Strife. A romance of Germany and Italy

Front matter

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A o wy via *0 ^ O a a a'^ n c '’ a o ,

Chapter I. — Immergrun 13 II. — Unexpected Guests 26

III. — Necessity 34

IV. — A Dream 40'

V. — Father Beaumont 51'

VI. — Speranza 59

VII. — “Asleep” 69

VIII. — Mademoiselle Beaumont .... 76

IX. — The Medal 87

X. — An Unfortunate Remark. ... 96

XI. — Amelia 105

XII. — Discoveries no

XIII. — San Angelo . . . . . . .119

XIV. — Retrospection 13 1

XV. — Surprises 139

XVI. — “ Love’s Young Dream ” . . . . 155

XVII. — A Rendezvous 169

XVIII. — Parting 179

XIX. — A Happy Interval 184

XX. — Incognito 190

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Xll

CONTENTS.

Chapter XXL — Arrested

XXII. — Cave of St. Anthony .

XXIII.' — A Midnight Excursion .

XXIV. — The Bowlder

XXV. — Angel of Death

XXVIII. — Out of the Body XXIX. — Character XXX. — Suspense XXXI. — Retribution XXXII. — Immergrun .

PACK

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ADIEU .

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CHAPTER I.

IMMERGRUN.

My father’s castle, Immergriin, was situated on the highest elevation of table-land running along the right bank of the river in the valley of the Elbe, a short distance below Dresden.

My great-great-grandfathers might be forgiven for their pride in this grand estate, whose possession with them dated several hundred years back. In their day, vine-hills, minsters, old towers, and windmills allured quixotic travellers to the neighborhood of Immergriin; but their descendants beheld with great satisfaction the gradual improvements in the valley, till villas, groves, and cultivated gardens nestled at their very feet, and they surveyed with the stately pride of the oldest family ” these modern improvements from their ancient castle.

A leafy avenue led by a rather circuitous and steep drive to the ” visitors’ grove,” as it was called. There every traveller was sure to find his way. It was pleasant to see parties of excursionists resting under

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the old trees, whose abundant foliage sheltered them from the noon glare, and to hear them eulogize the taste and hospitality of the De Stalbergs, who afforded them the charming view of the valley, and a bird’s-eye view of the Saxon capital, whose hum and bustle reached their ears with a softened, alluring sound. The grove was not far from the castle, and I fancy the enthusiastic praises that sometimes fell on listening ears were shaped for that purpose. It was a harmless flattery, intended to reciprocate some of the genial influence the proprietors of Immergrlin had exercised, out of pure hospitality to chance pleasure-seekers.

But, alas! dear reader, I have no such entertainment for you.

Snow covers the ivy that grows over the old castle-walls, the trees are mantled with snow, and the whole plain in the valley of the Elbe is one great blank. The steep hillsides on the opposite banks of the river, cut into narrow terraces for the vinegrowers, present a dreary aspect.

Rows of blackened sticks standing upright, and the gnarled vines shrinking from their stiff support, remind one of some humans, as we see them among the peasantry at the time of the vintage, when they have abused the gifts of Dame Nature, and converted the luscious fruit of these same vines into stupefying draughts.

While we are regarding this wintry prospect from a hall window, a friend, who was not expected this morning, has come cautiously behind me, to form

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his own opinions of my sanitary condition, as my father is out in his sleigh, notwithstanding the heavy fall of snow continues unabated.

‘‘ Well, little one, you have surveyed the prospect thoroughly, I think. What is your conclusion?” our friend asks.

“Not very flattering to my ancestors, doctor,” I reply, as quietly.

“ Poor ghosts ! of what offence are they guilty toward your little ladyship? ”

“ Why sh-ould they call this place Immergriin ? At this moment, not a twig or blade of green is to be seen, either on the castle walls, the trees, or anywhere in the landscape. Evergree7t, indeed : ough ! I do not wonder my father dislikes the place ; it is cold and dreary enough.”

“ Not wishing to cross your humor, mademoiselle, and entertaining due respect for the opinion of the Baron de Stalberg, I should be happy to learn more of this matter ; so come into the library. I have a word to say to you.”

