XXXIII. THE LEGITIMATE WIFE…

XXXIII. THE LEGITIMATE WIFE

The Prince von Reuss, Henry XIV., Austrian ambassador at Berlin, had died an hour ago. A painful disease had confined him to his bed for weeks, and Marianne Meier had nursed him during this time with the greatest love and devotion. She had never left his bedside, and no one except herself, the physicians, and a few servants had been permitted to enter the sick-room. The brothers and nephews of the prince, who had come to Berlin in order to see their dying relative once more, had vainly solicited this favor. The physicians had told them that the suffering prince was unable to bear any excitement, there being great danger that immediate death would be the consequence of a scene between them.

The prince, moreover, had sent his trusted valet de chambre to his brother, and informed him, even if he were entirely well, he would not accept the visits of a brother who had shown him so little fraternal love, and caused him so much grief by opposing his faithful and beloved friend Marianne Meier in the most offensive and insulting manner.

The distinguished relatives of the prince, therefore, had to content themselves with watching his palace from afar, and with bribing a few of his servants to transmit to them hourly reports about the condition of the patient.

And now Prince Henry XIV. was dead, and his brother was his successor and heir, the prince having left no legitimate offspring. It was universally believed that he had never been married, and that his immense fortune, his estates and titles, would devolve on his brother. It is true there was still that mistress of his, fair Marianne Meier, to whom the prince, in his sentimental infatuation, had paid the honors of a legitimate wife. But, of course, she had no claims whatever to the inheritance; it would be an act of generosity to leave her in possession of the costly presents the prince had made to her, and to pay her a small pension.

The prince had hardly closed his eyes, therefore, and the doctors had just pronounced him dead, when his brother, now Prince Henry XV., accompanied by a few lawyers, entered the palace of the deceased in order to take possession of his property, and to have the necessary seals applied to the doors. However, to give himself at least a semblance of brotherly love, the prince desired first to repair to the death-room, and to take a last leave of the deceased. But in the anteroom he met the two footmen of his brother, who dared to stop his passage, telling him that no one was allowed to enter.

“And who dares to issue such orders?” asked the prince, without stopping a moment.

“Madame has done so,” said the first valet de chambre. “Madame wants to be alone with the remains of her husband.”

The prince shrugged his shoulders, and, followed by the legal gentlemen, he walked to the door, which he vainly tried to open.

“I believe that woman has locked the door,” said the prince, angrily.

“Yes, sir, madame has locked the door,” said the valet de chambre; “she does not want to be disturbed in her grief by mere visits of condolence.”

“Well, let us leave her, then, to her grief,” exclaimed the prince, with a sarcastic smile. “Come, gentlemen, let us attend to our business. Let us take an inventory of the furniture in the several rooms and then seal them. You may be our guide, valet.”

But the valet de chambre shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “Pardon me, sir, that is impossible. His highness, our late prince and master, several days ago, when he felt that his end was drawing near, caused every room to be locked and sealed by the first attache of the legation in the presence of all the members of the embassy. The keys to all the rooms, however, were handed by order of the prince to madame, his wife.”

The new prince, Henry XV., turned somewhat uneasily to the legal gentlemen.

“Have we a right to open the doors forcibly?”

“No, that would be contrary to law,” said one of the lawyers, in a low voice. “The late prince has doubtless left some directions in relation to this matter and intrusted them to the officers of the legation. Your highness ought to apply to those gentlemen.”

“Is the first attache of the legation, Baron Werdern, in the palace?” said the prince to the valet de chambre.

“No, your highness, he has just gone out with a few other gentlemen of the legation to request the attendance of two officers of the law, that the will may be opened and read in their presence.”

“My brother has made a will, then?” asked the prince, in a somewhat frightened tone.

“Yes, your highness, and he laid it, in the presence of every member of the legation, of two officers of the law, and of every servant, three days ago, in a strong box, the key of which he handed to the officers of the law, when the box was deposited in the archives of the legation.”

“And why did Baron Werdern go now for the officers of the law?”

“In order to request their attendance in the palace, the late prince having left the verbal order that his will should be opened two hours after his death. The baron was going to invite your highness likewise to be present.”

“Well, let us wait here for the arrival of the gentlemen,” said Prince Henry XV., shrugging his shoulders. “It seems a little strange to me, however, that I must wait here in the anteroom like a supplicant. Go and announce my visit to madame!”

The valet de chambre bowed and left the room. The prince called the two lawyers to his side. “What do you think of this whole matter?” he asked, in a low voice.

The two representatives of the law shrugged their shoulders.

“Your highness, every thing seems to have been done here legally. We must wait for the return of the gentlemen and for the opening of the will.”

The valet de chambre now reentered the room, and approached the prince. “Madame sends her respects to the prince, and begs him to excuse her inability to admit her brother-in-law just now, as she is dressing at the present moment. She will have the honor to salute her gracious brother-in-law at the ceremony.”

“Does that woman call myself her gracious brother-in-law?” asked the prince, with an air of the most profound contempt, turning his back to the valet de chambre. “We will wait here, then, gentlemen,” he added, turning to the lawyers. “It seems that woman intends to take a petty revenge at this moment for the contempt with which I have always treated her. I shall know, however, how to chastise her for it, and--”

“Hush, your highness,” whispered one of the lawyers, “they are coming!”

In fact, the large folding-doors were opened at that moment, and on a catafalque, hung with black cloth, the remains of the prince were lying in state; on both sides of the catafalque large tapers were burning in heavy silver chandeliers.

Prince Henry, awed by this solemn scene, walked forward, and the grave countenance of his brother, with whom he had lived so long in discord, and whom he had not seen for many years, filled his heart with uneasiness and dismay.

He approached the room, followed by the legal gentlemen, with hesitating, noiseless steps. On the threshold of the door there now appeared the first attache of the legation, Baron Werdern, who, bowing deeply, invited the prince whisperingly to come in.

The prince walked in, and on crossing the threshold, it seemed to him as if his brother’s corpse had moved, and as if his half-opened eyes were fixed upon him with a threatening expression.

The prince averted his eyes from the corpse in dismay and saluted the gentlemen standing around a table covered with black cloth. Two large chandeliers, with burning tapers, a strong box, and writing-materials, had been placed upon this table; on one side, two arm-chairs, likewise covered with black cloth, were to be seen.

The baron conducted the prince to one of these arm-chairs, and invited him to sit down. Prince Henry did so, and then looked anxiously at the officers of the law, who were standing at the table in their black robes, and behind whom were assembled all the members of the legation, the physicians, and the servants of the late prince.

A long pause ensued. Then, all at once, the folding-doors opened, and the prince’s steward appeared on the threshold.

“Her highness the Princess Dowager von Reuss,” he said, in a loud, solemn voice, and Marianne’s tall, imposing form entered the room. She was clad in a black dress with a long train; a black veil, fastened above her head on a diadem, surrounded her noble figure like a dark cloud, and in this cloud beamed her expansive, thoughtful forehead, and her large flaming eyes sparkled. Her features were breathing the most profound and majestic tranquillity; and when she now saluted the gentlemen with a condescending nod, her whole bearing was so impressive and distinguished that even Prince Henry was unable to remain indifferent, and he rose respectfully from his arm-chair.

Marianne, however, paid no attention to him, but approached the remains of her husband. With inimitable grace she knelt down on one side of the catafalque. The priest who had entered with her knelt down on the other.

Both of them muttered fervent prayers for the deceased. Marianne then arose, and, bending over the corpse, imprinted a long kiss upon the forehead of her departed husband.

“Farewell, my husband!” she said, in her full, melodious voice, and then turned around and stepped toward the table. “Without deigning to glance at the prince, she sat down in the arm-chair.”

“I request the officers of the law now to open the strong box,” she said, in an almost imperious voice.

One of the officers handed the key to Baron Werdern; the latter opened the strong box, and took from it a sealed paper, which he gave to the officer.

“Do you recognize the paper as the same yourself locked in this strong box?” she asked. “Is it the same which his highness the late Prince von Reuss, Henry XIV., handed to you?”

“Yes, it is the same,” said the two officers; “it is the will of the late prince.”

“And you know that his highness ordered us to open it immediately after his death, and to promulgate its contents. Proceed, therefore, according to the instructions of the deceased.”

One of the officers broke the seal, and now that he unfolded the paper, Marianne turned her head toward the prince, and fixed her burning eyes piercingly upon his countenance.

The officer commenced reading the will. First came the preamble, to be found in every will, and then the officer read in a louder voice, as follows:

“In preparing to appear before the throne of the Lord, I feel especially called upon to return my most heart-felt thanks, in this public manner, to my wife, Princess Marianne, nee Meier, for the constancy, love, and devotion which she has shown to me during our whole married life, and for the surpassing patience and self-abnegation with which she nursed me during my last sickness. I deem myself especially obliged to make this acknowledgment, inasmuch as my wife, in her true love for me, has suffered many undeserved aspersions and insults, because, in accordance with my wishes, she kept our marriage secret, and in consequence had to bear the sneers of evil-disposed persons, and the insults of malicious enemies. But she is my lawful wife before God and man, and she is fully entitled to assume the name of a Princess Dowager von Reuss. I hereby expressly authorize her to do so, and, by removing the secret that has been observed during my life in relation to our marriage, I authorize my wife to assume the title and rank due to her, and hereby command my brother, as well as his sons and the other members of my family, to pay to the Princess Dowager von Reuss, nee Meier, the respect and deference due to her as the widow of the late head of the family, and to which she is justly entitled by her virtue, her blameless conduct, her respectability, beauty, and amiability. The Princess Dowager von Reuss is further authorized to let her servants wear the livery and color of my house, to display the coat-of-arms of the princes von Reuss on her carriages, and to enjoy the full privileges of her rank. If my brother Henry, the heir of my titles, should have any doubts as to her rights in this regard, the officer reading my will is requested to ask him whether or not he desires to obtain further evidence in relation to the legitimacy of my marriage.”

“Does your highness require any further evidence?” asked the officer, interrupting the reading of the will.

“I do,” said the prince, who had listened to the reading of the will with a pale and gloomy mien.

“Here is that evidence,” said the priest, beckoning the sexton, who stood on the threshold of the door. The latter approached the priest, and handed him a large volume bound in black morocco.

“It is the church register, in which I have entered all the marriages, christenings, and funeral masses performed in the chapel of the Austrian embassy,” said the priest. “On this page you find the minutes of the marriage of the Prince von Reuss, Henry XIV., and Miss Marianne Meier. The ceremony took place two years ago. I have baptized the princess myself, and thereby received her into the pale of the holy Catholic Church, and I have likewise performed the rite of marriage on the occasion referred to. I hereby certify that the princess is the lawful wife of the late prince, as is testified by the minutes entered on the church register. The marriage was performed in the chapel, and in the presence of witnesses, who have signed the minutes, like myself.”

“I witnessed the marriage,” said Baron Werdern, “and so did the military counsellor Gentz, who, if your highness should desire further testimony, will be ready to corroborate our statements.”

“No,” said the prince, gloomily, “I require no further testimony. I am fully satisfied of the truth of your statements, and will now pay my respects to my sister-in-law, the Princess Dowager von Reuss, nee Meier.”

He bowed, with a sarcastic smile, which, for a moment, caused the blood to rush to Marianne’s pale cheeks, and then carelessly leaned back into his arm-chair.

“Be kind enough to proceed,” he said, turning to the officer. The latter took up the will again and read its several sections and clauses. The prince bequeathed his palace, with every thing in it, to his wife Marianne, and likewise his carriages, his horses, and the family diamonds he had inherited from his mother. The remainder of his considerable property he left to his brother, asking him to agree with the Princess Marianne on a pension corresponding with her rank and position in society. Then followed some legacies and pensions for the old servants of his household, a few gifts to the poor, and last the appropriation of a sum for which a mass was to be read on every anniversary of his death, for the peace of his soul. The ceremony was over. The officers of the law and the members of the embassy had left the death-room, and on a sign from Marianne the servants had also withdrawn.

The prince had exchanged a few words in a low voice with his two lawyers, whereupon they likewise had left the room. No one except the brother and the wife of the deceased remained now in this gloomy room, illuminated by the flickering tapers. Marianne, however, seemed to take no notice of the presence of her brother-in-law; she had approached the corpse again, and gazed at it with the most profound emotion.

“I thank you, Henry,” she said, loudly and solemnly. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart; you have given back to me my honor; you have revenged me upon your haughty relatives, and upon the sneering world.”

“Do not thank him, respected sister-in-law, for he has left you poor,” said the prince, approaching her, and contemplating her with a freezing smile. “My brother has made you a princess, it is true, but he has not given you the means to live as a princess. He has bequeathed to you this palace, with its costly furniture; he has bequeathed to you his carriages and diamonds; but a palace and furniture are no estates, and in order to keep carriages one has to feed men and horses. It is true, you can sell the palace and the diamonds, and obtain for them several hundred thousand florins. That sum would be amply sufficient for a person leading a retired life, but it is very little for one who desires to keep up a princely household, and to live in the style becoming a lady of your beauty and social position. My brother has foreseen all this, and he indirectly gave us a chance to come to an understanding, by asking me to agree with you on a pension to be paid you. Hence I ask you, how much do you demand? How high will be the sum for which you will sell me your mourning veil, your name, and your title of princess dowager? For you doubtless anticipate, madame, that I do not propose to acknowledge you publicly as my sister-in-law, and to receive a--Marianne Meier among the members of my family. Tell me your price, therefore, madame.”

Marianne looked at him with flaming eyes, a deep blush of anger mantling her cheeks. “Prince von Reuss,” she said, proudly, “you will have to permit the world to call me your sister-in-law. I am your sister-in-law, and I shall prove to the world and to you that it is unnecessary to have been born under a princely canopy in order to live, think, and act like a princess. My husband has rewarded me in this hour for years of suffering and humiliation. Do you believe that my reward is for sale for vile money? And if you should offer me millions, I should reject them if, in return, I were to lead a nameless, disreputable, and obscure existence. I will sooner die of starvation as a Princess Dowager von Reuss than live in opulence as Marianne Meier. This is my last word; and now, sir, begone! Do not desecrate this room by your cold and egotistic thoughts, and by your heartless calculations! Honor the repose of the dead and the grief of the living. Begone!”

She proudly turned away from him, and bent once more over the corpse. While she was doing so her black veil, with a gentle rustle, fell down over her face and wrapped her, as well as the corpse, as in a dark mist, so that the two forms seemed to melt into one.

The prince felt a shudder pervading his frame, and the presence of the corpse embarrassed him.

“I will not disturb you now in your grief, madame,” he said; “I hope your tears will flow less copiously as soon as the funeral is over, and I shall then send my lawyer, for the purpose of treating further with you.”

He bowed, and hastened to the door. She seemed neither to have heard his words, nor to have noticed that he was withdrawing. She was still bending over the remains of her husband, the black cloud surrounding her and the corpse.

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XXXIV. THE EIGHTEENTH OF BRUMAIRE

“News from France!” exclaimed Counsellor Gentz, entering Marianne’s boudoir in breathless haste. “Do you already know what has occurred? Did you hear, Marianne, how France has closed the eighteenth century?”

Marianne looked up into the face of her friend, with a gentle and peculiar smile. “That must have been exciting intelligence,” she said. “inasmuch as it was even able to arouse the dreamer, Frederick Gentz, from his political sleep, and to cause him to take interest again in the affairs of the world. Well, let us hear the news; what has occurred in France?”

“General Bonaparte has overthrown the Directory, and dispersed the Council of Five Hundred.”

“And you call that news?” asked Marianne, shrugging her shoulders. “You tell me there the history of the ninth and tenth of November, or, as the French republicans say, of the eighteenth and nineteenth of Brumaire. And you believe that I have not yet heard of it to-day, on the twenty-sixth of December? My friend Gentz, Bonaparte’s deeds need not more than a month in order to penetrate through the world; they soar aloft with eagle-wings, and the whole world beholds them, because they darken the horizon of the whole world.”

“But you have only heard the preamble of my news,” ejaculated Gentz, impatiently. “I have no doubt that you know the history of the eighteenth of Brumaire, and that you are aware that France, on that day, placed herself under the rule of three consuls, one of whom was General Bonaparte.”

“The other two consuls are Sieyes and Dacos,” interrupted Marianne. “I know that, and I know, too, that Lucien, Bonaparte’s brother, president of the Legislative Assembly, upon receiving the oath of office of the three consuls, said to them. ‘The greatest nation on earth intrusts you with its destinies; the welfare of thirty millions of men, the preservation of order at home, and the reestablishment of peace abroad, are your task. Three months from to-day public opinion will expect to hear from you how you have accomplished it.’” [Footnote: “Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire,” par A. Theirs, vol. i., p. 16.]

“Well, M. Bonaparte did not make public opinion wait so long,” said Gentz; “or rather, he asserts public opinion had not given him time to wait so long, and that it was public opinion itself that called upon him to proclaim himself sovereign of France.”

“Sovereign of France?” asked Marianne, in surprise. “Bonaparte has made himself king?”

“Yes, king, but under another name; he has caused himself to be elected consul for ten years! Ah, he will know how to shorten these ten years, just as he knew how to shorten those three months!”

“And this report is reliable?” asked Marianne, musingly.

“Perfectly so. Bonaparte was elected first consul on the twenty-fifth of December, and on the same day the new constitution was promulgated throughout France. That is a very fine Christmas present which France has made to the world! A box filled with dragon’s teeth, from which armed hosts will spring up. It is true the first consul now pretends to be very anxious to restore peace to Europe. He has sent special ambassadors to all courts, with profuse assurances of his friendship and pacific intentions, and he sent them off even previous to his election, in order to announce the news of the latter to the foreign courts on the same day on which he was proclaimed first consul at Paris. Such a peace-messenger of the general has arrived at Berlin; he has brought us the strange and startling news.”

“What is the name of this peace-messenger of the modern god of war?” asked Marianne.

“He sent his adjutant, General Duroc; the latter reached Berlin yesterday, and appeared even to-day as the petted guest of our court, at the great soiree of the queen. Oh, my friend, my stupid German heart trembled with anger when I saw the kind and flattering attentions that were paid to this Frenchman, while German gentlemen of genius, merit, and ability were kept in the background, neither the king nor the queen seeming to take any notice of their presence! There were Count Hardenberg and the noble President of Westphalia, Baron Stein; they stood neglected in a bay window, and looked sadly at the royal couple, who treated the Frenchman in the midst of the court in the most distinguished manner; there were Blucher and Gneisenau, overlooked by everybody, although their uniforms were no less brilliant than that of the French envoy; and there was finally Frederick Gentz, myself, who had only appeared at this court festival owing to the special desire and order of the queen, and whose presence she had entirely forgotten, although Gualtieri reminded her of it at least three times, and told her that I was there, and had only come because the queen had expressly ordered it so. But what did her beautiful majesty care that a German writer was vainly waiting for a smile of her affability, and a gracious nod of her lovely head? The French envoy was by far more important than all of us. For the sake of the Frenchman, even ‘Madame Etiquette,’ the Countess von Voss, mistress of ceremonies, had been silenced, and the plain adjutant of the first consul was received with as much distinction as if he were a minister plenipotentiary, while he only came as the simple agent for a private individual. They asked him to tell them about the battle of the Pyramids, about the battles of Mount Tabor and Aboukir, and the whole court listened to him with a suspense as though Bonaparte’s adjutant were preaching a new gospel. Whenever he paused in his narrative, the queen, with her fascinating smile, constantly addressed new questions to him, and praised the achievements of General Bonaparte as though he were the Messiah sent into the world to deliver it from the evils of war! In short, he had a perfect success; and at last, by means of an adroit trick, he managed to render it as magnificent as possible. The queen told General Duroc of our German customs, and informed him that this was the day on which the Germans everywhere made presents to each other, and that gifts were laid under Christmas-trees, adorned with burning tapers. At that moment Duroc turned to the king, and said, with his intolerable French amiability: ‘Sire, if this is the day of universal presents in Germany, I believe I will be courageous enough to-day to ask your majesty for a present in the name of the first consul, General Bonaparte, if your majesty will permit me to do so.’ The king, of course, gave him the desired permission, and Duroc continued: ‘Sire, the present for which I am to ask your majesty, in the name of the first consul, is a bust of your great ancestor, Frederick the Second. The first consul recently examined the statues in the Diana Gallery at the Tuileries; there were the statues of Caesar and Brutus, of Coriolanus and Cicero, of Louis XIV. and Charles V., but the first consul did not see the statue of Frederick the Great, and he deems the collection of the heroes of ancient and modern times incomplete as long as it does not embrace the name of Frederick the Great. Sire, I take the liberty, therefore, to ask you, in the name of France, for a bust of Frederick the Great!’” [Footnote: Historical.]

