a face which showed her entire conviction of the truth, and wringing her hands in anguish. Suddenly she threw herself upon her knees in a corner of the room, and seemed to pour forth her heart in agonized prayer. I observed that where she knelt a small ivory crucifix was attached to the wall, and that from time to time she separated her hands to make the sign of the Cross, and then clasped them again in fervent prayer. Later I learned, by chance, that Constance, when in Italy, had returned to the Catholic church, the faith of her mother. Whatever spiritual peace she may have afterwards found, after confession and long penance, as the abbess of a Roman convent, at this moment her prayers seemed to be unavailing. She arose from the crucifix only to fall at my feet, to clasp my knees, and to beg me to avert the frightful consequences of what she had done. I raised her, saying that I had already done all that was in my power, and that I had come to her to learn if she could do nothing.

"There is but one means," she said; "and that is to prevail if possible upon Herr Lenz to quit the field--to leave here immediately."

"How can we do that? The man is evidently your tool, the tool of your revenge; and it is no longer in your control--or do you think it is?"

"It may be, it may be," she said, in a low hurried tone. "He knows that I do not love him; he knows about Carl, and that has made him furious; but I know that he loves me, and that for the prize of my hand, which I have always refused him, he would consent to anything--to anything! Am I not fair enough, George, for a man to consent to anything for my sake?"

She threw back with trembling hands the dark lustrous masses of hair from either side of her face, and smiled upon me. I have only once in my life seen such a face, and that was when, in the Glyptothek at Munich, I saw the Rondanini Medusa, and then the world-celebrated mask seemed to me but a weak copy.

"Come!" I said. She was about to start just as she was: I wrapped her in a cloak of furs which she had probably worn from the theatre, and which was lying on the floor. We left the house and drove to the lodging of Herr von Sommer. The house was closed. Some minutes passed before our repeated knocking brought the porter to the door.

"Herr von Sommer set out half an hour ago."

"Do you know where he was going?"

"He did not say, further than that he would not be back for several days."

"Is no one in the house that can give further information?"

"Hardly: he took his own servant with him."

"You have no idea where he was going?"

"None. He went in a droschky."

I saw that nothing more was to be got out of the man, who stood shivering in his sheepskin cloak; and in fact he cut short the interview by shutting the door with a muttered oath.

Constance who had followed me, had heard all.

"Perhaps we can learn from him."

We drove to the palace of the prince. Our progress was slow; a furious gale was blowing, and the wretched horse could scarcely drag the coach through the snow-drifts. I fancied that our own slow journey was an emblem of repentance, which toils painfully after the evil deed that it can never overtake.

At last we reached the palace. As we got out, I cast an involuntary look towards the sky. From a clear space, the blackness of which contrasted with the white clouds that were driving with arrowy speed across the sky, looked down upon us the calm eternal stars. The words of Constance's favorite song came into my mind:

"All day long the bright sun loves me, Woos me with his glowing light; But I better love the gentle Stars of night."

Alas, this starry love had guided her far astray--had brought her at last here, in this fearful night, to the house where the sister was knocking at the door of her brother whom she had involved in the web of death.

The palace was dark; only the two lamps on either side the great entrance were burning, and their golden light, in which the snow flakes were once more fluttering down, shone dimly, as it had done a year before at the unhappy meeting between us two at this very spot.

I rang the bell: I heard its hollow clamor dully reverberating in the hall of stone, as in a great sepulchral vault. No one came. At last after minutes of agonizing expectation, the door was opened: a man in his shirt-sleeves, with a light in his hand, stood before me. The fellow's face was flushed with drinking and his eyes glassy; it was evident that in the servants' hall the master's absence had been turned to good account. He was about to close the door in my face, but I set my foot against it and pushed in. The man then recognized me, having seen me at the palace twice already to-day, and probably before at Rossow. He answered my questions with disagreeable servility. His highness had driven out half an hour before with the count; not in his own carriage, but in a hired droschky taken from the stand. He did not know where his highness had gone; his highness often went out in a droschky. He would certainly not be back until very late, if he came back at all to-night. He, for his part, had leave to go to bed.

It was evident that it was high time the fellow was making use of this permission, for he tottered with sleep while he stammered out these words. It was the same report that I had received at the other house: both parties had already left the city, to go heaven only knew where: somewhere where their meeting might be undisturbed. I said to Constance that we could do no more.

"I will go home and pray," she said.

Was it a reminiscence from the tragedy in which she had been playing? Was it really for her the close of the tragedy of her life? She spoke no word further as we went home, except that once she said:

"I have at least helped you to your happiness."

I do not know what she meant.

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Chapter XXV

When I reached home it was one o'clock--a fact which I could scarcely comprehend. It seemed to me as if not hours but weeks had elapsed since I parted from Hermine. I went on tip-toe to her room and bent over her bed, where she lay sleeping, one arm beneath her head, like a slumbering child. And like that of a child was the expression of her face, as though a happy dream were passing through her spirit. It seemed to me like a crime to sit watching, with a world of sorrow and anguish in my soul, by the side of this blessed peace; and yet slumber was impossible to me. So I put the shade before the night-lamp again, and went to my own bed-chamber where I had already lighted a lamp.

In the dim light of this lamp which only made a few objects in the room visible while the rest were plunged in darkness, I sat for hours before the hearth in which the last spark had long died out from the ashes, revolving in my breast thoughts indescribably painful. In vain did I endeavor to recall my old cheerful courage; it seemed to have died out, like the embers in the ashes before me, which had once glowed as brightly and sparkled as cheerfully: in vain did I try to bring to my memory all the goodness and kindness that life had brought me hitherto, and in which it still was rich; nothing would appear to me in the old light: all was empty, gray, and dead, as though the world were but a scene of devastation and decay, and I were wandering comfortless and alone, among the ruins of splendors long passed away.