Dr. Leon is not to be crossed, dear reader, any more than myself ; so we will go with him to the most inviting corner of the castle, as he requests.

The family physician and the pastor of the De Stalbergs were always the two cherished friends, selected with a regard to the same qualifications in either — piety and intelligence: one to administer to our weakness ; the other to restrain our self-sufficiency— both acknowledging their dependence on a greater Physician.

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It was scarcely fair to lay on my father’s shoulders all the weight of gloom that had oppressed my spirits and prompted my answer to Dr. L^on.

My eyes had rested a long time on that shroud of snow that covered the graves of my mother and our good bishop, in the family cemetery at Immergrlin.

There was only one window in the castle that looked into the cemetery. A church, built by my grandfather, and endowed with a pastorship, screened it from all the others.

Our bishop had fallen asleep ” only three months previous to the opening of my story, and, though but a girl of fourteen then, my incomplete character was already tinged with sombre shades, and I had my own hours of unuttered grief and lonely musing over that little cemetery.

My sister and brother shared with me the instructions of my father, who endeavored to inspire a healthier tone of mind than I had yet attained ; for though only a listener in the presence of the august faculty in the learned school of preceptors, my mind, very sensitive and a little wilful^ took occasional rambles over the fields of retrospection, and, gathering the withered flowers of hopes unrealized and promises unfulfilled, laid them away in secret nooks, to be cherished for what they had been.

Dr. Leon suspected' the existence of this “cranny,” and whenever he could get the faintest clew to the occasion of my retirement there, he poured in such a flood of sunshine on my morbid fancies that they

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appeared like rubbish,” as he called them, and I deserted them for the more cheerful views of real life he presented.

Come into the library with us, dear reader. It is very cheerful there. A large fireplace is all ablaze with ruddy flames. On the square blue tiles of the chimney-place, under the high old-fashioned mantelpiece, are pictures painted in the Meissen porcelain manufactory, representing Immergrlin under the benign influences of spring, summer, and autumn. There is one tile devoted to a winter view, but it is too flattering, and there is only one month in the year when it can be tolerated — the month of July.

My father is represented on one tile, as he appeared in his fifth year. He wears pink-striped pantaloons, with a waist not wider than two inches, fitting close up under his arms, little straps across the top of his fat arms, and a wealth of golden hair, the only covering of his fair neck and shoulders. He is looking very intently at something not included in the picture, and his dog, a woolly dog, seems to be wondering what his master is looking at, judging by the upturned head. The artist displayed a consciousness that attitude, and not expression, was his forte.

My sister Leoni, and her twin - brother Leon, occupy the oval centres of two contiguous tiles ; I, the youngest, the next tile to my mother’s. My mother has no apparent motive for being in the group, and I appear to have been at that juvenile age when one stays where one is put. I was put on the 2* B i8

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tile in a sitting posture, like the figures on a Chinese fan, sans floor or furniture. By far the best delineations on the tiles are a series of heraldic designs, including the armorial ensigns of all the branches of the De Stalbergs.

They seem to have been a hopeful race, for every device insinuates a claim in some form to that golden attribute whose progeny, according to Sophocles, is imperishable fame.

Spes — Esperance — Spera7tza ! The despair with which I opened this chapter betokens no especial transmission of this tri - formed motto as a talisman to one inheritor of the hopeful inscription. But I must not berate my ancestors, whose intentions were, no doubt, better than those embodiments of good purposes that are said to form a mosaic pavement for the lower world. I may confess, however, that these intentions last referred to are more obscure to my mind than some of the philosophy of the old fatalists, whose yearnings for the Truth, with their imperfect light, had more of the spirit of true religion than many of the revelations of our day, when men are more covetous of advantage, and whose spiritual excellence attains to .no greater elevation than the realization of their great expectations.

The library is a dreamy old place, and tempts one to forget one’s company manners. Make yourself at home, dear reader. The De Stalbergs accord that privilege to their guests as the , highest compliment to their intelligence and good sense.