“Very adroit, indeed,” said Marianne, smiling; “these republicans seem to be excellent courtiers.”

“Yes, very adroit!” exclaimed Gentz; “the whole court was in ecstasy at this tremendous flattery, at this compliment paid by the great republic to little Prussia; but I could not stand it any longer in those halls, and in the presence of these fawning Germans, and I hastened away in order to unbosom to you my rage, my indignation, and my grief. Oh, my fair friend, what is to become of Germany, and what will be the end of all these troubles? Ruin is staring us in the face, and we do not see it; we are rushing toward the precipice, and must fall a prey to France, to this wolf in sheep’s clothing, which will caress and pet us until it will be able to devour us!”

“I like to hear you talk in this strain,” said Marianne, joyfully. “That is again the friend of my heart, who is now talking to me. Listen to me. I have to communicate news to you, too, and you must not be surprised if I reply to your important political intelligence by a reference to my petty personal interests. But there is a connection between them, and you will see it by and by. Listen, then, to the news concerning myself.”

“Yes, Marianne,” said Gentz, kneeling down before her, and leaning his head upon her knees, “yes, tell me about yourself, my beautiful fairy queen; lull my political pains a little by the magic song which is flowing from your red lips like a fresh source of love. Oh, my charming princess, now that I am looking up into your radiant face, I feel a burning shame that I should have desecrated the delightful moments I passed by your side by such trivial complaints about the misery of German politics. What have we to do with politics? What do we care if Germany is going to be ruined? Apres nous le deluge! Let us enjoy the bliss of the fleeting hour!”

Marianne played smilingly with her slender fingers, covered with sparkling diamond rings, in his hair, and looked upon him with a wondrous air.

“Enthusiast!” she said; “now an ardent politician, then an impassioned lover, and ready at all hours to exchange one role for the other! Will you not listen to my news? My quarrel with my dear brother-in-law, Henry XV., is ended; we have come to an agreement.”

“And I hope my sagacious and prudent Marianne has subdued her proud and bold heart this time, and had a little regard for her advantage,” replied Gentz. “A woman as beautiful and radiant as Marianne Meier needs no empty aristocratic title, for your beauty makes you the queen of the world; but you need wealth in order to add power to your beauty, and to adorn it with a cloak glittering with gold and purple. Well, my queen, are you again Marianne Meier and a millionaire besides?”

“What a fool!” she exclaimed, proudly, “what a fool you are to believe I would crawl back into the Jews’ quarter and expose myself to the sneers of my enviable friends! No, my friend, money and beauty are insufficient for those who desire to play a role in the world; they stand in need of rank and titles, too, for these are the magic words opening to us the doors of royal palaces, and placing us on a par with the privileged and inacessible. I, for one, want to play my role in the world; hence I must have a distinguished title. It is true I also stand in need of wealth, and by means of a skilful arrangement I have secured both. The mote in my Jewish eye appearing to my aristocratic relatives like a very large beam, I have yielded and renounced the title of a Princess von Reuss; but, in spite of that, I remain a princess and retain the title of highness. The prince, my brother-in-law, has given me a splendid estate in fee-simple, the annual revenues of which amount to no less than twenty thousand dollars; in return, however, I surrender to him the family diamonds, this palace, the carriages with the coat-of-arms of the Reuss family, the horses and liveries, and last, the name and title of a Princess Dowager von Reuss.”

“And now, like all the fairies in the children’s books, you are a wondrous child without name and rank, but showering with your snowy hands golden suns and glittering stars upon mankind?”

“No, I am no nameless woman now, but I adopt the name of my estate of Eibenberg, and from this day forward I shall be the Princess Marianne of Eibenberg, the Emperor of Germany himself having recognized my new title. The documents, signed by the emperor himself, are on the table there. The prince brought them to me to-day as a Christmas-present. Now, my friend, my real life is to commence; I have acquired wealth and a distinguished name. The poor Jewess, the daughter of the Ghetto, has moved into the palace of the aristocracy and become a princess.”

“And I will be the first to do you homage as though you were my princess and queen!” exclaimed Gentz, “the first who will call himself your vassal. Come, my princess, let me place the sweet yoke upon my neck; let my forehead touch the ground on which you are walking; place your foot upon my neck, so that I may feel the sweet burden of your rule.”

And bending down his head until his brow touched the floor, he placed her tiny foot, encased in a beautiful silken shoe, upon his neck. Marianne did not interfere with him, but looked down on him with a proud, triumphant smile.

“You lie at my feet, Frederick Gentz,” she said, “nevertheless I will lift you up to me; you shall stand by my side, my equal, famous and great as you ought to be, owing to your genius! But a truce to tender trifling, my friend; both of us have to accomplish great purposes, and our thoughts and actions should be grave and stern. Come, rise from your knees, my vassal; you shall be a prince by my side, and we will rule the world together.”

She withdrew her foot from his neck, but Gentz seized it with both hands and kissed it. He then quickly rose from his knees, and drew himself up to his full height, looking at her sternly and almost angrily.

“You have often told me that you loved me,” he said, “but it was a lie; you do not understand love, your heart is cold and your senses are silent, only your pride speaks.”

“It is possible that you are right,” she replied, “but, in that case, I love you with my pride and with my mind, and that is worth something, at all events. I want to see you honored, famous, and influential; is not that also love?”

“No, it is a mockery!” ejaculated Gentz, mournfully. “It is malice, for you see I am a poor, despised man, without money, without fame, without rank; a miserable military counsellor, outranked by every private counsellor, and persecuted day by day by my creditors, as if they were vultures following a poor dove whose wings have been clipped.”

“But your wings shall grow again, so that you may escape from the vultures!” exclaimed Marianne, “and that you may soar, eagle-like, above the miseries of the world, and exercise a commanding influence over it. The time of dreams and expectations is over, the time for action has come for all energetic and able minds. Two years ago I asked you, as I do to-day, if you would not devote your services to Austria, and if you would not seek for fame and happiness in that country, in which your genius would be appreciated and rewarded. Do you remember what you replied to me at that time?”

“Yes, I remember,” said Gentz, with a sarcastic smile; “I was foolish enough to reject your offers, and to declare that I would stay here at Berlin, and see if my native country would not need my abilities and my services, and if our rulers here would not avail themselves of my talents and of my pen. And thus I have lost, again, two years of my life, and only my debts have increased, but not my fame.”

“Because you were an enthusiast, and expected to be appreciated in Prussia; believing this good king (who would like to make his people happy and prosperous, but who timidly shrinks back from all energetic resolutions) would be very grateful to you for exhorting him to grant freedom of the press to his subjects, and, in general, to introduce liberty and equality in his states. Do you still believe that Frederick William the Third will do so?”

“No, he will not,” replied Gentz, mournfully; “no, this king does not understand the present age, and instead of being a step in advance of it, he will always remain a step behind it, and thus involve Prussia in untold misery and suffering. I have hoped and waited long enough; the time of patience and idleness is now over, and I therefore renounce, to-day, at the end of the eighteenth century, my native state, in order to become a citizen and son of a larger fatherland. I cease to be a Prussian, in order to become a German; and Prussia having no desire to avail herself of my abilites, I am going to see whether or not Germany has any use for them. My beautiful Marianne, you shall be the priestess who receives the oath which I make on the altar of the fatherland: ‘I swear to devote all my powers and talents to Germany; I swear to be a faithful and untiring son to my great fatherland!’”

“I have heard your oath, Frederick Gentz, and I accept it in the name of Germany,” said Marianne, solemnly. “You shall be the champion of the honor and rights of Germany; your weapon, however, shall not be the sword, but the pen.”

“But where will the lists be opened to my tournament?” asked Gentz, musingly.

“In Austria,” replied Marianne, quickly; “the Emperor of Germany is expecting you, the son of Germany; the Emperor of Germany is calling you to serve and promote the interests of your fatherland. I am authorized to tell you that. The new Austrian envoy, Count Stadion, has requested me to do so; he has asked me to win you for Austria, that is, for Germany. For, believe me, the welfare of Germany is nowadays consulted in Austria, and not in Prussia!”

“No, not in Prussia!” exclaimed Gentz, mournfully. “Our government shuts its eyes in order not to behold the terrors which are rushing toward us with irresistible force, and will soon, like an avalanche, roll over Germany and annihilate us all, unless we skilfully calculate the danger, and raise sufficient bulwarks against it. They admire Bonaparte here, and only behold a hero, while I scent a tyrant--a tyrant who wants to subjugate us by his revolutionary liberty and his Jacobin’s cap, which is but a crown in another shape. I hate Bonaparte, for I hate the revolution which, notwithstanding its phrases of liberty and equality, is but a bloody despotism that does not even grant freedom of opinion to the citizen, and drags such ideas as are distasteful to it upon the scaffold. I hate the revolution, I hate Bonaparte, and I hate every form of tyranny, and shall oppose it as long as I live!”

“And I shall be a faithful squire by your side, and sharpen the bolts which you are going to hurl at the enemy,” said Marianne, with fervent enthusiasm. “We are both going to Vienna, in order to serve Germany. In Vienna a new century and a new country will open their arms to us. Thanks to my title, to my rank, and to my connections, every door will be open to us there, and the Jewess, Marianne Meier, princess of Eibenberg, will not even find the apartments of the emperor and empress closed; on the contrary, their imperial majesties will receive me as an honored and welcome guest, for I am a princess by the act of the emperor, and the friend of the empress; Victoria de Poutet Colloredo is also my friend. And whithersoever I go, you shall go, too, my friend, and the doors that will open to me shall not be closed to you. My rank opens them to me, and your genius opens them to you. Come, let us be faithful allies; let us swear to support each other firmly and immovably, and to walk together step by step.”

“Oh, my noble and generous friend,” exclaimed Gentz, sadly, “how delicately you try to veil your protection! In such an alliance, I am unable to offer you any compensation, for I should find all doors closed if you should not open them to me. I have neither rank, money, nor friends at court!”

“Well, let me protect you now, and at some later period you will protect me,” said Marianne. “Let us swear to pursue our path together.”

“I swear it by all that is sacred to me!” exclaimed Gentz. “I swear that I will remain faithful to you and to Germany for my whole life. I swear that I will follow you everywhere; that I will serve you wherever and whenever I can, and to love you to my last breath.”

“The alliance is closed,” said Marianne, solemnly, “Henceforth, we will fight jointly, and pursue our goal together. It is our own greatness, and the greatness of Germany. The country is in danger--let us see if we cannot contribute something to its preservation, and if it does not need our hands and our heads in order to weather the storm. If we should be able, while assisting the country, to pick up a few laurels, titles, decorations, and treasures for ourselves, we would be fools not to avail ourselves of the opportunity.”

“Yes, you are right,” said Gentz, smiling, “we would be fools not to do so; and you are right, too, as to the perils of the country. Germany is in danger. The new century will dawn upon her with a bloody morning sun, and it will arouse us from our sleep by a terrific cannonade. But as for ourselves, we will not wait until the roar of the strife awakens us; we will be up and doing now and work on the lightning-rod with which we will meet the approaching thunderstorm, in order that its bolts may glance off harmlessly and not destroy Germany. I will be an untiring warrior in the great struggle against the revolution, and my pen, which is my sword, shall never be idle in the strife. From this hour I cease to be the insignificant Prussian counsellor, Frederick Gentz; from this hour I will strive to become the great political writer of Germany. May the genius of Germany be with me in my endeavors!”

“Amen!” said Marianne, fervently. “May the genius of Germany bless us and the new century. Amen!”

THE PEACE OF LUNEVILLE

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XXXV. JOHANNES MULLER

The minister, Baron Thugut, was pacing his cabinet in an excited manner. His face, usually so cold and immovable, was painfully agitated to-day; his shaggy white eyebrows were closely contracted, and his eyes were casting angry glances on the dispatch which he had just thrown on his desk, and which a courier from General Melas, in Lombardy, had brought to him a few minutes ago.

“Another battle lost!” he muttered; “another laurel-wreath placed on the defiant head of General Bonaparte! This man will make me mad yet by his impudent good luck. It is dreadful only to think that he was already defeated at Marengo [Footnote: The battle of Marengo was fought on the 14th of June, 1800.]--so surely defeated that General Melas issued orders for the pursuit of the enemy, and rode to Alessandria to take his supper in the most comfortable manner. That fellow Melas is a jackass, who only scented the roast meat which he was going to have for supper, but not General Desaix, who arrived with his troops in time to snatch victory from our grasp, and to inflict a most terrible defeat upon our triumphant army. All of our generals are short-sighted fools, from that ridiculously-over-rated Archduke Charles down to General Schwarzenberg, and whatever the names of these gentlemen may be--these gentlemen with the golden epaulets, and decorated breasts, and empty heads--I have no confidence in a single one of them. At the moment of danger as well as of victory they regularly lose their senses, and thereby turn our victories into defeats; while they render our checks in the same way only more disastrous and decisive. I am entirely opposed to placing any more archdukes at the head of our armies. Fortunately, I have succeeded in getting rid of Archduke Charles, and I hope that Archduke John, too, will be badly beaten at no distant period, so that we may remove him, like his brother, from his position at the head of his troops. It will never do. Well--” he interrupted himself in his soliloquy, casting an angry glance on his private secretary, Hudlitz, who was just entering the room--“well, why do you disturb me without being called for?”

“Pardon me, your excellency,” said Hudlitz, humbly, “but your excellency had instructed me to inform you immediately of the arrival of the custodian of the imperial library, whom your excellency had sent for.”

“And he is there now?” asked Thugut.

“Yes, your excellency, Mr. Muller, the aulic councillor and custodian of the imperial library is waiting in the anteroom.”

“Admit him, then,” said Thugut, waving his hand toward the door.

Hudlitz limped out, and a few minutes later the announced visitor appeared on the threshold of the door. He was a little, slender man, with a stooping form, which had not been bent, however, by the burden of years, but by the burden of learning, of night-watches and untiring studies. His head, covered with a pig-tail wig, according to the fashion of that period, was slightly bent forward. His expansive forehead was indicative of the philosophical turn of his mind; his large eyes were beaming with deep feeling; his pleasing, yet not handsome features, were expressive to an almost touching degree, of infinite gentleness and benevolence, and a winning smile was playing constantly on his thin lips.

This smile, however, disappeared now that he felt the small, piercing eyes of the minister resting upon his countenance. Hat in hand, and without uttering a word, he remained standing at the door; he only raised his head a little, and his eyes were fixed on the minister with a calm and proud expression.

“You are the aulic councillor, Johannes Muller?” asked Thugut, after a short pause, in a somewhat harsh voice.

“Yes, I am Johannes Muller,” said the latter, and the smile had already returned to his lips. “I thank your excellency for this salutary question.”

“What do you mean by that, sir?” asked Thugut, wonderingly. “Why do you call my question salutary?”

“Because it involves a good lesson, your excellency, and because it informs me that they are wrong who, from motives of mistaken benevolence, would persuade me that I was a well-known person, and that everybody in Vienna was familiar with my name. It is always wholesome for an author to be reminded from time to time of his insignificance and littleness, for it preserves him from giving way to pride, and pride is always the first symptom of mental retrogradation.”

Thugut fixed his eyes with a sullen air on the countenance of the savant. “Do you want to give me a lesson?” he asked, angrily.

“By no means, your excellency,” said Johannes Muller, calmly; “I only wished to mention the reason why I was grateful to you for your question. And now I trust your excellency will permit me the question--to what am I indebted for the honor of being called to your excellency?”

“Well, I wished to make your acquaintance, Mr. Aulic Councillor,” said Thugut. “I wished no longer to remain the only inhabitant of Vienna who had not seen the illustrious historian of Switzerland and the author of the ‘Furstenbund.’ [Footnote: “The League of the Princes,” one of the celebrated works of Johannes von Muller.] You see, sir, I know your works at least, even though I did not know your person.”

“And your excellency did not lose any thing by not knowing the latter, for it is a person that is not worth the trouble to become acquainted with. We men of learning are less able to speak with our tongues than with our pens, and our desk alone is our rostrum.”

“And there you are a powerful and most impressive orator, Mr. Aulic Councillor!” exclaimed Thugut, in a tone of unaffected and cordial praise.

An air of joyful surprise overspread the gentle face of Johannes Muller, and he cast a glance of heart-felt gratitude on the minister.

Thugut noticed this glance. “You are surprised that I am able to appreciate your merits so correctly and yet suffered years to elapse without inviting you to call on me? I am a poor man, overburdened with business and harassed with the dry details of my administration, and the direction of political affairs leaves me no leisure to be devoted to literature.”

“At least not to German literature,” said Muller, quickly; “but every one knows your excellency to be a profound connoisseur of oriental languages; and it is well known, too, that you devote a great deal of attention to them, notwithstanding the immense burden of business constantly weighing you down.”

Thugut smiled, and his harsh features assumed a milder expression. Johannes Muller, without intending it perhaps, had touched the chord that sounded most sweetly to Thugut’s ears; he had flattered him by referring to his profound oriental studies.

“Well,” he said, “you see I am taking likewise a lively interest in German literature, for I invited you to come and see me; and you are a German author, and one of the most illustrious at that. Now, sir, let us speak frankly and without circumlocution, as two men of science ought to do. Let us mutually forget our titles and official positions, and chat confidentially with each other. Come, my dear sir, let us sit down in these two arm-chairs and talk like two German gentlemen; that is, frankly and sincerely. Nobody is here to hear us, and I give you my word of honor nobody shall learn a word of what we are going to say to each other. Perfect irresponsibility and impunity for every thing that will be spoken during this interview. Are you content with this, and will you promise me to open your mind freely to me?”

“I promise it, your excellency, and shall reply truthfully and fearlessly to whatever questions you may address to me, provided I am able to tell you the truth.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Thugut, shrugging his shoulders. “Every thing has two sides, and both are true according to the stand-point from which one is looking at them. You have two sides yourself, sir, and they are contrasting very strangely with each other. You are a native of Switzerland, and yet you depict the Hapsburg princes in your works with more genuine enthusiasm than any of our Austrian historians. You are a republican, and yet you are serving a monarchy, the forms of which seem to agree with you exceedingly well. You belong to the orthodox reformed church, and yet you have written ‘The Voyages of the Popes,’ and ‘The Letters of Two Catholic Prelates.’ You are a friend of justice, and yet you have even discovered good and praiseworthy qualities in that tyrannous King of France, Louis XI. Now tell me, sir, which is your true side, and what you really are?”

“I am a man,” said Johannes Muller, gently; “I commit errors and have my failings like all men, my heart is vacillating, but not my head. With my head I am standing above all parties, and above all individual feelings; hence I am able to write ‘The Voyages of the Popes,’ and ‘The Letters of Two Catholic Prelates,’ although, as your excellency stated, I am a member of the orthodox reformed church; and hence I am able to praise the Hapsburgs and serve a monarchy, although I am a republican. But my heart does not stand above the contending parties; my heart loves mankind, and takes pity on their failings; hence it is able to discover praiseworthy qualities even in Louis XI. of France, for in the BAD king, it constantly follows the vestiges of the man whom nature created good and humane.”

“Those are the views of Jean Jacques Rousseau!” exclaimed Thugut, contemptuously; “but these views are inapplicable to the world and to practical life; he who desires to derive advantages from men, first, of all things, must avail himself of their bad qualities and flatter them. To hold intercourse with perfectly virtuous men is tedious and unprofitable; fortunately, however, there are very few of them. I should have no use whatever for such patterns of virtue, and, instead of admiring them, I should try to annihilate them. He who is to be a welcome tool for me, must either have a stain by which I may catch him at the slightest symptom of disobedience, like an insect tied to a string, and draw him back to me, or he must be so narrow-minded and ignorant as not to understand me fully, and to be unable to divine and penetrate my hidden thoughts and intentions.” [Footnote: Thugut’s own words.--Vide Hormayer, “Lebensbilder aus dein Befreiungskrieg,” voi. i., p. 322.]

“In that case I must hope never to be a welcome tool of your excellency,” said Muller, gravely.

“Are you so sure of your virtue? Are you unconscious of any stain on your character?”

“If principles be virtue, yes; in that case I am sure of my virtue,” said Muller, calmly. “I shall never be unfaithful to my principles, and I hope never to have a stain on my conscience.”

“Who is able to say that?” exclaimed Thugut, laughing; “many a one has become a murderer, who was unwilling to tread on a worm, and many a one has become a perjurer, who protested solemnly that he would never utter a lie. But a truce to philosophical discussions. I like to go directly at my aim, and to utter my thoughts clearly and precisely. Listen, then, to me, and learn what I want you to do. You are a great mind, an illustrious historian, a very learned man, and you are pining away among the shelves of your imperial library. The greatest historian of the century is nothing but the custodian of a library, and is subordinate to a chief whom he must obey, although the latter is mentally a pigmy compared with him. Such a position is unworthy of your eminent abilities, or tell me, do you feel contented with it?”