A reaction from my excessive excitement must have overcome me at last. I dreamed that there was a gray twilight that was neither night nor day. I was wandering alone upon the bleak ridge of the promontory at Zehrendorf, and a bitter piercing wind was blowing from the sea. All was waste and desolate, and there was nothing to be seen but the ruin of the old Zehrenburg, which rose dumb and defiant in the twilight. But when I looked at it, it was not the old castle, but a gigantic statue of stone, which was the Wild Zehren looking with dull glazed eyes towards the west, where his sun had set forever in the eternal sea. And though no light illuminated the gray twilight, a bright glitter flashed from a golden chain which was on the neck of the stone giant who was the Wild Zehren, and spurs of gold gleamed upon his feet of stone, and brightly flashed the bare blade of the broad knight's sword which lay across his knees of stone. And as, full of inward terror, I watched the statue, a small figure came through the tall broom and drew near the stone giant, which it crept lurkingly around, and watched from all sides. And the queer small figure was the commerzienrath, and he made the oddest faces and cut the strangest capers when he found the giant was so fast asleep. Suddenly he began to clamber up the knees, then stood upon tip-toe and took the golden chain from the giant's neck and hung it around his own, then sprang down and took the sword, and lastly the golden spurs, which he buckled on. Then with ridiculous pomposity he strode backwards and forwards in the knight's accoutrements, and tried to brandish the sword, but could not lift it, while his spurs kept catching in the high broom and tripping him, and the heavy chain upon his shoulders pressed him down, so that he suddenly became a decrepit and bowed old man who could scarcely stand upon his feet, and still tried to balance himself like a rope-dancer, upon the sharp edge of the precipice where the chalk-cliff fell perpendicularly to the sea. I strove to call to him to have a care for Hermine's sake, but I could neither speak nor move; and suddenly he fell over the cliff. I heard the heavy fall of his body upon the pebbly beach, and the giant begun to laugh, a laugh so loud, so terrible that I awakened in fright, and with wildly-beating heart looked around the room, into which, through the curtains, there fell a gray twilight which was neither night nor day, just as it had been in my dream, and I still heard the resonant peals of laughter, but they were blows with which some impatient hand was battering at the house-door. I hastened to open it myself.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"A message for Herr Hartwig, and--and--ah! you are there yourself, Herr Hartwig, I see."

It was a servant from the hotel at which for many years my father-in-law had been in the habit of stopping whenever he came to the town.

"Yes; what is the matter?"

"My master sends his respects, and--and the Herr Commerzienrath has just been found dead in his bed."

I stared aghast into the face of the man: he probably thought that I had not understood him, and stammered out his awkward message again; but I had perfectly well understood him at first; that is, I had understood the meaning of his words. The commerzienrath has been found dead in his bed. That is very easily said, and as easily understood. The commerzienrath had been found dead in his bed.

"I will come at once," I said.

The man hastened off; I went back to my room, put on my overcoat and hat, took a pair of dark gloves instead of the light ones I had worn the previous evening--all quite mechanically, as if I were going out about some ordinary business. "The commerzienrath has been found dead in his bed," I repeated, as I would have repeated a report brought to the office that a belt had broken in such and such a shop.

Then suddenly a pang darted through me as if a dagger had been thrust into my breast.

"Poor child!" I muttered, "poor child, how will she bear it? But there is so much misfortune in the world; so much misfortune, and he was an old man."

Thus I left the house, in which the inmates already began to be stirring.

"You are going out early this morning," said the porter, coming out of his lodge. "Anything happened at the works?"

I did not answer: not until I had reached the street did I comprehend the meaning of the man's words. It was now near seven o'clock, and already clear daylight. The wind had hauled to westward, and was blowing hard. It was raining: streams of water poured from the roofs, and the heavy snow that had fallen in the night was mostly changed into gray slush, through which the bakers' and milkmens' carts were toiling heavily. I was shivering, and said to myself that it was a very disagreeable morning; but no other feeling awakened in me. At a corner I met a hearse with no following of carriages; the driver upon his high seat had pulled his cocked hat down over his face; the broken-down horses were going at a half-trot; the hearse slipped about in the slush, and the threadbare black pall that was hung over the hearse flapped to and fro in the wind.

"That cannot be the commerzienrath," I said, looking after the hearse with a vacant mind.

Thus I reached the hotel.

"Number eleven: first door to the right at the top of the stairs," said the porter.

He accompanied me up the stairs, more, no doubt, from curiosity than sympathy, and told me that the Herr Commerzienrath had arrived in the last train yesterday evening, and he had been ordered to wake the commerzienrath at half-past six this morning, as he had a note to send to Herr Hartwig. He knocked at the door punctually to the minute, and the Herr Commerzienrath had called out quite plainly: "Very well; let Louis bring my coffee;" and when ten minutes later, Louis took the coffee up, the commerzienrath did not answer, and they found he was dead. Who would have expected it? Such a robust old gentleman! And they sent off at once for Doctor Snellius, because he was Herr Hartwig's family physician, and the doctor would certainly be here in a minute. "This door, Herr Hartwig, this door."

The door was ajar. The landlord, the head-waiter, and another man, if I remember rightly, were standing in the large room, into which the dim light fell through the half-drawn curtains. At the farther end of the room was a bed, before which two lights were burning on a small table.

"We left everything as we found it," said the landlord in a low tone, as he went with us to the bed. "It is a rule with me in such cases to exercise the greatest discretion. One has then no reason to reproach oneself, and avoids much inconvenience. The Herr Commerzienrath is lying precisely as Louis found him; and there lies the tray with coffee where Louis put it down."

There lay the tray with coffee where Louis had put it down, and there lay the commerzienrath as Louis had found him. The light from the two candles, their long wicks unsnuffed, fell brightly enough upon his face into which I now gazed. It was the third time in my life that I had looked closely into the face of the dead. And naturally the other two faces rose in my memory; that of the Wild Zehren, that of my dear and fatherly friend, and now here was this. In the sombre features of the Wild Zehren had lain gloomy defiance, like those of an Indian chief, who, bound fast to the death-stake, sings taunting songs at his tormentors; upon the mild face of his noble brother had lain a sublime calm, as upon the face of one who dies for the sake of others. How different was the face before me! About the large mouth hovered something like the mocking smile which he usually wore when he thought he had overreached any one; his eyes half shut, as he used to shut them when he wished to hide his real meaning: over all the old, wrinkled, yellow face was spread the deceitful cloud in which he loved to hide himself, only that the cloud was drawn now a little closer than usual, and it was not his old cuttle-fish man[oe]uvre, but death.