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The curiosities in that cabinet with glass doors were all placed there by visitors to the ancestral and present occupants of the castle — from the Egyptian infant mummified three thousand years ago, to that arrow-head from the American huntinggrounds. So each article, besides its local worth, has a value by its association with some dear friend or honored guest.

The bronzes are all Pompeian copies ; the marbles, Roman ; and the stone and silver, Egyptian models. The engravings on the walls are German reformers, writers, kings, and electors, considered excellent portraits, and valuable to students of physiognomy. I became a physiognomist at a very early age, and Dr. Leon declared “ those old pictures had more to do with my education in that branch of learning than Addison ” — though a handsome edition of his works occupies a conspicuous corner in the lower row of English authors ; and that “ More would have considered me a fair illustration of prosopolepsia, or the taking a prejudice against a person for his looks, which he reckoned among the smaller vices in morality.” ^

Dr. Ldon often amused himself at my expense, but I was always compensated for the diversion my odd notions and ways ” afforded him, by a line and a precept proportioned to my capacity, and so gently offered, as a remedy for erring opinions, or suggestion for additional knowledge, that his raillery was taken for just what he intended — good-humored pleasantry, with never a suspicion of malice

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in it. For a young lady of my wilful tendencies to retain the good opinion of a man so opposed to unreason as Dr. Leon, the reader must suspect, and I admit, claims on his generous consideration, independent of any individual qualifications.

Dr. Leon was, as his name indicates, of Spanish origin — one of a large family of sons whose sole inheritance was the nobility of blood that had run in the veins of maternal and paternal ancestry, without the wherewithal to furnish nutriment, and without which the best blood becomes thin, and cries out from every member of the ignoble body, and punishes neglect of its cries with the afflictions of Job, even from the crown of the head to the sole of the fpot. Alimentiveness did not predominate over other propensities in Dr. Leon’s organization ; but the faculty of self-esteem was largely developed, and his spirit of independence, dignity, and self-government prevented his rusting in indigent idleness while there was a wide field for the occupation of his energies, which are the truest tests of real nobility. A relative on the maternal side, whose guardianship concluded with the distribution of the pittance left by their father to eight sons, gave them, as a bonus, an excellent maxim, modified by a man noted for practising what he preached, into this terse sentence : “Eagles fly alone, and they are but sheep which always herd together.”

Shrewd enough to take a good hint without quarrelling with its author or caring for his motive, the

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youngest of the eight brothers, at the age of sixteen, began the study of medicine, passed the ordeal of an examination before the faculty of the University at Berlin, “ walked the hospitals,” received the highest commendations of his professors, and so fastened upon their approbation by his display of perseverance, tenacity of purpose, and capacity of endurance, united with qualities peculiarly adapted to the profession he had chosen — tenderness, charity, and benevolence — that his fame reached the Prussian Court, and, at the age of twenty-six. Dr. Leon was appointed the court physician to Frederick William III. A prince who “ placed a Bible in the hands of every family in his realm,” could not fail to recognize the merits of a man who attributed his success in life to his unalterable faith in the maxims of that guide. For the precept of Sir Philip Sidney was but a dilution of a proverb, and yet stimulating enough to induce one young eagle to leave the aerie deserted by the parent birds, and, finding his own sustenance, prove his right to a noble name.

Such was my father’s friend. Dr. Leon. His estate adjoined Immergrlin, and his time was divided between his own and my father’s castle. His family consisted of a wife and one daughter. Madame was a bright, bonny lady; and Ethel, a fair-haired, beautiful girl of fourteen — just my age — was the crowning joy of the good doctor’s life. Castle Mkhren was the gift of the king to Dr. Leon. My father, the Baron de Stalberg, was attached to the court when Dr. Leon became the king’s physician.