Johannes Muller smiled sadly. “Who is able to say that he feels contented?” he asked. “I am, perhaps, a bad custodian, and that may be the reason why the prefect of the Imperial Library, Baron Fenish, is not on good terms with me, and profits by every opportunity to mortify me. A German savant never was an independent man, for he generally lacks the most indispensable requisite for an independent position: he generally lacks wealth.”

“Then you are poor?” asked Thugut, with flashing eyes.

“I have no other means than my salary. The Muses will adorn a man, but they will not feed him.”

“I will deliver you from your subordinate position,” said Thugut, hastily; “you shall be independent, free, and rich. You are a fool to bury yourself, with your glory and with your pen, in the dust of old books. Life and history are calling, and offering you their metal tablets to write thereon. Write, then; write the history of our times; render yourself an organ of the age; assist us, by your writings, in preserving the government and law and order. Defend, with your ringing voice, the actions of the government against the aspersions of this would-be wise, noisy, and miserable people, and you shall have a brilliant position and an annual salary of four thousand florins. You are silent? You are right; consider well what I am proposing to you. I offer you a brilliant position. I will make you the great historian of our times. It affords you always so much pleasure to praise and commend; well, sir, praise and commend what we are doing. Assist me, at least, in mystifying our contemporaries and posterity a little, and I will reward you in the most liberal manner. A good title, a large salary, and we will, moreover, pay your debts.”

“Ah! your excellency knows that I have debts, and you believe that to be the string by which you may draw me to you like an insect?” asked Muller, smiling. “To become the historian of our times is an honorable and welcome offer, and I confess to your excellency that I have already finished many a chapter of it in my head, and that I have devoted a great deal of attention to the special history of Austria. It would be agreeable to me if your excellency would permit me to recite to you a few passages from the history of Austria, as I have elaborated it in my head. This will be the best way for your excellency to obtain the conviction whether I am really able to fill so brilliant a position as your excellency has offered me, and whether my services deserve so liberal a salary.”

“Well, sir, let me hear a few passages from your ‘History of Austria.’ I am very anxious to listen to them.”

“And your excellency remembers the promise that there is to be irresponsibility and impunity for whatever will be said during this interview?”

“I do, sir, and I swear that your words shall never be repeated to any one, and that I shall only remember them when I have to reward you for them. I swear, besides, that I will quietly and patiently listen to you until you have concluded.”

“I thank your excellency,” said Johannes Muller, bowing gracefully. “I should like to recite to your excellency now a chapter that I desire to write on the literature of Austria. I turn my eyes back to the days of Maria Theresa and Joseph the Second. Both of them were lovers of literature, art, and science, which both of them promoted and fostered. Joseph expelled darkness from his states and uttered the great words, ‘The mind shall be free!’ And the mind became free. It became active and exalted in every art; the poets raised their voices; the learned sent the results of their studies into the world, and labored powerfully for the advancement and enlightenment of the people. The mind tore down the barriers that stupid fear had raised between Austria and the other German states, and the great poets who had lately arisen in Germany now became, also, the poets and property of Austria. Austria called Lessing and Klopstock HER poets; like the rest of Germany, she enthusiastically admired Schiller’s ‘Robbers,’ and wept over ‘Werther’s Sorrows;’ she was delighted with the poetry of Wieland; she learned to love the clear and noble mind of Herder, and the writings of Jean Paul admonished her to learn and to reflect. It was a glorious period, your excellency, for a young nation had arisen in Austria, and it was drawing its nourishment from the breasts of a young literature.”

“And sucking from these breasts the revolutionary spirit, and the arrogance of independent thinkers,” interrupted Thugut, rudely.

Johannes Muller seemed not to have heard him, and continued: “Joseph the Second died; scarcely a decade has passed, and what has this decade made of Austria? The mind has been chained again; the censor with his scissors has taken his stand again by the side of the Austrian boundary-post; and the wall severing Austria from Germany has been recreated. Every thing now has become again suspicious; even the national spirit of the Austrian, even his hatred of foreign oppression, and his hostility to foreign encroachments. In this hatred itself the government sees the possibility of a rising, and a spirit of opposition, for it sees that the people are no longer asleep, but awake and thinking, and thought in itself is even now an opposition. Every manifestation of enthusiasm for a man who has spoken of the freedom and independence of Germany is looked upon with suspicion, and the noblest men are being proscribed and banished, merely because the people love them, and hope and expect great things from them. The people, according to the wishes of government, shall do nothing but sleep, obey, and be silent; the people shall manifest no enthusiasm for any thing; the people shall love nothing, desire nothing, think nothing; the people shall have no heroes, to whom they are attached; for the glory of the heroes might eclipse the emperor, and the shouts of love sound like shouts of insurrection.”

“You refer to the Archdukes Charles and John,” said Thugut, quietly. “It is true, I have removed Archduke Charles from his command, for his popularity with the army and people is very great, and would have become dangerous to the emperor. We must conquer through tools, and not through heroes; the latter are very unpleasant to deal with, for they do not gratefully receive their reward as a favor, but they impudently claim and take it as a right. The imperial throne must be surrounded by heroes, but these heroes must never eclipse the imperial throne. Pardon this note to your chapter, and proceed.”

“The heroes of the sword are cast aside,” continued Johannes Muller, “but neither the heroes of thought nor the heroes of literature are spared. The government tries to disgrace and insult literature, because it is unable to assassinate it entirely; it drags literature into the caves of unworthy censors, and mutilates its most beautiful limbs and destroys the most magnificent splendor of its ideas. The government is AFRAID of the mind; hence it desires to kill IT. A government, however, may commit many mistakes, but it never ought to show that it is afraid, fear exposing it to ridicule. And if we ought not to weep over the persecutions which the apprehensions of the government have caused to be instituted against literature, we ought to laugh at them. Whole volumes of the most sublime works of Gibbon, Robertson, Hume, and other great historians have been prohibited; and there is not one of our German poets--neither Goethe, nor Schiller, nor Herder, nor Wieland, nor Lessing, nor Jean Paul--whose works are not ostracized in German Austria. Fear and a bad conscience scent everywhere allusions, references, and hints. Hence history is banished from the stage; for the history of the past constantly points with a menacing finger at the sore spots of the present. Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ has been prohibited, because the public might believe princes would lose their heads if weighed down by misfortunes. ‘Hamlet,’ ‘Richard the Third,’ and ‘Macbeth’ must not be performed, because people might get accustomed to the dethronement and assassination of emperors and kings. Schiller’s ‘Mary Stuart’ is looked upon as an allusion to Marie Antoinette; ‘Wallenstein’ and ‘Tell’ are ostracized, because they might provoke revolutions and military mutinies. The ‘Merchant of Venice’ must not be performed, because it might give rise to riotous proceedings against the Jews; and in Schiller’s ‘Love and Intrigue,’ President de Kalb has been transformed into a plebeian vicedomus, in order to maintain the respect due to the nobility and to the government functionaries. It is true, it is permitted to represent villains and impostors on the stage, but they must never be noblemen; and if men of ideal character are to be brought upon the stage, they must be either princes, counts, or police-directors. For even more sacred than the dignity of the highest classes is the holy police, the great guardian of the government, the great spy watching the people, who are being deprived of every thing; to whom every intellectual enjoyment, every free manifestation of their enthusiasm is forbidden, and who are yet required to deem themselves happy, and that they shall be faithfully attached to their government! If the government enslaves the people, it must expect that these slaves will lose all sense of honor and justice, and willingly sell themselves to him who holds out to them the most glittering offers, and knows best how to tempt them by golden promises!--I am through, your excellency,” said Johannes Muller, drawing a deep breath; “I have recited to you my whole chapter on the literature of Austria, and I thank you for having listened to me so patiently. Now it is for your excellency alone to decide whether you deem me worthy of filling the honorable position you have offered. I am ready to accept it, and to write the history of our times in this spirit, and shall be very grateful if your excellency will grant me for this purpose your protection and a salary of four thousand florins.”

Thugut looked with an air of pride and disdain into his glowing face.

“My dear sir,” he said, after a long pause--“my dear sir, I was mistaken in you, for I believed you to have a clear head and a strong mind, and I perceive now that you are nothing but a weak enthusiast, dreaming of ideal fancies which one day will turn out entirely differently; to become spectres, from which you will shrink back in dismay. You will not always remain the enthusiastic admirer of freedom as at present; and the proud republican will one day, perhaps, be transformed into the obedient servant of a tyrant. You assured me quite haughtily that you had no stain on your conscience; let me tell you, sir, that there is a stain on your character, and I should have profited by it--you are vain. I should not have tried to bribe you with money, but with flattery, and I had been successful. I had too good an opinion of you, however. I believed you had a vigorous mind, capable of comprehending what is necessary and useful, and of preferring the practical and advantageous to the ideal. Although a native of Switzerland, you are a genuine German dreamer, and I hate dreamers. Go, sir, remain custodian of the Imperial Library and complete your catalogues, but never imagine that you will be able with your weak hand to stem the wheel of history and of political affairs; the wheel would only destroy your hand and what little glory you have obtained, and hurl you aside like a crushed dog. Farewell!”

He turned his back upon Johannes Muller, and placed himself at the window until the soft noise of the closing door told him that the historian had left him.

“What a fool!” he said. Then, turning around again--“a genuine German fool! Wanted to lecture me--ME!”

And, amused by the idea, Thugut burst into loud laughter. He then rang the bell violently, and as soon as the valet de chambre made his appearance he ordered him to get the carriage ready for him.

Fifteen minutes later the minister left the chancery of state for the purpose of repairing, as was his custom every evening, to his garden in the Wahringer Street. The streets through which he had to pass were crowded with citizens, who were talking with ill-concealed rage about the fresh defeat of the Austrians at Marengo, and were loudly calling out that Minister Thugut was alone to blame for Austria’s misfortunes, and that he was the only obstacle that prevented the emperor from making peace. And the people surrounded the well-known carriage of the minister with constantly-increasing exasperation, and cried in a constantly louder and more menacing tone: “We do not want war! We want peace! peace!”

Thugut was leaning back comfortably on the cushions of his carriage. He seemed not to hear the shouts of the people, and not to deem them worthy of the slightest notice. Only when the tumult increased in violence, and when the incensed people commenced hurling stones and mud at his carriage, the minister rose for a moment in order to look out with an air of profound disdain. He then leaned back on his seat, and muttered, with a glance of indescribable contempt:

“Canaille!” [Footnote: Hormayer’s “Lebensbilder,” vol. i., p. 230.]

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XXXVI. THUGUT’S FALL

Tidings of fresh defeats had reached Vienna; more disasters had befallen the army, and the great victory of Marengo had been followed, on the 3rd of December, 1800, by the battle of Hohenlinden, in which Moreau defeated the Austrians under Archduke John. Even Thugut, the immovable and constant prime minister, felt alarmed at so many calamities, and he was generally in a gloomy and spiteful humor.

He felt that there was a power stronger than his will, and this feeling maddened him with anger. He was sitting at his desk, with a clouded brow and closely compressed lips, his sullen eyes fixed on the papers before him, which a courier, just arrived from the headquarters of the army, had delivered to him. They contained evil tidings; they informed him of the immense losses of the Austrians, and of the insolence of the victorious French general, who had only granted the Austrian application for an armistice on condition that the fortresses of Ulm, Ingolstadt and Philipsburg be surrendered to him; and these humiliating terms had been complied with in order to gain time and to concentrate a new army. For Thugut’s stubbornness had not been broken yet, and he still obstinately refused to conclude the peace so urgently desired by the whole Austrian people, nay, by the emperor himself.

“No, no, no peace!” he muttered, when he had perused the dispatches. “We will fight on, even though we should be buried under the ruins of Austria! I hate that revolutionary France, and I shall never condescend to extend my hand to it for the purpose of making peace. We will fight on, and no one shall dare to talk to me about peace!”

A low rap at the door leading to the reception-room interrupted his soliloquy, and when he had harshly called out, “Come in,” his valet de chambre appeared in the door.

“Your excellency,” he said, timidly, “Counts Colloredo, Saurau, and Lehrbach have just arrived, and desire to obtain an interview with your excellency.”

Not a muscle moved in Thugut’s face to betray his surprise, and he ordered the servant in a perfectly calm voice to admit the gentlemen immediately. He then hastily walked to the door for the purpose of meeting them. They entered a few minutes later: first, Count Colloredo, minister of the imperial household; next, Count Saurau, minister of police; and last, Count Lehrbach, minister without portfolio. Thugut surveyed the three dignitaries with a single searching glance. He perceived that good-natured Count Colloredo looked rather frightened; that the ferocious eyes of Count Lehrbach were glistening like those of a tiger just about to lacerate his victim: and that Count Saurau, that diplomatist generally so impenetrable, permitted a triumphant smile to play on his lips. With the sure tact which Thugut never lost sight of, he saw from the various miens of these three gentlemen what had occasioned their call upon him, and his mind was made up at once.

He received them, however, with a pleasant salutation, and took the hand of Count Colloredo in order to conduct him to an armchair. Colloredo’s hand was cold and trembling, and Thugut said to himself, “he is charged with a very disagreeable message for me, and he is afraid to deliver it.”

“Your excellency is doubtless astonished to see us disturb you at so unexpected an hour,” said Count Colloredo, in a tremulous voice, when the four gentlemen had taken seats.

“No, I am not astonished,” said Thugut, calmly. “You, gentlemen, on the contrary, have only anticipated my wishes. I was just about to invite you to see me for the purpose of holding a consultation, very disastrous tidings having arrived from the headquarters of our army. We have lost a battle at Hohenlinden--Archduke John has been defeated.”

“And Moreau has already crossed the Inn and is now advancing upon Vienna,” said Count Lehrbach, with a sneer. “You have made some terrible mistakes in your hopes of victory, minister.”

“Yes, indeed, you have made some terrible mistakes, my dear little baron,” said Count Saurau, laying particular stress on the last words.

Thugut fixed a laughing look on him. “Why,” he said, “how tender we are to-day, and how big your beak has grown, my dear little count! You seem but slightly afflicted by the misfortunes of the empire, for your face is as radiant as that of a young cock that has just driven a rival from its dunghill. But it must have been a very stupid old cock that has condescended to fight with you. Now, my dear Count Colloredo, let us talk about business. We have been defeated at Hohenlinden, and Moreau is advancing upon Vienna. These are two facts that cannot be disputed. But we shall recover from these blows; we shall send a fresh army against Moreau, and it will avenge our previous disasters.”

“However, your excellency, that is a mere hope, and we may be disappointed again,” replied Colloredo, anxiously. “The emperor, my gracious master, has lost faith in our victories, unless we should have an able and tried general at the head of our forces--a general equally trusted by the army and the nation.”

“Let us, then, place such a general at the head of the army,” said Thugut, calmly; “let us immediately appoint Archduke Charles commander-in-chief of the Austrian forces.”

“Ah, I am glad that you consent to it,” exclaimed Colloredo, joyfully, “for the emperor has just instructed me to go to his distinguished brother and to request him in the name of his majesty to resume the command-in-chief.”

“Well, he will accept it,” said Thugut, smiling, “for commanding and ruling always is a very agreeable occupation; and many a one would be ready and willing to betray his benefactor and friend, if he thereby could acquire power and distinction. Are you not, too, of this opinion, my dear little Count Saurau? Ah, you do not know how tenderly I am devoted to you. You are the puppet which I have raised and fostered, and which I wanted to transform into a man according to my own views. I am not to blame if you have not become a man, but always remained only a machine to be directed by another hand. Beware, my dear, of ever falling into unskilful or bad hands, for then you would be lost, notwithstanding your elasticity and pliability. But you have got a worthy friend there at your side, noble, excellent Count Lehrbach. Do you know, my dear Count Lehrbach, that there are evil-disposed persons who often tried to prejudice me against you, who wanted to insinuate you were a rival of mine, and were notoriously anxious to supplant me and to become prime minister in my place? Truly, these anxious men actually went so far as to caution me against you.”

“And did not your excellency make any reply to them?” asked Count Lehrbach, laughing.

“Parbleu, you ask me whether I have made a reply to them or not?” said Thugut. “I have always replied to those warning voices: ‘I need not break Count Lehrbach’s neck; he will attend to that himself. I like to push a man forward whom I am able to hang at any time.’” [Footnote: Thugut’s own words.--Hormayer’s “Lebensbilder,” vol. i., p. 882.]

“But you have not taken into consideration that the man whom you are pushing forward might reach back and afford you the same pleasure which you had in store for him,” exclaimed Lehrbach, laughing boisterously.

“Yes, that is true,” said Thugut, artlessly; “I ought to have been afraid of you, after all, and to perceive that you have got a nail in your head on which one may be hanged very comfortably. But, my friends, we detain Count Colloredo by our jokes, and you are aware that he must hasten to the archduke in order to beg him to become our commander-in-chief and to sign a treaty of peace with France. For I believe we will make peace at all events.”

“We shall make peace provided we fulfil the conditions which Bonaparte has exacted,” said Count Colloredo, timidly.

“Ah, he has exacted conditions, and these conditions have been addressed to the emperor and not to myself?” asked Thugut.

“The dispatches were addressed to me, the minister of the imperial household,” said Count Colloredo, modestly. “The first of these conditions is that Austria and France make peace without letting England participate in the negotiations.”

“And the second condition is beaming already on Count Lehrbach’s forehead,” said Thugut, calmly. “Bonaparte demands that I shall withdraw from the cabinet, as my dismissal would be to him a guaranty of the pacific intentions of Austria, [Footnote: Hausser’s “History of Germany,” vol. ii., p. 324.] Am I mistaken?”

“You are not; but the emperor, gratefully acknowledging the long and important services your excellency has rendered to the state, will not fulfil this condition and incur the semblance of ingratitude.”

“Austria and my emperor require a sacrifice of me, and I am ready to make it,” said Thugut, solemnly. “I shall write immediately to his majesty the emperor and request him to permit me to withdraw from the service of the state without delay.”

Count Colloredo sighed mournfully; Count Saurau smiled, and Count Lehrbach laughed in Thugut’s face with the mien of a hyena.

“And do you know who will be your successor?” asked the latter.

“My dear sir, I shall have no successor, only a miserable imitator, and you will be that imitator,” said Thugut, proudly. “But I give you my word that this task will not be intrusted to you for a long while. I shall now draw up my request to the emperor, and I beg you, gentlemen, to deliver it to his majesty.”

Without saying another word he went to his desk, hastily wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper, which he then sealed and directed. “Count Colloredo,” he said, “be kind enough to hand this letter to the emperor.”

Count Colloredo took it with one hand, and with the other he drew a sealed letter from his bosom.

“And here, your excellency,” he said--“here I have the honor to present to you his majesty’s reply. The emperor, fully cognizant of your noble and devoted patriotism, was satisfied in advance that you would be ready to sacrifice yourself on the altar of the country, and, however grievous the resolution, he was determined to accept the sacrifice. The emperor grants your withdrawal from the service of the state; and Count Louis Cobenzl, who is to set out within a few hours for Luneville, in order to open there the peace conference with the brother of the First Consul, Joseph Bonaparte, will take along the official announcement of this change in the imperial cabinet. Count Lehrbach, I have the honor to present to you, in the name of the emperor, this letter, by which his majesty appoints you minister of the interior.”

He handed to Count Lehrbach a letter, which the latter hastily opened and glanced over with greedy eyes.

“And you, my dear little Count Saurau?” asked Thugut, compassionately. “Have they not granted you any share whatever in the spoils?”

“Yes, they have; I have received the honorable commission to communicate to the good people of Vienna the joyful news that Baron Thugut has been dismissed,” said Count Saurau; “and I shall now withdraw in order to fulfil this commission.”

He nodded sneeringly to Thugut, bowed respectfully to Count Colloredo, and left the minister’s cabinet.

“I am avenged,” he muttered, while crossing the anteroom; “henceforward the shipbuilder’s son will call me no longer his ‘dear little count.’”

“And I shall withdraw, too,” said Count Lehrbach, with a scornful smile. “I shall withdraw in order to make all necessary preparations, so that my furniture and horses can be brought here tomorrow to the building of the chancery of state. For I suppose, Baron Thugut, you will move out of this house in the course of to-day?”

“Yes, I shall, and you will withdraw now, sir,” said Thugut, dismissing the count with a haughty wave of his hand. Count Lehrbach went out laughing, and Count Colloredo remained alone with Thugut.

“And you,” asked Thugut, “do not you wish to take leave of me by telling me something that might hurt my feelings?”

“I have to tell you a great many things, but nothing that will hurt your feelings,” said Colloredo, gently. “First of all things, I must beg you not to deprive me of your friendship and advice, but to assist me as heretofore. I need your advice and your help more than ever, and shall do nothing without previously ascertaining your will.”