"And we were so cheerful last night," whispered the host. "We sat in the dining-room until half-past one, and drank three bottles of champagne. The Railroad Director Schwelle was with us. I have warned the old gentleman often enough; at his years one should be more prudent. And such a clear head! Such a head for business! And here lies the note that was to be sent to you this morning."

It was a leaf apparently torn from his pocket-book, with half a page of writing on it; the pencil with which he had written, lay by it. I took up the paper; the characters were very legible, even firmer than his writing usually was of late:

"DEAR SON: I arrived here yesterday evening, and would like to speak with you before you go home from the works. May I ask you to wait for me? I must first go on 'Change, where I shall meet many envious faces to-day. They will see to-day how soon an old hand can grind little notches out of his blade. But more of this when we meet. If you are engaged out, please excuse yourself, as I should like to sit at your table once more. But no preparations for me, I beg. Only, if you can manage it conveniently, my favorite dish, Magdeburg cabbage, and a little----"

The bill of fare was broken off, and here lay the guest.

"Death overtook him while he was writing," said the landlord, whose discretion had not hindered him from looking over my shoulder into the paper. "How sudden it comes, sometimes!"

At this moment the doctor stood among us: I had not heard him enter. He nodded to me without speaking, and leaned over the dead man. Thus he remained sometime and then he raised himself up and said to the landlord:

"I wish you would heat for me about a wine-glassful of pure Jamaica rum. It must be perfectly pure rum, and must be brought to a boil. You would probably do better to look after it yourself."

"Certainly, certainly," said the landlord. "It is my duty in such cases to do everything that lies in my power."

"And do you go and see that I get it at once; and you, young man, tell my driver to wait for me."

"Yes sir," said both the waiters at once, and hastened after the landlord.

"Have you any hope?" I asked.

The doctor did not answer. He gave a hurried glance at the door, then stepped again to the bed, threw back the coverlid which the dead man had drawn up over breast and arms as high as the chin, and then I saw that he took out a small phial which he had probably found under the cover in the stiffened hand of the corpse. He smelled its contents cautiously for a moment, then wrapped it in a piece of paper and put it in his waistcoat pocket.

"Unless there is some especial reason for it," he said, "your wife need not know that her father has poisoned himself."

I groaned aloud.

"Courage! courage!" said the doctor; "this is a world in which things are often desperately dark. But this cannot be helped now, and you have to think of your wife and children."

As I went home an hour later, the wind was howling as furious as ever through the rainy streets, and at the same corner I met the same hearse, now coming back in a slouching trot as before. I looked at it without the least emotion or feeling, which seemed indeed to have perished forever in my breast. Yes, yes, the doctor was right: it was often desperately dark in this world; and I do not know that it would have seemed darker to me had I known what I did not know, that in the palace of the prince, which I had to pass on my way home, behind the lowered curtains, the last of the male line of the princes of Prora-Wiek, counts of Ralow, was giving up his young life under the hands of the surgeons.

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Chapter XXVI

It is often desperately dark in this world; who can say: "It cannot be darker now?"

When I reached home there was a running and a calling--something had happened. An hour before she had rung for me, and I was not to be found. "She was taken in a dreadful way; but luckily what was most needed was ready at hand; for the doctor----"

"He is close behind me," I said, and hurried into the room, from which came the most heart-breaking cries.

"Courage, dearest friend, courage," said the doctor an hour or two later: "it is a little too soon, and--but there are often worse cases, I think--but stay here a few minutes and breathe a little fresh air; you are terribly excited; you cannot bear it."

"She has to bear it," I cried, wringing my hands.

"Of course," he answered. "Come with me."

The day was fine, notwithstanding the cold night and the gray rainy morning; the March sun had broken gloriously through the clouds, and shone dazzlingly from the clear-blue sky: the thawing snow was dropping from all the roofs and pouring from all the rain-spouts, and in the thick branches of the trees of the garden upon which the windows opened, birds were fluttering and twittering, proclaiming that winter was at last over and the spring had come.

But I had no ear for this proclamation: I had no faith in the blue sky and the running water; I awaited other tidings--awaited them with fervent prayers and passionate vows, such as men offer in the time of sore extremity; and the tidings came at sunset, in a tiny piping voice that seemed to go directly to my heart.

Yes, now it was spring. I saw the spring sunlight in the happy smile of the pale young mother; I saw the bright spring sky in her blue eyes that looked smilingly up to me in a soft tremulous light such as I had never before seen in them, and then were turned with beaming love upon her babe.

"It is a girl, after all," she whispered. "You will spoil her terribly, and love her a great deal more than me; but I will not be jealous, I promise you."

And the next day the sun was shining again, and the heaven still blue and the birds jubilant.

"If the weather keeps so fine, we can soon go to Zehrendorf," she said. "It is very well that you have not come to a definite settlement with the prince. He has been very kind and obliging to us, it is true, but still I think you had better reconsider the matter with my father. Why does my father not come? You have written to him, haven't you?"

"Certainly; but he had started on a journey. And you must not talk so much."

"I feel quite strong: I only wish I could give the little one some of my strength. Oh me! such a giant as you are, George, and such a tiny morsel of a babe! But it has your eyes, sir!"

"I hope it has yours, madame."

"Why so?"

"Because then it would have the loveliest in the world."

"What a flatterer! But to come back to Zehrendorf: we will have to keep it on account of the child, which will need country air, the doctor says. I can see us both sitting under the great beech which I saved because you carved your name on it--for somebody else, sir!--and now to be sitting with wife and child, a prosaic, common-place husband, where you once stood full of romantic dreams--is it not very comical?"

