Chapter XIV…

Chapter XIV

It was a singular coincidence that on the very same day and almost at the self-same hour another of the friends placed the decision of his happiness or misery in a woman's hands, and received no more consoling reply, nay was rejected in still more mysterious language than Edwin.

It happened thus. Mohr had gone to the little house on the lagune, as indeed he did every day, to inquire about Fraeulein Christiane's health. Neither he or any other man had seen her since the night of the accident; for she had positively refused even to receive Marquard, who had saved her life. She sat in the small room behind the kitchen, which the old maid-servant had given up to her; the single grated window looked out upon the canal and the bare, blackened chimney. Here she bolted herself in and opened the door only at Leah's knock, but remained mute even to her kindly inquiries, and during the first day sat like a statue on the stool by the window, with her eyes intently fixed upon the sullen waters below. It seemed as if she considered herself in a self-chosen prison, separated from the world for life. She touched none of the food her nurse brought, except a little soup and bread, and the only time she had spoken was on the third day, when she asked for some work. Since that time sitting always in the same place, she had sewed from early morning until late at night, mended underclothing, hemmed handkerchiefs, and answered all the young girl's timid entreaties and questions only by a pressure of the hand and a gloomy shake of the head.

The same cheerless report was all that could be given today. The night before, Leah had glided into the kitchen, listened at the door of the room, and heard the poor thing moving restlessly to and fro, perhaps to warm herself, for it was cold and she had refused to have a fire lighted in the little stove. She had often groaned like one suffering the deepest pain, and vainly striving to repress any manifestation of it. Midnight was long past before all was still.

"What will happen if God in his mercy does not perform a miracle and let a ray of his love and peace illumine the poor darkened soul!" exclaimed the little artist, with a deep sigh. "Oh! my child, don't you see I was right in saying that all earthly paths lead to darkness and error, unless we humbly strive to seize God's hand and walk by his side? This poor lost life! God forgive me, but I can scarcely help agreeing with the Herr Doctor: who can tell whether it was well for her, that we took so much trouble to recall her to existence?"

Leah was standing beside her painting table, with her pale face bent toward the floor. She made no reply. Her heart was so heavy with her own griefs and those of others, that had it not been for her father, she would fain have wished herself out of the world.

"My honored friends," said Mohr, rising from his chair, where puffing huge clouds of smoke from his cigarette he had sat for some time absorbed in thought, "I too am of the opinion that something must be done; we have given the mercy of God ample time to work a miracle. Perhaps that mercy is held in abeyance; perhaps God is waiting to see whether we will not ourselves move in the matter and assail the difficulty with our poor human powers. And to do this, I at least, a tolerably obstinate heathen,--no offense, Herr Koenig--am fully resolved."

"What are you going to do?" asked Leah, looking up in alarm.

Mohr stretched his herculean frame, as he was in the habit of doing, when after long consideration he had formed some definite resolution. For a moment his muscular arms almost touched the ceiling, then he buried his hands in his bushy hair and said, half closing his eyes and drawing his mouth awry:

"This Marquard may understand his trade well enough, so far as the body is concerned, but rubbing the limbs is not all that can be done. The soul, which has been just as much benumbed by the accident, must also be warmed by spiritual friction and moral mustard plasters; for in its desperation it is still freezing in its death-like torpor, while the body is already rejoicing in the flow of the thawed blood. I'll go in and apply to this apparently dead soul, some of the restoratives we ought to have tried long ago."

"She will not admit you," said Leah with a sorrowful shake of the head, "and even if--have I not done everything in my power, by kind words and the most sincere good will--"

"Certainly, my dear Fraeulein, but that's just it: you've handled her with gloves. I--now, I will try a ruder way. Devil take it! no offense, Herr Koenig, but really the evil one, if there is such a person, would laugh in his sleeve and with good reason, if we let this poor soul, which we've toiled so hard to snatch from his clutches, fall back into them for want of aid. Here it's force against force, and a little cunning into the bargain; if you'll knock, Fraeulein Leah, and say you want to come in and then let me step before you--such an innocent stratagem will never be imputed to you as a sin."

"I fear it will be useless," replied Leah, "even if it does actual harm. At least I--but perhaps I don't understand." She went out, and Mohr, with awkwardly feigned liveliness, followed her on tip-toe as if bent upon some mischievous prank. Yet the hands he passed through his hair trembled. When Leah knocked at the chamber door, a scarcely audible voice within asked: "Who's there?"

"I, dear Christiane," replied the young girl, "and I wanted to ask if you would allow--here is--"

At this moment the bolt was drawn back, and Mohr, without the slightest ceremony, passed Leah and entered the half open door.

"Here's some one else," he said finishing Leah's sentence, "who would like to inquire about Fraeulein Christiane's health. Pardon an old friend, that cannot endure to be always shut out by locks and bolts. By Styx, my honored friend, you've not chosen the most cheerful quarters. This dark cage is uncommonly well adapted to give the blues."

Christiane was speechless. At the entrance of Mohr, who instantly closed the door behind him, she had started violently and fled to the grated window, where she stood motionless, with her arms folded over her breast and her eyes cast down; she almost seemed to be asleep. The jesting tone died on his lips, as he saw the death-like pallor of her face and the expression of hopeless suffering that dwelt about her mouth and eyes. As he approached nearer and tried to take her hand, she drew still closer to the window, sank into the chair which stood beside it, and with averted face and shuddering limbs motioned him away. An inexpressible compassion took possession of him.

"Fraeulein Christiane," he said when he partially recovered from the shock of such a meeting, "my visit is unwelcome to you; I'm sincerely sorry, but the reasons for my intrusion are far too grave for me to take leave of you at once, as well-bred people usually do under such circumstances. The more quietly you listen, the sooner you'll get rid of me. Will you listen?"

"No!" at last burst hoarsely from her scarcely-parted lips. "Go--leave me--I've nothing to hear or say!"

"Allow me to doubt that," he answered with apparent composure. "For in the first place you are ill. The wisest sick people don't know what's good for them, they are in a certain sense irresponsible beings. Whether you have anything to say to me, I do not know, but I, have a great deal to say to you. To begin without circumlocution: I know you're angry with me, because I prevented you from accomplishing your purpose and turning you back on this world, which for some unknown reason, you wished to quit. Do you know why I took this liberty? Not from common philanthropy. I should beware of grabbing the coat tail of the first person I might see making the leap. No, my dear Fraeulein, what I did for you I did from common selfishness; for if you were no longer in this world, it would lose it charms for me, like a quartette from which the first violin was missing. Pardon the not very clever comparison, but while your face is so ungraciously averted, I'm glad if I can even patch my sentences together, without making any pretensions to style." She still remained silent, with her forehead pressed against the bare wall and her hands convulsively clasped.

"I don't know for what you have taken me so far," he continued in a smothered voice, as he leaned, against one of the bed posts and secretly wiped his forehead, although the room was by no means warm. "Probably you've not had quite so bad an opinion of me, as I of myself, since I was vain enough to put my best foot forward as far as possible. One thing however, you do not know: as a man I may be a tolerably useless, superfluous and ill-made individual: but as a poodle I'm remarkable. The few persons to whom I attach myself can never shake me off, no matter what they do, or whether I'm agreeable or disagreeable to them. And therefore, I must inform you, that it will be useless to reject me, ill-treat me, or even plunge into the water again to get rid of me; the poodle will leap in after you and bring you out again, even if he's obliged to do it with his teeth.

"I know that if you were to vouchsafe me a word, you would ask by what right I intrude upon you, what you are to me, why I annoy you with the information of my poodle qualities? Dear Fraeulein, I might answer that I can no more give you a reason than the poodle could in the same situation; it is mere instinct. But a still better reply would be this: the misfortune of my life, dear friend, has been that I've always done everything by halves. It grieves me deeply, that this time also, in saving your life, I seem to have only half succeeded, and therefore I wish to see if I cannot complete my task, if I devote to it all my energies, my small portion of brains and heart and my large share of obstinacy.

"Don't be offended by the not very choice mode I take of expressing myself, dear Christiane! You may believe that I'm in the most solemn earnest. Do you know what I told the brothers in the tun, when I first saw you and received that well merited dismissal you gave? I said that you were a whole-hearted woman, for whom I had a great respect. And this respect I still feel, and because I believe you to be one of the rare women, to whom an honest man may without the slightest peril offer his heart and hand--"

"Hush! Oh! for God's sake, hush!" she interrupted, starting from her rigid immobility. "Go, go--say no more--each word is like a red hot needle piercing my wounded flesh. You don't know--you shall never know--"

"Nonsense, dear Fraeulein! I shall never know! As if I wanted to know anything, as if anything I could learn would be able to change my opinion of you! No, my honored friend, that would not be a poodle's trait. His master may steal spoons, may be the saviour of his native land; it makes no difference to the dog, he licks his hand with equal respect. The motive you had for taking that premature cold bath, I shall never ask to know in this world. Of course you were not entirely yourself, you had been tasting some of the bitter wormy apples, that hung on the tree of knowledge, and the cramps which ensued appeared unendurable. So be it! That belongs to the past, you've rid yourself of the indigestion by a violent remedy, and can gradually regain a taste for the household fare life serves up on an average. Isn't this clear to you, best, dearest of all artists? You would not be what you are, would not play Beethoven as you do, if you had passed by all the abysses and thorney hedges of this life safe and untorn."

He waited a short time for some reply; then he tried again to approach her window, but she turned away with a shrinking gesture, as if he would be degraded should his hands touch hers.

"No, no, no!" she cried in a stifled voice. "You think a thousand times too well of me. I--oh! there's nothing that less deserves to live, that is less able to endure life, than the wretched creature for whom you, self-sacrificing as you are,--but no, draw back your hand; you don't know whom you wish to raise."

"Is it so?" he said quietly. Then we must call things by their right names, that we may understand each other. Statistics and public opinions unite in saying, that of all the women who arbitrarily seek to leave the world, nine-tenths seek death from misplaced affection, deceived, unrequited, or hopeless passion. Should your case be one of these, the common prejudices of the world cannot prevent me from placing my love at your disposal. I know you never can have done anything base, half way, contemptible, which alone could degrade you in my eyes, because it would destroy and give the lie to the image of you which I cherish in my heart. Even if a misplaced love had led you into the arms of an unworthy man, and indignant anguish at a piece of knavish treachery, devilish villainy--He suddenly paused, startled by the fixed, almost Medusa-like gaze, with which she looked him in the face.

"I thank you," she answered mournfully. "'Devilish villainy' the words are apt, very apt. It's only a pity that I can't tell you why they are so. But that--that no lips would utter, save in madness, and unfortunately madness will not yet come to me. Perhaps if I repeat the words over and over, reflect how well they apply--but no, Fate is not so compassionate! Into the mire with the worm, should it show any desire to crawl. But to crush it, to give it the death blow--ah no! that would be far too humane, too magnanimous for an adorable Providence. Fie, how bitter this earth taste becomes on the tongue!"

She shuddered, then started from her straw chair as if some strange power had rudely shaken her. "Can you still remain!" she exclaimed. "Don't you feel that I must hate you more than any other human being, just because you have restored me to myself, hurled me back to the fate I thought I had escaped? It is such a refinement of mockery, that you should come with your kind, warm-hearted desire to aid me now, when there's nothing more to be saved. Ha! ha! ha! Perhaps if you stay here a little longer, madness may come. Then you would have rendered a service, which would atone for much. Won't you sit down? We'll have a little music--a few false notes more or less--pshaw, what will it matter? The harmony of the spheres will not be interrupted. Well? Don't you like the idea? Why are you silent?"

"Christiane," said he, and the tone of his voice revealed a firm, inexorable purpose, "I will take my disagreeable face out of your sight--for to-day! But rely upon it; you will see me again. You do not know, cannot suspect what means a brave, honest man can summon to aid him in healing wounds that seem to be mortal. Christiane, despite all you have told me, I cannot give you up, cannot leave you to yourself; and this terrible, incomprehensible fate of which you speak--only give me time to struggle with it; I think I'm the stronger. Your life belongs to me. You threw it away, and I, the honest finder, restore it to you--if you despise it, it's mine. Only give me time! Only promise me--"

"Nothing," she exclaimed with savage resolution, by which she strove to arm herself against his beseeching words. "My life is over. You will never--never see me again!" She turned away and hid her face in both hands, which she pressed against the iron bars. After a pause she heard him say: "So be it; I will go. But every word I have said stands fast. Henceforth your life is mine. I'll see who'll tear it from me." Then he left the room. Leah and her father were waiting for him in the sitting room. He passed on in silence, as if he did not see them, and the expression of his face was so gloomy and menacing that neither ventured to accost him.

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Chapter I

When, late in the evening Edwin returned home, he found Balder lying dressed upon his bed, with the little lamp, by which he seemed to have been reading, beside him. His face was even paler than usual, his features wore an expression of feverish excitement, and his limbs were so paralysed by exhaustion, that he could only raise his head a little to greet his brother.

"What news do you bring?" he cried. "Nothing good? How is it possible!"

Edwin approached his bed and bent over him. "Child," said he, "you ought to have been undressed long ago. Do you know that you're very cold and pale? I've nothing now but you. If you play me any mischievous tricks--"

"Oh! Edwin I--But you, how do matters stand between you and her? For God's sake tell me! what has happened? What did she say?"