“The emperor will not permit it,” said Thugut, gloomily. “He will require you to break off all intercourse with me.”

“On the contrary,” whispered Colloredo, “the emperor desires you always to assist him and myself by your counsels. The emperor desires you to be kind enough to call every day upon me in order to consider with me the affairs of the day, and there, accidentally of course, you will meet his majesty, who wants to obtain the advice of your experience and wisdom. You will remain minister, but incognito.”

A flash of joy burst forth from Thugut’s eyes, but he quickly suppressed it again.

“And shall I meet in your house sometimes your wife, the beautiful Countess Victoria?” he asked.

“Victoria implores you, through my mouth, to trust her and never to doubt of her friendship. I beg you to receive the same assurance as far as I am concerned. You have rendered both of us so happy, my dear baron; you were the mediator of a marriage in which both of us, Victoria as well as myself, have found the highest bliss on earth, and never shall we cease to be grateful to you for it; nor shall we ever be able or willing to do without your advice and assistance. You are our head, we are your arms, and the head commanding the arms, we shall always obey you. Victoria implores you to tell her any thing you desire, so that she may give you forthwith a proof of her willingness to serve you. She has charged me to ask you to do so as a proof of your friendship.”

“Well,” said Thugut, laughing, “I accept your offer, as well as that of your beautiful wife Victoria. Count Lehrbach has been appointed minister and he wants even to move to-morrow into the chancery of state. We will let him move in early in the morning, but, in the course of the day, the emperor will do well to send him his dismissal, for Count Lehrbach is unworthy of being his majesty’s minister of state. His hand is stained with the blood which was shed at Rastadt, and a minister’s hand must be clean.”

“But whom shall we appoint minister in Lehrbach’s place?”

“Count Louis Cobenzl, for his name will offer the best guaranty of our pacific intentions toward France.”

“But Count Cobenzl is to go to Luneville to attend the peace conference.”

“Let him do so, and until his return let Count Trautmannsdorf temporarily discharge the duties of his office.”

“Ah, that is true, that is a splendid idea!” exclaimed Count Colloredo, joyfully. “You are a very sagacious and prudent statesman, and I shall hasten to lay your advice before the emperor. You may rest assured that every thing shall be done in accordance with your wishes. Lehrbach remains minister until to-morrow at noon; he then receives his dismissal, Count Louis Cobenzl will be appointed his successor, and Count Trautmannsdorf will temporarily discharge the duties of the office until Cobenzl’s return from Luneville. Shall it be done in this manner?”

“Yes, it shall,” said Thugut, almost sternly.

“But this does not fulfil Victoria’s prayer,” said the count, anxiously. “I am able to attend to these matters, but Victoria also wants to give you a proof of her friendship.”

“Well, I ask her to prepare a little joke for me and you,” replied Thugut. “Count Lehrbach will move early to-morrow morning with his whole furniture into the chancery of state. I beg Victoria to bring it about that he must move out to-morrow evening with his whole furniture, like a martin found in the dove-cote.” [Footnote: Thugut’s wishes were fulfilled. Count Lehrbach lost on the very next day his scarcely-obtained portfolio, and he was compelled to remove the furniture which, in rude haste he had sent to the chancery of state in the morning, in the course of the same evening.--Vide Hormayer’s “Lebensbilder,” vol. i., p. 330.]

“Ah, that will be a splendid joke,” said Count Colloredo, laughing, “and my dear Victoria will be happy to afford you this little satisfaction. I am able to predict that Count Lehrbach will be compelled to move out to-morrow evening. But now, my dearest friend. I must hasten to Archduke Charles, who, as you are aware, is pouting on one of his estates. I shall at once repair thither, and be absent from Vienna for two days. Meantime, you will take care of Victoria as a faithful friend.”

“I shall take care of her if the countess will permit me to do so,” said Thugut, smiling, and accompanying Count Colloredo to the door.

His eyes followed him for a long while with an expression of haughty disdain.

“The fools remain,” he said, “and I must go. But no, I shall not go! Let the world believe me to be a dismissed minister, I remain minister after all. I shall rule through my creatures, Colloredo and Victoria. I remain minister until I shall be tired of all these miserable intrigues, and retire in order to live for myself.” [Footnote: Thugut really withdrew definitely from the political stage, but secretly he retained his full power and authority, and Victoria de Poutet-Colloredo, the influential friend of the Empress Theresia, constantly remained his faithful adherent and confidante. All Vienna, however, was highly elated by the dismissal of Thugut, who had so long ruled the empire in the most arbitrary manner. An instance of his system is the fact that; on his withdrawal from the cabinet, there were found one hundred and seventy unopened dispatches and more than two thousand unopened letters. Thugut only perused what he believed to be worth the trouble of being read, and to the remainder he paid no attention whatever.--“Lebensbilder,” vol. i., p. 327.]

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XXXVII. FANNY VON ARNSTEIN

The young Baroness Fanny von Arnstein had just finished her morning toilet and stepped from her dressing-room into her boudoir, in order to take her chocolate there, solitary and alone as ever. With a gentle sigh she glided into the arm-chair, and instead of drinking the chocolate placed before her in a silver breakfast set on the table, she leaned her head against the back of her chair and dreamily looked up to the ceiling. Her bosom heaved profound sighs from time to time, and the ideas which were moving her heart and her soul ever and anon caused a deeper blush to mantle her cheeks; but it quickly disappeared again, and was followed by an even more striking pallor.

She was suddenly startled from her musings by a soft, timid rap at the door leading to the reception-room.

“Good Heaven!” she whispered, “I hope he will not dare to come to me so early, and without being announced.”

The rapping at the door was renewed. “I cannot, will not receive him,” she muttered; “it will be better not to be alone with him any more. I will bolt the door and make no reply whatever.”

She glided with soft steps across the room to the door, and was just about to bolt it, when the rapping resounded for the third time, and a modest female voice asked:

“Are you there, baroness, and may I walk in?”

“Ah, it is only my maid,” whispered the baroness, drawing a deep breath, as though an oppressive burden were removed from her breast, and she opened the door herself.

“Well, Fanchon,” she asked, in her gentle, winning voice, “what do you want?”

“Pardon me, baroness,” said the maid, casting an inquisitive look around the room, “the baron sent for me just now; he asked me if you had risen already and entered your boudoir, and when I replied in the affirmative, the baron gave me a message for you, with the express order, however, not to deliver it until you had taken your chocolate and finished your breakfast. I see now that I must not yet deliver it; the breakfast is still on the table just as it was brought in.”

“Take it away; I do not want to eat any thing,” said the baroness, hastily. “And now Fanchon, tell me your errand.”

Fanchon approached the table, and while she seized the silver salver, she cast a glance of tender anxiety on her pale, beautiful mistress.

“You are eating nothing at all, baroness,” she said, timidly; “for a week already I have had to remove the breakfast every morning in the same manner; you never tasted a morsel of it, and the valet de chambre says that you hardly eat any thing at the dinner-table either; you will be taken ill, baroness, if you go on in this manner, and--”

“Never mind, dear Fanchon,” her mistress interrupted her with a gentle smile, “I have hardly any appetite, it is true, but I do not feel unwell, nor do I want to be taken ill. Let us say no more about it, and tell me the message the baron intrusted to you.”

“The baron wished me to ask you if you would permit him to pay you immediately a visit, and if you would receive him here in your boudoir.”

The baroness started, and an air of surprise overspread her features. “Tell the baron that he will be welcome, and that I am waiting for him,” she said then, calmly. But so soon as Fanchon had withdrawn, she whispered: “What is the meaning of all this? What is the reason of this unusual visit? Oh, my knees are trembling, and my heart is beating so violently, as though it wanted to burst. Why? What have I done, then? Am I a criminal, who is afraid to appear before her judge?”

She sank back into her arm-chair and covered her blushing face with her hands. “No,” she said, after a long pause, raising her head again, “no, I am no criminal, and my conscience is guiltless. I am able to raise my eyes freely to my husband and to my God. So far, I have honestly struggled against my own heart, and I shall struggle on in the same manner. I--ah! he is coming,” she interrupted herself when she heard steps in the adjoining room, and her eyes were fixed with an expression of anxious suspense on the door.

The latter opened, and her husband, Baron Arnstein, entered. His face was pale, and indicative of deep emotion; nevertheless, he saluted his wife with a kind smile, and bent down in order to kiss her hand, which she had silently given to him.

“I suppose you expected me?” he asked. “You knew, even before I sent Fanchon to you, that I should come and see you at the present hour?”

Fanny looked at him inquiringly, and in surprise. “I confess,” she said, in an embarrassed tone, “that I did not anticipate your visit by any means until Fanchon announced it to me, and I only mention it to apologize for the dishabille in which you find me.”

“Ah, you did not expect me, then?” exclaimed the baron, mournfully. “You have forgotten every thing? You did not remember that this is the anniversary of our wedding, and that five years have elapsed since that time?”

“Indeed,” whispered Fanny, in confusion, “I did not know that this was the day.”

“You felt its burden day after day, and it seemed to you, therefore, as though that ill-starred day were being renewed for you all the year round,” exclaimed the baron, sadly. “Pardon my impetuosity and my complaints,” he continued, when he saw that she turned pale and averted her face. “I will be gentle, and you shall have no reason to complain of me. But as you have forgotten the agreement which we made five years ago, permit me to remind you of it.”

He took a chair, and, sitting down opposite her, fixed a long, melancholy look upon her. “When I led you to the altar five years ago to-day,” he said, feelingly, “you were, perhaps, less beautiful than now, less brilliant, less majestic; but you were in better and less despondent spirits, although you were about to marry a man who was entirely indifferent to you.”

“Oh, I did not say that you were indifferent to me,” said Fanny, in a low voice; “only I did not know you, and, therefore, did not love you.”

“You see that want of acquaintance was not the only reason,” he said, with a bitter smile, “for now, I believe, you know me, and yet you do not love me. But let us speak of what brought me here to-day--of the past. You know that, before our marriage, you afforded me the happiness of a long and confidential interview, that you permitted me to look down into the depths of your pure and noble soul, that you unveiled to me your innocent heart, that did not yet exhibit either scars or wounds, nor even an image, a souvenir, and allowed me to be your brother and your friend, as you would not accept me as a lover and husband. Before the world, however, I became your husband, and took you to Vienna, to my house, of which you were to be the mistress and queen. The whole house was gayly decorated, and all the rooms were opened, for your arrival was to be celebrated by a ball. Only one door was locked; it was the door of this cabinet. I conducted you hither and said to you, ‘This is your sanctuary, and no one shall enter it without your permission. In this boudoir you are not the Baroness Arnstein, not my wife; but here you are Fanny Itzig, the free and unshackled young girl, who is mistress of her will and affections. I shall never dare myself, without being expressly authorized by you, to enter this room; and when I shall be allowed to do so, I shall only come as a cavalier, who has the honor to pay a polite visit to a beautiful lady, to whom he is not connected in any manner whatever. Before the world I am your husband, but not in this room. Hence I shall never permit myself to ask what you are doing in this room, whom you are receiving here; for here you are only responsible to God and yourself.’ Do you now remember that I said this to you at that time?”

“I do.”

“I told you further that I begged you to continue with me one day here in this room the confidential conversation which we held before our marriage. I begged you to fix a period of five years for this purpose and, during this time, to examine your heart and to see whether life at my side was at least a tolerable burden, or whether you wished to shake it off. I asked you to promise me that I might enter this room on the fifth anniversary of our wedding-day, for the purpose of settling then with you our future mode of living. You were kind enough to grant my prayer, and to promise what I asked. Do you remember it?”

“I do,” said Fanny, blushing; “I must confess, however, that I did not regard those words in so grave a light as to consider them as a formal obligation on your part. You would have been every day a welcome guest in this room, and it was unnecessary for you to wait for a particular day in accordance with an agreement made five years ago.”

“Your answer is an evasive one,” said the baron, sadly. “I implore you, let us now again speak as frankly and honestly as we did five years ago to-day! Will you grant my prayer?”

“I will,” replied Fanny, eagerly; “and I am going to prove immediately that I am in earnest. You alluded a few minutes ago to our past, and asked me wonderingly if I had forgotten that interview on our wedding-day. I remember it so well, however, that I must direct your attention to the fact that you have forgotten the principal portion of what we said to each other at that time, or rather that, in your generous delicacy, and with that magnanimous kindness which you alone may boast of, you have intentionally omitted that portion of it. You remembered that I told you I did not love you, but you forgot that you then asked me if I loved another man. I replied to you that I loved no one, and never shall I forget the mournful voice in which you then said, ‘It is by far easier to marry with a cold heart than to do so with a broken heart; for the cold heart may grow warm, but the broken heart--never!’ Oh, do not excuse yourself,” she continued, with greater warmth; “do not take me for so conceited and narrow-minded a being that I should have regarded those words of yours as an insult offered to me! It was, at the best, but a pang that I felt.”

“A pang?” asked the baron, in surprise; and he fixed his dark eyes, with a wondrously impassioned expression, on the face of his beautiful wife.

“Yes, I felt a pang,” she exclaimed, vividly, “for, on hearing your words, which evidently issued from the depths of your soul, on witnessing your unaffected and passionate grief, your courageous self-abnegation, I felt that your heart had received a wound which never would close again, and that you never would faithlessly turn from your first love to a second one.”

“Oh, my God,” murmured the baron, and he averted his face in order not to let her see the blush suddenly mantling it.

Fanny did not notice it, and continued: “But this dead love of yours laid itself like the cold hand of a corpse upon my breast and doomed it to everlasting coldness. With the consciousness that you never would love me, I had to cease striving for it, and give up the hope of seeing, perhaps, one day my heart awake in love for you, and the wondrous flower of a tenderness after marriage unfold itself, the gradual budding of which had been denied to us by the arbitrary action of our parents, who had not consulted our wishes, but only our fortunes. I became your wife with the full conviction that I should have to lead a life cold, dreary, and devoid of love, and that I could not be for you but an everlasting burden, a chain, an obstacle. My pride, that was revolting against it, told me that I should be able to bear this life in a dignified manner, but that I never ought to make even an attempt to break through this barrier which your love for another had erected between us, and which you tried to raise as high as possible.”

“I!” exclaimed the baron, sadly.

“Yes, you,” she said, gravely. “Or did you believe, perhaps, I did not comprehend your rigorous reserve toward me? I did not understand that you were wrapping around your aversion to me but a delicate veil? You conducted me to this room and told me that you never would enter it, and that you would only come here when specially invited by myself to do so. Well, sir, you managed very skilfully to conceal your intention never to be alone with me, and to lead an entirely separate life from me under this phrase, for you knew very well that my pride never would permit me to invite you here against your will.”

“Oh, is it possible that I should have been misunderstood in this manner?” sighed the baron, but in so low a voice that Fanny did not hear him.

“You further told me,” she continued, eagerly, “that I should only bear the name of your wife before the world, but not in this room where I was always to be Fanny Itzig. You were kind enough to give to this moral divorce, which you pronounced in this manner, the semblance as though YOU were the losing party, and as though you were only actuated by motives of delicacy toward me. I understood it all, however, and when you left this room after that conversation, sir, I sank down on my knees and implored God that He might remain with me in this loneliness to which you had doomed me, and I implored my pride to sustain and support me, and I swore to my maidenly honor that I would preserve it unsullied and sacred to my end.”

“Oh, good Heaven!” groaned the baron, tottering backward like a man suddenly seized with vertigo.

Fanny, in her own glowing excitement, did not notice it.

“And thus I commenced my new life,” she said, “a life of splendor and magnificence; it was glittering without, but dreary within, and in the midst of our most brilliant circles I constantly felt lonely; surrounded by hundreds who called themselves friends of our house, I was always alone--I, the wife of your reception-room, the disowned of my boudoir! Oh, it is true I have obtained many triumphs; I have seen this haughty world, that only received me hesitatingly, at last bow to me; the Jewess has become the centre of society, and no one on entering our house believes any longer that he is conferring a favor upon us, but, on the contrary, receiving one from us. It is the TON now to visit our house; we are being overwhelmed with invitations, with flattering attentions. But tell me, sir, is all this a compensation for the happiness which we are lacking and which we never will obtain? Oh, is it not sad to think that both of us, so young, so capable of enjoying happiness, should already be doomed to eternal resignation and eternal loneliness? Is it not horrible to see us, and ought not God Himself to pity us, if from the splendor of His starry heavens He should look down for a moment into our gloomy breasts? I bear in it a cold, frozen heart, and you a coffin. Oh, sir, do not laugh at me because you see tears in my eyes--it is only Fanny Itzig who is weeping; Baroness von Arnstein will receive your guests to-night in your saloons with a smiling face, and no one will believe that her eyes also know how to weep. But here, here in my widow-room, here in my nun’s cell, I may be permitted to weep over you and me, who have been chained together with infrangible fetters, of which both of us feel the burden and oppression with equal bitterness and wrath. May God forgive our parents for having sacrificed our hearts on the altar of THEIR God, who is Mammon; I shall ever hate them for it; I shall never forgive them, for they who knew life must have known that there is nothing more unhappy, more miserable, and more deplorable than a wife who does not love her husband, is not beloved by him.”

“Is not beloved by him!” repeated the baron, approaching his wife who, like a broken reed, had sunk down on a chair, and seizing her hand, he said: “You say that I do not love you, Fanny! Do you know my heart, then? Have you deemed it worth while only a single time to fix your proud eyes on my poor heart? Did you ever show me a symptom of sympathy when I was sick, a trace of compassion when you saw me suffering? But no, you did not even see that I was suffering, or that I was sad. Your proud, cold glance always glided past me; it saw me rarely, it never sought me! What can you know, then, about my heart, and what would you care if I should tell you now that there is no longer a coffin in it, that it has awoke to a new life, and--”

“Baron!” exclaimed Fanny, rising quickly and proudly, “will you, perhaps, carry your magnanimity and delicacy so far as to make me a declaration of love? Did I express myself in my imprudent impetuosity so incorrectly as to make you believe I was anxious even now to gain your love, and that I was complaining of not having obtained it? Do you believe me to be an humble mendicant, to whom in your generosity you want to throw the morsel of a declaration of love? I thank you, sir, I am not hungry, and do not want this morsel. Let us at least be truthful and sincere toward each other, and the truth is, we do not love each other and shall never do so. Let us never try to feign what we never shall feel. And if you now should offer me your love I should have to reject it, for I am accustomed to a freezing temperature; and I should fare like the natives of Siberia, I should die if I were to live in a warmer zone. Both of us are living in Siberia; well, then, as we cannot expect roses to bloom for us, let us try at least to catch sables for ourselves. The sable, moreover, is an animal highly valued by the whole world. People will envy our sable furs, for they know them to be costly; they would laugh at us if we should adorn our heads with roses, for roses are not costly by any means, they are common, and every peasant-girl may adorn herself with them.”

“You are joking,” said the baron, mournfully, “and yet there are tears glistening in your eyes. However, your will shall be sacred to me. I shall never dare to speak to you again about my heart. But let us speak about you and your future. The five years of our agreement have elapsed, and I am here to confer with you about your future. Tell me frankly and honestly, Fanny, do you wish to be divorced from me?”

She started and fixed a long and searching look on her husband.

“Your father died a year ago,” she said, musingly, “you are now the chief of the firm; no one has a right to command any longer what you are to do, and being free now, you may offer your hand to her whom you love, I suppose?”

The baron uttered a shriek, and a death-like pallor overspread his face. “Have I deserved to be thus deeply despised by you?” he ejaculated.

Fanny quickly gave him her hand. “Pardon me,” she said, cordially. “I have pained you quite unintentionally; the grief of this hour has rendered me cruel. No, I do not believe that you, merely for your own sake, addressed this question to me; I know, on the contrary, that you entertain for me the sympathy of a brother, of a friend, and I am satisfied that your question had my happiness in view as well as yours.”

“Well,” he said, with the semblance of perfect calmness, “let me repeat my question, then: do you want to be divorced from me?”

Fanny slowly shook her head. “Why?” she asked, sadly. “I repeat to you what I told you once already; we are living in Siberia--let us remain there. We are accustomed to a freezing temperature; we might die, perhaps, in a warmer zone.”