"Oh yes, it is inexpressibly comical; but now you really must not talk any more."

"Your commands shall be obeyed, my lord."

And her blue eyes laughed so saucily, and she was so full of life and hope and happiness, so merry, and full, of mirthful fancies; it cut me to the heart when I saw and heard her, and had to leave her, under the pretext of urgent business, to go and bury her father, who had killed himself to avoid the disgrace of a shameful bankruptcy. And this day too was a bright golden day of spring; only here and there were these drops falling from the roofs, for the bright sun and warm air had dried the moisture; in the sky, making it a still deeper blue, were standing great white clouds, and the birds in the budding trees were thinking seriously of setting up housekeeping--who could help looking cheerfully in spite of all, into the future that was to make all right? Who would not shake off his winter cares when he saw how everything was springing and budding and blooming? But--

One night in spring there came a frost; It nipped the tender blossoms.

Let this sad refrain of the old song say for me what I cannot bring myself to narrate in words. It needs no comment; nor do the two fresh graves, one larger and one tiny hillock, close side by side; nor the flowers which loving hands have strewn above them.

One night in spring there came a frost; It nipped the tender blossoms.

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Chapter XXVII

Only work can make us free!

I had opportunity enough in the two following years to test this leading aphorism of the wisdom of my teacher, in all its bearings.

Work indeed made me free.

But free from what?

First from the meshes of the dishonest web in which the association with my father-in-law had involved me, the meshes from which he for his part had torn himself swiftly loose by a self-inflicted death, and from which I gradually disengaged myself with incredible toil, which I had to disentangle, untie, straighten out, if I would not let disgrace and obloquy rest upon the name of the man who had been the father of my wife.

It came to light that, like a desperate player, he had given up the game before it was quite lost. But in truth that is not exactly the right word. It was lost for him; for what alone could have saved him, could have set him free, as it set me free who took his obligations upon myself, was conscientious, honest, manly work. But this was to him impossible: he had never accustomed himself to it, had never believed in its efficacy and its mighty results. When I spoke with enthusiasm to him of the future that would bloom for our enterprises, and that out of the waste place of ruins that he had despised for so many years, there would arise a star of life and prosperity whose genial influences would extend far and wide, he only smiled in contemptuous incredulity, and called me an enthusiast, a dreamer, who would end by burning his fingers, or at best would only pull the sweet chestnuts out of his furnace-fires for others to feast upon.

And he had gone on and gambled on upon 'Change, in stocks, in foreign loans, in spirits, in cotton, in heaven knows what, just as he had formerly gambled in contraband goods and in uninsured ships, until at last the cards so fell that he saw no escape but to quit at once the table and his life.

I could never rid myself of the thought that the shame of having to appear so small before me, to whom he had always so vaunted himself; to have to admit that I was right with my stupid honesty; the shame of this it was, I say, drove to his death the man who had inordinate vanity, but not a trace of genuine pride. He knew that it was all over with his wisdom, his superiority; and worst of all, it was all over with his authority: and he grudged me what was to come in the future, since I had so often, both in jest and earnest, foretold him that a new time had come; an age of brotherhood, of equity, of justice, of mutual help; and that the old egotism with its narrow schemes, its little tricks and petty craft, would perish at the coming of the great new era.

Perhaps one or another of my readers may think that in thus prophesying I drew too largely on my hopes and fancies, and that the golden time of which I spoke lies still as then upon the lap of the gods.

But I am merely writing the history of my own life; and I can only say that if my temperament be sanguine and my views inclined to optimism, my own experiences in these things have not rendered turbid the free current of my blood, nor shaken my pious belief in the better qualities of human nature and beyond all, my faith in the approaching triumph of goodness and truth, even in our own day. Wherever industry and uprightness have gone hand in hand, in those provinces where I am most at home--the provinces of industry and commerce--there and only there have I seen permanent successes achieved; and if in politics it now and then appears otherwise, this is but an appearance destined soon to vanish and disclose the stern reality.

But, as I said, I am only writing the story of my own life, which has taught me this lesson first and chiefest of all, and at no time were the lessons more impressive than at the period of which I am now speaking. And had I been the worst of pessimists, the most splenetic of misanthropes, the proofs of love, of kindness, and of devotion which were offered me on all sides, would have taught me another and a better faith.

On all sides, even where I had least expected them.

For instance from the old man whom during the building of the new factory I had often seen in dressing-gown and slippers, a little black cap on his bald head, and a long pipe in his toothless mouth, standing by the paling which separated the building-place from the gardens behind it, and with whom I had occasionally exchanged a few friendly words, without knowing or asking who he was. This old man came to see me on one of the first days of my trials, while my business misfortunes and my domestic afflictions were dealing me blow after blow, and introduced himself as Herr Weber, the former owner of the ground. He had heard, he said, that my deceased father-in-law's affairs were not in the best condition, and he had come to say to me that as for the payment I need be in no hurry--(my father-in-law had assured me that the purchase had been paid for to the last farthing)--and that he saw what trouble I was in, and that I had never shunned to give my personal help wherever it was necessary. As for the old gentleman, he would never have lent him a penny; but when active young men like myself needed it, he had always a few thousands at their service, say twenty or forty as might be wanted, and if they would be of any help to me, I might come and see him when I pleased.

A day or two later came a letter in a big school-boy hand and the queerest spelling, from the good Hans, to the effect that there was a considerable portion left of his mother's fortune, which was entirely at his disposal, and that it was at my service to the last penny; but as he could not lay hands upon the cash at once, he had in the meantime instituted a very thorough search in his desk and in all his coats, with astonishingly successful results, and he expected of my friendship that I would allow him to send me this sum without delay. Moreover, I knew, he said, that he was a better manager than he seemed to be, and if I would permit him to canter over every day to Zehrendorf and look after things a little there, it would be a real kindness both to his bay horse and himself.