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Immediately discerning the noble qualities of the new favorite, my father laid aside his usual reserve, and made friendly advances that led to mutual confidence, and were highly advantageous to Dr. Leon. The social character and rather retiring disposition of the king, inclined him to consult my father privately on many occasions when a more general council might have been held. Dr. Leon’s opinions were often deferred to on certain questions where his economy induced wise adjustment ; and the king admitted him to these private conferences on my father’s ascribing to the doctor the credit of whatever happy issues were due to his advice. After eight years of uninterrupted intercourse with each other and their king on this enviable footing, my father was obliged to retire from the court to devote the most tender care to my mother’s health, which threatened rapid decline. Dr. Leon having chosen for a wife a lady who, having no title to court favors, would not even share the privileges of her husband at court, gained a reluctant consent to his retirement, from the king, at the same time ; and “ by way of gratifying and rewarding both the friends,” the king gave the estate adjoining my father’s to the doctor, and furnished the castle “ as a bridal gift to the new wife.”

Several years were passed in travel through the East, and my mother’s health improved wonderfully; but suddenly she insisted on returning home, and declared her conviction that she would only live long enough to see Immergrlin once more.”

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The doctor and Madame joined their entreaties to my father’s in vain to dissuade her, and he finally yielded to my mother’s longing desire to return to her home.

One week after she arrived at Immergrlin, my mother suffered great mental anguish, and then all was blank for several months. A day came when she again recognized her home, husband, and children ; but it was only the flickering of a light that had seemed almost gone, to cheer the watchers for a moment — then expire.

Death is not the greatest sorrow. My mother’s grave was not so sad a place as her prison-house, and my father’s grief was not so terrible to me as the despair I remembered only too well.

But I invited you to hear what the doctor had to say in the old library. And there he is, dear reader, seated on the very fauteuil I notice he always takes when he anticipates some manoeuvring on my part. He thinks I cannot detect the anxiety brooding in that dear, benevolent face. I shall just let him entertain his opinion, and take a seat on the old tigerrug before the fire — a winter luxury especially for Minnette, the little one.”

I will confess the snow-air has made me a little nervous, and a certain dream — I believe in dreams — haunts me; so if Dr. Leon suspects any concealment of a certain little ‘‘ brownie,” who is my favorite guest in the cranny ^ but uneasy at the doctor’s menacing approach, I must avoid his challenge, or be defeated.

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You understand, then, why I make the firelight my excuse, and turn my eyes partly away from his inquisitive glances. >

Minnette,” — there is a touch of sadness in his voice, but I must not permit it to affect me — “you said your father disliked Immergriin?”

“Yes, doctor; only this morning, when the snow began to fall, he declared the castle was cheerless, the weather execrable, and he had but one tie at Immergriin.”

“ I suspected as much,” he answered, as if talking to himself The doctor looked a shade paler, or perhaps it was the sickly hue of the phantasm that threw its white mystery over everything I looked at. There are three occasions when this influence is very perceptible to me: the full moon, shedding its intense white light from an unclouded sky full on the disk of earth that I inhabit ; when at sea, the restless waters are churned into a creamy foam, and an impenetrable shroud of mist gathers around the shivering vessel, shutting from my view the sky, the only familiar sight in the vast solitude of mid-ocean ; and when all the landscape is covered — as I saw it from the window of the library — with its symbolic pall of pure snow, nature’s mute acknowledgment that so God can blot out His inevitable curse with heaven’s new whiteness.

These phenomenal occurrences repeat their unnatural effect on me as often as they repeat themselves ; and I am thrilled with the same consciousness always, of a strange sympathy with that white mystery, that impalpable something, that eludes criticism.

If you have no prepossession for these flimsy fancies,” dear reader, you may find a more palpable reason for Dr. Ldon’s pallor than the reflex of my “white ideal,” in his apprehensions of evil, in a physical sense, that threatened his dearest friend, my father.

CHAPTER 11.

UNEXPECTED GUESTS.

Have any visitors been here in my absence, or ; have you been away from the castle ? ” j

“No visitors have been here; but we have been away’ from the castle,” I responded as if I were repeating the translation of a sentence in an exercise-book.

The doctor smiled, as if even this faint attempt at gayety gave him some encouragement, and I improved my opportunity to seize the vantage-ground, and perhaps evade the cross-questioning regarding myself that I felt was coming.