“Or your heart might exult, perhaps, with happiness and delight,” said the baron, and now HIS eyes were fixed inquiringly upon her face. “You called me just now your friend, you admitted that I felt for you the sympathy of a brother; well, then, let me speak to you as your brother and friend. Do not reject the offer of a divorce so quickly, Fanny, for I tell you now I shall never renew it, and if you do not give me up to-day, you are chained to me forever, for I shall never be capable again of a courage so cruel against myself. Consider the offer well, therefore. Think of your youth, your beauty, and your inward loneliness. Remember that your heart is yearning for love and pining away in its dreary solitude. And now look around, Fanny; see how many of the most distinguished and eminent cavaliers are surrounding you, and longing for a glance, for a smile from you. See by how many you are being loved and adored, and then ask yourself whether or not among all these cavaliers no one would be able to conquer your heart if it were free? For I know your chaste virtue; I know that, although chained to an unbeloved husband, you never would prove faithless to him and avow love to another so long as you were not free. Imagine, then, you were free, and then ask your heart if it will not decide for one of your many adorers.”

“No, no,” she said, deprecatingly, “I cannot imagine a state of affairs that does not exist; as I am not free, I must not entertain the thoughts of a free woman.”

Her husband approached her, and seizing her hand, looked at her in a most touching and imploring manner.

“Then you have forgotten that five years ago, on our wedding-day, you promised me always to trust me?” he asked. “You have forgotten that you took an oath that you would tell me so soon as your heart had declared for another man?”

Fanny could not bear his look, and lowered her eyes.

“It has not declared for another man, and, therefore, I have nothing to confide to you,” she said, in a low voice.

The baron constantly held her hand in his own, and his eyes were still fixed on her face.

“Let us consider the matter together,” he said. “Permit me to review your cavaliers and admirers, and to examine with you if there is not one among them whom you may deem worthy of your love.”

“What!” ejaculated Fanny, having recourse to an outburst of merriment in order to conceal her embarrassment, “you want to make me a Portia, and perform with me a scene from the ‘Merchant of Venice?’”

“Yes, you are Portia, and I will play the role of your confidant,” said Baron Arnstein, smiling. “Well, let us begin our review. First, there is Count Palfy, a member of the old nobility, of the most faultless manners, young, rich, full of ardent love for--”

“For your dinner-parties and the rare dishes that do not cost him any thing,” interrupted Fanny. “He is an epicure, who prefers dining at other people’s tables because he is too stingy to pay for the Indian birds’-nests which he relishes greatly. As for myself, he never admires me until after dinner, for so soon as his stomach is at rest his heart awakes and craves for food; and his heart is a gourmand, too--it believes love to be a dish; voila tout!”

“Next, there is the handsome Marchese Pallafredo,” said her husband, smiling.

“He loves me because he has been told that I speak excellent and pure German, and because he wants me to teach him how to speak German. He takes me for a grammar, by means of which he may become familiar with our language without any special effort.”

“Then there is Count Esterhazy, one of our most brilliant cavaliers; you must not accuse him of stinginess, for he is just the reverse, a spendthrift, squandering his money with full hands; nor must you charge him with being an epicure, for he scarcely eats any thing at all at our dinner-parties, and does not know what he is eating, his eyes being constantly riveted on you, and his thoughts being occupied exclusively with you.”

“It is true, he admires me,” said Fanny, calmly, “but only a few months ago he was as ardent an adorer of my sister Eskeles, and before he was enamoured of her, he was enthusiastically in love with Countess Victoria Colloredo. He loves every woman who is fashionable in society for the time being, and his heart changes as rapidly as the fashions.”

“Besides, there is the prebendary, Baron Weichs,” said her husband; “a gentleman of great ability, a savant, and withal a cavalier, a--”

“Oh, pray do not speak of him!” exclaimed Fanny, with an air of horror. “His love is revolting to me, and fills me with shame and dismay. Whenever he approaches me my heart shrinks back as if from a venomous serpent, and a feeling of disgust pervades my whole being, although I am unable to account for it. There is something in his glances that is offensive to me; and although he has never dared to address me otherwise than in the most respectful and reserved manner, his conversation always makes me feel as though I were standing under a thunder-cloud from which the lightning might burst forth at any moment to shatter me. As you say, he is a man of ability, but he is a bad man; he is passionately fond of the ladies, but he does not respect them.”

“And he does not even deserve mentioning here,” said the baron, smiling, “for, even though you were free already, the prebendary never could enjoy the happiness of becoming your husband, and I know that your heart is too chaste to love a man who is unable to offer you his hand. Let us, then, look for such a man among the other cavaliers. There is, for instance, Prince Charles, of Lichtenstein, the most amiable, genial, and handsome of your admirers; a young prince who is neither haughty nor proud, neither prodigal nor stingy; who neither makes love to all ladies so soon as they become fashionable as does Count Esterhazy, nor wants to learn German from you, as does the Marchese Pallafredo; a young man as beautiful as Apollo, as brave as Mars, modest notwithstanding his learning, and affable and courteous notwithstanding his high birth. Well, Fanny, you do not interrupt me? Your sharp tongue, that was able to condemn all the others, has no such sentence for the Prince von Lichtenstein. You suffer me to praise him. Then you assent to my words?”

“I can neither contradict you nor assent to your words,” said Fanny, with a forced smile; “I do not know the prince sufficiently to judge him. He has been at Vienna but a very few months--”

“But he has been a daily visitor in our house during that period,” said her husband, interrupting her, “and he is constantly seen at your side. All Vienna knows that the prince is deeply enamoured of you, and he does not conceal it by any means, not even from myself. A few days ago, when he was so unfortunate as not to find you at home, because you were presiding over a meeting of your benevolent society, he met me all alone in the reception-room. Suddenly, in the midst of a desultory conversation, he paused, embraced me passionately, and exclaimed: ‘Be not so kind, so courteous, and gentle toward me, for I hate you, I detest you--because I hate every thing keeping me back from her; I detest every thing that prevents me from joining HER! Forgive my love for her and my hatred toward you; I feel both in spite of myself. If you were not her husband, I should love you like a friend, but that accursed word renders you a mortal enemy of mine. And still I bow to you in humility--still I implore you to be generous; do not banish me from your house, from HER, for I should die if I were not allowed to see her every day!’”

Fanny had listened to him with blushing cheeks and in breathless suspense. Her whole soul was speaking from the looks which she fixed on her husband, and with which she seemed to drink every word, like sweet nectar, from his lips.

“And what did you reply to him?” she asked, in a dry and husky voice, when the baron was silent.

“I replied to him that you alone had to decide who should appear at our parties, and that every one whom you had invited would be welcome to me. I further told him that his admiration for you did not astonish me at all, and that I would readily forgive his hatred, for--”

The baron paused all at once and looked at his wife with a surprised and inquiring glance. She had started in sudden terror; a deep blush was burning on her cheeks, and her eyes, which had assumed a rapturous and enthusiastic expression, turned toward the door.

The baron’s eyes followed her glance, and he heard now a slight noise at the door.

“I believe somebody has knocked at the door,” he said, fixing his piercing eyes on his wife. She raised her head and whispered, “Yes, I believe so.”

“And it is the second time already,” said the baron, calmly. “Will you not permit the stranger to walk in?”

“I do not know,” she said, in great embarrassment, “I--”

Suddenly the door opened, and a young man appeared on the threshold.

“Ah, the Prince von Lichtenstein,” said the baron, and he went with perfect calmness and politeness to meet the prince who, evidently in great surprise, remained standing in the door, and was staring gloomily at the strange and unexpected group.

“Come in, my dear sir,” said the baron, quietly; “the baroness will be very grateful to you for coming here just at this moment and interrupting our conversation, for it referred to dry business matters. I laid a few old accounts, that had been running for five years, before the baroness, and she gave me a receipt for them, that was all. Our interview, moreover, was at an end, and you need not fear to have disturbed us. Permit me, therefore, to withdraw, for you know very well that, in the forenoon, I am nothing but a banker, a business man, and have to attend to the affairs of our firm.”

He bowed simultaneously to the prince and to his wife, and left the room, as smiling, calm, and unconcerned as ever. Only when the door had closed behind him, when he had satisfied himself by a rapid glance through the reception-room that nobody was there, the smile disappeared from his lips, and his features assumed an air of profound melancholy.

“She loves him,” he muttered; “yes, she loves him! Her hand trembled in mine when I pronounced his name, and oh! how radiant she looked when she heard him come! Yes, she loves him, and I?--I will go to my counting-house!” he said, with a smile that was to veil the tears in his eyes.

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XXXVIII. THE RIVALS

The baron had no sooner closed the door of the boudoir when the young Prince von Lichtenstein hastened to Fanny, and, impetuously seizing her hand, looked at her with a passionate and angry air.

“You did that for the purpose of giving me pain, I suppose?” he asked, with quivering lips. “You wished to prove to me that you did not confer any special favor upon me; Yesterday you were kind enough to assure me that no man ever had set foot into this room, and that I should be the first to whom it would be opened today; and I was such a conceited fool as to believe your beatifying words, and I rush hither as early as is permitted by decency and respect, and yet I do not find you alone.”

“It was my husband who was here,” said Fanny, almost deprecatingly.

“It was a man,” he ejaculated, impetuously, “and you had given me the solemn assurance that this door had never yet opened to any man. Oh, I had implored you on my knees, and with tearful eyes, to allow me to see you here to-day; it seemed to me as though the gates of paradise were to be at last opened to me; no sleep came into my eyes all night, the consciousness of my approaching bliss kept me awake; it was over me like a smiling cherub, and I was dreaming with open eyes. And now that the lazy, snail-like time has elapsed, now that I have arrived here, I find in my heaven, at the side of my cherub, a calculating machine, desecrating my paradise by vile accounts--”

“Pray do not go on in this manner,” interrupted Fanny, sternly. “You found my husband here, and that, of course, dissolves the whole poetry of your words into plain prose, for she, whom in your enthusiastic strain you styled your cherub, is simply the wife of this noble and excellent man, whom you were free to compare with a calculating machine.”

“You are angry with me!” exclaimed the young prince, disconsolately. “You make no allowance for my grief, my disappointment, yea, my confusion! You have punished me so rudely for my presumption, and will not even permit my heart to bridle up and give utterance to its wrath.”

“I did not know that you were presumptuous toward me, and could not think, therefore, of inflicting punishment on you,” said Fanny; “but I know that you have no right to insult the man whose name I bear.”

“You want to drive me to despair, then!” retorted the prince, wildly stamping on the floor. “It is not sufficient, then, that you let me find your husband here, you must even praise him before me! I will tell you why I was presumptuous. I was presumptuous inasmuch as I believed it to be a favor granted to me exclusively to enter this room, and you have punished me for this presumption by proving to me that this door opens to others, too, although you assured me yesterday that the contrary was the case.”

“Then you question my word?” asked Fanny.

“Oh,” he said, impetuously, “you do not question what you see with your own eyes.”

“And, inasmuch as you have satisfied yourself of my duplicity with your own eyes, as you have seen that every one is at liberty to enter this room, and as you consequently cannot take any interest in prolonging your stay here, I would advise you to leave immediately,” said Fanny, gravely.

“You show me the door? You turn me out!” exclaimed the prince, despairingly. “Oh, have mercy on me! No, do not turn away from me! Look at me, read in my face the despair filling my soul. What, you still avert your head? I beseech you just grant me one glance; only tell me by the faintest smile that you will forgive me, and I will obey your orders, I will go, even if it should be only for the purpose of dying, not here before your eyes, but outside, on the threshold of your door.”

“Ah, as if it were so easy to die!” ejaculated Fanny, turning her face toward the prince.

“You look at me--you have forgiven me, then!” exclaimed the young man, and impetuously kneeling down before her, he seized her hands and pressed them to his lips.

“Rise, sir, pray rise,” said the baroness; “consider that somebody might come in. You know now that everybody is permitted to enter this room.”

“No, no. I know that nobody is permitted to enter here!” he exclaimed, fervently; “I know that this room is a sanctuary which no uninitiated person ever entered; I know that this is the sacred cell in which your virgin heart exhaled its prayers and complaints, and which is only known to God; I know that no man’s foot ever crossed this threshold, and I remain on my knees as if before a saint, to whom I confess my sins, and whom I implore to grant me absolution. Will you forgive me?”

“I will,” she said, smilingly, bending over him; “I will, if it were only to induce you to rise from your knees. And as you now perceive and regret your mistake, I will tell you the truth. It was an accident that the baron entered this room to-day, and it was the first time, too, since we were married. Nor did he come here, as he said, in delicate self-derision, for the purpose of settling accounts with me, but in order to fulfil a promise which he gave me five years ago, and which, I confess to my shame, I had forgotten, so that, instead of expecting my husband, I permitted you to come to me.”

“I thank you for your kind words, which heal all the wounds of my heart like a soothing balm,” replied the prince. “Oh, now I feel well again, and strong enough to conquer you in spite of the resistance of the whole world.”

“And do you know, then, whether you will be able to conquer me in spite of my resistance?” asked Fanny, smiling.

“Yes!” he exclaimed, “I know it, for in true love there is a strength that will subdue and surmount all obstacles. And I love you truly; you know it, you are satisfied of it. You know that I love you; every breath, every look, every tremulous note of my voice tells you so. But you? do you love me? Oh, I implore you, at length have mercy on me. Speak one word of pity, of sympathy I Let me read it at least in your eyes, if your lips are too austere to utter it. I have come to-day with the firm determination to receive at your hands my bliss or my doom. The torment of this incertitude kills me. Fanny, tell me, do you love me?”

Fanny did not answer at once; she stood before him, her head lowered, a prey to conflicting emotions, but she felt the ardent looks which were resting on her, and her heart trembled with secret delight. She made an effort, however, to overcome her feelings, and, raising her head, she fixed her eyes with a gentle yet mournful expression upon the young man, who, breathless and pale with anxiety, was waiting for her reply.

“You ask me if I love you,” she said, in a low but firm voice; “you put that question to me, and yet you are standing now on the same spot on which my husband stood fifteen minutes ago and also asked me a question. I must not answer your question, for I am a married woman, and I have taken an oath at the altar to keep my faith to my husband, and I have to keep it, inasmuch as my heart has no love to give him. But I will, nevertheless, give you a proof of the great confidence I am reposing in you. I will tell you why my husband came to see me to-day, and what was the question which he addressed to me. Hush, do not interrupt me; do not tell me that my conversations with the baron have no interest for you. Listen to me. The baron came to me because the five years, which we had ourselves fixed for that purpose, had elapsed to-day, and because he wanted to ask me whether I wished to remain his wife, or whether I wanted to be divorced from him.”

“And what did you reply?” asked the prince, breathlessly.

“I replied to him as I replied to you a little while ago: ‘I have taken an oath at the altar to keep my faith to my husband, and I have to keep it, inasmuch as my heart has no love to give to him.’”

“Ah, you told him that you did not love him?” asked the prince, drawing a deep breath. “And after this confession he felt that he ought no longer to oppose your divorce, for his heart is generous and delicate, and consequently he cannot desire to chain a wife to himself who tells him that during the five years of her married life she has not learned to love him. Oh, Fanny, how indescribably happy you render me by this disclosure. Then you will be free, your hands will not be manacled any longer.”

“I did not tell you the reply I made to my husband when he left it to me again to say whether I would be divorced from him or not,” said Fanny, with a mournful smile. “I replied to him that every thing should remain as heretofore; that I did not want to inflict the disgrace of a divorce upon him and upon myself, and that we would and ought to bear these shackles which, without mutual love, we had imposed upon each other in a dignified, faithful, and honest manner until our death.”

“That is impossible!” exclaimed the prince. “You could not, you ought not to have been so cruel against yourself, against the baron, and also against me. And even though you may have uttered these words of doom on the spur of that exciting moment, you will take them back again after sober and mature reflection. Oh, say that you will do so, say that you will be free; free, so that I may kneel down before you and implore you to give to me this hand, no longer burdened by any fetters; to become my wife, and to permit me to try if my boundless, adoring love will succeed in conferring upon you that happiness of which none are worthier than you. Oh, speak, Fanny, say that you will be free, and consent to become my wife!”

“Your wife!” said Fanny, lugubriously. “You forget that what separates me from you is not only my husband, but also my religion. The Jewess can never become the wife of the Prince von Lichtenstein.”

“You will cast off the semblance of a religion which in reality is yours no longer,” said the prince. “You have ceased to be a Jewess, owing to your education, to your habits, and to your views of life. Leave, then, the halls of the temple in which your God is no longer dwelling, and enter the great church which has redeemed mankind, and which is now to redeem you. Become a convert to the Christian religion, which is the religion of love.”

“Never!” exclaimed the baroness, firmly and decidedly--“never will I abandon my religion and prove recreant to my faith, to which my family and my tribe have faithfully adhered for thousands of years. The curse of my parents and ancestors would pursue the renegade daughter of our tribe and cling like a sinister night-bird to the roof of the house into which the faithless daughter of Judah, the baptized Jewess, would move in order to obtain that happiness she is yearning for. Never--But what is that?” interrupting herself all at once; “what is the matter in the adjoining room?”

Two voices, one of them angrily quarrelling with the other, which replied in a deprecating manner, were heard in the adjoining room.

“I tell you the baroness is at home, and receives visitors!” exclaimed the violent and threatening voice.

“And I assure you that the baroness is not at home, and cannot, therefore, receive any visitors,” replied the deprecating voice.

“It is Baron Weichs, the proud prebendary, who wants to play the master here as he does everywhere else,” said the prince, disdainfully.

“And my steward refuses to admit him, because I have given orders that no more visitors shall be received to-day,” whispered Fanny.

The face of the young prince became radiant with delight. He seized Fanny’s hands and pressed them impetuously to his lips, whispering, “I thank you, Fanny, I thank you!”

Meantime the voice in the reception-room became more violent and threatening, “I know that the baroness is at home,” it shouted, “and I ask you once more to announce my visit to her!”

“But you know, sir,” said the gentle voice of the steward, “that the baroness, when she is at home, is always at this hour in the reception-room, and receives her visitors here without any previous announcement.”

“That only proves that the baroness receives her visitors in another room to-day,” shouted the voice of Baron Weichs. “I know positively that there is a visitor with the baroness at this very moment. Go, then, and announce my visit. It remains for the baroness to turn me away, and I shall know then that the baroness prefers to remain alone with the gentleman who is with her at the present time.”

“Ah, this prebendary, it seems, is growing impudent,” exclaimed the prince, with flashing eyes, walking toward the door.

The baroness seized his hand and kept him back. “Pay no attention to him,” she said, imploringly; “let my steward settle this quarrel with that insolent man. Just listen! he is even now begging him quite politely, yet decidedly, to leave the room.”

“And that fellow is shameless enough to decline doing so,” said the prince. “Oh, hear his scornful laughter! This laughter is an insult, for which he ought to be chastised.”

And as if the words of the prince were to be followed immediately by the deed, a third voice was heard now in the reception-room. It asked in a proud and angry tone, “What is the matter here? And who permits himself to shout so indecently in the reception-room of the baroness?”

“Ah, it is my husband,” whispered Fanny, with an air of great relief. “He will show that overbearing Baron Weichs the door, and I shall get rid of him forever.”

“He has already dared, then, to importune you?” asked the prince, turning his threatening eyes toward the door. “Oh, I will release you from further molestation by this madman, for I tell you the gentle words of your husband will not be able to do so. Baron Weichs is not the man to lend a willing ear to sensible remonstrances or to the requirements of propriety and decency. He has graduated at the high-school of libertinism, and any resistance whatever provokes him to a passionate struggle in which he shrinks from no manifestation of his utter recklessness. Well, am I not right? Does he not even dare to defy your husband? Just listen!”

“I regret not to be able to comply with your request to leave this room,” shouted now the voice of the prebendary, Baron Weichs. “You said yourself just now, baron, that we were in the reception-room of the baroness; accordingly, you are not the master here, but merely a visitor like the rest of us. Consequently, you have no right to show anybody the door, particularly as you do not even know whether you belong to the privileged visitors of the lady, or whether the baroness will admit you.”

“I shall take no notice of the unbecoming and insulting portion of your remarks, baron,” said the calm voice of Baron Arnstein; “I only intend at this moment to protect my wife against insult and molestation. Now it is insulting assuredly that a cavalier, after being told that the lady to whom he wishes to pay his respects is either not at home or will not receive any visitors, should refuse to withdraw, and insist upon being admitted. I hope the prebendary, Baron Weichs, after listening to this explanation, will be kind enough to leave the reception-room.”

“I regret that I cannot fulfil this hope,” said the sneering voice of the prebendary. “I am now here with the full conviction that I shall never be able to reenter this reception-room; hence I am determined not to shrink back from any thing and not to be turned away in so disgraceful a manner. I know that the baroness is at home, and I came hither in order to satisfy myself whether the common report is really true that the baroness, who has always treated me with so much virtuous rigor and discouraging coldness, is more indulgent and less inexorable toward another, and whether I have really a more fortunate rival!”

“I hope that I am this more fortunate rival,” said Baron Arnstein, gently.