"Nothing new, child; nothing which could surprise us. But it will be better to say nothing more about it to-day. I've taken a long tramp and feel very well now. Don't you see I'm perfectly calm! Why do you excite yourself instead of going to sleep, as I am about to do?"

"No, no," cried the youth starting up in bed, while Edwin was trying to re-kindle the fire in the stove; "I want to know all! Do you suppose I could sleep? Tell me--"

"Well then, we had a thorough explanation and parted afterwards good friends, very good friends, but who, however, are resolved to avoid each other in the future. That's all, my boy! There, the fire is burning again. I feel terribly cold; and the night will be long and may bring snow. So Mohr, whose specialty is getting up a heat, hasn't been here! Come, we needn't grudge ourselves a little supper, now that we have become capitalists. I'll call Lore."

"I've already provided for that," said Balder. "I thought--we would have a pleasant evening together. She put it all down on the bench by the lathe--Oh! Edwin, is it possible?"

"What, my dear fellow? That there are people, young ladies especially, who don't find your brother so lovable as you, dear enthusiast? Ladies who would not prefer a tun and his heart to a fairy castle? Oh! child, if I really were the human jewel your brotherly affection believes me, don't forget how poor and tasteless the setting is, and that elegant young ladies regard fashion more than material. Courage, old fellow! We're too good to dispose of ourselves for less than our value; fool that I was to wish for something more in life, when I was already so rich. Haven't I wife, child, brother, and sweetheart all in one? Come on, child. I feel as hungry as if, instead of a stomach, I carried in my body the basket[5] I received this morning, and the provisions in yonder corner look remarkably appetizing!"

"Unfortunate girl!" said Balder in a hollow voice.

Edwin paused in the middle of the room. "I thank you for those words," he said with a sudden change of tone. "She deserves that one should weep tears of blood for her. Not because she is unable to take a liking for my worthy person; in that, she is perhaps very wise. But to be a child of the world, as she is, and neither able to conquer her fear of annihilation, nor able to take refuge in the arms of the eternal one called Love--oh! child, it's terrible. To have a heart so heavy that it draws her into the gulf of death before she knows why she has lived--a mind so clear, that it contends that we have a right to give up an enigma we are weary trying to solve, even if it were our own life, in order to obtain repose! Yes tears of blood, precisely because she cannot weep them herself; for her poor Undine soul, in its despair, has not even the petty consolations of tortured mortals. Mark my words, no drop of blood will flow when she dies. She'll be found some day sitting before her mirror with a frozen heart. Turned to stone by her own image."

"Edwin! You think--she could--"

"Put an end to her life, rush out of the world--marry the count, which to be sure, amounts to very much the same thing. But hush! I hear Heinrich on the stairs. We'll show him cheerful faces; these have not been altogether happy days for him of late."

Mohr entered. It was touching to see how his gloomy face brightened when Edwin without saying a word, handed him the letter from the faculty. "I'll dedicate my comedy to these gentlemen," said he. "There seems to be some people in the world after all who know how to appreciate uncommon merit."

He remained until late in the evening. They pushed the table close to Balder's bed-side and all shared in the frugal meal, engaging in conversation about the latest events in their lives; a conversation during the progress of which each unburdened his heart to the other, and in acknowledging the necessity and inevitability of pain and sorrow they grew as calm as mariners who, floating with the stream, take in oars and sails and lying on their backs watch the movements of the clouds.

But when the brothers were again alone, the memory of what they had recently experienced seemed to seize upon Edwin with fresh strength. "I would give my life to help her!" he said to himself. Balder doubtless caught the remark, but remained silent. When they had put out the light, he heard Edwin rise and come to his bed. "Child," said he, "it's so cold over there. Move a little nearer to the wall; I should like to hold your hand until I fall asleep. I've nothing but you, but that's enough, if I only know you're near me."

He lay down beside Balder, with his hand clasped in his brother's. It was not long before he fell asleep and breathed as quietly as a man who has peaceful dreams. But Balder lay awake for hours, revolving various unformed ideas in his mind.

When they awoke the next morning, they were as usual silent and absorbed in their own thoughts, and the events of the previous evening were not mentioned between them. Edwin looked over his notes for the lecture. Balder sketched some models lent him by his employer; only once the latter asked casually if Edwin was not going to answer the deans' letter immediately. "There's no great hurry now, child," replied the other. "But it shall be done. A change of air would be the best thing for me, and perhaps for you too."

"Certainly," replied the invalid. "I long to get away from this air." He meant more than his words conveyed, but Edwin did not see the calm smile that would have betrayed his thoughts.

"I shall leave you without any one to look after you to-day, my dear boy," said Edwin, as he put his notes in his pocket to go to the lecture. "I hope you'll be good and neither attempt to work, nor commit any other act contrary to police regulations. Farewell, child! Make up a little more fire. Your hands are so cold again."

At the end of ten minutes Balder threw aside his pencil, and began to exchange his dressing gown for a street suit. His hands trembled when, for the first time in many weeks, he again took out the old cloak and little grey hat he had worn on his last expedition to the courtyard. Despite his old fashioned, almost shabby clothes, and the weary manner in which he limped along with his cane, there was such a charm in his movements and the slight droop of the beautiful face, that no one would have smiled at the short cloak and worn felt hat.

He glided down the stairs very softly. On the landing before Christiane's door, he remembered how long it was since he had heard her play. He thought she had stopped on account of his illness and determined on his return to knock and beg her not to deny herself the pleasure any longer. The door of the workshop was only ajar. The head journeyman saw him pass, and called after him to ask a friendly question about his health and warn him not to catch cold. He answered with a jest and crossed the courtyard without looking at the bench in the bean arbor, but was obliged to stand still a moment in the entry to recover his breath. His heart throbbed loudly; he heard through the door Franzelius' deep voice, suppressed but apparently engaged in eager conversation, and now and then a merry, girlish laugh he had missed for weeks. Only a momentary pang thrilled his frame, the next instant he was calm and cheerful again. He felt strong enough to enter and greet the happy pair without envy. "Perhaps I will when I come back," he thought, and then limped softly forward, glad that he met no one who would have remonstrated against his hazardous venture.

A keen, cold east wind was blowing, driving before it flakes of dry crumbling snow. Fortunately an empty droschky was just passing; Balder stopped it, and as he sat within, wrapped himself closely in his cloak. But it was not the cold that made him shiver, but the feverish excitement of his blood; for every pulse throbbed in anticipation of the decisive moment he was about to meet.

When he reached the house in Rosenstrasse, he could not alight directly at the door, as an elegant carriage already occupied the place. He ordered the droschky to wait, and with many pauses, that he might not lose his breath, ascended the stairs.

Little Jean opened the door and stared at the unexpected visitor with eyes that grew larger than ever at the sight of him. There was some one calling on his mistress, he said, but perhaps she would receive him; he would see. He came back almost immediately and in his unmovably solemn manner, without uttering a word, opened the door of Toinette's room.

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Chapter II

When the young girl saw Balder, she hastily rose from the sofa and with the most winning cordiality approached him, holding out both little hands, as if to support his tottering steps.

"You've come to see me yourself--to-day!" she exclaimed. "But was it safe? The wind is so cold--my stairs are so steep--and yet you don't know how glad I am to see you well again. Allow me to introduce you to the Herr Count."

She turned toward a tall, slender man, dressed entirely in black, who sat negligently leaning back in the chair beside the sofa, and only noticed the young stranger in the shabby cloak by a slight bend of the head. A flush crimsoned Balder's face, partly at the count's haughty gesture, partly at the thought: "So he's the man who has supplanted Edwin!" His clear eyes rested a few seconds upon the countenance of the young nobleman, who had taken a newspaper from the table and seemed to be attentively reading it. He did not know why the regular features and faultless figure caused him so much dissatisfaction, and at the same time awakened a sort of compassion. He too had bowed in silence and now sank into the arm chair the beautiful girl had drawn forward with friendly solicitude.

He was now sitting opposite her, but at first could find no words with which to begin a conversation, he was so completely captivated by her face. In spite of Edwin's descriptions, he had not imagined her so beautiful and elegant, had not supposed that the tone of her voice and the expression of her dark eyes were so gentle and innocent. She seemed to attribute his silence to exhaustion caused by unusual exertion and left him to rest for a time, while she rang for the boy and ordered some sugar and water. Then she again turned toward him and in the most cordial manner questioned him concerning his health, and what remedies the doctor had ordered.

His only reply was to express his thanks for the friendly interest she had shown him during the past few weeks, and tell in how many delirious dreams the palms had played a part, and what pleasure they had afforded him in his hours of consciousness. At first his manner was hesitating and embarrassed, but when he noticed the sarcastic smile on the face of the count, who sat opposite him without uttering a syllable, he suddenly shook off his diffidence and gave utterance to so many bright and clever ideas that Toinette thought him very attractive, and frankly told him that his brother had slandered him, when he described him as a misanthropic hermit. She hoped to see him more frequently now; she was angry with him for having waited till he had been seriously ill before finding the way to her, and he might as well confess that the only reason he had not joined the party to Charlottenburg, was because he was prejudiced against her. Who could tell how Edwin might have slandered her too. She said all this in such a gay tone, that Balder was secretly amazed. Was it coldness of heart or self-control, that enabled her to speak of Edwin as if nothing had occurred between them, as if he would come to her again to-morrow and renew the old intercourse? Absorbed in this reflection he again became silent, and she also lost her gayety.

"You were going to say something more," she began after a pause. "I saw you repress the words that were hovering on your lips."

"You may have been right," he replied. "But if you'll allow me, I'll say it some other time. I'll not interrupt you any longer to-day." He glanced at the count and prepared to rise.

"My dear Count," said the fair girl, without the least embarrassment, "I should like to say a few words to Herr Balder alone. If you would go into the ante-room for five minutes--you will find books on the table, and can amuse yourself in feeding my sparrows."

"I hope the private audience will not last too long," said the young gentleman sharply, as he rose, and pulling his whiskers, walked slowly toward the ante-room.

Toinette's color heightened. "Have patience," she cried. "Herr Balder is a less frequent visitor than you, and I must avail myself of the favorable opportunity. Besides, you'll lose nothing important, so far as I am aware."

He made her an ironical bow and said: "You somewhat abuse your sovereign rights, Fraeulein; but in case of necessity, the room to which you send me has a second door of egress. Au revoir."

They were scarcely alone, when Balder seized Toinette's hand and pressed it warmly. "Dear Fraeulein," he said, "I thank you for having allowed me this interview. I shall not try the gentleman's patience long. The object that has brought me here, in addition to the desire to thank you in person, is soon explained. My brother has told me--from the very beginning--the terms on which he stood with you, and that yesterday you deprived him of all hope. I don't know whether you were really as much in earnest as he supposed, whether it was indeed your final answer. And Fraeulein, I'm so proud of my brother that I could not make up my mind to utter even a syllable that might sound like intercession to a woman who had really rejected him. It's not merely the partiality of kindred blood: I've lived with him six years and know his value, and I know that the best of women would scarcely be good enough for him. Therefore, if the woman he loved did not perceive his worth, it might at first be a great grief to him, but I should console myself with the thought that she did not deserve him and must lack the power to render him happy, if she could fail to appreciate his nobleness and wealth of intellect, and her incredible piece of good fortune to be loved by such a man. Knowing you as I do, dear Fraeulein, through him and through my own short acquaintance with you, I have formed too favorable an opinion of you to believe that you could be blind to the worth of Edwin's mind and heart. His ironical manner of speaking of himself, his simplicity, and disdain of all pretension have not deceived you in regard to the depth and warmth of his nature, the superiority of the man who has laid his life at your feet. If nevertheless you can endure the thought of losing him, I must believe that some other obstacle stands between you. You have always been honest and frank toward Edwin. Be so to me too, dear Fraeulein; tell me openly whether I'm mistaken or whether I have made the right conjecture, in believing you would have accepted his offer if he had been entirely alone in the world, if he had not imposed upon you, for who knows how long a time, the care of an invalid brother."

She looked at him with an expression of the greatest astonishment and admiration. "Dear Herr Balder, how can you even for a moment--"

"You're right," he smilingly interrupted, "it would be too much to expect you to carry honesty so far. Therefore please say nothing, but let me tell you that this miserable obstacle does not really stand in the way, or rather that it will scarcely be an obstacle after a few weeks longer. I've asked our physician on his conscience--and fortunately he has one, so that I might even have believed a different answer than the one he gave. The poor mortal who stands before you, will soon be obliged to leave vacant even the modest place he now occupies in the world. Edwin of course has no suspicion of this; we are all accustomed to think even the inevitable improbable, if it's coming is long delayed. When it at last occurs, we try to accommodate ourselves to it as best we may. Edwin will get over his grief in time. For my part--I confess, dear Fraeulein, I find the world very beautiful. I should have liked to continued your acquaintance too. But one must not be grasping; I've enjoyed life so fully, in a condensed essence as it were, that I really ought not to complain if the portion allotted to me is already consumed." He paused, a calm smile resting on his lips. When he looked up, he saw that Toinette's eyes were full of tears. "Why do you weep?" he asked anxiously. "I hope my fate, which causes me anything but sorrow--"

"No," she eagerly exclaimed, closing her eyes a moment as if to repress the tears. "I don't weep for you, dear Balder--pardon me for addressing you like an old friend or brother-you're not to be pitied, I envy you your beautiful life and your still more beautiful death, even if it is as near as you believe; perhaps it may be farther off than you think; a man can endure much, and doctors are bad prophets. If my eyes grew moist, it was for myself, because I'm such a poor fool, that I must remain in debt to you and your brother for the offer of all the good and beautiful things you would fain give me but which I must nevertheless decline. Dear Balder, if you knew--but why should you know? If I'm unhappy, isn't it my only consolation to at least appear no worse than I am, explain why, with the best intentions, I cannot make those I love as happy as they deserve to be?