“ We went to Dresden on Monday,” I continued, with my liveliest tones, “ and attended the opera in ^ the evening — Der Freischutz.”

“ Very good,” responded the doctor cheerily, “ the most wholesome hobgoblin dose I could prescribe. The very best satire on transcendentalism that could be conveyed to a rational mind.”

“ But the music, doctor ? ”

“ Capital, when you shut your eyes.”

“ On Tuesday we returned home, and Madame and Ethel dined with us.”

**And they are off the company list at Immergrun ? ”

“ I beg Madame’s pardon, and — ”

“ Granted by proxy ; and more readily, as neither one was included in my inquiry regarding visitors to the castle. And as I do not propose to weary you with my catechism, I have a leading question that will bring us nearer the purpose. Has the baron, your father, had any symptoms of nervousness or illness of any sort ? ”

“ No, doctor, I have not heard him complain of any — oh, yes ! I forgot. At dinner on Wednesday, just after Antonio removed the soup, which my father declared was insipid — though we all disagreed with him — he suddenly dropped his hands on his knees, and exclaimed, ‘ Oh ! that dreadful feeling — my hands and arms are like lead ! ’ Then he grew very pale; but Leon gave him a glass of water, and he took it in his own hand, and seemed well again the moment after he had swallowed the water.”

It was a rather sudden attack — ”

“ I scarcely think you would have pronounced it an attack, doctor; but a mere — what you call a symptom — ”

‘‘An adjunct; yes: there was no faintness, difficulty of respiration, articulation, or complaint of palpitation in the throat ? ”

“ Only that momentary paralysis of the arms,” I replied, confidently. “And there was no exciting cause; apparently; for but two letters came with the

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mail, and they w^re both friendly invitations from the Baron von Seibert at Prague and the Cardinal Darree at Rome.”

“ Well, run over the six days remaining, and tell me if anything occurred to excite or even interest your father more than usual.”

I was fairly caught now, on a point I had quite forgotten in my exclusive entertainment of “ the brownie.”

Madame had purposely failed to rentind the doctor that Leon and Leoni’s birthday fete was at hand, when he was invited by the conference and urged by my father to superintend the purchase of furniture and upholstery for the new parsonage; and we tried to intercept everything calculated to remind my father of the date. But we were ourselves deceived by his calm preparation for it.

Madame had sent the presents which she knew the doctor would approve, in his name, and wishing to avoid anything that might mar the pleasure of my brother and sister in receiving their gifts, she permitted them to suppose they were selected before the doctor’s departure, and promised herself a little amusement at the doctor’s expense, when he received the thanks that were due to her own providing for his forgetfulness. How should I avoid betraying Madame’s secret? I was saved all trouble on this score by the opening of the library door, and the appearance of the twin brother and sister in the room.

Delighted with the doctor’s presence, so unexpected to therti, they each seized a hand, and kissed

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him on both cheeks, Leon saying: thousand

thanks for the beautiful presents you sent for our fete, dear doctor.”

There was a dilemma !

Ringing for Nannine, Leoni ordered the presents to be brought in, and remarked, as the case of their more costly gifts was laid on the table : “ Doctor, you will have an opportunity now to prove your skill in pointing out characteristics in gifts.”

Yes, doctor,” added Leon, ‘"and you, no doubt, can guess the giver’s name as readily : so there they are, at your service.”

It was too absurd. I could not help laughing at the doctor’s dismay. In that grand, simple nature there lurked none of ” the civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits” of society, and at that moment the uneasy little gentleman was a fit subject for a comic sculptor. His well-braced shoulders had borne without bending under life’s burdens; his compact little head, well posed, had no nonsensical developments under the comfortable layer of iron-gray hair that was brushed away from his expansive forehead. His beard and eyebrows matched the hair perfectly; and it was inexpressibly amusing to me to see those eyebrows rise almost to a vertical line with the wrinkles in his forehead, as he drew down his beard with the hand that hesitated to touch the traps for his conscience that my brother had so innocently laid.