“Oh, no, sir,” exclaimed the prebendary, laughing scornfully. “A husband never is the rival of his wife’s admirers. If you were with your wife and turned me away, I should not object to it at all, and I should wait for a better chance. But what keeps me here is the fact that another admirer of hers is with her, that she has given orders to admit nobody else, and that you, more kind-hearted than myself, seem to believe that the baroness is not at home.”

“This impudence surpasses belief,” exclaimed the prince, in great exasperation.

“Yes,” said Fanny, gloomily, “the Christian prebendary gives full vent to his disdain for the Jewish banker. It always affords a great satisfaction to Christian love to humble the Jew and to trample him in the dust. And the Jew is accustomed to being trampled upon in this manner. My husband, too, gives proof of this enviable quality of our tribe. Just listen how calm and humble his voice remains, all the while every tone of the other is highly insulting to him!”

“He shall not insult him any longer,” said the prince, ardently; “I will--but what is that? Did he not mention my name?”

And he went closer to the door, in order to listen in breathless suspense.

“And I repeat to you, baron,” said the voice of the prebendary, sneeringly, “your wife is at home, and the young Prince von Lichtenstein is with her. I saw him leave his palace and followed him; half an hour ago, I saw him enter your house, and I went into the coffee-house opposite for the purpose of making my observations. I know, therefore, positively, that the prince has not yet left your house. As he is not with you, he is with your wife, and this being the usual hour for the baroness to receive morning calls, I have just as good a right as anybody else to expect that she will admit me.”

“And suppose I tell you that she will not admit you to-day?”

“Then I shall conclude that the baroness is in her boudoir with the Prince von Lichtenstein, and that she does not want to be disturbed,” shouted the voice of the prebendary. “Yes, sir; in that case I shall equally lament my fate and yours, for both of us are deceived and deprived of sweet hopes. Both of us will have a more fortunate rival in this petty prince--in this conceited young dandy, who even now believes he is a perfect Adonis, and carries his ludicrous presumption so far as to believe that he can outstrip men of ability and merit by his miserable little title and by his boyish face--”

“Why is it necessary for you to shout all this so loudly?” asked the anxious voice of the baron.

“Ah, then you believe that he can hear me?” asked the voice of the prebendary, triumphantly. “Then he is quite close to us? Well, I will shout it louder than before: this little Prince Charles von Lichtenstein is a conceited boy, who deserves to be chastised!”

The prince rushed toward the door, pale, with quivering lips and sparkling eyes. But the baroness encircled his arm with her hands and kept him back.

“You will not go,” she whispered. “You will not disgrace me so as to prove to him by your appearance that he was right, and that you were with me while I refused to admit him.”

“But do you not hear that he insults me?” asked the young prince, trying to disengage himself from her hands.

“Why do you listen to other voices when you are with me?” she said, reproachfully. “What do you care for the opinion of that man, whom I abhor from the bottom of my heart, and whom people only tolerate in their saloons because they are afraid of his anger and his slanderous tongue? Oh, do not listen to what he says, my friend! You are here with me, and I have yet to tell you many things. But you do not heed my words! Your eyes are constantly fixed on the door. Oh, sir, look at me, listen to what I have to say to you. I believe I still owe you a reply, do I not? Well, I will now reply to the question which you have so often put to me, and to which I have heretofore only answered by silence!”

“Oh, not now, not now!” muttered the prince.

“Yes, I will tell you now what has been so long burning in my soul as a sweet secret,” whispered Fanny, constantly endeavoring to draw him away from the door. “You have often asked me if I loved you, and my heart made the reply which my lips were afraid to pronounce. But now I will confess it to you: yes, I love you; my whole soul belongs to you! I have secretly longed for the hour when I might at last confess this to you, when my heart would exult in pronouncing the sweet words, ‘I love you!’ Good Heaven! you hear it, and yet you remain silent--you avert your face? Do you despise me now because I, the married woman, confess to you that I love you? Is your silence to tell me that you do not love me any longer?”

He knelt down before her and kissed her dress and her hands. “I love you boundlessly,” he said with panting breath; “you are to me the quintessence of all happiness, virtue, and beauty. I shall love you to the last hour of my life!”

“If Prince Charles von Lichtenstein should be near,” shouted the voice of the prebendary, close to the door, “if he should be able to hear my words, I want him to hear that I pronounce him a coward, a fool, and impostor--a coward, because he silently suffers himself to be insulted--”

The prince, unable to restrain his feelings any longer, rushed forward and impetuously pushing back the baroness, who still endeavored to detain him, he violently opened the door.

“No,” he shouted, in a threatening and angry voice. “No, Prince Charles von Lichtenstein does not allow himself to be insulted with impunity, and he asks satisfaction for every insult offered to him!”

“Ah!” exclaimed the prebendary, turning with a wild, triumphant laugh to Baron Arnstein, “did I not tell you that the prince was concealed in your house?”

“Concealed!” ejaculated the prince, approaching his adversary with eyes sparkling with rage. “Repeat that word if you dare!”

“I shall do so,” said the prebendary, with defiant coolness. “You were concealed in this house, for nobody knew of your presence, neither the steward nor the baron. You had crept into the house like a thief intending to steal valuables, and this, indeed, was your intention, too; however, you did not want to purloin the diamonds of the fair baroness, but--”

“I forbid you to mention the name of the baroness!” exclaimed the prince, proudly.

“And I implore you not to compromise the baroness by connecting her with your quarrel,” whispered Baron Arnstein in the prince’s ear; then turning to the prebendary, whose eyes were fixed on the prince with a threatening and defiant expression, he said:

“You are mistaken, sir; Prince Charles von Lichtenstein did not come here in a stealthy manner. He wished to pay a visit to the baroness, and the latter, as you know, being absent from home, the prince did me the honor to converse with me in that room, when we were interrupted all at once by the noise which you were pleased to make in the reception-room here.”

“And being in that room, you were pleased to enter the reception-room through THIS door,” said the prebendary, sneeringly, pointing to the two opposite doors. “But why did not the prince accompany you? It would have been so natural for one friend of the baroness to greet the other!”

“I did not come because I heard that YOU were there,” said the prince, disdainfully, “and because I am in the habit of avoiding any contact with your person.”

“Ah, you are jealous of me, then?” asked the prebendary. “Why is my person so distasteful to you that you should always escape from me?”

“I escape from no one, not even from venomous serpents, nor from an individual like you,” said the prince, haughtily. “I avoided you, however, because I dislike your nose. Do you hear, my impertinent little prebendary? I dislike your nose, and I demand that you never let me see it again!”

“Ah, I understand,” replied the prebendary, laughing. “In order to spare the feelings of the fair baroness, and not to injure her reputation. Pardon me, for, in spite of your prohibition, I am constantly compelled to defer to this amiable lady. You wish to give another direction to our quarrel, and my innocent nose is to be the BETE DE SOUFFRANCE. But you shall not entrap me in this manner, prince; and you, my dear Baron Arnstein, can you allow us to continue the quarrel which we commenced about your lady, now about my nose, and to conceal, as it were, the fair Baroness Arnstein behind it?”

“Baroness Arnstein has no reason whatever to conceal herself,” said the baron, coldly and proudly. “As she was not the cause of this quarrel, I do not know why you are constantly dragging her name into it. You behaved here in so unbecoming a manner, that I had to come to the assistance of my steward. You were then pleased to utter insults against the Prince von Lichtenstein in his absence, and being in the adjoining room and overhearing your offensive remarks, he came to call you to account for them.”

“And to tell you that I dislike your nose, and that I must take the liberty to amputate its impertinent tip with my sword,” exclaimed the prince, pulling the prebendary’s nose.

It was now the prebendary’s turn to grow pale, while his eyes flashed with anger. “You dare to insult me?” he asked menacingly.

“Yes, I confess that is exactly my intention!” replied the prince, laughing.

“Ah, you will have to give me satisfaction for this insult!” shouted the prebendary.

“With the greatest pleasure,” said the prince. “This is not the place, however, to continue this conversation. Come, sir, let us leave this house together in order to make the necessary arrangements--”

At this moment the folding-doors of the anteroom were opened, and the voice of the steward shouted: “The baroness!”

An exclamation of surprise escaped from the lips of the three gentlemen, and their eyes turned toward the door, the threshold of which Fanny Arnstein was crossing at that moment. She seemed just to have returned home; her tall form was still wrapped in a long Turkish shawl, embroidered with gold; a charming little bonnet, adorned with flowers and plumes, covered her head, and in her hand she held one of those large costly fans, adorned with precious stones, which were in use at that time in the place of parasols. She greeted the gentlemen with a winning smile; not the slightest tinge of care or uneasiness was visible in her merry face; not the faintest glimmer of a tear darkened the lustre of her large black eyes.

“Gentlemen will please accept my apology for making them wait, although this is the hour when I am in the habit of receiving visitors,” said the baroness, in a perfectly careless manner. “But I hope my husband has taken my place in the mean time and told you that I had to preside over a meeting of our Hebrew Benevolent Society, and you will acknowledge that that was a duty which I ought not to have failed to fulfil. Ah, you smile, Baron Weichs; you must explain to me what is the meaning of this smile, if you wish to intimate thereby, perhaps, that there are no important duties at all for us ladies to perform. Come, gentlemen, let us sit down and hear in what manner Baron Weichs will be able to defend his smile. Sit down here on my right side, prince, and you, Baron Weichs, on my left, and my husband may take a seat opposite us and play the role of an arbiter.”

“I regret that I cannot comply any longer with your amiable invitation,” said the prebendary, gloomily. “You have made me wait too long, baroness; my time has now expired, and I must withdraw. I suppose you will accompany me, Prince Lichtenstein?”

“Yes, I shall accompany you,” said the prince, “for unfortunately my time has also expired, and I must go.”

“Oh, no,” exclaimed the baroness, smiling, “you must stay here, prince. I dare not prevent the prebendary from attending to his important affairs, but you, prince, have no such pretext for leaving me; I therefore order you to remain and to tell me all about yesterday’s concert at the imperial palace.”

“I regret exceedingly that I am unable to obey your orders,” said the prince, mournfully. “But I must go. You just said, dear lady, that an important duty had kept you away from home; well, it is an important duty that calls me away from here; hence I cannot stay. Farewell, and permit me to kiss your hand before leaving you.”

She gave him her hand, which was as cold as ice and trembled violently when he took it. He pressed his glowing lips upon this hand and looked up to her. Their eyes met in a last, tender glance; the prince then rose and turned toward the prebendary, who was conversing with Baron Arnstein in a low and excited tone.

“Come, sir, let us go,” he said, impetuously, and walked toward the door.

“Yes, let us go,” repeated the prebendary, and bowing profoundly to the baroness, he turned around and followed the prince.

Fanny, who was evidently a prey to the most excruciating anguish, followed them with her distended, terrified eyes. When the door closed behind them, she hastily laid her hand on her husband’s shoulder, and looked at him with an air of unutterable terror.

“They will fight a duel?” she asked.

“I am afraid so,” said the baron, gloomily.

The baroness uttered a shriek, and after tottering back a few steps, she fell senseless to the floor. Early on the following morning, four men with grave faces and gloomy eyes stood in the thicket of a forest not far from Vienna.

Two of them were just about divesting themselves of their heavy coats, embroidered with gold, in order to meet in mortal combat, their bare breasts only protected by their fine cambric shirts. These two men were Prince Charles von Lichtenstein and the prebendary, Baron Weichs.

The other two gentlemen were engaged in loading the pistols and counting off the steps; they were Baron Arnstein and Count Palfy, the seconds of the two duellists. When they had performed this mournful task, they approached the two adversaries in order to make a last effort to bring about a reconciliation.

“I implore you in my own name,” whispered Baron Arnstein in the ear of the Prince von Lichtenstein--“I implore you in the name of my wife, if a reconciliation should be possible, accept it, and avoid by all means so deplorable an event. Remember that the honor of a lady is compromised so easily and irretrievably, and that my wife would never forgive herself if she should become, perhaps, the innocent cause of your death.”

“Nobody will find out that we fight a duel for her sake,” said the prince. “My honor requires me to give that impertinent fellow a well-deserved lesson, and he shall have it!”

Count Palfy, the prebendary’s second, approached them. “If your highness should be willing to ask Baron Weichs to excuse your conduct on yesterday, the baron would be ready to accept your apology and to withdraw his challenge.”

“I have no apology to offer,” exclaimed the prince, loudly, “and I am unwilling to prevent the duel from taking its course. I told the prebendary that I disliked his nose, and that I wished to amputate its impertinent tip. Well, I am now here to perform this operation, and if you please, let us at once proceed to business.”

“Yes, let us do so,” shouted the prebendary. “Give us the pistols, gentlemen, and then the signal. When you clap for the third time, we shall shoot simultaneously. Pray for your poor soul, Prince von Lichtenstein, for I am a dead shot at one hundred yards, and our distance will only be twenty paces.”

The prince made no reply, but took the pistol which his second handed to him. “If I should fall,” he whispered to him, “take my last greetings to your wife, and tell her that I died with her name on my lips!”

“If I should fall,” said the prebendary to his second, in an undertone, but loud enough for his opponent to hear every word he said, “tell the dear city of Vienna and my friends that I have fought a duel with Prince Lichtenstein because he was my rival with the beautiful Baroness Arnstein, and that I have died with the conviction that he was the lover of the fair lady.”

A pause ensued. The seconds conducted the two gentlemen to their designated places and then stood back, in order to give the fatal signals.

When they clapped for the first time, the two duellists raised the hand with the pistol, fixing their angry and threatening eyes on each other.

Then followed the second, the third signal.

Two shots were fired at the same time.

The prebendary stood firmly and calmly where he had discharged his weapon, the same defiant smile playing on his lips, and the same threatening expression beaming in his eyes.

Prince Charles von Lichtenstein lay on the ground, reddening the earth with the blood which was rushing from his breast. When Baron Arnstein bent over him, he raised his eyes with a last look toward him. “Take her my last love-greetings,” he breathed, in a scarcely audible voice. “Tell her that I--”

His voice gave way, and with the last awful death-rattle a stream of blood poured from his mouth.

“Hasten to save yourself,” shouted Count Palfy to the prebendary, who had been looking at the dying man from his stand-point with cold, inquisitive glances. “Flee, for you have killed the prince; he has already ceased to breathe. Flee! In the shrubbery below you will find my carriage, which will convey you rapidly to the next post-station.”

“He is dead and I am alive!” said the prebendary, quietly. “It would not have been worth while to die for the sake of a woman because she has got another lover. It is much wiser in such cases to kill the rival, and thus to remove the obstacle separating us from the woman. But I shall not escape; on the contrary, I shall go to the emperor myself, and inform him of what has occurred here. We are living in times of war and carnage, and a soul more or less is, therefore, of no great importance. Inasmuch as the emperor constantly sends hundreds of thousands of his innocent and harmless subjects to fight duels with enemies of whom they do not even know why they are their enemies, he will deem it but a matter of course that two of his subjects, who know very well why they are enemies, should fight a duel, and hence I am sure that his majesty will forgive me. Brave and intrepid men are not sent to the fortress. I shall not flee!”

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XXXIX. THE LEGACY

Three days had passed since that unfortunate event. Early on this, the third day, the corpse of the prince had been conveyed to the tomb of his family; a large and brilliant funeral procession had accompanied the coffin; even the carriages of the emperor, the archdukes, and high dignitaries of the state had participated in the procession, and the Viennese, who for three days had spoken of nothing else but the tragic end of the young and handsome Prince Charles von Lichtenstein, derived some satisfaction from the conviction that they were sharing the sympathy of the imperial family for the deceased; thousands of them consequently joined the procession and accompanied the coffin.

But this manifestation of sympathy did not seem sufficient to the good-hearted and hot-blooded people. They did not merely wish to show their love for the deceased; they also wanted to manifest their hatred against the man who had slain him; and, on their return from the funeral, the people rushed to the Kohlmarkt and gathered with loud shouts and savage threats in front of the house of the prebendary, Baron Weichs.

It was reported that the prebendary, whom the people charged with having assassinated Prince Lichtenstein, was constantly in Vienna; and as this fact seemed to indicate that the emperor did not intend to punish his misdeed, the people wanted to take it upon themselves to chastise him, or to give him at least a proof of the public hatred.

“Smash the murderer’s windows!” shouted the people, who were constantly reenforced by fresh crowds appearing on the Kohlmarkt. And, passing from threats to deeds, hundreds and hundreds of busy hands tore up the pavement in order to hurl the stones at the house and windows of the prebendary. And the rattling of the windows, the loud noise of the stones glancing off on the walls, increased the rage and exasperation of the people. Soon they were no longer contented with doing this, but wished to get hold of the malefactor himself, and to punish him for his crime. The crowd rushed with wild clamor toward the closed street-door of the baron’s house; one among them quickly climbed on the shoulders of another, in order to tear down the coat-of-arms of the prebendary, fixed over the entrance, and thundering applause greeted him when he had accomplished his purpose. The infuriated men then commenced striking at the door itself, which offered, however, to all attacks, a firm and unyielding resistance.

Suddenly a stern, imperious voice shouted: “Stop! Stand back! stand back!”

The people turned around in terror, and discovered only then that a carriage, surrounded and followed by twenty mounted policemen, was approaching from the alley on which the principal door of the prebendary’s house was situated. This carriage, with its sinister escort, could make but slow headway through the dense mass of the people, who looked inquisitively through the lowered windows into the interior of the coach. Every one was able to recognize the three gentlemen who were seated in the carriage, and who were none other than the prebendary, Baron Weichs, and two of the best known and most feared high functionaries of the police. The baron’s face was pale and gloomy, but the defiant, impudent smile was still playing on his thin lips. He looked, with an air of boundless contempt, at the crowd surging around his carriage and staring at him as if it wished to read in his pale features the sentence that had been pronounced against him.

“How inquisitive is the populace!” said the prebendary, disdainfully. “They are so anxious to find out whether I am now being conveyed to the place of execution, which would be a most welcome spectacle for them. You ought to have mercy on this amiable rabble, gentlemen, and inform them of the evil tidings that I have unfortunately not been sentenced to be hanged on the gallows, nor to be broken on the wheel, but only to be imprisoned in a fortress for ten years, which I shall pass at the beautiful citadel of Komorn.”

The two officers only replied to him by silently nodding, and the carriage passed on. But some compassionate and talkative police agent had informed the people that the emperor had sentenced the prebendary, Baron Weichs, to ten years’ imprisonment in a fortress, and that he was at this moment on his way to Komorn. The people received this intelligence with jubilant shouts, and dispersed through the city in order to inform their friends and acquaintances of the welcome news, and then to go home, well satisfied with the day’s amusements and diversions.

And the waves of life closed over the lamentable event, and carried it down into the abyss of oblivion. A few days passed by, and another occurrence caused the colloquies concerning the duel of Prince Lichtenstein and what had brought it about to cease, as some new subject of conversation took its place.

One heart alone did not console itself so rapidly; one soul alone bewailed him on comfortless days and restless nights, and paid to him the tribute of tears and sighs. Since that last meeting with the prince, Fanny Arnstein had not left her cabinet again; its doors had been closed against everybody, and she had wept and sighed there during these three days, without taking a morsel of food.

Vainly had her husband often come to her door in order to implore her to open it at last, and to take some nourishment. Fanny had never answered him; and if he had not, constantly and stealthily returning to her door at night, heard her low sobs and half-loud wailing, he would have believed that grief had killed her, and that love had intended to unite her in heaven with him to whom her heart belonged, as they had been so hopelessly separated on earth.

To-day, after the prince’s funeral, the baron again entered the reception-room adjoining his wife’s cabinet, but this time he did not come alone. A lady, whose face was covered with a large black veil, accompanied him, and walked at his side to the constantly closed door.

The baron knocked at this door, and begged his wife, in words of heart-felt sympathy, to open it to him.

There was no reply; not a word was heard from the unhappy baroness.

“You see, your highness,” whispered the baron, turning to the veiled lady, “it is as I told you. All prayers are in vain; she does not leave her room; she will die of grief.”

“No, she will not die,” said the lady, “she is young, and youth survives all grief. Let me try if I cannot induce her to admit us.”

And she knocked at the door with bold fingers, and exclaimed: “Pray, Fanny, open the door, and let me come in. It is I, Princess Eibenberg; it is I, your friend, Marianne Meier; I want to see my dear Fanny Itzig.”

Every thing remained silent; nothing stirred behind that locked door. Marianne removed her veil, and showed her proud, pale countenance to the baron.

“Baron,” she said, gravely, “at this hour I forgive you the insult and contempt you hurled at me five years ago on your wedding-day. Fate has avenged me and punished you cruelly, for I see that you have suffered a great deal during the last three days. My heart does not bear you any ill-will now, and I will try to restore your beautiful and unhappy wife to you, and to console her. But I must request you to leave this room. I know a charm, by which I shall decoy Fanny from that room; but in order to do so I must be alone, and nobody, save herself, must be able to hear me.”