"I have repented a thousand times," she continued, pushing her hair back from her temples, and at the same time surreptitiously brushing the tears from her eyes, "that I did not yesterday tell your brother all my story. I have been reflecting ever since how I could repair my error, whether I should write my tale or beg him to come to me again. But it makes no difference; I may as well tell you as him that I now know that I shall have no happiness in life, never, never, either through myself or others. You shall know why, although the secret concerns subjects which are rarely mentioned between two young people. Dear friend, I can give you no better proof of the high esteem in which I hold you, than in telling you this sorrowful secret, which I only learned myself a few days ago."

She here cast a hasty glance at the door, through which the count had left the room. "I owe this knowledge to him," she continued in a lower tone. "As his relatives tried to persuade him out of his mad intention of marrying me, by harping upon my humble origin, he made inquiries concerning me in my native city; he wished at least to ascertain whether anything derogatory could be said about my family. The little that was known about my parents did not satisfy him; so he applied to the young prince, who of late has again resided in his ancestral castle and is about to wed his cousin. Madly in love as he is, the count did not conceal why he desired to information, and the young prince, now perhaps the only person who really knows anything about the matter, thought it his duty, by way of warning, to tell him the family secret that his mother, on her death bed, had confided to him. Oh! dear Balder, such horrible things happen in this world! Oh! that a poor mortal should be obliged to live and struggle against his fate in vain, seldom even knowing why he must suffer! But when they are known the stronger the reasons the less comfort they afford! Since I've known why I am constituted, as I am, that it all precedes from perfectly natural causes and that it is not at all surprising that I have never been able to make myself or others happy. I've also lost all hope that things can ever alter for the better." She leaned back in the corner of the sofa, rested her head on the cushion and gazed fixedly at the ceiling. "Do you know my story?" said she.

"My brother told me all."

"He has told you nothing; for I find that I myself knew nothing of the truth, that I did not even know my real parents. The good ballet-master was not my father, my father was the prince, and the woman I called mother, was utterly alien in blood; my mother was a poor girl, beautiful and unfortunate, more unfortunate even than her daughter. She is said to have loved a worthy young man, but he was too poor to marry her. The prince, who did not love his wife and never remained with her long at the castle, was residing in Berlin; he saw the timid young creature in the street, and followed her. She would have nothing to say to him, his rank and wealth did not allure her, she preferred to remain a beggar, rather than prove faithless to her love. But her mother! Can you imagine how a mother can break the heart of her only child? Yet her mother did it. And now she is dead, and her unhappy daughter is dead, and the child of that daughter, who was forced to sacrifice herself without love, this child of misery and blasphemy lives and must atone for its patents' sin by carrying through life an unhappy heart that cannot love!"

She was silent, and he too sat without speaking, deeply moved by the hopeless tone of her voice. They heard the count pacing impatiently up and down the ante-room, carriages rolling along the street, and the bright winter sun shone cheerily through the clear window panes. Suddenly the lovely girl sat erect again, shook back her hair and said with a forced laugh: "Oh! how horrible! But what's to be done? It is and cannot be helped. Only those people seem to me pitably stupid and cruel, who seek to make such a poor unfortunate being responsible for its acts, I would gladly be a good, warm-hearted, simple fool, like other girls, make kind people happy, and be tenderly petted myself, if it hadn't been for this terrible spell which is upon me; but my poor mother could leave me nothing but her hate and cold, mute despair, and from my father I inherited my princely tastes and empty hands. He loved me very dearly, they say, the more so because the purchased happiness with my mother was so short; she died when I was born. In order to be able at least to occasionally see me, he placed me, despite of the princess' opposition, with my foster parents, for whose child I passed. But he himself died young and forgot to provide for me in his will, and the princess never forgave me my existence. If she had lived to see me curse my life, she might perhaps have been conciliated. But she too is dead, and I'm all alone."

"Must you remain so, dear Fraeulein?" said Balder, laying his hand gently on hers, which were clasped on her lap.

"My friend," she replied, "I believe that both you and your brother have the kindest intentions toward me. But it would be a crime, if I were to persuade myself that you could help me now, when I see all so clearly, know that my fate is to suffer from a taint in the blood. How can you persuade me to make your brother unhappy? For he would be so; I could never endure narrow surroundings. Of course if one loved, that passion would chase away all the rest, all the cares and poverty of daily life would be forgotten. My mother certainly would not have sighed or complained, had she become the wife of the man she loved. But--I will promise no one what I can't perform. To lead my sorrowful life alone, to my own cost, shrink from an unpaid bill and turn again and again a worn-out dress--that I could accomplish if necessary. The princess who had to tend geese, may have secretly wept herself weary; and if the worst should come no one can control me. But when I've once given my life into other hands, and am no longer mistress of myself, I should be obliged to persevere even if I saw that my unhappiness was weighing down another heart with sadness. And your brother is too dear to me for that, you can tell him so."

She rose seemingly wishing to end the conversation. But Balder remained seated and after a pause said: "So you want to deprive those whom you believe to be your friends, of all hope of conquering what you call your fate? I believe, like you, in the power of blood, but I believe too, in the power of the will and the might of love. Only one thing seems hopeless to me: the commonplace. I've not known many people, yet among the few I have known were some who felt so perfectly well satisfied with what was base and mean, that nothing higher and purer could touch and win them. But a noble spirit, like yours, unhappy because of its loneliness, suffering only on account of its inability to give joys to others--no, dear Fraeulein, never will I believe that your heart can have no future, that you must forever remain in this sad, cold isolation, and all the efforts of warm-hearted men to melt your soul be utterly in vain. When I repeat our conversation to my brother, I know well what his course will be; he will not think of himself but of your fate and his duty not to remain away from you. You don't know what he can do. Not that he will seek to win you for himself, to creep into your heart in any way. But he will fearlessly battle with the dark powers that rule your youth, and," he added with a melancholy smile--"I'm only sorry that I shall not be alive to hear you, when you say to him: 'You've conquered; my heart has grown warm.'"

Toinette gently shook her head. "You're a good man, but a bad prophet," she answered smiling. "But no matter. Only promise me to live, for who knows what may happen; and tell your brother--what you please. I doubt whether he will come here again. He's different from you, prouder, more passionate, he wants 'all or nothing.' If he will only learn to be satisfied with a little--I shall always be glad to see him. But he must come soon, for I can't tell what will become of me. In three days I must decide upon something; for even if I loved life, I can live no longer as I am; servitude, poverty--or a third contingency, which might not be the worst. And now, my dear friend--"

She looked toward the door, which had already been once opened and hastily closed again. The youth rose and approached her. "I thank you most sincerely for all you've confided to me," said he, "and I shall carry away a lighter heart than I brought with me. But I should like to say one thing more; if it's impossible for you to refuse to receive this count, beware of letting Edwin meet him here. From what I know of my brother, he would not endure this gentleman's haughty manner, and even his mere presence, his cold, empty smile, his brow, behind which no noble thought ever germinated, would be so repulsive to him, that he would beseech you to choose between him and this third alternative. How is it possible for you to tolerate such a person near you? The very nobility of your own nature ought to make such a caricature of true nobility--"

At this moment the door was gently opened and the count appeared on the threshold. "Send this eloquent young man away, Fraeulein," he said contemptuously, without vouchsafing Balder a single glance, "or you'll place me in the painful position of being forced to give him a lesson in good breeding, to make him understand that it's unseemly to express his very immature opinions about people in so loud a tone that those concerned can't help hearing it in the adjoining room. Of course it's impossible to feel insulted by such complimentary remarks from a saucy lad. But--"

"You forget where you are, Count," Toinette hastily interrupted, while Balder growing red and pale by turns, vainly strove to find an answer. "If the time seems long to you, pray go. I'm accountable to no one for the length of my interview with this friend."

"Undoubtedly," replied the count with a slight bend of the head, "you're at liberty to choose your friends, and no one is responsible for his taste. I, too, trust to continue the acquaintance of this hopeful youth--at some more suitable place. Farewell, Fraeulein!" He took his hat and with an icy smile left the room.

"What have you done, Balder!" cried Toinette. "You've deeply offended him, and he'll never forget it. Why didn't I warn you? These walls and doors are so thin!"

"Pardon me the unpleasant scene; I deeply regret having caused it," replied Balder, extending his hand to her. "But I've no anxiety about anything else. I still believe the count has too much good feeling to revenge himself on a defenceless man for an unintentional offence, and then--no one can bear me a grudge long. I do not even know whether I can bid you farewell a second time?"

He bent over her hand, and, absorbed in other thoughts, she left it in his clasp. "Don't go yet," she said. "Wait till he has driven away. I don't feel satisfied about this matter. And you're exhausted, and you ought to take a glass of wine--"

He smilingly released her hand. "Although I'm not the strongest person in the world--my nerves are strong enough as yet to prevent any fear of men. You may be perfectly at ease, dear Fraeulein, I shall find my way home safely. Farewell!"

He limped out of the room so quickly, that little Jean, who was sitting at a small table in the entry, writing exercises, was not quick enough to open the door for him. But when he had descended the stairs and reached the street, he saw the count's carriage still standing in the same place. "He's waiting till I have gone, and will then go up again," he thought, and regretted that there was to be a continuation of the scene just experienced. But as he looked around to summon the droschky, the carriage door opened and the count alighted.

"My worthy young gentleman," said he, approaching Balder, "we've not yet done with each other. I've taken the liberty of waiting here, to give you some good advice." He paused a moment and measured the youth from head to foot. Balder looked him quietly in the face. "I'm eager to hear it," said he.

"You're still very young and moreover in other respects not a person who could be held to the full meaning of his words. But for that very reason you will do well not to try forbearance too far. I inform you therefore that I don't desire to meet you in this young lady's drawing, room a second time.

"It will rest entirely with you, Herr Count, to avoid me. I've no reason to shun you."

"Then you must submit to the treatment I think proper to bestow upon any insolent person of your stamp."

Balder had turned deadly pale, and his limps trembled, but instead of menace there was a strange expression of sorrow in the eyes that rested upon the man who offered him this insult.

"Herr Count," said he, "I regret that I expressed my opinion of you in so loud a tone that you could overhear it. It always pains me to offend any one. But I regret still more, that your subsequent conduct confirms my hasty judgment. I believe we've nothing more to say to each other."

He bowed coldly and beckoned to the driver of his droschky, which was waiting at some little distance. At the same moment he felt his cloak seized.

"It is true, my young friend, that I have done with you," he heard the count say in a tone of suppressed fury. "Your feeble health gives you the liberty, so easily abused, of saying what you please with impunity. But you will oblige me by giving your brother, in my name, the same warning that I have given you. Out of consideration for the lady to whom he, as I hear, is paying attention, I should prefer that she should be spared the necessity of making a choice between us. I'm not in the habit of putting myself on a level with the first person who comes along, and the affair might have unpleasant consequences for him. You'll be kind enough to give him this message, my young friend? And now I'll not keep you standing in the windy street any longer. I trust you have understood me." He drew back, bowed with mock civility, and sprang into his carriage, which drove rapidly away.

Balder remained silent and motionless. Involuntarily he placed his hand upon his heart, where he felt a keen pain. But it passed away again. His rigid features relaxed, and he smiled sadly as he drew his cloak closer around his shoulders. "What a contemptible man!" said he. "How anybody who is governed by such dull instincts must feel! And she, she could--no, Edwin, he is not dangerous to you, or she has never been worthy of possessing your heart!"

The droschky stopped beside him, the driver, who saw the pale youth standing so lost in thought, pitied him, and jumped down from the box to open the door and help him in. "Why, sir, you ought to be with your mother, instead of making visits. An old droschky like this isn't very warm, and you're shivering like a sentinel when it is ten degrees below zero."

"You are right, my friend," replied Balder smiling. "But I think the sentinel will soon be relieved. Drive me home as fast as possible, I shall hardly get out of doors again."

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Chapter III

Edwin was strolling down Friedrichstrasse with Marquard, whom he had met on his way home from the university.

"I thought it would only be a soap bubble of happiness," said he. "A removal at this season of the year is as impossible, as for him to remain here alone. You'd undoubtedly take the best care of him, and Mohr has even offered to move into the tun bodily as 'Vice-Edwin.' But nevertheless, my dear fellow, don't urge me. You don't know how we've spoiled each other. There are hours when it's troublesome for him to speak, and then I read the signs on his brow as clearly as my own handwriting. And, reproach me if you will for being sentimental, I, too, should fare ill without him. For the last six years my best thoughts have come to me in his calm presence. If I reached a point when I could make no farther progress, I only needed to look at him, and light dawned upon me from his eyes. I'm really afraid I should seem stupid, if I were to go to the university without him, and the faculty would think I'd had somebody's help in writing my prize essay. Habeat sibi! Some other door will open."

"You know your own affairs best," replied Marquard, who, wrapped in an elegant fur cloak, was strolling beside him with apparent indifference. "If it doesn't agitate him to think that he's the obstacle. Perhaps--it's only an idea--you might allege your regard for the princess in Rosenstrasse, as a pretext for not going away."