I scarcely need mention that the good doctor offered me his capital for the third time; but this and all the rest did not move me so much, nor exercise such an influence on my future, as the proposition made to me by a deputation of the workmen of the factory, with Herr Roland at their head as spokesman. They had heard, he said, that matters were not in the condition they should be, and that there was danger that the works would pass into other hands; that this possibility was very alarming to them, and they had unanimously resolved to avert it, if it lay at all within their power. They therefore begged to inquire if it would in any way diminish my embarrassments if they one and all agreed to a reduction of wages until the danger was over, and I was in a condition to make good the arrears; releasing me at the same time from all responsibility in case the hoped-for turn of affairs did not come to pass.

It was some time before I could so far control my emotion as to be able to answer, and then I said to the brave fellows that I could never agree to accept their generous offer; not because I was ashamed to be under an obligation to my comrades, but because, thanks to the friendly assistance I had received from other sources, I was in a position to fulfil all my engagements to them.

But I had something else, I said, in view. And here I unfolded to them a project which I had long planned with the doctor and Klaus, upon the model of similar enterprises in England, by which each of the workmen, according to the degree of his skill and merit, became a participator in the establishment. I told them that a time of uncertainty, a crisis like the present, was not suitable for putting this plan into execution, but that I was more resolved than ever to exert all my powers to bring about a fitting time, and that I hoped to be able to offer the matter to them definitely, perhaps within a year.

And before a year had passed, I was able to redeem my word.

Nor was I less fortunate in regard to the second point, which I had held to with a kind of passion while I gave up so much else so willingly: Zehrendorf still remained in my possession, and I had not been forced to abandon a single one of the useful improvements that had been commenced there. On the contrary, all was thriving and prospering; and I had even commenced a new work, the draining of the great moor, with the best results. The property was now worth, if not the price which the commerzienrath had demanded for it, still very nearly that which the generous young prince had offered at our memorable interview. I could not look without sadness at the letter which he had written to me that evening, before I went to him the second time, in which he placed his credit at my disposal to an extent far exceeding the sum mentioned. What had become of the other letter in which he called upon his father to make good this offer, in the event of his falling in the duel? Doubtless it never reached the hands for which it was intended, for the old prince, who survived his son several years, was a man of generous and noble character, and would have held sacred the last wish of his unfortunate son. And the dishonesty of those who intercepted this letter turned to my advantage. I should certainly, in those first days of trial and confusion, have parted at once with the property had the proposition been made to me; but as no one offered to buy it, and I was not disposed to throw it away for a fourth of its value to Herr von Granow, I was compelled to keep it, and I was enabled to keep it, thanks to the generous help of my good Hans, and--why should I not say it? thanks to my own untiring exertions.

But I had to thank labor for yet more than this. As she set me free from the load of indebtedness which my father-in-law had suddenly thrown upon my shoulders, so she bathed me in dragon's blood until I was invulnerable to the keen arrows of grief which at first pierced my heart at the loss of my wife and my child. It is true that under the covering of apparent insensibility remained a deep-seated sorrow; but the tears which I often wept in the evening when I came home after the toils of the day to my solitary room, or when I awaked in the night to a sense of my loneliness, had no longer the old corrosive bitterness; they flowed gently, and less for my own loss than at the thought that one so loving, so gentle, so graceful, so full of innocent mirth and lightheartedness had been so untimely summoned away. And yet here too there was something which almost seemed a consolation. As her father had never loved any creature upon earth but her, so she had loved him dearly, however often he may have wounded her pride and sensibility by his coarse and dishonorable nature. His death, the cause of which could not be altogether kept secret, would have been a fearful blow to her; and how could she have passed through this time of trouble, of comparative poverty, this almost desperate struggle, she, who from her earliest youth had found life a long festival, and who only knew struggles and poverty by hearsay? How could she have borne to know that her husband of whom she was so proud, whom her love placed so high above all other men, was a debtor to his friends? And could she have entered with her whole heart into the feast in which the chief of the establishment and his workmen celebrated the founding of their co-operative association, and I declared that from henceforth the distinction between us of master and workmen was at an end; that we were all workmen and all masters in one common cause. Could she have adapted herself to these relations? Of a truth she could! For her love for me was greater than her pride.

She would have adapted herself to it, for she could well play a part when she thought it necessary to do so; but to enter into it, to throw her heart into it, that she could never have done; and this thought remained like a faint dimness upon her lovely portrait, which all my love and endearing memories could not wipe away. I had to admit to myself that in the tasks which were dearest and most sacred to me, I must have been alone.

Alone!

I do not know whether there are men who can endure the sense of being alone; but I know certainly that I do not belong to such. And I was alone for the first time for many, many years; far more alone than in that solitary apprenticeship I passed in the little house among the ruins. There I had at least had the dreams of a golden future for my companions; now this future lay behind me as a past, as something irrevocably gone. I called myself ungrateful: there was still so much left to me, and above all, my dear, my beloved friends. There was the good Doctor Snellius, there was my brave Klaus, there, over on the island, was my faithful old Hans, and even good Fräulein Duff might have been near me, if her parents--now very aged--in Saxony, with whom she was staying, could have been prevailed upon to part with her. And before all, there were Kurt and Benno, now grown tall stately young men, and whom I often sportively called my staff and my prop.

In earnest as well as in sport: for Kurt had now become the soul of the Technical Bureau, and the superiority of his knowledge and his talents freely acknowledged by all, even by Herr Windfang; and Benno, who, half from natural inclination and half from affection to me, had turned farmer, knew how to turn his knowledge of natural science to such account at Zehrendorf as to astonish all who understood what he was doing.

In truth I had no lack of friends, not to mention the hundreds of stalwart men in the midst of whom I lived, and who would have gone through fire and water at a sign from me, and it would have been ungrateful, shamefully ungrateful, had I spoken of being alone, so I did not speak of it; but I was alone, and I felt it, nor could all my labor banish this feeling--indeed it seemed to strengthen it.