I was conscious of his giving an appealing glance at my face, that called for interference, and I could, by simply pointing out his own presents, have re- 3*

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lieved all embarrassment ; but it was a rare treat to see a lion-hearted man, who had no fear of anything in nature, coping with that imp of temptation, a fib !

I knew who would win, so my amusement was harmless.

In his desperation, the doctor gave one more look at me, and caught the expression of mirth I could no longer restrain.

^‘Minnette, you rogue,” he exclaimed, ^'you are mischievously enjoying my perplexity ! Come here this moment, and, by way of atonement, offer my defence for total ignorance of the source of every one of these baubles ! ”

As fate would have it, Madame Leon and Ethel burst in upon us just at the moment of confession; : and my sister’s demure account of “the doctor’s in- ; explicable gravity when she ordered the presents to ■ be brought,” threw Madame into convulsions of j laughter that even the doctor could not resist. |

When the presents were duly admired, the doc- j tor requested Leoni to summon Antonio, and I was surprised to see that Madame became sad and disquieted.

Nannine, answering the bell, was questioned regarding my father, and it was evident, by her manner, there was something she avoided mentioning ; and she hastily offered to “ send Antonio,” adding,

“ the baron went out an Hour ago, in his sleigh.”

“ My dear Kate,” said the doctor to Madame, “I wish to know the extent of the fainting-spell the baron had in his chamber on Wednesday night; and it is better not to conceal the real state of affairs ;

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from the children. There is no occasion for great alarm/’ he said, as we exclaimed at this acknowledgment that our father had suffered without our knowing more of it than the momentary faintness we had witnessed at table.

“Antonio did wrong to conceal my father’s illness from me,” said Leoni, with mingled pain and displeasure.

“My dear Leoni, I must acquit Antonio of blame,” replied Madame, hastily, and with her irresistibly persuasive tones. “The baron was merely faint after the mental struggle he endured against the returns of that violent grief he has brought into subjection, and that this fete-day naturally stirred again. Antonio called Nannine immediately, and your father, on recovering his consciousness, expressed the wish, that you should not have the pleasure of your fete marred by any information of his weakness.”

“ It should be a matter of congratulation also,” said Doctor Leon, “that your father could so promptly rally from an attack that five years ago would have prostrated him for weeks; and that he could even elude your tender watchfulness by appearing so cheerful — as Nannine reports him — on your fete-day. Now, to come to the point, I wish very much you would all join me in persuading the baron to leave Immergrlin. He is leading a more secluded life than his naturally cheerful nature can bear without injury. Content to devote his time to your instruction and happiness, he only occasionally sees the.- outside world — then, never^social-

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ly; and he admits no one to Immergrlin but the few friends who, like Madame and myself, are in entire sympathy with him. This must not be. In Italy he has many old court friends, with whom his present associations would be of the most cheerful character. And two years of entire change of scene, habits, climate, and intercourse would be of incalculable advantage to him, and better for you all. I will begin with the youngest. Come, Minnette, which do you prefer, orange-blossoms, or sn'ow-flakes ? ”

“ I should like it to be always summer,” I replied; “and on sunny days my father is always more genial.”

“I was sure of that vote. Now, Master Leon, your voice, if you please ? ”

“I am so extravagantly fond of travel that I could not offer an objection, unless it were to doubt the possibility of your effecting an arrangement to separate my father from yourself, doctor.”

“It will require our joint philosophy, my boy, to avoid, on this occasion, the imputation of folly. And I must beg you will none of you aid your father in an attempt at a compromise. If we should accompany you the result would not be the same.”

Ethel’s fair ringlets and my dark curls were in ominous proximity at that moment, and something very like a lamentation was threatening, when Leoni said :

“ Ah, doctor, if you are willing to trust my father away without your care, I am comforted by your confidence. But I shall sadly miss these very assurances ^f yours, that have power to^quiet my fears.”

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It was too much. Ethel and I broke into a loud wail ; and the doctor and my brother fled from the room, while Madame and Leoni shared their pockethandkerchiefs with us. Neither Ethel nor myself were ever known to be provided for these occasions, so it was a mercy they were rare.