"Unfortunately the good advice comes too late. He knows that that is all over."

"What? Been made such short work of? How did that happen?"

"It's a long story. I'll tell you some other time."

They walked on in silence side by side. At last Marquard said: "I see I'm the only practical person among you; for even our tribune of the people--though he's shown more common sense than I gave him credit for, in selecting from among the children of the people one whose father is a house owner for his bride--will scarcely become a steady married man and quiet citizen. You, my noble philosopher, are in love with a psychological problem, and our satirical friend, instead of at least acting out his comedy: 'I am I and rely on myself--'"

"What news have you heard of him? He came in to play chess last night as usual."

"His queen checkmated him yesterday, the game's up, the zaunkoenigs were sitting in their nest with very anxious faces when I make them a short call in the evening. The mysterious night-bird they sheltered, has flown away, no one knows where."

"Could the poor creature for the second time--"

"That was the fear of her worthy hosts, behind whose backs she stole away. But I soothed their anxiety. After a conversation forced upon her by Mohr, in the course of which God knows what he may have said, undoubtedly with the best intentions, but in his mad way, she waited until papa Koenig and the young girl had gone out, then suddenly emerged from her solitary corner and saying that she wanted to buy a winter cloak, asked the cook to lend her some money. When she'd got twelve or fourteen thalers--all the ready money the woman had,--she entered a droschky and drove away. It's not likely that she wanted to buy a pistol, having possibly taken a prejudice against water, for tickets to eternity can be bought cheaper by other routes. Moreover so many days have intervened since that unhappy night, that it's natural to suppose milder thoughts had come. In a note to Leah, she begged her not to seek to discover her, for that she would send her word when she could find courage to live and a desire to recall herself to the memory of those who had meant kindly toward her, though they had acted against her will. Herr Feyertag might sell her furniture and piano, deduct the rent and the borrowed money from the proceeds, and give the remainder to the poor; the letter was resolute, like the woman who wrote it, but it was no suicide's bulletin; I know that, for I once made a collection of the autographs, last notes, etc., left by suicides just before they entered eternity."

"And Mohr?"

"He came again in the evening, and seemed to have been brooding meantime over some plan or to have had some other question to ask. When he found the cell empty, (no one thought of an escape, as the imprisonment was voluntary,) he became even more thoughtful, morose, and uncivil than he's been for the last few weeks. Even the little zaunkoenig, who can usually stand a good deal, seemed somewhat nettled by his strange manners. For the rest--all honor to the little man! He's cared for the unfortunate creature like a real Samaritan, while from a Christian standpoint, suicides have usually been considered the very scum of humanity, the poor step-children of God and predestined to misery, and have always been buried outside the church-yard wall. A long hymn of praise might be sung over Leah's treatment of the stranger. My little Adele actually gets jealous when I tell her how self-sacrificing, clever, and discreet the zaun-princess' conduct has been."

"And there's still no clue to the cause of this desperate step?" said Edwin. "When I think of our bacchanalian revel at Charlottenburg, and her playing--she seemed to be in such good spirits, like all the rest of us, only of course in her strange, sullen way--"

Marquard shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell! Perhaps Leah! At least, whenever I alluded to the subject, she grew speechless in a strange way, like a person who has no talent for lying and therefore prefers to seal his lips. Mohr, who'd be easier game to an inquisitor, seemed, up to yesterday, to have no suspicions; but early this morning, so your old Lore tells me, he went to Fraeulein Christiane's room, on the pretext that he wanted to buy the piano. There he rummaged in every corner, and at last found something--a little book, at the sight of which he uttered an inarticulate moan. What it may have been, his 'so-called gods' only know. However, he's happy now; he has an object in life which occupies all his thoughts: to unveil this mystery and trace the woman who has disappeared."

"I've wondered whether, after all,--did you never meet a certain Candidat Lorinser?"

The physician made no reply; for they were just turning the corner of Dorotheenstrasse, and Marquard's keen eye had discovered a crowd of people standing silent and motionless around a droschky in front of Herr Feyertag's shop. "What's that?" said he. "Are the neighbors waiting to see Jungfrau Reginchen drive out to pay wedding calls? We've not got quite so far as that--no, some accident--"

Edwin heard no more. Urged by a sudden presentiment, he reached the house at the very moment a lifeless body, carefully supported by the head journeyman and the driver of the droschky, was carried up the steps. He heard the crowd around him say: "There comes his brother!" then his senses failed. The by-standers caught him, as he tottered and seemed about to fall.

But it was only a momentary faintness that paralysed him. The next instant he heard Marquard's voice again. "Keep up your courage, Edwin! Come! It can scarcely be death!" Aided by his friend, he stood erect and allowed himself to be led into the house.

The entry was crowded with the members of the household and with curious neighbors, but they silently made way for them. All the apprentices were assembled in the courtyard, gazing at the upper windows as if expecting some message; but not a word was uttered, the whole house seemed holding its breath in terror.

The driver of the droschky now appeared in the doorway. "Good Lord, what a misfortune!" he said, approaching Edwin. "Such a young fellow! I really thought he was a girl in disguise, till he began to talk to the strange gentleman; then his eyes flashed as only a man's can. I saw he'd got a little heated, so I shut the window, and he jested when I told him he was shivering like an old sentinel. And all the way from Rosenstrasse here, I never noticed that, as one might say, he was driving to eternity in the old droschky! I suppose you're his brother? Well, there's no hurry about the fare." Edwin shuddered and his voice failed when he turned to speak. Marquard gave the man some money and took his number, in order to ask him some farther questions about the last scene; then he helped Edwin up stairs.

They had laid the lifeless form upon the bed just as they had taken it out of the carriage, still wrapped in the faded cloak. No one had gone up to the room except the head journeyman, Herr Feyertag and his wife; Reginchen had glided after them, but she had not ventured to enter and was crouching on the stairs, pale as a ghost.

When Edwin, leaning on Marquard, entered the tun, Madame Feyertag was kneeling beside the bed rubbing Balder's cold temples with some stimulant. Marquard permitted her to go on, and for some minutes closely examined the motionless body. Then he turned to Edwin, who had sunk down on the foot of the bed. "Poor boy!" said he. "Come, Edwin, be a man! It was only a question of weeks. He's passed into the other world quickly and painlessly. Look at the calm face."

A loud burst of weeping interrupted him. Herr Feyertag, with gentle violence, led away his kind-hearted wife, who sobbed as hopelessly as if she had lost a child of her own; the head journeyman, with tears streaming down his face, softly followed them; he first tried to say something to Edwin, but checked the words that were on his lips. When he returned to the workshop, he sat down on a stool and buried his face in his hands. Half an hour later, when the apprentices stole in to continue their work, prepared for violent reproaches, they found the choleric fellow in the same attitude. He seemed completely transformed; but when toward evening, the youngest apprentice began to whistle softly to himself, he rushed at him like a madman and called him a heartless toad, for screwing up his mouth and whistling wedding tunes on such a day.

Over the house there was a hush, as if with the fading away of this one life all the joy of existence had vanished. Every one went about on tip-toe and closed the doors noiselessly. When, toward evening, the maid-servant went to the pump, she looked up to the open windows of the upper room, wiped her eyes, and stealing away with the empty pail, brought the water from one of the neighboring houses.

In the afternoon, Mohr came, and an hour after him, Franzelius, both entirely ignorant of what had happened. But Herr Feyertag sat in the shop and beckoned to every one who entered the house, in order to keep troublesome visitors away from Edwin. Mohr did not utter a word and no change of countenance betrayed his emotion, so that the worthy shoemaker shook his head, as, muttering something in a low tone, the young man left the shop, to go up to the tun. But it was a long time before he reached it. He first slipped into Christiana's room, and sitting there in the darkness let the first passion of grief rage itself calm, before he ventured to go to Edwin. Franzelius, on the contrary, had thrown himself into the arms of his future father-in-law, with such heart-rending sobs, that Herr Feyertag, who hitherto had placed no great confidence in him, because he believed him to be a bloodthirsty revolutionist, secretly admitted that his wife was right; Reginchen could not have found a better husband.

It was strange that neither of the friends ventured to let Edwin see their first sorrow, that both paid the common toll of human weakness before making their daily visit to the tun. Was it because of the habit formed during the last few weeks, of considering that room a sacred place, from which all the tumult of selfish sorrows and passions must be kept away, or did they fear that they could not endure the sight of the survivor, if they had not first regained their own composure?

They met on the stairs, just as Mohr was leaving Christiane's room. Without uttering a word, the old antagonists fell into each others arms, kissing and embracing each other as if there had never been any ill-blood between them. Thus a solemn vow of eternal friendship was exchanged, and they mounted the stairs hand in hand.

They found Edwin alone, still sitting in the same attitude as when Marquard had left him an hour before, to visit some patients. Balder was lying wrapped in his cloak, like a victor who had fallen on the battle field. Edwin was bent forward, leaning on the foot of the bed. He now half rose and with a faint smile held out his hands to his friends.

"Have you come too?" said he. "I'm glad. He's so beautiful! I can scarcely pity my own loneliness when I look at his face. Can you believe that he will never open his eyes again? And yet he never will, Marquard says he never will, and he must know." After a pause he continued: "Take a chair, Franzel. Pardon me that I keep my seat. We need not stand upon ceremony, and it is hard for me to move a limb. He's better off, I don't grudge him his happiness,--but it's hard to think we shall soon see his face no more."

Mohr had taken a chair opposite the bed, Franzelius was leaning against the door gazing through his tears at the closed eye-lids and marble brow of the beloved dead. When the room grew so dark, that they could scarcely distinguish each other's features, Mohr rose and insisted upon taking Edwin to his room, where he could get some wine and some light food to strengthen him. "You've a great deal before you; you must husband your strength. Franzel will stay here. We'll send a lamp up to him. The night watch can be divided between us." Unconsciously, like a somnambulist, Edwin obeyed. The strong wine Mohr pressed upon him threw him into a sound sleep for half an hour. As he awoke, he uttered a cry that made his companion start up in alarm.

"It's nothing!" Edwin said with a sorrowful shake of the head. "I was only dreaming that I heard Balder's voice. Just as I tried to take his hand, I awoke and suddenly remembered all. I thought my heart would burst; but I am strong again, only my eyes are still dry. Come, we'll not keep him waiting too long."

When they opened the door of the death chamber, they paused on the threshold in astonishment. Franzelius had taken advantage of their short absence to erect, with the aid of the household, a sort of catafalque. The turning lathe was placed in the centre of the room and covered with a black cloth, and on it was a hastily made couch, on which Balder was laid. At his head stood the palms, and beside them two tall laurel trees, which the old tenor had sent. His wife had added two silver candelabras, which burned on either side of the bier and shed a calm light on the beautiful pale face. Instead of the little cloak, a white sheet, on which the slender hands rested, covered the slight form. The white cat had glided in through the open window and wandering around for a time, crouched finally at the foot of the bier with its yellow eyes fixed steadily on the candles.

Edwin seated himself on Balder's empty bed and drew his friend down beside him. "Thank you," said he. "We'll let no stranger touch him. No one but those who have loved him."

Franzelius mutely pressed his hand and turned away to hide his tears. Mohr had sat down before the chess board that stood on the little table in the corner, and mechanically began to move the pieces.

They had not long sat thus silent and alone, when some one knocked gently. Mohr went to the door and came back saying: "The zaunkoenig is here, with Leah and Frau Valentin. They only wish to hear how you are, and have no desire to intrude upon you. But I thought if you had no objections we would admit them."

Edwin nodded and rose. When the little artist entered and cast a glance at the simple catafalque, tears gushed from his eyes. He blindly grasped Edwin's hand and held it firmly, trying to conceal his emotion behind his hat. Frau Valentin's pleasant face also disappeared in her handkerchief. Leah, without looking at Edwin, approached the bier and seemed utterly petrified with surprise at the incomprehensible mystery of death. Her face was as still and white as that of the departed. Only her eyes, which without the quiver of a lash, rested intently on the noble countenance of the dead, glowed with the intense fire of life.

For a time no words were uttered; at length Frau Valentin, wiping her eyes, approached Edwin. "Forgive me for coming," said she. "My heart brought me here. You needn't fear that I shall obtrude words of consolation that would be meaningless to you. But to me, to us, you will not grudge the comfort of believing that the Father has recalled his child, and that we other children of God shall meet him again in the eternal home; and meet you too, dear friend, who until then must feel his loss so terribly."

"Thank you," replied Edwin. "I know your meaning is the kindest. You wish to give me of your abundance in what you think is my poverty. To be sure, I've lost much; for what can replace the joy of daily and hourly drinking in every look, every thought that proceeds from such a soul! I'll say nothing about him; he would never let me praise him to his face, and I'm foolish enough to fear that yonder poor husk would begin to blush. To speak of him later--behind his back--will be the best consolation. As for the rest--do you really believe, that I shall not see him again daily and hourly, even without waiting for a heavenly meeting? If I were forced to await that, I should hardly linger long behind. But I have him, he can never be torn from me; the happiness of having known and loved such a creature in the flesh and blood, can never pass when the flesh moulders away. This spiritual intercourse is the only really living thing, the only eternity, and it continues to exist amid a thousand changes, an inextinguishable flame, even when the individual brain and heart which for a time have fed the flame, cease to feed it longer. They may well crumble to ashes, when their short blaze has kindled a fire in other souls." He paused. She had listened with deep emotion and a scarcely perceptible shake of the head; but repressed any desire she might have had to contradict him. Edwin now approached Leah.