"You have worked too hard," said the doctor. "Even such a nature as yours cannot keep this up. You must break away--take a journey--recreate yourself a little. One should study the Brunels and the Stephensons on their own ground, as one studies Raphael and Michel Angelo. Only don't stay away so long as Paula."

The doctor seemed to have startled himself by associating my name thus with Paula's; at least he tuned himself down with an especially energetic effort, looked at me rather doubtfully through his round spectacle-glasses, and said, as if in answer to a question on my part:

"She is very well, and enjoying herself extremely; she writes to me from Meran----"

And the doctor began to hunt for the letter in his old fashion.

"From Meran?" I asked; "how long has she been there?"

"About--let me see--about a week. I thought a short stay there would be beneficial to her. The prolonged stay in the Italian climate does not seem to suit her."

"But I thought you said just now, doctor, that she was very well?"

"Well, so I did--that is to say--what I mean was--of course she is well; but better is better, and she has been there now long enough. Oscar stays behind in Rome. Has not Kurt told you all about it?"

"Not a word, from which I infer that he does not know it himself. Paula corresponds with scarcely any one but you."

"Well, I believe that is so," answered the doctor, "and I know I ought to read her letters now and then to you and the boys; but somehow it always happens----"

And the doctor made another dive into his breast-pocket, then, as if in desperation, crammed his battered hat upon his large bald head, and hurried off, leaving me once more in absolute uncertainty as to what really were the contents of Paula's letters, which he was always rummaging his pockets for without ever finding.

That their contents had, directly or indirectly, some reference to me, was not to be doubted; for what other reason could the doctor have had in concealing these letters from me so carefully? But my conjectures could penetrate no further than this; and I was obliged to admit to myself, with deep grief, that I could no longer understand Paula. And I also could not avoid the thought that she was herself responsible for this, and that it was the result of her own conduct, if my dearest friend, my sister, as she had so often called herself, had become a stranger and a riddle to me. And why? I did not know, nor could I fathom the cause. Was it a fault in me that I once loved her with all the strength of my young, buoyant, confiding soul? That after she had so often, under such different circumstances, and in so many ways, rejected my love, I had become like a ship torn from its anchor and driven rudderless upon a rough sea? Was it a fault that even in my love for Hermine, I could not forget her, though I knew that she would remain forever distant from me, and that I had in future only to look up to her as to the high inaccessible stars? Must I pay so heavy a penalty for what was as natural to me as to breathe? Must she on this account exclude me from the council of her heart, in which I had before been so proud of my place; and forbid my participation in her hopes, her plans, her wishes, her triumphs, and perhaps her disappointments? Must she for this deny the cordial interest which she had once felt for me, and deny it at a time when all my friends crowded around to help me with word and deed, and when she had nothing for me but two or three lines which she wrote from Rome, containing scarcely anything but the expression of a sympathy which in such cases is felt by mere acquaintances?

I had become a stranger to her, that was plain; or I should have heard her sweet consoling voice in the dark hours that followed Hermine's death. And she had grown a stranger to me: I scarcely knew more of her than did the indifferent crowd that stood before her pictures at the exhibition. I knew as little as they why she, whose fresh venturous power had charmed and astonished every one in her first pictures, now for a long time seemed only to take pleasure in melancholy themes--in views in the most desolate parts of the Campagna, where sad-featured peasants watched their goats among the ruins of long-past splendor; in scenes upon the Calabrian coast where a burning sun glowed pitilessly between the bare pointed rocks, and the solitude and desertion seemed to sink into the beholder's soul. How did the choice of such subjects, and the strangely serious, even gloomy coloring, agree with the cheerful frame of mind which, according to the doctor's report, she continually enjoyed?

"Only one who is deeply unhappy can paint thus," I once heard a lady dressed in mourning remark to her companion, as they stood before one of these pictures.

"Of late her pictures have shown a great falling-off," said a critic whose judgment carried great weight in the city. "Such pictures please, because they flatter a certain leaning towards pessimism which belongs to most men of our time; but all largeness of conception and treatment is wanting. I might say here is an egotistic sorrow which is forcibly imposed upon nature. The execution, too, leaves much to be desired: look here, and here"--and the critic pointed to several places which he pronounced weak. "But her younger brother is a genius indeed," he went on. "Have you seen his aquarelles? Heavens! what fire and what life! And he is still little more than a boy they say. He will be at the top of the tree before long, mind my words."

It seemed that the public did not altogether agree with the critic in his estimation of Paula's talents; at all events they fairly fought for her pictures, and paid the highest prices for them. I, for my part, did not trust myself to form a judgment, and in fact I had none; I only knew that if Paula enjoyed such unbroken happiness and cheerfulness as the doctor reported, she gave this cheerfulness the strangest expression in the world.

The conversation in which the doctor informed me that Paula and her mother were staying at Meran, took place in February, nearly two years after my misfortunes. In the beginning of the summer I heard again from him that she was making sketching excursions in the Salzkammergut and Tyrol, and somewhat later, that she would pass the latter part of the summer in Thüringen.

"She keeps coming nearer, nearer, all the time," said the doctor; "will you not now undertake your long-planned trip to England?"

"It seems," said I, looking straight into the doctor's spectacles, "that you think I ought to celebrate Paula's return by my own absence."

"I do not see how you arrive at this singular conclusion," said the doctor.

"Nor do I see how otherwise to interpret your suggestion that I should go away when Paula comes."

"Your wits are certainly wandering," he answered.

A few weeks later he surprised me with the news that he thought of taking a journey the next morning to J., the Thüringian town in which Paula was staying. Her health seemed to be not so good as he could wish, though it was true her letters were as cheerful as usual--here the doctor made a motion toward his breast-pocket--but he would rather see her for himself; it was but a "cat's jump," and he thought of returning the next day.

"Bring her back with you," I said; "perhaps she would like to stay awhile here again."

The doctor looked at me fixedly.