“Very well, I will go,” said the baron, mournfully. “But permit me first to ask you to do me a favor. My request will prove to you the confidence I repose in you. Please do not tell Fanny that you saw me sad and deeply moved; do not intimate any thing to her about my own grief.”

“She will perceive herself, from your pale face and hollow cheeks, poor baron!” exclaimed Marianne.

“No, she is not accustomed to look at me attentively; it will escape her,” said the baron, sadly, “and I would not have it appear as though I were suffering by her grief, which I deem but natural and just. I beg you, therefore, to say nothing about me.”

“I shall fulfil your wish,” said Marianne. “Fanny will, perhaps, thank you one day for the delicacy with which you are now behaving toward her. But go now, so that I may call her.”

The baron left the room, and Marianne returned to the door. “Fanny,” she said, “come to me, or open the door and let me walk in. I have to deliver to you a message and a letter from Prince Charles von Lichtenstein.”

Now a low cry from the cabinet was heard; the bolt was drawn back, the door opened, and Baroness Arnstein appeared on the threshold. Her face was as pale as marble; her eyes, reddened by weeping, lay deeply in their orbits; her black, dishevelled hair fell down on her back like a long mourning veil. She was still beautiful and lovely, but hers was now the beauty of a Magdalen.

“You bring me a message from him?” she asked, in a low, tremulous voice, and with tearful eyes.

“Yes, Fanny,” said Marianne, scarcely able to overcome her own emotion, “I bring you his last love-greetings. He believed that he would fall, and on that fatal morning, before repairing to the duelling-grounds, he paid me a visit. We had long been acquainted and intimate; both of us had a great, common goal in view; both of us were pursuing the same paths; this was the origin of our acquaintance. He knew, too, that I had been a friend of yours from your childhood, and he therefore intrusted to me his last message to you. Here, Fanny, this small box contains all the little souvenirs and love-tokens which he has received from you, and which he deemed much too precious to destroy or to take into his grave; hence he requests you to preserve them. They consist of withered flowers which you once gave him, of a ribbon which you lost, of a few notes which you wrote to him, and from which the malicious and slanderous world might perceive the harmless and innocent character of your intercourse, and, last, of your miniature, painted by the prince himself, from memory. This casket the prince requests you to accept as his legacy. It is a set of pearls, an heirloom of his family, which his dying mother once gave to him in order to adorn with it his bride on his wedding-day. The prince sends it to you and implores you to wear it as a souvenir from him, because you were the bride of his heart. And here, Fanny, here is a letter from him, the last lines he ever wrote, and they are addressed to you.”

The baroness uttered a cry of joy; seizing the paper with passionate violence, she pressed it to her lips, and knelt down with it.

“I thank Thee, my God, I thank Thee!” she murmured, in a low voice. “Thou hast sent me this consolation! Thou dost not want me to die of despair!”

And now, still remaining on her knees, she slowly unfolded the paper and read this last glowing farewell, this last tender protestation of his love, with which the prince took leave of her.

Marianne stood, with folded arms, in a bay window, watching her friend with grave, sympathetic eyes, and beheld the pallor and blushes which appeared in quick succession on her cheeks, the impetuous heaving of her bosom, the tremor of her whole frame, and the tears pouring down like rivers from Fanny’s eyes on the paper, with a mingled feeling of pity and astonishment.

“It must be beautiful to be able to love in such a manner,” she thought. “Beautiful, too, to be able to suffer thus. Enviable the women living with their hearts and deriving from them alone their happiness and grief. Such a lot has not fallen to MY share, and I am almost afraid that I do not love any thing but myself. My life is concentrated in my head, and my blood only rushes from the latter to my heart. Who is more to be pitied, Fanny with the grief of her love, or I, who will never know such a grief? But she has wept now, and her tears might finally cause me to weep, too, and to awaken my love. That must not be, however. One who has to pursue great plans, like myself, must keep a cool head and a cold heart.”

And she approached with quick steps the baroness, who was yet on her knees, reading and re-reading the farewell letter of the prince.

“Rise from your knees, Fanny,” she said, almost imperiously. “You have paid the tribute of your tears to the departed friend, you have wept for him for three days; now bury the past in your heart and think of your future, my poor girl.”

“My future?” said Fanny, permitting her friend to raise her gently. “My future is broken and darkened forever, and there is a cloud on my name, which will never leave it. Oh, why is there no convent for the Jewess, no lonely cell whither she might take refuge, with her unhappiness and disgrace?”

“Do as I have done,” said Marianne; “let the whole world be your convent, and your reception-room the cell in which you do penance, by compelling men to kneel before you and adore you, instead of kneeling yourself, and mortifying your flesh. Lay your unhappiness and your disgrace like a halo around your head, and boldly meet the world with open eyes and a proud mien. If you were poor and nameless I should seriously advise you to become a Catholic, and to take refuge in a convent. But you are rich; you bear a distinguished, aristocratic name; your husband is able to give sumptuous dinner-parties; consequently people will pardon his wife for having become the heroine of an unfortunate romance, and they will take good care not to turn their backs on nor to point their fingers at you; and whenever you pass them in the street, not to laugh scornfully and tell your history in an audible voice. I, my child, formerly had to bear such contumely and humiliation, and I took a solemn oath at that time that I would revenge myself upon this world, which believed it had a right to despise me--that I would revenge myself by becoming its equal. And I have fulfilled my oath; I am now a princess and a highness. The proud world that once scorned me now bows to me; the most virtuous and aristocratic ladies do not deem it derogatory to their dignity to appear in my reception-room; the most distinguished princes and cavaliers court the friendship and favor of the Princess von Eibenberg, nee Marianne Meier. Follow my example, therefore, Fanny; brave the world, appear in your reception-room with serene calmness and ease; give even more sumptuous dinner-parties than heretofore, and the small cloud now darkening your name will pass by unnoticed. People will come at first from motives of curiosity, in order to see how you bear your affliction and how you behave under the eclat produced by the deplorable occurrence; next they will come because your dinners are so very excellent, and because this and that princess or countess, this and that prince, minister, or general, do not disdain to appear in your reception-room, and thus the whole affair will gradually be forgotten.”

“But my heart will not forget it,” said the baroness, mournfully; “my heart will never cease to weep for him, and when my heart is weeping, my eyes will not laugh. You have had the courage to conceal your tears under a smile, and not to suffer your head to be weighed down by the disgrace and contumely which they tried to heap on it. I shall have the courage not to conceal my tears, and to walk about, bending my head under the disgrace and contumely which have undeservedly fallen to my share. If I were guiltier, I should be able, perhaps, to brave the world; but having to mourn, not over a guilty action, but only over a misfortune, I shall weep! Let the world condemn me for it; I shall not hear its judgment, for I shall retire into solitude.”

“Oh, you foolish woman!” exclaimed Marianne, fervently.

“Yes, foolish, because you believe already at the beginning of your life that you are done with it. My child, the human heart is much too weak to be able to bear such a grief for many years. It gradually grows tired of it and finally drops it, and perceives then all at once that it is quite empty. Tedium, with its long spider-legs, will then creep over you and draw its dusty network around and no one will tear away this network, because nobody will be there to do this salutary service, for you will have driven people away from your side and preferred loneliness to their society. Beware of solitude, or rather learn to be alone in the midst of the world, but not in the privacy of your deserted boudoir. You have to fulfil a beautiful and grand mission here in Vienna. You have to emancipate the Jews--in a manner, however, different from the course I have pursued. I have proved to the foolish world that a Jewess may very well be a princess and worthily represent her exalted rank, notwithstanding her oriental blood and curved nose; but in order to be able to prove it to the world, I had to give up my religion and to desert my people. It is your mission to finish the work I have commenced, and to secure to the Jews a distinguished and undisputed place in society. You shall be the mediator between the aristocracy of blood and of pedigree and the aristocracy of money--the mediator between the Christians and the Jews. You shall give to the Jews here in Vienna a position such as they are justly entitled to: free, respected, and emancipated from the degrading yoke of prejudices. Such is your mission. Go and fulfil it!”

“You are right, Marianne,” replied Fanny, with glowing enthusiasm. “I will fulfil the mission, for it is a grand and sacred one, and it will comfort and strengthen my heart. The happiness of my life is gone forever; but I may, perhaps, be happy in my unhappiness, and I will now try to become so by consoling the unhappy, by assisting the suffering, and by giving an asylum to the disowned and proscribed. To dry tears, to distribute alms, and to scatter joy and happiness around me--that shall be the balm with which I will heal the wounds of my heart. You are right; I will not retire from the world, but I will compel it to respect me; I will not flee with my grief into solitude, but I will remain with it in the midst of society, a comfort to all sufferers, a refuge to all needing my assistance!” [Footnote: Fanny von Arnstein kept her word. Her house became the centre of the most distinguished intellectual life; her hands were always open and ready to scatter charities and to spread blessings. She did not, however, give merely with her hands, but also with her heart, and only thereby she became a true benefactress; for she added to her gifts that pity and sagacity which know how to appreciate the true sort of relief. To many people she secured lasting happiness; to many she opened the road to wealth, and to some she gave sums which, in themselves, were equivalent to an independent fortune. Her hospitality equalled her benevolence, and she exercised it with rare amiability and to a remarkable extent. Every day numerous guests were received in her house in the city as well as in her villa, where they enjoyed the advantages of the most attractive, enlightened, and distinguished society.]

“That is right! I like to hear you talk thus,” exclaimed Marianne, embracing her friend, and tenderly pressing her to her heart. “Now my fears for you are gone, and I may bid you farewell with a reassured and comforted heart. My travelling-coach is waiting for me, and I shall set out in the course of the present hour.”

“And where are you going?” asked Fanny, sympathetically.

“That is a secret--a profound political secret,” said Marianne, smiling; “but I will confide it to you as a proof of my love. I go to Paris for the purpose of delivering to the first consul a letter from the poor Count de Provence, whom the royalists, and consequently myself, also call King Louis the Eighteenth of France. That, Fanny, is the legacy Prince Charles von Lichtenstein has bequeathed to ME. Through him I became acquainted with some of those noble emigres who preferred to give up their country and their possessions, and to wander about foreign lands without a home, instead of proving faithless to their king, and of obeying that despotic republic and the tyrant who now lays his iron hand upon France. It was the Prince von Lichtenstein who, two weeks ago, brought the Duke d’Enghien to me, and initiated me into the great plans of the unfortunate Bourbons.”

“The Duke d’Enghien was here in Vienna?” asked Fanny, in surprise.

“Yes, he was here; he kept himself concealed in the palace of your friend Lichtenstein, and only his devoted adherents knew where he was. The prince belonged to his most enthusiastic followers and friends. Oh, what plans those two fiery young men conceived in the safe asylum of my reception-room! what great things did they expect from the future for the cause of the Bourbons and for France! You ought to have see Prince Charles von Lichtenstein in such hours, Fanny; then you would have really understood and boundlessly loved him. His cheeks, then, were glowing with noble impetuosity; his eyes flashed fire, and sublime words of soul-stirring eloquence dropped from his lips. Never has an enemy been hated more ardently than he hated Bonaparte, the first consul; never has a cause been more passionately adhered to than the cause of his unhappy fatherland and that of the exiled Bourbons. If the Count de Provence could boast of a hundred such defenders as was the Prince von Lichtenstein, he would have reconstructed the throne of the fleur-de-lis within a week in Paris. Dry your tears, Fanny, for you are not most to be pitied. You only lost a lover, but the Bourbons lost a champion and Germany a true and valorous son; these two are more to be pitied than you. You may find a hundred other lovers, if such should be your desire, but the Bourbons have but few champions, and the number of the true and noble sons of Germany is constantly on the decrease.”

“And he said nothing to me about his plans and hopes?” exclaimed Fanny, reproachfully. “He never made me suspect that--”

“That he had not only a heart for love, but also for politics and for the cause of the fatherland!” interrupted Marianne, smiling. “My child, he loved with his heart; hence, so long as he was with you, all the schemes of his head were silent. Still he knew that the beloved of his heart was able and worthy, too, to be the friend of his head; and when he took leave of me, he instructed me to initiate you into all his plans, and to let you participate in his hopes. Fanny, your friend greets you through my mouth; he wishes to transfer his love and his hatred, now that he has left us forever to yourself. As he was a faithful son of his German fatherland, you shall be its faithful daughter and guardian, and watch over the welfare of your country, and devote yourself to its service with your whole strength. As he was an inexorable enemy of that new, blood-stained France and of her dictator, you shall forswear all connection with that country, which soon will pour its torrents of blood and fire over our own unhappy fatherland. You shall do whatever will serve and be useful to the fatherland, and you shall abhor, persecute, and combat every menace to subjugate Germany. Your house shall be open to all German patriots; it shall be closed against all enemies of Germany, no matter whether they are Germans or French, or to whatever nation they may belong. Such, Fanny, is the legacy which Prince Charles von Lichtenstein, the noble German patriot, has bequeathed to you with his love, and which is to comfort and strengthen you in your grief.”

“I accept this legacy,” exclaimed Fanny, radiant with enthusiasm. “Yes, I accept this legacy and will fulfil it faithfully! To Germany I will transfer the love which I once devoted to him; I will love and honor him in each of our German brethren. Like him, I will hate the enemies of Germany, and never shall my house be opened to them--never shall they cross its threshold as welcome guests! As I cannot be a happy wife, I will try to be a faithful daughter of my country, to love its friends faithfully, and to hate its enemies bitterly!”

“That is right,” said Marianne, joyfully. “Now you have received your best consolation, and the grief of your love will be transformed into deeds of love. The blessing of your departed friend will be with you, and the love of your fatherland will reward you for what you will do for it. And you shall assist our despised and down-trodden Jews, too, by proving to those who scorn us and contemptuously treat us as aliens, that we feel like natives and children of the country in which we were born, and that we do not seek for our Jerusalem in the distant Orient, but in the fatherland we share with all other Germans. Let us prove to these Christians that we also are good patriots, and that we love our fatherland like them, and are ready to make any sacrifice which it may require from us.”

“Yes, I will prove that I am a good patriot as he was a good patriot,” said Fanny, enthusiastically. “I will hate whatever he hated; I will love whatever he loved!”

“Amen!” exclaimed Marianne, solemnly. “And now, farewell, Fanny. I go to fulfil the legacy which Prince von Lichtenstein has bequeathed to me. He had taken it upon himself to deliver this letter to Bonaparte, and to see what the Bourbons have to expect from him, and whether Bonaparte is a Monk or a Cromwell. I fear the latter. The Bourbons and Lichtenstein hoped for the former. They believed he would be the Monk of the restoration, and he had only placed himself so near the throne in order to restore the latter to Louis XVIII., as Monk had done in relation to Charles II. Well, we shall see! I will go now and deliver the letter which Prince Lichtenstein has intrusted to me. Farewell, Fanny, and remember your legacy!”

“I shall remember it as long as I live,” said Fanny, fervently. “And as I never shall forget my love, I shall never forget my fatherland either. Both shall live indissolubly united in my heart!” [Footnote: The history of Baroness Arnstein and the tragic end of Prince Charles von Lichtenstein do not belong to romance, but to reality, and created a great sensation at that time. Every one in Vienna knew that love for Baroness Arnstein had been the cause of the duel and of the death of the Prince von Lichtenstein, but every one knew also that Fanny von Arnstein was not to blame for this event; hence the sympathy and compassion felt for the unhappy lady were universal. The imperial court and the city took pains to do homage to her and to manifest their respect for her. But Baroness Arnstein was not to be consoled by such proofs of public sympathy; the affliction which had befallen her was too terrible, and she did not endeavor to conceal her grief. She caused the cabinet in which he had seen her on the day preceding his death to be hung in black like a death-room; all the souvenirs and every thing reminding her of him were preserved in this room. She spent there every anniversary of his death in deep mourning, and at other times she frequently retired thither to pray for him. Except herself no one was ever permitted to enter this cabinet, consecrated as an altar for the religion of her reminiscences.--Vide Varnhagen von Ense’s Miscellanies, vol. i., p. 112.]

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XL. THE FIRST CONSUL

“Then you have seen and conversed with our poor, unhappy king?” said Madame Bonaparte to the beautiful and richly-dressed lady who was sitting on the sofa at her side, and who was none other than the Princess Marianne von Eibenberg.

“Yes, madame, I have often had the good fortune to converse long with him,” said the princess, heaving a sigh. “I passed a few weeks in his neighborhood, and touched by his resignation, his unfaltering patience, and calm greatness, I offered him my mediation; I wished to be the messenger whom the poor unfortunate would send out in order to see whether the shores of his country will never again be visible to him, and whether the great and intrepid pilot who is now steering the ship of France with so firm a hand has no room left for the poor shipwrecked man. The Count de Provence accepted my services; he gave me a letter which I was to deliver to the First Consul himself, and I set out for Paris provided with numerous and most satisfactory recommendations. All these recommendations, however, were useless; even the intercession of Minister Talleyrand was in vain; the First Consul refused to grant me an audience.”

“He had been told, perhaps, how beautiful and charming a messenger had been this time sent to him by the Count de Provence,” said Josephine, smiling, “and he was, therefore, afraid of you, madame. For Bonaparte, the most intrepid hero in battle, is quite timid and bashful in the presence of beautiful ladies, and not having the strength to withstand your smiles and prayers, he evades you and refuses to see you.”

“Oh, madame,” exclaimed the princess, quickly, “if the First Consul is unable to resist the smiles of the most beautiful lady, I predict to you an even more brilliant future; for in that case he will lay the whole world at your feet to do you homage. He who has remained at the side of Josephine a hero and a man of iron will, need not fear the beauty of any other woman.”

“You know how to flatter,” said Josephine, smiling. “You forget, however, that we are in a republic here, and that there is no court with courtiers in the Tuileries, but merely the humble household of a citizen and general, which, I trust, will soon give way to the splendor of royalty.”

“Do you believe so, madame?” asked the princess, eagerly. “Do you believe that the hopes which the Count de Provence has built on the noble and grand spirit of General Bonaparte are not illusory? Oh, let us be frank and sincere toward each other, for I know you sympathize with the sufferings of the royal family, and the terrible misfortunes of the august exiles find an echo in your heart. Hence, when I did not succeed in obtaining an interview with the First Consul, and in delivering my letter to him in person, I applied to you, and the Count de Provence himself authorized me to do so. ‘If Bonaparte refuses to hear you,’ he said, ‘go to Josephine. Bring her the greetings of the Count de Provence; remind her of the happy days of Versailles, where, as Viscountess de Beauharnais, she was always welcome at the court of my lamented brother. Ask her if she still remembers how often we joked and laughed together at that time. Ask her whether my present misfortunes shall last forever, or whether she, who holds my destiny in her hand, will restore me to mirth and joy.’”

“Oh!” exclaimed Josephine, bursting into tears, “if I held his destiny in my hand, he would not have to wait long for his throne and for happiness. I should be the first to jubilantly welcome him to France, the first to joyously leave these Tuileries, this royal palace, the grandeur of which frightens me, and in the walls of which it always seems to me as though I were a criminal adorning herself with stolen property, and stretching out her hands toward the holy of holies. And yet I am innocent of this outrage; my conscience is clear, and I am able to say that King Louis XVIII. has no more devoted, faithful, and obedient subject than the wife of the First Consul of France.”

“The king knows it, and depends on you,” said the princess. “Bonaparte’s heart is in your hands; you alone are able to move it.”

“But do I know, then, whether he has yet a heart or not?” exclaimed Josephine, passionately. “Do I know, then, if he loves any thing but his glory? Man cannot serve two gods, and his god is glory. He soars aloft with the glance of an eagle, and the radiance of the sun does not dazzle him. Where will he finally rest and build his aerie? I do not know. As yet no rock has been too lofty for him, no summit too steep and sufficiently near the sun. I follow his flight with anxious eyes, but I am unable to restrain him. I can only pray for him, for myself, and for the unhappy king; I can only pray that the bold eagle may not finally conclude that the vacant throne will be an aerie worthy of himself, and occupy it.”

“But you believe that he will do so?” asked the princess, quickly.