"I thank you for coming," said he as he pressed her hand. Large tears welled to her eyes, but she did not utter a word. "See how beautiful he is!" Edwin gently continued. "I know you will never forget these features, and therefore I'm glad you can see him. True, his rare smile will never come again, and his eyes--but dear Fraeulein, this is exhausting you too much. Let them take you home--I'll come in a few days--you ought to spare yourself."

A look from him summoned her father, who gently took the hand of the deeply agitated girl and led her out of the room. Frau Valentin embraced Edwin like a mother, and then followed the others. The room was again perfectly still, and they sat together in silence for several hours, until Marquard came and insisted that Edwin must spend the night with him. "To-morrow!" replied the latter. "Let me have my own way to-day. Go all of you, and leave me. Rest assured this course is best for me; I'll go to sleep, and my quiet companion will not disturb me."

At first Marquard would not listen to such a proposal, but Edwin was firm in his resolution, and they at last left him alone with the dead. It was ten o'clock on a cold, dark winter's night; the wind drove snow flakes into the open windows, and ever and anon the candles flickered as if they would be extinguished. Edwin, wrapped in Balder's cloak, had thrown himself on his bed without undressing, and now lay listening to the wind, the spluttering of the candles, and the distant rolling of the carriages in the crowded city. No restful sleep visited his excited senses, only a hasty changeful dream, in which scenes from his earliest childhood passed before his mind, and amid them Toinette seated in a light carriage beside a stranger, gazing coldly and sadly at him, followed by a vision of Leah's thoughtful face which appeared beside her mother's bust. When he opened his eyes to drive away these confused images, he looked straight into the round yellow eyes of the cat that would not leave the bier. This at last made him uncomfortable. He rose, took the animal in his arms and carried it to the door, to drive it down stairs. But when he turned the handle, he saw crouching on the threshold the figure of some one who seemed to have been peeping through the key hole.

"You here, Reginchen?" he exclaimed in astonishment.

The young girl had started up, and was standing before him trembling from head to foot like some detected criminal.

"Ah! Herr Doctor," she faltered at last, "don't be angry with me. I couldn't sleep, I tossed about continually, and let me close my eyes as resolutely as I would, I constantly saw him before me, and then--then something fairly drew me here--I thought when I'd once seen him I should feel better, that I could rest, and so I crept up stairs. I could, just see his face through the keyhole, but it wouldn't let me go away again. If you hadn't come, I believe I should have knelt here all night and been forced to look at him till I died."

"Won't you come in, child?" he said, taking her by the hand. "Don't be frightened. I'll cut off a lock of his hair for you. Do you want it?"

"No, no!" she exclaimed vehemently. "Not in there, not a step nearer! I'm so afraid of him, I'm afraid he will open his eyes, and ask--oh! Herr Edwin, you don't know--let me go--if I should touch a lock of his hair, I should never be able to leave his side again and I can't help being a poor stupid thing, who didn't understand him! Oh, God! my heart is breaking!"

Passionate sobs checked her utterance. But when Edwin put his arm around her and kindly tried to soothe her, she broke from him and darted down the stairs like an arrow, while he stood a long time in the darkness, musing over this strange enigma, ere he again threw himself on his cold bed.

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Chapter IV

On the morning of the third day the funeral took place. Franzelius, who had undertaken to attend to all the sorrowful details, insisted that this last duty should be performed at six o'clock. "Perhaps then the preacher will oversleep himself," said he. Edwin had assented. The clergyman belonging to their ward, who as professor of theology had met Edwin at college, came the day after the event to condole with him and ask for some notes for the funeral address. "You would do me a favor," Edwin replied, "if you would merely say what is absolutely necessary, what your formula prescribes. Eulogies from a person who knew nothing of the dead, have always been repulsive to me; and besides, as my brother shared my opinions, many a word would be uttered over his open grave, against which he would protest if he could hear it." The clergyman probably thought that the softened soul of a mourner would be good soil in which to sow the seed of religion, but Edwin cut short all farther conversation, and his colleague, in by no means the best of humors, left him.

Franzelius had still another reason for choosing the dark morning hour. A society of workmen, of which he was a member, wished to sing a hymn in the churchyard and could not assemble later. But he did not tell his friend a word of this.

He had kept his promise, no stranger's hand had been allowed to touch the dead body. Even the most painful task, he performed himself, screwing down with his own hands the coffin lid. Then, as the bearers wound slowly down the crooked stairs with their burden, he took Edwin's arm and supported him on the last sorrowful pilgrimage.

The street was only lighted by a faint reflection from the snow, and few persons were standing around the door. Edwin bowed sorrowfully to his acquaintances and then entered the first of the four mourning coaches, which instantly moved forward. He was accompanied by Mohr, Marquard, and Franzelius. The second carriage was occupied by Herr Feyertag and the old gentleman on the second floor, who despite the wintry cold, would not be dissuaded from showing his fellow-lodger this token of sympathy. The third carriage belonged to the little artist. He had come by himself and intended to follow the coffin alone, when he perceived the head journeyman, who with a large weed on his hat and a band of crape on his left arm, was preparing to accompany the procession on foot. Herr Koenig instantly ordered his driver to stop, opened the door, and compelled the worthy man to take the seat beside him, which the modest fellow after long hesitation, at last consented to do.

The fourth and last carriage contained a young Pole and the president of a society, which numbered among its members many foreigners and formed the largest portion of the audience to Edwin's lectures. They followed the body solely from regard for their teacher, as they had never known Balder, and instantly drew down the curtains in order to beguile the long ride by discussing theatrical matters, the latest news, and smoking paper cigarettes.

From an upper window, a weeping girl wrapped in a thick shawl, gazed after the slowly moving carriages. It was Reginchen, who for two days had not made her appearance and steadily refused even to see her lover.

The procession moved through the Oranienburg Gate and traversed the suburbs for some distance, ere it reached the cemetery. The air was mild, as if a thaw were about to set in, and the snow over which they walked to the grave, yielded noiselessly under their feet. Beside the fresh mound of earth stood the clergyman, and behind him a throng of dark figures, the workmen to whom the printer had said that he had lost his dearest friend. The clergyman, whom Edwin only greeted with a formal wave of the hand, now read aloud the prayer for the burial of the dead and then approached the edge of the grave, into which the coffin was already lowered.

He began: "'In the midst of life we are in death.' But they who turn from the light of eternal truth, bear the gloom of death within their souls. They live as if they thought never to die, and die as though they were never to live again. What grief and terror will overwhelm them on the day when the graves open and the dead come forth to receive the crown of glory or the sentence of eternal condemnation. How the words of the Judge will thunder in their ears: 'I offered you salvation and ye rejected it with scorn and turned a deaf ear unto my message.' In your vain self-righteousness you chose to be your own deliverers, and have pronounced your own doom. Then will your pride bow before the throne of the Highest, and defiance be crushed before the majesty of the Son of Man. Then lips will sue for mercy, which on earth overflowed with blasphemy, denying with Peter and saying: 'I know not this man.' But we, who stand around this sad grave, will unite in silent prayer to God, and implore him not to enter into judgment with this our brother, to suffer a ray of his eternal mercy to transfigure and cleanse from sin the frail erring life, which too early reached its end!"

An unbroken silence followed these words. The clergyman had folded his hands over his book and closed his eyes in prayer. Suddenly Franzelius' suppressed voice was heard amid the group of friends who were standing at the foot of the grave:

"Let me speak, for I cannot be silent, I should despise myself, I should be a miserable coward, if I could hear such words spoken over his grave, without uttering a protest in the name of those who have known and loved him. What is that I hear? 'let there be no scandal?' Say that to those, who have not hesitated to carry the strife of opinions into the stillness of the churchyard, where even the bitterest enemies lie in death quietly side by side. No, my friends," he continued in a loud voice, springing upon one of the snow covered mounds, "we at least have not assembled around this grave, to stammer an abject petition for a poor sinner who, unless justice be tempered by mercy, is forever lost. This dead man will never be lost to us, and as by the might of his love and intellect, he has indeed redeemed himself from the curse of frail mortality, the terrors of blind delusion and the bonds of selfishness, his memory will help us to free ourselves also and to become more worthy of the joy of having been loved by him. For yes, he has loved you too, my friends who never saw his face or heard his voice. His great heart beat for all his brothers, for all who were poor and miserable, for all the children of this world, who come they know not whence and go they know not whither, and yet are too honest to console themselves with fantastic tales and be lulled to rest by idle dreams. What can be called sacred, if his grave is not? For do you know whom we are burying here? A laborer, my friends, who was ever sharing his last shilling with some poor man; a poet who never desecrated his genius for fame or gold; a hero, whose last act was a deed of sacrifice for those he loved. And is this life to be swallowed up in gloom? Should this grave be called a 'sad' one over which penitent sighs and pharasaical petitions for mercy must resound? Oh! my Balder, I know you would submit to even this error of a gloomy, intolerant formalist, with the quiet smile which was your only weapon against all assaults. But we, your friends, are not yet at peace, but in the midst of warfare. We must struggle for the weak who allow themselves to be intimidated by formulas preferring to leave their free souls in imprisonment than to shake themselves free from the hands of their tyrants, to learn to know and love this earth instead of despising its beauty in view of an imaginary world to come. Despise an earth, which has contained you, my Balder, a sky to which your noble eyes have been raised? no, a thousand times no! such a world is no vale of tears, and even in the bitterest woe beside your grave, we still have a feeling of triumph--we have possessed you, and all the calamities of life are richly compensated for, by the certainty that your great heart lives on in ours--Balder--my friend--my brother--"

His voice suddenly failed, he pressed his clenched hand to his eyes and turned away, but the next instant regained his composure and motioned to the singers, who stood in a dense mass behind him. Instantly a quartette choir, whose voices at first low and unsteady from agitation, became gradually clearer and more powerful, began a song, which Mohr had composed to the air of Integer vitae:

Brother, ere in the dust thy form we lay, We'll to thy worth a loving tribute pay; Thy virtues rare, and kindly heart, which were A comfort on life's way.

Fearless thy earnest, noble soul did stand, Not mid the lofty masters of the land, But with thy brothers, 'mong their lowly huts, A member of their band.

O! chosen one, for whom we proudly weep. Of whom thy friends a loved remembrance keep, How patiently thy weary lot was borne Till peaceful thou did'st sleep!

Rejoice we at thy absence; gone before Thy pleasures and thy pains on earth are o'er; Rest thou, while on through strife and woe We heavenward soar.

The last solemn notes died away, but there was still no movement among the group who stood with bowed heads beside the open grave. When after a pause they raised their eyes they perceived that the clergyman had disappeared. The old sexton, unable to understand the strange scene, had also retired leaving his spade behind him. While Edwin, standing between Mohr and Marquard, gazed into the grave as tearlessly as a departed spirit, it was rapidly filled, each person stepping forward in turn to cast in a spadeful of earth.

Franzelius approached Edwin, and they clasped each other's hands in silence. The mourner's soul was still benumbed with grief, and the same dull stupor rested upon him as the party returned home. He took leave of his friends at the door of the house and went up to his desolate cell alone.

He found everything in the neatest order, nothing was left to recall the sorrowful events which, during the last few days, had occurred in the quiet room. A bright fire was burning in the stove, the breakfast stood on the table as usual, and the turning lathe was once more in its place beside the window, with the tools arranged upon it as before.

But on Balder's chair lay the little chisel with which Franzelius had screwed down the coffin lid. At this sight, the spell which had bound Edwin was suddenly broken; he threw himself into the chair and gave free course to the bitterest tears.

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Chapter V

When Marquard visited Edwin the following morning, he found him at his desk, holding his pen in his right hand and resting his head on the left. A sheet of paper lay before him.

"Good morning, Fritz," said he. "You've come just at the right time. I must make a decision, and everything within me seems walled up. I need some one to unlock me. Perhaps you have the key." He looked at him with a weary, restless glance, and tried to smile. It was pitiful to see the effort he made to adopt a careless tone. His friend shook his head, "A decision?" he asked.

"Yes, indeed, and no less important one than to dip this pen into yonder inkstand and write: 'Honored Sir!' Will you believe that I've been working at this herculean task for two hours and have not yet stirred a finger?"

"You can do something more sensible."

"Gladly. If it doesn't require too much intelligence."

"Only as much as is needed to pack a trunk and go with it to the railway station. My fur boots are at your service, and also money to pay the traveling expenses. If you will only for once take the medicine, without reflecting upon the prescription, and pack up this very day."

"This very day?"

"What's the use of writing that you will come? You're going, and that's enough. I know all you want to say: that you don't feel like it, that you fear you'll not make a favorable impression just now. That's all nonsense. If you don't make haste at once, it's very doubtful whether you can ever present yourself in any place; you're far more likely to absent yourself--retire where we yesterday accompanied our own Balder. You've been moping about here for months. It's a bit too much, quite enough to break down a stronger man. Come now, make a dash, put on your dress-coat, visit your superiors and colleagues, set the cog-wheel of your career in motion, and let the grey substance in your brain rest, that it may make good its deficiencies. If this prescription is not carefully followed, I'll answer for nothing, or rather I will answer for the nothing into which your insignificant self will soon be resolved. Have you had any sleep?"

"I believe so," replied Edwin, with an absent nod. "I slept night before last from two to three."