"I would very gladly do you and her the pleasure of being absent when she returns," I continued; "but I really can not now well leave the works for any length of time; and perhaps it will be sufficient if you tell her, doctor, that I have suffered much in the last twelve months, and also learned much; for example, to use your own expression, my friend, to live with half a heart. Will you tell her that?"

I had done my best to speak as firmly as possible, but could not prevent my voice from trembling a little at the last words, and my hand also trembled, which the doctor held fast between both his own small and delicate hands, while he looked steadfastly into my face through his round spectacle-glasses.

"Will you?" I repeated, a little confused.

"I certainly will not!" exclaimed the doctor, suddenly dropping my hand, pushing me back into the chair from which I had risen, and walking in an agitated manner up and down the room; then suddenly stopping before me, he crowed in his shrillest tones:

"I certainly will not! I am sick of this game of hide-and-seek, and out it must come, happen what may. Do you know, sir, or do you not know, that Paula loves you? Do you know, or do you not know, that she has loved you for ten years? that she has loved you from the hour when you saved her father from the axe of that murderous scoundrel--I can't remember his name. That with this love for you she has grown from the half child you first knew her, to womanhood? and that from that time there has been no hour of her life when she has not loved you, and certainly most of all at the times when she has seemed to love you least--for example at the time when you, you brainless mammoth, were fancying she was captivated by Arthur, who was tormenting her about you, and asking whether it was right and fair for the daughter of a prison-superintendent to make an inexperienced young man, condemned to only seven years' imprisonment, a prisoner for life? Have you any idea what it cost the poor girl to conceal her love from you? What it cost her to play the part of a sister and only a sister towards you, that you might remain unfettered to grasp boldly at whatever was highest and fairest in the world, and be able to mount the ladder upon whose topmost round the high-spirited girl wished to see the man she loved? What it cost her to send you to Zehrendorf to win the bride she had destined for you? What it cost her to turn a smiling face upon your happiness! And finally, what, it cost her not to hasten to you in your misfortunes, not to be able to say to you: 'Here, take my life, my soul--all, all is yours?' I ask you for the last time, do you know this, sir, or do you not?" In his excitement the doctor's voice had reached a pitch from which all tuning down was impossible. He did not even make the attempt, but instead, tore off his spectacles, stared angrily at me with his sparkling brown eyes, put on his glasses again, crammed his hat upon his flushed skull until it covered his ears, turned abruptly upon his heel and made for the door.

In two strides I overtook him.

"Doctor," I said, catching him by the arm, "how would it do if you let me go to-morrow in your place?"

"Do whatever you like!" he cried, running out of the room and banging the door behind him.

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Chapter XXVIII

There come days in our lives which we afterwards remember as some blessed dream which knows nothing of earthly sufferings or earthly restrictions, in which we soar as on the pinions of eagles, strong and high above all the little pitiful obstacles that otherwise so lamentably hamper our feet.

Of such dream-like beauty was the day on which I took the most memorable journey of my life: a wonderful summer day, whose glorious brightness was not marred by the smallest cloud, and yet palpitating in a mild balmy air that played around my cheeks and brow, while the train whirled in rattling speed through the lovely Thüringian country. It was the first journey I had made in my life, at least the first that was not a business trip, and the first also that took me from my northern home into the sunny plains of Middle Germany. The novelty of the scenery probably helped to make everything appear to me doubly graceful and lovely: I could not satiate myself with gazing at the soft undulating lines of the hills; at the sharply-defined crags whose summits were crowned with ruined fortresses and ancient keeps, and whose feet were laved by the clear water of winding rivers; at the flowing meadow-lands in which lines of trees with foliage of brightest green marked the courses of the streams; at the cities and towns that lay so peacefully in the valley, and at the little villages that nestled so cosily among the trees. It was not Sunday, but all these things wore a Sunday look, even the men who were working alone in the fields and stopped to look as the train rushed by, or those gathered in the neat stations where we stopped. It was as if everybody was travelling only for pleasure, and that even taking farewell was not painful on such a lovely day. And then the meetings of friends--the happy faces, the hand-shaking and kissing and embracing! Every one of these scenes I watched with the liveliest interest, and always with a feeling of emotion, as if I had a portion in it myself.

Thus I arrived in the afternoon at E., where I quitted the railroad and engaged a carriage from a number that were at the station to take me the remaining distance. We soon left the level land and entered a valley through which the road to "the forest" ran in many windings between hills on either side. The journey lasted several hours, and the sun was already declining as we slowly toiled up a mountain the steepest of all, "but the last," said the driver. We had both descended and were walking on either side the large and powerful horses, and keeping the flies off them with pine branches.

"Woa!" cried the driver; the horses stopped.

We had reached the summit, and stopped to let the horses blow a little.

"That is our pride," said the man, as I looked with astonishment at a primeval and gigantic oak which grew here in an open space in the heart of the pine forest, and spread its gnarled and weather-beaten boughs far up against the blue sky.

"That is a great curiosity," he went on. "People come from miles and miles to see that tree; and it has been painted I don't know how often. Not many days ago a young lady, who has been staying with us a few weeks, came here and made a picture of it. I drove her here myself; I often drive her about."

Absorbed in my own thoughts hitherto, I had, contrary to my usual custom, spoken but little with the man, and indeed scarcely noticed him, and now it seemed as if he and I were old acquaintances, and had the most intimate interests in common. I asked him the young lady's name; not that I had any doubt that it was Paula, and yet it was a sort of shock to me when he pronounced it, and from his lips it sounded strangely. And now the man, who seemed to have been awaiting his opportunity, became very communicative, and told me, while we crossed the back of the mountain and descended in a rattling trot, a multitude of things about the charming young lady; and the old lady her mother, who was blind, but who recognized people at once by the voice; and about the old man, with the hooked nose and long gray moustache and curly white hair, who was really only their servant, but the ladies treated him as one of themselves; and yesterday a young gentleman had arrived, with a sunburnt face and bright brown eyes and long brown hair, who was the young lady's brother, and a painter too.