“Oh, my dear,” replied Josephine, with a melancholy smile, “no one is able to know at the present time, nay, even to conjecture, what Bonaparte will do; no one, not even myself. His mind is impenetrable, and he only speaks of what he has done, not of what he is going to do. His plans lie inscrutable and silent in his breast, and nobody can boast that he is aware of them. He knows that I am a royalist at heart, and he often mocks me for it, but more frequently he is angry with me on this account. Since the French people have elected him First Consul for life, I see him tremble and frown whenever I dare to mention our exiled king, and to call him our master. He has strictly ordered me to receive no stranger unless he has given me permission to do so, and all friends of mine, whom he knew to be enthusiastic royalists, have already been banished by him. I must feign to forget all I owe to friendship and gratitude, and yet all those cherished reminiscences will never be effaced from my heart. But I must obey my master; for Bonaparte is no longer only my husband, but he is also my master. Thus impeded in all her inclinations, the wife of the First Consul must swallow her grief and seem ungrateful, although she is not. State it to those who believe my fate to be an enviable one; state it to the Count de Provence, who deems my influence greater than it really is. He is, and always remains for me, the legitimate king of France, and I call God to witness that I do not long for the crown which is his legitimate property. I call God to witness that I have improved every opportunity to promote the interests of the Count de Provence, and that I have always taken pains to remind Bonaparte of his duty to his legitimate king. But my success has been insignificant, and to-day for the first time since a long while I dare again to entertain a glimmer of hope. Bonaparte knew that I wanted to receive you to-day, and he did not forbid it, although he had already been informed that the Princess von Eibenberg was highly esteemed as a devoted friend at the court of Coblentz, that she had made a journey to Mitau for the express purpose of seeing the Count de Provence, that she had been sent by the latter with letters and messages to Paris, and that the Duke d’Enghien, who some time ago had secretly been at Vienna, had been every day at your house.”

“What! The First Consul is aware of all that?” asked Marianne, wonderingly.

“His spies serve him well,” said Josephine, heaving a sigh, “and Bonaparte has got spies everywhere, even here in the Tuileries, here in my own rooms--and I should not wonder if he should learn even within the next quarter of an hour what we have conversed about here, although it may have seemed to us as though we were alone.”

“But if the First Consul learns that the Count de Provence wants to avail himself of my services for the purpose of promoting his interests here in Paris, and if he has, nevertheless, permitted you to receive me, it seems to me a favorable symptom,” said Marianne Eibenberg, musingly.

“Of course, he has some object in view in permitting it,” replied Josephine, sighing, “but who knows what? I am unable to fathom his intentions; I content myself with loving him, admiring him, and endeavoring cautiously to lead him back to the path of duty. But hush!” she interrupted herself all at once, “I hear steps in the small corridor. It is Bonaparte! He comes hither. He will see that I have wept, and he will be angry with me!”

And after breathing into her handkerchief in anxious haste, Josephine pressed it against her eyes, and whispered tremblingly, “Can it be seen that I have wept?”

Marianne was about replying to her, when quick steps were heard in the adjoining room. “He is coming,” whispered Josephine, and she rose from the sofa for the purpose of going to meet her husband. He just opened the door by a quick pressure of his hand and appeared on the threshold. His eyes swept with a quick glance over the room and seemed to pierce every corner; a slight cloud covered his expansive marble forehead; his thin lips were firmly compressed, and did not show the faintest tinge of a smile.

“Ah, I did not know that there was a visitor with you, Josephine,” he said, bowing to Marianne, who returned his salutation by a deep and reverential obeisance, and then fixed her large dark eyes upon him with an air of admiration.

“My friend,” said Josephine, with a fascinating smile, “the Princess von Eibenberg has been recommended to me by persons of the highest distinction, and I confess that I am very grateful to those who gave me an opportunity to make the acquaintance of this beautiful and agreeable lady. It is true, I hear that the princess is a native of Germany, but she has got the heart of a Frenchwoman, and speaks our language better than many of the ladies whom I hear here in the Tuileries.”

“Ah, she doubtless speaks that language of ancient France, which always pleases you so well,” exclaimed Bonaparte; and now there appeared on his finely formed lips a smile, illuminating and beautifying his face like sunshine. “I suppose, madame,” he said, suddenly turning to Marianne, “you have come hither in order to bring to my dear Josephine greetings from a cavalier of that ancient France which has forever fallen to ruins?”

“No, general,” said Marianne, whose radiant eyes were constantly and fearlessly fixed on Bonaparte--“no, general, I have come hither in order to admire the New France, and never shall I be able to thank Madame Bonaparte sufficiently for the happiness she has procured me at this moment. It is the first time in my life that I have been able to see a great man, a hero!”

“And yet you were in Loudon and Mitau and there saw the Counts d’Artois and Provence,” replied Bonaparte, sitting down in an arm-chair by Marianne’s side, and requesting the ladies by a wave of his hand to resume their seats on the sofa.

“And in Loudon, in Mitau, in Coblentz, everywhere they admire the hero who has risen like a new sun with the young century!” said Marianne, with irresistible grace.

“Those gentlemen of ancient France spoke of me, then?” asked Bonaparte. “You see, madame, I speak without circumlocution. I am nothing but a good soldier, and always strike directly at my aim. I have been told that you have come hither as an emissary of the Bourbons, and I confess to you that to-day for the first time I feel grateful to those gentlemen, for they have made a very beautiful selection. The emissaries sent hither heretofore were less beautiful and less amiable. Those Bourbons know the foibles of the male heart better than anybody else, and they want to fascinate me in order to seduce me afterward the more surely.”

“Pardon me, general, they were not so bold as that,” said the princess, smiling. “Let me say that I am not gifted with the magic power of Armida, nor are you with the sentimental weakness of Rinaldo.”

“You do not deem me worthy to be compared with Rinaldo?” asked Bonaparte, casting so glowing a glance on the fair emissary that Josephine almost regretted having brought this fascinating beauty in contact with her husband.

“I do not deem Rinaldo worthy to be compared with Bonaparte,” said the princess, with a charming smile. “Rinaldo did not conquer any countries; he did not cross the bridge of Arcole, holding aloft the waving colors; he did not see the pyramids of Egypt; he did not conquer at Marengo!”

“Ah, madame, you seem to have a good memory,” exclaimed Bonaparte, merrily, “and you do not only know ancient France, but are also quite familiar with her recent history.”

“General, it is owing to you that the history of France is that of the whole world, and that the victories of France signify the defeat of the remainder of Europe. But you have brought about an even greater miracle, for those whom you have vanquished do not hate you for it, but they admire you, and while cursing their own misfortune, they are astonished at your heroism and surpassing greatness as a military chieftain. There is no one who does not share this feeling of admiration, and there is no one who entertains it in a livelier manner than the two men who have reason to complain most of France, and who do so least!”

“Ah, you skilfully return to the charge,” exclaimed Bonaparte, smiling. “You would make a good general: you make a short cut on the field of flattery and so reach the more rapidly the straight road on which you want to meet the Counts de Provence and Artois in order to praise them before me.”

“No, Bonaparte,” said Josephine, hastily, “the princess, on the contrary, wishes to tell you how those gentlemen praise you, and with how much admiration they speak of you.--Oh, pray, madame, repeat to Bonaparte what the Count d’Artois told you the other day, and mention the honors and distinctions he would like to confer on my husband.”

“Well, I should really like to know the honors and distinctions which that little emigre, M. de Bourbon, is able to confer on the First Consul of France,” said Bonaparte, with a sarcastic smile. “Tell me, madame, what did the Count d’Artois say, and what that statement of yours is that has filled the ambitious heart of Madame Bonaparte with so much delight?”

“Oh, you want to mock me, my friend,” said Josephine, reproachfully.

“By no means, I am in dead earnest, and should like to know what the pretenders did say about me. State to us, then, madame, with your seductive voice, the tempting promises of the Bourbons.”

“General, there was no talk of promises, but of the admiration the Count d’Artois felt for you,” said Marianne, almost timidly, and with downcast eyes. “We conversed about politics in general, and Madame de Guiche, in her charming innocence, took the liberty to ask the Count d’Artois how the First Consul of France might be rewarded in case he should restore the Bourbons.”

“Ah, you conversed about this favorite theme of the emigres, about the restoration question!” said Bonaparte, shrugging his shoulders. “And what did the prince reply?”

“The Count d’Artois replied: ‘In the first place, we should appoint the first consul Connetable of France, if that would be agreeable to him. But we should not believe that that would be a sufficient reward; we should erect on the Place du Carrousel a lofty and magnificent column to be surmounted by a statue of Bonaparte crowning the Bourbons!’” [Footnote: Las Cases, “Memorial de Sainte-Helene,” vol. i., p. 337.]

“Is not that a beautiful and sublime idea?” exclaimed Josephine, joyfully, while the princess searchingly fixed her eyes on Bonaparte’s face.

“Yes,” he said, calmly, “it is a very sublime idea; but what did you reply, Josephine, when this was communicated to you?”

“What did I reply?” asked Josephine. “Good Heaven! what should I have replied?”

“Well,” said Bonaparte, whose face now assumed a grave, stern expression, “you might have replied, for instance, that the pedestal of this beautiful column would have to be the corpse of the First Consul.” [Footnote: Bonaparte’s own words.--Ibid., vol. ii., p. 337.]

“Oh, Bonaparte, what a dreadful idea that is!” exclaimed Josephine, in dismay--“dreadful and withal untrue, for did not the Count d’Artois say the Bourbons would appoint you Connetable of France?”

“Yes, just as Charles II. of England conferred the title of duke on Monk. I am no Monk, nor am I a Cromwell. I have not injured a single hair on the head of the Bourbons, and my hand has not been stained by a drop of the blood of the unfortunate king who had to atone for the sins of his predecessors. He had ruined France, I saved her; and the example of Monk teaches me to be cautious, for the English people had confided in him, and he gave them a king who made them unhappy and oppressed them for twenty years, and finally caused a new revolution; I want to preserve France from the horrors of a new revolution, hence I do not want to become another Monk.”

“And who should dare to compare you with Monk or Cromwell, general?” exclaimed Marianne. “If there is a man worthy to be compared with the first consul of France, it is only the great Washington, the liberator of America.”

“Ah, you think so because we are both presiding over a republic,” replied Bonaparte, with a sarcastic smile. “As I do not want to be a Monk, it is hoped that I shall be a Washington. Words cost nothing, and those who utter them so easily do not consider whether the circumstances of the two nations, the time and occasion may be as well compared with each other as those two names. If I were in America, it would be my highest glory to be another Washington, and I should deserve but little credit for it, after all, for I do not see how one could reasonably pursue there any other course. But if Washington had been in France, with its convulsions within and an invasion from abroad, I should not have deemed it advisable for him to be himself; if he had insisted upon remaining himself, he would have been an idol, and only prolonged the misfortunes of France instead of saving the country.”

“You confess, then, that France ought not to remain a republic?” asked Josephine, joyfully. “You want to restore the monarchy?”

“Wait for the things to come,” said Bonaparte, gravely. “To ask me prematurely to do things incompatible with the present state of affairs would be foolish; if I should announce or promise them it would look like charlatanry and boasting, and I am not addicted to either.”

“But you give us hopes, at least, that you will do so one day, when the time has come, I suppose, my friend?” said Josephine, tenderly. “You will not let this beautiful lady depart from Paris without a kind and comforting reply? She will not have entered the Tuileries, the house of the kings, in order to be obliged to inform on her return those to whom it justly belongs that there is no longer any room for them under the roof which their fathers have built. I am sure, Bonaparte, you will not send such a reply to the legitimate King of France from HIS OWN rooms.”

Josephine, glowing with excitement, had risen from her seat; stepping close up to Bonaparte, she encircled his neck with her beautiful arms, and laid her charming head on his shoulder.

“Oh, Josephine, what are you doing?” ejaculated Bonaparte, angrily. “Will not the princess tell the Count de Provence that the Tuileries are now inhabited by a downright bourgeois and hen-pecked husband, who treats his wife sentimentally even in the presence of other persons, and in return for her caresses has always to comply with her wishes? And shall we not be laughed at, my child?”

“I should like to see the Titan who would dare to laugh at the First Consul!” exclaimed Marianne, eagerly. “You would do like Jove; you would hurl down the audacious scoffer into the abyss with a flash from your eyes.”

Bonaparte fixed so long and glowing a look on the princess that Marianne blushed, while the jealous heart of Josephine began to ache.

“Bonaparte, state the reply you are going to make to the Count de Provence,” she said, anxious to withdraw his attention from the contemplation of this fascinating beauty.

“A reply?” asked Bonaparte. “What shall I reply to?”

“General, to this letter, which the Count de Provence has intrusted to me, and which I have solemnly pledged myself to deliver to you personally,” said Marianne, handing Bonaparte a sealed paper, with an imploring glance.

Bonaparte did not take it at once, but looked sternly at the two ladies who stood before him, turning their beautiful and deeply moved faces toward him with an air of supplication.

“It is a perfect conspiracy, then, ladies? A complete surprise of the fortress?” he asked. “You want to compel me forcibly to open the gates of my eyes to you? Do you not know, then, Josephine, that I have sworn not to accept any letters from the Pretender, in order not to be obliged to make a harsh reply to him?”

“Keep your oath, then,” said Josephine, smiling; “do not accept the letter, but permit me to do so, and let me read the contents of the letter to you.”

“Oh, women, women!” exclaimed Bonaparte, smiling. “They are born sophists, and I believe they would be able to outwit the devil himself! Well, I will comply with your request; take the letter and read it to me.”

Josephine uttered a joyful cry, and took the letter from Marianne’s hands. While she broke the seal and unfolded the paper, Bonaparte had risen from his arm-chair, and commenced slowly pacing the room. He knew, perhaps, that Marianne’s eyes were fixed upon him with a searching expression, and her glances were disagreeable to him.

Josephine read as follows:

“Men like you, sir, never inspire suspicion and uneasiness, whatever their conduct may be. You have accepted the exalted position which the French people offered to you, and I am grateful to you for so doing. You know better than anybody else how much strength and power are required to secure the happiness of a great nation. Save France from her own fury, and you will have fulfilled the foremost and greatest desire of my heart; restore her king to her, and future generations will bless your memory. But you hesitate very long to give my throne back to me, and I almost fear you will allow the opportunity to pass by unimproved. Hasten, therefore, and designate the positions you desire for yourself and for your friends. You will always be too indispensable to the state for me ever to be able to discharge the obligations of my ancestors and my own, even by means of the most influential positions. My character, as well as motives of sound policy, will induce me to pursue a liberal course. We are able to secure the happiness of France. I say we, for you cannot secure the happiness of France without me, and I cannot do any thing for France without you. General, Europe has fixed her eyes on you, and immortal glory awaits you.” [Footnote: This letter is historical.--Vide “Memoires d’un Homme d’Etat,” vol. vii., p. 393.]

“Always the same strain,” muttered Bonaparte, “always the story of the column surmounted by the statue of the First Consul crowning the Bourbons, while his bleeding corpse is to be the foundation of the column!”

“He is reflecting,” whispered Josephine to the princess. “That shows, at least, that he has not yet made up his mind to reject the offer of the Count de Provence.”

At this moment Bonaparte turned toward the two ladies and approached them rapidly.

“Are you authorized to receive my reply?” he asked, turning his gloomy eyes toward the princess.

“I shall feel happy and honored by any message you may be pleased to intrust to me,” said Marianne.

Bonaparte nodded to her.

“Will you permit me to write a letter here, Josephine?” he asked. Instead of making a reply, Josephine hastened to her desk, in order to take out some paper, to draw a chair to the table, and then to hand the pen to Bonaparte, with a fascinating smile. When he commenced writing, she supported herself in breathless suspense on the back of his arm-chair and looked over the Consul’s shoulder, while the Princess von Eibenberg, standing not far from them, looked at both with sparkling eyes.

Bonaparte hastily wrote a few lines, threw the pen aside, and turning around to Josephine, he handed her the letter.

“There, read it,” he said, “and read it aloud, so that the beautiful emissary of your M. de Bourbon may learn my reply, and know the contents of the message she is to deliver to him.”

Josephine took the paper, and read, in a tremulous voice, frequently interrupted by her sighs:

“I have received the letter of your royal highness; I have constantly felt a lively sympathy for you and for the misfortunes of your family. But your royal highness must not think of coming to France; you would have to pass over a hundred thousand corpses before reaching it. In other respects, I shall constantly take pains to do whatever will be calculated to alleviate your condition and to make you forget your misfortunes.”

“Well, Josephine, you are silent?” asked Bonaparte, when she ceased reading. “You are dissatisfied with my letter? And you, too, madame, have a dark shadow on your beautiful face! How could you expect another answer from me?”

“General, I believe the royal princes really hoped for another answer,” said Marianne, heaving a sigh.

“And what justified such a hope?” asked Bonaparte, sternly “What have I done to give rise to such chimeras?”

“General, the favorable answer you gave to Prussia--”

“Ah!” said Bonaparte, shrugging his shoulders, “the wind is blowing in that direction, then? Prussia asked me if she would cause us any trouble by tolerating the French princes within her boundaries. I replied in the negative; and when Prussia went further and asked whether we should feel offended or not, if she paid an annual pension to the Bourbons, I permitted even that on condition that the princes remained quiet and did not carry on any intrigues. They believed, then, that because I suffered distressed persons to be relieved and an asylum to be granted to the homeless, I should be ready, also, to make the beggars masters again, and to lay France at the feet of the exiles!”

“Bonaparte, your words are very harsh and very unjust,” exclaimed Josephine, sadly.

“They may be harsh, but they are true,” he said, sternly. “I will not permit them to entertain any illusions concerning myself; hence I have spoken so long and plainly. It would be harsh and cruel to hold out hopes to the Bourbons which I shall never fulfil. France is lost to them, and they will never recover her. State that to the princes who have sent you to me, madame. Let the Bourbons be on their guard, for France is wide awake and keeps her eyes and ears open. I am willing to forgive that little Duke d’Enghien for not considering me a great general, and for criticising my exploits, but I should neither forgive him nor either of his uncles in case they should try to trouble France with their senseless schemes. I know that the Bourbons have long been trying to find means and ways to reconquer the sceptre of St. Louis. So long as their schemes are floating in the air like cobwebs, I forgive them; but if they intend to act, let them weigh the consequences! He who menaces France is a traitor, whatever may be his name, and traitors will be punished to the full extent of the law. State that to the Bourbons, madame; state it especially to the Duke d’Enghien. And now be kind enough to deliver my reply to the Count de Provence. When do you intend to start?”

“In a few days, general.”

“Oh, that will not do. That poor Count de Provence will be eager to get a reply,” said Bonaparte, “and it would be very cruel not to transmit it to him as soon as possible. You especially will not wish to make him wait, and I therefore advise you to set out to-day, within the next hour! I shall issue orders that horses be kept in readiness for you; and in order that you may not be detained anywhere, I shall instruct two officers to escort you to the frontier. Hasten, therefore, madame; in half an hour everything will be ready for your departure.”

He nodded to her, and left the room.

The two ladies were alone again and looked at each other with mournful eyes. Marianne’s face was pale; a gloomy fire was burning in her eyes, and a contemptuous smile was visible on her lips. Josephine seemed greatly embarrassed, and her gentle eyes were filled with tears.

“I am to be transported beyond the frontier like a criminal!” ejaculated Marianne at last, in a voice trembling with anger. “I am to be treated like a dangerous intriguer, and yet I have only delivered a letter which had been intrusted to me by the king.”

“Forgive him,” said Josephine, imploringly. “He has been prejudiced against you, and the numerous plots and conspiracies, which have already been discovered, cause him to deem rigorous precautions altogether indispensable. But I beg you especially not to be angry with me, and pray beseech the Count de Provence not to hold me responsible for the deplorable message you are to deliver to him. I have opened my heart to you, and you know it to be filled with the most faithful devotion and with the most reverential affection for the unfortunate prince, but I am not strong enough to change his fate; I--”

Just then the door opened; M. de Bourrienne, chief of the cabinet of the First Consul, made his appearance and approached the princess with a respectful bow.

“Madame,” he said, “the First Consul sends you word that every thing is ready for your departure, and he has instructed me to conduct you to your carriage.”

Josephine uttered a groan, and, sinking down on a chair, she covered her face with her handkerchief in order to conceal her tears.

Marianne had now recovered her proud and calm bearing, and a bold and defiant smile played again on her lips. She approached Josephine with soft and quiet steps.

“Farewell, madame,” she said. “I shall faithfully report to the Count de Provence every thing I have seen and heard here, and he will venerate and pity you as I shall always do. May the First Consul never regret what he is doing now, and may he not be obliged one day to leave France in the same manner as he compels me to depart from Paris! Come, sir, accompany me, as it cannot be helped!”

And drawing herself up to her full height and as proud as a queen, Marianne, princess of Eibenberg, walked toward the door.

Josephine followed her with her tearful eyes, which she then raised to heaven. “Oh, my God, my God,” she whispered, “ordain it in Thy mercy that my worst forebodings may not be fulfilled! Guide Bonaparte’s heart and prevent him from going on in his ambition, from stretching out his hand for the crown of the Bourbons, and from staining his glory with the blood of--Oh, Thou knowest my fears; Thou knowest what I mean, and what my lips dare not utter. Protect Bonaparte, and guide his heart!”

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