"I thought so!" exclaimed his friend, dashing his hat violently upon the table. "And no one made his appearance yesterday, to perform a work of charity and bore you till you fell asleep. What's the use of friends who are poets in private and lecturers in public? Where was Mohr, with his famous comedy? And our dear Franzel? Holy--"

"Philosophy showed poetry the door in the afternoon," said Mohr, who had just entered and overheard Marquard's words, "but don't be disturbed. Doctor, I'm not at all offended. It's long been known that you materialists have not classical culture enough to distinguish between Orpheus and Morpheus. Good morning, Edwin. I'm only here to tell you that I'm not yet fit for anything. The salt in my nature has lost its savor, or else grown bitter. As Bitter-salt[6] it may perhaps be of some assistance as a purgative; (pardon the wretched pun, the times are too hard for good ones.) And then I wanted to tell you why the tribune of the people cannot appear to-day any more than yesterday. He's been imprisoned."

"Franzel?"

"Arrested and imprisoned. The police officers have extended their motherly arm toward him and taken the erring child. We needn't pity him. He's very well satisfied. My phenological science told me long ago that he has la bosse du martyr.

"But the occasion, the pretext?"

"The disturbance of a public act of worship. Your reverend colleague, Edwin, drove straight from the churchyard to the police headquarters, to complain of the atheistical opposition he had encountered. Franzel was doubtless already prominent in their books among the powers hostile to repose and order, so they took advantage of the opportunity to keep him quiet for a time. They can't do much to him, and a few weeks imprisonment is a more merciful punishment for godless heretics, than the wood piles of former days. I'm only afraid it will make him still more obstinate."

"And he's right!" cried Edwin, as he started up and began to pace up and down the room in feverish haste. "They want an open battle, they challenge it themselves, and there will be no peace until it has been fairly fought. How often, in this very spot, I've agreed with Franzel that we ought not to discuss anything, except with those who hold similar views, for certainly the truth will not be spread by arousing superstition and folly against it. But we ought at least to retain our right to go our own way, and much as people prattle about liberty of conscience, when the matter becomes serious, the liberty is only for those who think they have rented the public conscience; and we, in the belief that the more sensible people have already yielded, are constantly stopping half way. We submit ourselves to listen to unmeaning formulas repeated at the most important epochs of our lives; when a child is given to us, a tie formed for life, a loved one restored to earth, a stranger whose every word we would fain oppose, utters that which wearies if it does not anger us. I've endured it like a thousand others, and said to myself: it's no worse than to sign yourself at the close of a letter 'with respect and esteem,' when you feel neither; it is a mere form which can only bind those who find in it a substance. But I now see whither this carelessness leads. Instead of declining all priestly gabble, I paid no more attention while this warder of Zion was slandering Balder's dust, than if the wind had been blowing through the leafless branches, and was only roused from my reverie by our faithful friend's eloquent defense. If he had remained silent, I verily believe I should have been stupid enough to let the zealot talk on, just as once, when I undertook to be godfather, I weakly said 'yes,' when asked if I would strengthen the child in the faith that Jesus Christ descended into hell and rose from the dead on the third day. And now our poor champion must atone for the cowardice and false shame we have all shown in not honestly and thoroughly renouncing ancient abuses. No, I'll go and tell these gentlemen--"

"You'll be kind enough not to attempt to escape from my care," said Marquard quietly, as he seized the agitated man by the arm. "As for our scapegoat, I hope to set him free immediately. I am blessed with various connections, and fondly as conservative circles cherish the deceptions of a high church patterned after the English, they can't wholly shake off a secret fear of the free-thinkers, and are the first to counsel half way measures and compromises as long as possible. But you, my son, will now take an hour's walk, accompanied by Mohr, in the course of which you'll converse on the most shallow and insignificant subjects--"

He was interrupted by the old maid-servant, who came in to deliver a letter. A deep flush crimsoned Edwin's pale face as he recognized the handwriting, "Excuse me," said he, "if I glance it over."

He went to the window, and they soon heard him laugh aloud. "Good news?" asked Mohr, who was absently playing with the leaves of the palms.

"Excellent! And it comes just at the right time. I'll set out on my journey this very day, for you're right, Fritz, the air of this city doesn't agree with me. I must beg you Heinrich, to take my farewell messages to the little house on the lagune and to Frau Valentin. I--whether I ever set foot in the tun again, or trouble one of you to send my movables after me--at any rate, I'll write as soon as I know how matters stand where I am going, and whether I shall remain. And now--perhaps you'll excuse me--the train leaves in two hours, and I still have all my arrangements to make."

"We yield to force," said Marquard dryly, "and I dispense with all the formalities of leave taking the more willingly, as I'm sure all this is mere bustle, and we shall not get rid of you so quickly."

He was not mistaken. Two hours after, Edwin still sat as unprepared for traveling as before, gazing at the letter which lay open before him, as if he expected to discover some other meaning in the lines, than that which the words conveyed. They ran as follows:

"My Dear Friend!

"The time has expired, the three days have passed without my seeing you again, I had scarcely hoped that the disclosure I made to you through your brother--give my kindest regards to him; I envy you the happiness of possessing such a relative--that any word from me could produce any impression upon you since I can retract nothing, cannot deceive you and myself.

"I have ceased to desire to exist and have exhausted my means to do so. You know that with me both amount to very much the same thing. I cannot understand how people can remain attached to a life, whose conditions are limited to simple existence. And yet--I must suffer more than I yet suffer, physical and spiritual hunger must gnaw still more sharply, ere I can bring myself to try the last resource. Meantime the pain is dull, and sometimes blended with the hope that it may not last forever. So I wish to try whether I shall be better amid entirely new surroundings. The old countess has invited me to spend some time at her castle; she came for me in person, and little as I like her, I have still less reason to be over fastidious. When you read these lines I shall be on the way.

"I can scarcely ask you to write to me. But if you do not prefer to utterly forget me, pity me more than you condemn. I shall never cease to remember you.

"Toinette."

At noon, when kind Madame Feyertag went to the tun to interrupt his solitude, and ask if he wanted anything, he seemed perfectly calm, spoke of his speedy departure, thanked her for the love she had shown Balder, and made all sorts of arrangements, in case he should enter upon his duties as professor at once. He even ate a portion of the food brought up to him, but could not made up his mind to go, and the trunk he had brought down from the attic remained unpacked. Old Lore saw him wandering about his room late at night; his lamp was not extinguished until after midnight.

When Marquard called the following morning, he was not at all surprised to hear that the Herr Doctor had not yet gone. "He has a disease of the nerves called absence of will," he said to the shoe maker, "it's hard to reach, but I think if we can once get him on the way--"

At the door of the room he started violently. He heard Edwin's voice talking in a very strange tone on all sorts of matters. When he entered, he found his friend sitting on the bed with dilated eyes, holding the little bottle of violet perfume and Leah's plate, and striking them together like a tambourine and a drum stick. He did not recognize the new comer, and continued his discordant music, which he accompanied with confused, delirious words, and verses of Italian poetry--apparently from Dante. On the little table beside him lay a small copy of the Divina Comedia, and beside it Toinette's letter. The back of this was covered with writing in Edwin's small hand, which had probably been done just before the fever set in, and his friend in amazement read a singular improvisation in the style of the Inferno, whose echo must have excited the sick man. Although Balder had said that his brother was a poet, he had not been caught in such sins for years, and in his days of health, certainly would not have fallen into this fever for versifying. But as it sometimes happens in dreams or a state of somnambulism, that we suddenly practise with wonderful skill an art whose rudiments we have scarcely mastered, these lines had been written without an erasure, as if dictated by some other, and as even the worst verses were far superior to what Edwin usually acknowledged, and the cynical, over-excited tone of the whole was utterly foreign to his nature, Marquard looked upon them as a record of words uttered by a man possessed with a devil, and forced to repeat what the demon suggests. The verses ran as follows:

Methought that all my tasks were duly learned, And I prepared to turn my back on school. Must I examined be, to show what rank I've earned?

Then pray begin to ask your questions o'er, For I am almost tempted to display Before you all my wisdom's scanty store.

Our life--whence comes it?--That we do not know. And whither does it tend?--From dusk to night. Its purpose?--Earth to teach us to forego.

Say, 'What is God?--That, God alone doth know. And what is pleasure?--To be free from pain. And pain?--To lack all pleasure here below.

Not always must we joy in self-denial. We are too far removed from actual life, And to the ground 'twixt two beliefs will fall.

Well, in the first class I have learned this truth, Which in the sixth I dimly did suspect, Hollow's the nut we have to crack, forsooth.

When scarcely from the nurse's arms escaped, We gnaw, till on it we have cracked our teeth. By earnest zeal reward from toil is reaped.

To feel the pangs of hunger never stilled, Mocking us alway as dry husks we gnaw, In the delusion we are being filled.

Then, though of course the palate, without question, Is thereby fooled, the stomach's soothed, and we Our nap can take fearing no indigestion.

Naught save the carelessness that questions never, Goes satisfied away. It took the shells For kernels, and thought ignorance clever.

It hopes, when shrinking from the pangs of death, That life's just opening, the best to come! When its last sun doth fade, and fails its breath.

A brighter heavenly light will swiftly shine. Good dreamers! After school there is no doubt That a pleasant vacation will be thine.

Next to the university, the student, When once the school examinations o'er, Will go, and with the change be well content.

From obscure toil and hours of study free Into this world we go; only again Quiet and insignificant to be.

No difference exists 'twixt old and young; nor Any trace of cheerful intercourse, No longer rings the cry "Excelsior!"

And say, are all these changing forms in quest Of this? This lavish outlay too! Oh fools! Who in this world think "all is for the best."

To me, from whom its joys have passed away, It seemeth like a dream of the great Pan, Sprung from his burning brain on some dog day.

Dixi! Although thy brains thou'st often racked. The matter is not yet so plain and smooth. The aid of ripe experience thou hast lacked.

Not yet? A little longer turn the pages dreary, Conning the self same lesson? Said I not Of sitting on the school bench I was weary?

Loathsome the animal, whose monstrous jaws The food long since digested idly grinds, And grinds again, nor ever makes a pause.

No matter, still thou must remain to aid Thy weaker schoolmates on the lower forms, Till themes are all prepared and lessons said.

Why sullen looks and frowning brow display? The hours of leisure may be occupied In scribbling rhymes, while schoolboy pranks you play And on the school room bench your name enscribe.

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Chapter VI

Sensitive minds are in the habit of terming the union between body and spirit an unequal marriage, a mesalliance. And yet good and evil days might teach them a better term, show them that whatever may be thought in regard to the difference of origin, in the conscientious fulfillment of every duty the dust born portion certainly does not fall below the other, which is said to be its master. How could the soul enjoy the sensation of pleasure, if its faithful companion did not lend to it the aid of the senses, to say nothing of the joys which, even to the most transcendental, arise from the senses alone. And if, in the pure ether of spiritual enjoyment, we tremble at the thought of our resemblance to God, what tortures we should suffer in the knowledge of our likeness to the worms, if the body did not again befriend us, and as distress reached its climax, transfer the conflict to the domain of the senses, thus, as it were, retrieving the vantage point it has lost, until it has gained new strength and new armor to end the struggle in its own territory.

Thus the severe illness which attacked Edwin was a boon to his sorely wounded spirit. For weeks he lay senseless, a prey to a violent nervous fever. He recognized none of his nurses, neither Franzelius, who after having been released from his imprisonment with an impressive warning, spent his nights regularly in the tun, sleeping perhaps a short time on Balder's bed, when toward midnight the patient grew a little calmer, nor the faithful Mohr, who acted as sick nurse during the day, and who in the intervals when his constant attendance was not required, found his sole recreation in sitting at Balder's turning lathe and playing countless games of chess. At the commencement of the illness, Marquard had been inclined to send Edwin to the hospital, where he could have taken charge of him more easily. But the other two friends and Madame Feyertag would not listen to the proposal, and although the illness lasted for weeks and months, the kindhearted woman never for a moment regretted that she had kept the sick man under her roof. Her heart and her linen chest, her hands and those of her old maid-servant were always open and ready, whenever they were needed. "My worthy friend," said the zaunkoenig to her husband--he came every day to inquire how the sick man had passed the night--"your explosive theory is brilliantly refuted, and the wisdom of Solomon proven:--'the price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies.'"