The carriage was clattering over the rough pavement of the little town, and the talkative fellow was still chattering about Paula and the rest. I had told him that I had come on purpose to see that lady, and that he must put me down at the inn at which he told me she was staying.

The carriage stopped. The head-waiter with two small myrmidons rushed out; two boys who saw a chance of their services being called into requisition as guides came up to have a look at the strange gentleman. Concealing my agitation, I asked the head-waiter if I could have a room, and if either of the guests was at home.

I could have a room, he said, but neither of the guests was at home: the lady and the young gentleman had gone out for a walk, and the young lady had started for the mountains with Herr Süssmilch early in the afternoon: she went into the mountains every afternoon: she painted up there, and hardly ever came back until after sundown.

"Do you know the place?"

"Certainly; perfectly well: this boy here has carried the lady's things there often enough. Say, Carl, you know where the lady goes to paint?"

"To be sure," said the boy. "Shall I take the gentleman there?"

"Yes," I said, and turned to start at once.

"You need not be in any hurry, sir," the attentive headwaiter called after me; "you will reach the place in half an hour."

My little guide ran on ahead, and I followed him along the main street of the little town, planted with lindens, with groups of travellers seated here and there before the doors, and reached the fields upon which still lay the golden evening light, and then entered the cool twilight of the woods. We pursued the wide road which ascended the mountains by a steep acclivity for the most part, but occasionally ran along small level glades, and was elsewhere inclosed on both sides by the tall forest trees. It was wonderfully quiet in the cool pines: no breeze stirred, scarcely was the silence broken at rare intervals by the chirp of a bird: the blue sky looked down from above, and I felt as if the path climbed up to heaven.

No one met us on the way; only when we were almost at the summit and had turned to the right from the main road into the wood and reached an open space where stood a sort of hunting-lodge, I saw a couple of men who were sitting upon benches with mugs of beer in their hands. Out of the wood, directly opposite the spot at which we had entered the clearing, came a man followed by a boy carrying an easel and other painter's apparatus. I recognized the sergeant at once; and my little guide said that the boy who was carrying the things was his brother Hans, and that they were coming from the place where the lady used to paint. This place was only five minutes walk distant, and we had only to follow the way by which the sergeant and Hans had just come.

My old friend, who was talking in a rather animated manner to the boy, who probably was not carrying the things carefully enough to please him, had not observed me, and I was glad of it, for I felt that I was not in a frame of mind to talk with him. So I gave my guide a sign to wait for me; and crossed the clearing towards the path he had pointed out.

It was a broad path, overgrown with short green grass upon which the foot fell noiselessly, and the pines on both sides were of such growth that their branches almost entirely roofed it in, so that only here and there the red sunset glow pierced to the green twilight. It gradually but continually ascended, and I walked on, not even conscious that I was walking or moving my limbs, as one ascends heights in a dream. A breathless expectation, a joyful fear possessed me wholly. Thus might an immortal spirit feel which is about to enter the presence of its judge, and with all its timid hesitation, knows still that this judge is mercy itself.

And now it grew lighter and more open with every step, and I passed out of the forest upon the crest of the mountain, which to my right hand rose to a mighty height, while westwardly, to the left, it sloped away to a deep valley, over which I could see far-distant mountain terraces rising slope above purple slope, against the evening sky. The sun had set, but its radiance still lay calm upon the light clouds which floated over the mountain, and a few paces from me, bathed in the roseate light reflected from the clouds, stood a female figure by a mossy rock upon which she leaned her right arm, while her left hand with her broad straw hat hung idly by her side. She was looking fixedly at the sunset sky, and her features were clearly defined against the bright background. Thus I saw her once more.

But she neither saw me nor heard me, for the soft grass muffled my steps. I wished to call her by name, but could not; and now she slowly turned her face towards me and looked at me with wide fixed eyes and unmoving features, as though I were an apparition which she had long yearned to behold, and which the might of her longings had summoned before her. But as I spread my arms, saying, "Paula, dearest Paula!" a heavenly light flashed into her lovely face, a faint cry broke from her lips, and she lay upon my breast with a storm of passionate tears, as if all the sorrows she had borne all these long years had burst forth in one moment.

What I said, what she said, while we stood on the mountain ridge, while streak after streak of the rosy light faded out of the sky, I cannot now recall.

And then we went back hand in hand through the silent wood, by another way than that by which I had come; a way that at first led over a grassy slope directly down the mountain, so that we could still see the valley in the faint evening light, and then under high beeches where it was quite dark, so that Paula held firmly to my hand until we came upon open spaces and the valley lay before us again, now dim in gray twilight, so that I thought the descent must be longer than the ascent, and yet it was so short--so short! What did it matter? I knew that with her who was leading me down the dim mountain path I would walk henceforth hand-in-hand so long as we both lived upon earth; and an inward prayer rose in my soul that her last day might be mine also.

And now I see ourselves--that is our mother, Paula, Oscar and myself--seated at a table in one of the arbors in front of the inn, and the light of the lamp in its glass shade falls mildly on the gentle features of the blind lady who from time to time lays her soft hand upon mine, and on Paula's dear face that beams with a lovely radiance from her inward happiness, and upon the beautiful young features of Oscar, whose dark eyes glow while he tells how a young English nobleman whose acquaintance he made at Rome has given him a grand commission to paint a series of frescoes in his castle in the Highlands, and how before he sets out there, he had to come after his sister to get some advice from her; and then the youth tosses back his long hair, and lifts a full glass and drinks it off to our health, and the mother smiles gently upon us, and as our glasses clink together there appears in an opening in the trellis that head with the gray moustache and white hair which played so important a part in the history of art.

Then I am standing at the open window of my room, listening to the rustling of the west wind in the branches and the plashing of the fountain before the inn, and my gaze is fixed upon a star that beams brighter than all the rest in the nightly sky.

And the old sadness awakens once more in my heart, and my eyes fill with tears.

But when I look again, the star is beaming more brightly than ever, as if it were an eye looking lovingly down and sending me greeting from the abodes of the blest.

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