A calm smile rested on his lips and he looked at the crape on his white hat. The shoe-maker shrugged his shoulders. "The intention is good," said he, "but the idea is usually weak. For instance, there's my daughter Reginchen!--Well, I won't praise her, but Schopenhauer is right again in regard to her explosive effect. The Lord knows what ails her; her mother didn't make half so much fuss when she was young. But her imaginative power Herr Koenig, is beyond any man's comprehension. You know she's betrothed to Herr Franzelius. Didn't she act at first as if she would die if she couldn't have him? Besides, he's a very respectable man and if he only gets rid of his radical nonsense, can make a good living; for it can't be denied that he has education and what's called character, and with the few groschen she'll bring him, he can settle in life and even start a printing office. Well, as I have only this one daughter--we're weak, Herr Koenig, we men when we are fathers. But now, just think of this: ever since the young gentleman upstairs died, the silly thing has worn black as if he had been her brother, and all the betrothal gayety is over. When Herr Franzelius comes in the evening, they clasp each other's hands for ten minutes and hang their heads like a couple of weeping willows, and all the rest of the day she sits still and reads Schiller's poems, and if I ask how much of her wedding outfit is completed, she says: 'There's no hurry about that, father.' Yes, yes, Herr Koenig, it's just as I say: the will is good, for she still means to marry him; but what notion she's taken into her head, to be suddenly absorbed in Schiller when she ought to be thinking of making up underclothes and bed-linen--if I've got the least idea, I'll never attempt to tell the difference between neat's leather and calf skin again. By the way, where's your daughter? It's an age since I've had the honor--"

The little artist, who had listened with evident sympathy, was so much disturbed by this question that his only answer was a heavy sigh. At last he said: "The dear God some times tries us very severely, Herr Feyertag. He has long showered blessings upon me, I was happy in my home and in my art, and really always strove hard to keep my mind humble that I might not be rendered arrogant by so many mercies. Since I've become a court-artist, especially, I've examined my heart and uprooted every fibre of pride, for after all there are many far more deserving and talented than I, who yet accomplish nothing, while my modest speciality--but now I've been chastised in what was dearest to me. My Leah's health is failing, no one knows what to do for her, even Dr. Marquard can say nothing except that it may improve when the weather is more favorable, when we can travel. But its now February, who knows how matters will be in April or May. Oh! my dear friend, all my life I've clung to the consolation that our heavenly father chastises us because he loves us, but if I should be compelled to endure--"

He paused suddenly and without, as usual, leaving his regards for Madame Feyertag, hastily quitted the shop.

At this time, Edwin had been out of danger for several weeks and even a relapse was no longer to be feared. His physical health was visibly improving; but his intellect seemed inexpressibly slow in regaining its clearness and strength. He could sit at the window for hours with a very cheerful face, without seeking any amusement or occupation. Not until the first days of early spring came and he could drive out in the noonday sun, did the mist which had settled on his mind gradually dissolve. His memory regained its power slowest of all. When the events which had occurred during the last few months before Balder's death were mentioned, it was with the greatest difficulty that he could re-unite the sundered threads.

Even after nursing was no longer necessary, Franzelius still continued to sleep in the tun. Edwin had begged him to do so, because he felt how much pleasure it afforded the faithful friend to thus fulfil what he had promised Balder. Moreover, after being alone all day--Mohr having sought solitude for some time, it was pleasant when evening came to see the honest face and to be lulled to sleep by quick conversation. True, there was no lack of other visitors. The little artist came and Frau Valentin, who again as far as Madame Feyertag's jealousy permitted, hastened convalescence by preserves, strengthening broths, and various delicate birds. But the more his strength returned, the more indifferent and content with his position the invalid seemed.

The news that another had obtained the professorship offered to him had come long before. Edwin had seen it in a newspaper and submitted to the disappointment with great indifference. What was his career to him now? He was happy in once more feeling strength to think of new books, and eagerly read the important works that had appeared during his sickness. Toinette's name never crossed his lips. He once asked whether Marquard had seen a letter which he had received just before his illness and which he was unable to find. "The maid-servant probably lighted the fire with it long ago," Marquard answered dryly; "was it anything of importance?" He did not want to return the fatal sheet which he had carefully laid aside, until there was no possible danger of a re-opening of the old wound.

But this danger seemed at last to have disappeared. One day, when Marquard was making a short call, Edwin with a perfectly calm face showed him a note he had received an hour before at the sight of which his friend could scarcely conceal his alarm.

"It has come true," said Edwin smiling, but with a slight flush. "I thought the lime twig would not release the bird again. Well, I hope her gilded cage will be large enough for her to fancy herself at liberty."

"May I read it?" asked Marquard.

"Certainly. Unfortunately I've never had any secrets in common with her, and you have long thought her what she seems here."

The note ran as follows:

"You discarded me so suddenly, dear friend, that if I were sensitive I should now keep silence in my turn. But as, from the beginning of our acquaintance, I was as sincere in my friendship as you in your unfortunate love, my feeling is more lasting, as well as more compassionate and considerate than yours, I should not like to have you learn through the newspapers, that your poor duchess has resolved to make a mesalliance and in a few days will be called countess. Why have I made this resolution? If your philosophy can find no answer to the question, will you expect a hopeless simpleton to furnish one? Why are we in the world at all? Perhaps a curiosity to learn whether any reason for existence would declare itself was the sole motive that induced me to take this step, at which you will doubtless feel some degree of indignation. Believe me, it is only a preparation for the last extreme measure, the step into nothingness. Besides, I have not been untrue to myself, I told him all, even that I do not love him. But as he is more easily satisfied than certain people, and asks nothing I cannot give, I think we shall get along with each other very well, as we generally end best with those with whom, we have never begun. With you--I feel it by this letter, which can find no close--I should never have been happy. But it is the same now. There are some absurd destinies, is it not so, dear friend?

"In spite of everything ever your own

"TOINETTE,

"P. S.--Little Jean sends his compliments to you. It was on his account that I decided to marry the count. He would have been miserable for life, if he had not been permitted to wear the count's livery, which is green embroidered with silver, and makes him look like a green-finch in a gala dress.

"Despite all this I still wish I were--"

The last line was erased, but the words were yet legible. Marquard silently laid the letter on the table.

"What do you say to it?" asked Edwin, as he slowly replaced the sheet in the envelope.

"Nothing. I've long since given up saying anything about the countless varieties of the great species, 'woman.' I hate unscientific talk and therefore only try to look at each individual case from the practical side. At present I should like to hear what you say to it. You've taken more than a theoretical interest in the case from the very beginning."

"I'll tell you, as soon as I have found the formula. Hitherto, it has only been boundless surprise."

"At her decision? Why, I should think--"

"No, at its effect on myself. Will you believe that I read this letter without any quicker pulsation of the heart than if it had contained the news that the Sistine Madonna had been removed from Dresden to Munich. It seems as if the enchantment had vanished with the old blood the fever consumed. Countess Toinette--I can say it as calmly as Reginchen Franzelius."

Marquard, with immovable composure, looked him steadily in the face. "Bravo!" said he. "You ought to have a red ticket: 'dismissed cured.' To-day you must take a little walk, then for dinner--but I'll consult with Madame Feyertag about that."

He pressed his hand, whose temperature did not seem to exactly please him, and left the room. On the stairs he met Mohr. "Be kind enough to watch Edwin to-day as closely as possible and not leave him alone long," he whispered hastily. "His old love has accepted her count. He says he's perfectly indifferent to it, but this idealist is not to be trusted. Tell Franzel to keep watch to-night. I'll look in again to-morrow."

But this time the clever physician was mistaken. When he returned the next morning, he found his patient looking much fresher and brighter and his pulse in a perfectly normal condition. He listened to the account of the expedition made the day before, which, favored by the brightest March sunlight, had for the first time restored Edwin's confidence in his strength. "To-day, with your permission, I propose to make a visit," said he. "I want to look in upon my little friend and patron in the Venetian palace. He's not made his appearance in the tun for a week. Did the child of God only have intercourse with the child of the world as a good samaritan!"

"You're very much mistaken," replied Marquard looking unusually grave. "Our zaunkoenig is watching his nest, because his brood is looking very miserable."

"Leah? Sick? And how long has she been ill? Why do I first hear of it to-day?"

"Why should I gossip about one sick room in another! I only wish I were as successful there as here. But there are cases which remind us rather roughly of the limits of our powers."

"Can't you understand her sickness?"

"Her case requires a wiser man than I. I know that the seat of the difficulty is in the mind, and I would even venture to touch the sore spot with the point of a needle. But what will that avail, if the remedy, which I also know, is not to be bought at any apothecary's?"

"A disease of the mind?"

"No: a simple consuming fever with a perfectly clear intellect. In short:

"By angels 'tis called a heavenly bliss, By devils a woe of th' deepest abyss, While mortals exclaim 'it is love.'"

"Love? Is the poor girl--"

"In love, and so deeply that her life is imperiled. Oh! my dear fellow, these still waters!"

"And who in the world--But to be sure, from what I know of her, she'd not confess it to you, or any other human being."

"A good family doctor needs no verbal confession in such cases. We've other means of examining a feverish little heart--quiet noiseless means. At first, its true, I was on the wrong track. I imagined--mind, this is entirely between ourselves--that I myself was the fortunate object and cause of this mysterious suffering. After all, it would not have shown any want of taste in her, and with the romantic occasion of our introduction--the night when we rescued Fraeulein Christiane from drowning--who would have wondered if she had at first revered me as the saving angel, then admired, and at last learned to love. And I confess the bare thought cost me several sleepless nights--until about midnight. You know what I think of love and matrimony, but my most sacred prejudices were in danger of being vanquished, when I fancied that a girl like this zaunkoenig's daughter could really want me for her lawful husband. There's something about her which must make it difficult, nay impossible for an honest man ever to be faithless to her. I'm as good a conductor of heat as an iron stove, and opportunity added fuel to the flames. Under the pretext of being obliged to watch her, I daily spent an hour in her society, almost always alone; and besides, just at that time, I'd had a quarrel with my little nightingale. Adeline had been a little too enthusiastic about a handsome Hungarian. So I took advantage of the holiday thus given my heart, to make studies beside the lagune, to ascertain whether I could change my sentiments and transform myself from an admirer of ladies in general, to the adorer of one."

"And in what did these studies consist?" asked Edwin forcing a smile.

"That's my secret," replied Marquard pathetically. "Enough I gave up the game as I saw it was lost to me; but with the zeal of jealousy searched for the man who stood in the way. My old sympathetic method didn't leave me in the lurch this time."

"May one know--?"

"It's not my own invention. One of my colleagues in the dim past made use of the stratagem. You know the story of the sick prince, who was in love with his step-mother, and whose secret the physician discovered by feeling his pulse just as the queen was entering the room. Well, I couldn't introduce the man whom I suspected into Leah's sick chamber. There was an obstacle in the way. But his name, which I uttered apparently without design, while clasping the delicate round wrist of the little Jewish-Christian, produced precisely the same effect. A sudden quickening of the pulse to forty more throbs a minute.

"Of course the case is not particularly interesting to you," he continued, as Edwin made no reply but with averted face gazed steadily out of the window. "You've never had any different feeling for this pupil, than for any other student. At that time you'd been bitten by the serpent, and even if you had been offered the three graces attired in their authentic Olympic costume, you would have blindly pursued the ducal banner. Whether under these circumstances, however, it would be well for you to pay your visit to the Venetian palace today, you must decide yourself. True, we usually recommend rubbing chilblains with snow, but unfortunately a woman's heart is somewhat more delicately organized than the sturdy extremities. I thought it my duty to make this acknowledgement. Adieu!"

He patted his silent friend on the shoulder and left him alone.

It would be impossible to describe Edwin's state of mind in a few words; we can scarcely venture to say whether joy or perplexity predominated in his strange bewilderment. The first overwhelming surprise was succeeded by the sense of secret shame that this could have so amazed him, the burden of a fault, which pardonable on account of its total unconsciousness, was yet unable to wholly absolve itself from the charge of ingratitude. How selfishly unfeeling it now seemed, that he had not even repaid with friendly recognition her many unobtrusive tokens of the most humble affection! Even today, when he had determined to see her again, it was principally the father, toward whom he thought he had a duty to fulfil. And now he learned that the happiness and misery of this young girl's life depended upon his presence or absence.

He closed his eyes and recalled all the scenes in which she had played a part, from the first interview in the little house to the evening when she had stood beside Balder's catafalque and gazed at the still face with an expression of the deepest woe. He saw her so distinctly that he could have sketched her features line for line, the beautiful lines of the eye-lids, which had attracted his attention at their first meeting, because they moved very little, as if the eyes had more strength than those of others to bear the light without the quiver of an eyelash. Then the delicate, strongly marked brows, which contracted when she was in thought--her father often teased her about it; her forehead was like a white page containing some secret inscription, and the eyebrows arched beneath it like two large interrogation points--all these things appeared before him, and the quiet droop of the head when it was difficult for her to understand something he was explaining, and the sudden movement with which, when she had grasped the idea, she raised it as if exulting in her victory and demanding new and more difficult tasks.

This girl loved him, and for months he had not had the slightest suspicion of it!

He took the plate she had painted for him from his desk, where he kept all sorts of writing materials lying on it, and looked at it as if for the first time. Without thinking what he was doing, he breathed on the surface and polished it with his handkerchief. It seemed as if he thought some secret cipher was concealed among the flowers and ears of corn, which must now stand out and reveal what thoughts had passed through her mind while she painted.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he possessed something better than this. The volume written by her own hand, in which as her father said, she had copied his lessons--a deep flush crimsoned his face as he remembered that it still lay unopened in his desk. True, how could it have interested him to see whether his pupil had correctly understood all his words, since the instruction was to cease. But suddenly this pledge entrusted to his care became of the greatest value, as a fresh means--since she would disclose her feelings in it without reserve--of obtaining a thorough knowledge of her, and then: did he know what confessions she might have made between the lines, confessions which had so long remained mute and unanswered?

As if to repair the omission by the utmost haste, he now drew out the package and tore off the enclosure. A plain thick volume, like a diary, appeared, on whose blue cover was written the word "journal." A flourish had been drawn beneath with the pen, and as he turned the leaves he found many traces on the margins of the pages that the writer had dreamily drawn, intricately interwoven flowers and figures, before summoning up courage to commit her thoughts to paper.

It was anything but a simple exercise book. The records dated much farther back, to a period three or four years before her acquaintance with Edwin, and contained all the secrets of her young life, everything which since her girlish heart had awakened, had aroused grave doubts and questions.

There was scarcely a trace of external events; only from the reaction on her mind could it be inferred that even this most quiet, uniform life had experienced its trials and storms. But instead of merely describing the tone and contents of these pages, let us at this point, while Edwin for hours absorbs himself in reading, insert a short extract from oft-interrupted soliloquies of this earnest young soul, which will at least afford an idea of its principle characteristics.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VII. FROM LEAH'S DIARY

"Since I burned the old volumes in which I so conscientiously gave an account of all my secret struggles before and after confirmation, I have had a horror of all writing. But is not this feeling similar to that experienced by a person just recovering from small-pox who sees himself in the glass for the first time, and desires to break the innocent mirror that shows him his real face. I wish I had not burned those diaries. True, they told a tale of sickness; but have we any reason to be ashamed, if we are attacked by fever and rave in delirious fancies?

"As to what befell me at that time--either I am greatly mistaken, or we are developed by sickness; few escape this development by pain, I think, and those few only because their natures are too weak and their blood too stagnant.

"But when I reflect upon it, it was not shame because I must endure these childish tortures before reaching clear views of life, which made me destroy the old journals; it was a gnawing remorse that I could see so plainly and yet lack the courage to openly assert my convictions. I could not even plead the excuse that my unbelieving mind was not wholly clear, and when my lips repeated the confession of faith, I only made a vague protest. I knew perfectly well that I was uttering a monstrous falsehood, my own quiet creed in black and white gave the lie to the public confession in church, and in addition to the first act of cowardice, I committed the second one of destroying these mute witnesses, as if thereby I could stifle my own consciousness.

"I can still remember how, in those days, a shudder like the chill of death ran through my frame, as, one after another, I heard all the main points of the creed which my benumbed brain had for months vainly striven to comprehend, echo loudly through the church, and at each one a voice within me shrieked 'no! no!' and yet the 'yes' fell from my lips, and I suddenly felt as though I were dead, since I had so publicly and solemnly belied my own nature. It seemed as if I had forsworn my existence, renounced what was nearest for something alien, and taken what must ever be foreign to my character as my dearest possession. Oh! the shame, the confusion, in which I returned and was forced to allow myself to be congratulated on my disgrace and degradation. For months I have been unable to regain my courage, or enter into cordial relations with myself, so utterly was I crushed.

"In those days, no palliating circumstances occurred to me, neither the timidity natural to my sixteen years, nor the horror that would have filled the solemn space if I had told the truth, nay I did not even think of the true motive of my decision, the grief I should have caused my dear father by a step so unprecedented. I heard only my own voice professing a religion of which my heart knew nothing, nay which to myself I had even clearly refuted, openly refused, and yet now acknowledged as the substance of my deepest thoughts and feelings. It weighed upon my conscience like a perjury; then I burned the books.

"Why have I now commenced a new one? What have I to discuss with myself? Ah! the silence which I have become accustomed to keep, because I fear the sound of my own thoughts, has at last reached such a point that nature and the world and my own heart are also dumb to me. There is no one to whom I could utter my secret feelings. My father would be frightened if he should see such deep gulfs and lonely heights in my soul. Aunt Valentin speaks a different language, and others who come to the house take me for a strange and not very lovable girl, who has few attractions.

"It's all the same. On the whole, silence makes us far happier; but we ought not to forget to talk to ourselves. I will practice the art again. Hitherto I have always lived at peace with myself, except for that one great discord.

"And that--I have now clearly perceived it--is the fault of the bad habit of expecting young people, just as they are beginning to suspect the value of words, the difficulty of the enigma of the world, the depths of the abysses of life, to be contented with a few answers learned by rote to the most mysterious questions! It is cruel, to compel them either to carelessly cast aside every doubt, in obedience to the exhortations of a good man, who by virtue of his office is not permitted to doubt, or the tremendous courage to step forward before a whole congregation and reveal the inmost depths of their souls!

"The objections I ventured to make during the time of instruction were all so easily refuted--with the theological self-sufficiency and supreme wisdom against which there can be no debate, since it refers every spiritual doubt to the poor hypercritic's conscience, and instead of any real arguments has only the inscrutable retort: 'we must pray to God for faith, and he will bestow it.' Is not that like saying that when I am hungry and ask for bread, I can have an opiate, that I may forget my wants and dream of full dishes? Thoughts disturb me, and to escape from their conflict, I must pray for thoughtlessness?

"But they are happy and wish others to have the same joy. If only the same food satisfied and nourished all!--

"May 10_th_.--I have been driving about the city with Aunt Valentin, buying all sorts of things. While we were so engaged she took advantage of the opportunity to labor again at my poor soul, which I thought she had given up as hopeless. But she really loves me, and therefore does not weary in constantly directing my attention to what renders her happy. I said very little in reply. There was so much noise and bustle in the streets, I had not felt cheerful and gay for so long a time, why should I spoil my enjoyment of the beautiful sunlight with arguments and self-defense? But at last, when we were again approaching our little house, in order not to delude her with false hopes, I remarked that I certainly greatly needed redemption and often longed for it with bitter pain. Yet how was I to feel love for a Saviour who did not answer my questions, did not know my sad thoughts, and stood before me as a sinless, perfect god-man. The mystical act of dying to rescue erring humanity has always been incomprehensible to me. Single beautiful rays of his nature shining through his doctrine might have warmed me; but I needed not only to be warmed but enlightened, and besides the wants of the heart, about which I am never uncertain, I have other needs, which the catechism does not still, and which--even if they are unnecessary or wrong--no dogmatic words can soothe.

"My dear father who was just going out, met us and interrupted Aunt Valentin's reply. No theological subjects are ever discussed before him, he has positively forbidden it. His relations toward God and all 'that is not of this world,' fill his whole nature so completely, that he himself says it is like a second health. If we speak of it, we must already be half sick, as we usually do not feel it at all. I envy him the happy certainty of constant intercourse with his God, who is as living a presence to him, as if he could see him with his eyes and touch him with his hands. I, on the contrary, always feel alone with myself, my human heart, my human thoughts; Aunt Valentin calls it godless, I call it god-forsaken. But is it my fault, that it is so? Have I not honestly sought him in tears and despair, the nearer the time came when I was to confess him in public? And he has not suffered me to find him!

"Evening.--I have been obliged to finish a piece of work, a vase designed for a wedding gift, roses and sprays of myrtle with the interlaced initials of both names in the centre. I can understand how my father is so 'satisfied in his God.' He has a much less exacting heart, and is also content with his art, while my half-way talent shames me. This too is a matter of temperament. It is an impossible thought that we must wish (that is pray) to close our eyes to our own deficiencies, to be satisfied with trivial things. It is well not to murmur, to submit to what cannot be altered, but to falsify our own judgment for the sake of so-called contentment--I shrink from it as from a heinous sin.

"Perhaps if I had great talent, or any high, difficult life-work taxing my energies, I might sooner cease to brood over inscrutable things. He who creates something in which he can himself believe, will perhaps in time lose his curiosity or the anxious desire to understand what has been created around him. He knows or imagines he knows why he lives. Each day seems to show him. I, on the contrary--if I were not necessary to my father--

"Two days later.--I stopped writing day before yesterday, because some impulse suddenly urged me to read the New Testament again. I had not opened it since so many incomprehensible, threatening and condemnatory sentences perplexed my heart and then threw it back upon itself. Now, since I have lost the childish awe of hearing in it the voice of an infallible spirit, an Omniscient God, since I have read the story of one of the noblest and most wonderful of men, I have found much that greatly refreshed me. But the subdued tone of the whole at last oppressed me again. What do we mortals possess that is more elevating, pure, and consoling than joy; joy in beauty, in goodness, in the brightness of this world! And while we read this book, we are constantly wandering in the dusk of expectation and hope, the promise of eternal life is never fulfilled, but just dawning when we have struggled through time, uncheered by a bright ray of joy, a jest, a laugh--the pleasure of this world is vanity--we are referred to a future which makes the present worthless, and the brightest earthly bliss, that of becoming absorbed in a pure, deep, loving thought, must also be suspected by us, since only the poor in spirit inherit the kingdom of heaven--

"I am poor in spirit, but it makes me unhappy that I feel it, and at the same time feel that if I could break though these restrictions, I should no longer be what I am, not yet become sure of my redemption and happiness. For what transcends me is no more mine.

"And then the thought that this gentle man, in order to belong to all humanity, should turn away from his relatives with such strange harshness, have no family ties--I suppose it was necessary but it always chills the ardor of my feelings. All the other great souls I have loved, have been glad and bright, and amid their majesty were allied to my nature by the chords of human needs. When I read Goeethe's letters, of Schiller's narrow circumstances, Luther and his family, or of the people of still more ancient times, up to Socrates and his scolding wife, I always feel a breeze from the native soil out of which the plant of their spirits has sprung, and which also bears and supports my insignificant one. But the absence of everything akin to humanity alarms and estranges me, and to make amends I have not even the faith to believe that all, as with God, is perfectly right.

"I have often wished I were a genius, for I thought geniuses must be very happy people, since with a sudden bound of fancy they leap over all the abysses of doubt at which quiet thinkers, to whom no brilliant idea suddenly lends wings, stand gazing helplessly. But on the other hand no applause from others or myself--though I greatly value genius--would induce me to relinquish honest labor, even if it advances slowly or does not reach the goal at all. This is my piety since I lack any other. Genius and devotion are probably incongruous, but without the consciousness of being absorbed in quiet honest devotion, in studying the mystery of life, not even our brief existence would not be worth the trouble of living.

"End of July.--I have worked hard at my studies from nature. I think these industrious months which have filled my portfolio, must have done me good; for I now believe I am on the track of my own views and opinions, and have freed myself as much as possible from what I learned, which never satisfied me.

"True, while I was doing so my journal has been neglected. I have painted until not only sight and hearing, but thought failed. If absorption in nature and art could content me, I should have experienced a few months of perfect happiness.

"Aunt Valentin has brought to the house a young man whom she holds in the highest esteem, an artist who belongs to the Nazarene school, not without talent and not unattractive, but in spite of his St John's head, as Aunt calls it, he will never be dangerous to me.

"August 2_d_,--When I think I must some day belong to a husband, I am always filled with fear, so greatly do I feel the need of loving, yielding up my heart, in whose depths many things are unchained which will some day burst forth like hot springs. But I know that I can only deliver up my life to a man, when he is what I have so often sought in books--a very Saviour; when he is so far above me in strength, goodness, and intellect, that I can always receive from him, no matter how often I ask. It is said to be more blessed to give than to receive. But in marriage, it seems to me, since a woman gives her all, she ought to receive more than her all. It may be that these are dreams woven in a girl's idle brain, and that in reality such a union of two in one is impossible. At least my own parents, exemplary as they were, my good aunt and all the other happy married people I have seen, do not correspond with this ideal. However, there will be plenty of time to lower my standard when it is necessary.

"3_rd_.--Aunt Valentin has just been talking about N--r. She said he esteemed me very highly, loved me warmly, and should consider himself happy if he could win my affection and make me his wife. I have seen it coming, and my answer was the more free from embarrassment, the less I reciprocated the feeling.

"He my saviour? He, who has not the most distant idea of my nature, and who would not have the least comprehension of my needs, if I told him all?

"'We are too unlike,' I answered. 'He is mistaken if he thinks one like me could make him happy.'--Aunt Valentin eagerly protested against this. He knew my religious opinions, and that was precisely what had turned the scale. He now felt how much he had to give, otherwise his modesty would have discouraged him. We discussed the matter a long time, debating whether with the possibility of conversion and future understanding, two persons so widely different in belief might venture to join hands. Dear me, she believes it because she desires it. This reason for faith does not exist for me, since I do not even wish to attract him.

"A nature like his, which is alarmed by everything vague and seeks repose at any cost, even that of truth--I mean truth to itself--such a peace-loving soul would be chilled to death in the storms of thought which are my element. It requires courage to stand as sentinel on such a lonely post, and not even know when one will be relieved--if at all.

"Wednesday, 6, A. M.--I awoke last night and could not fall asleep again on account of the heat, so I rose and sat down at the open window, where the night heaven looked down upon me with its countless stars. Then suddenly, when all around was so calm and silent, and yet so grand and wonderful, a feeling stole over me as if I distinctly heard my soul say: 'No, this boundless expanse contains no heart whose pulses throb in harmony with yours. But do not fear. We breathe and move and will and think according to eternal necessity, and are not solitary, even amid the desolation of midnight.' And as I said this to myself, I heard my dear father's quiet breathing and stole softly into his room. There he lay smiling so lovingly in his sleep, that I involuntarily knelt beside him and gently kissed his hand; then I returned to my bed and slept more sweetly than I had ever done before.

"Long ago, when it occurred to me, that what people call God was a vision created after their own image, a thrill of superstitious awe stole over me, as if I must be punished in some way for my audacity. But it is childish to suppose that if a conscious, omniscient, omnipresent being really holds the world in his hand, our doubts or misapprehensions would offend him, as an earthly monarch would be angered if a sentinel did not pay him due honor. But the childish tricks and farces which we daily see performed with the utmost seriousness, and even take part in ourselves, have gradually made us in earnest. People in Catholic countries believe that they offend this God,--whom they call all-good and all-wise--if they pass a church without removing their hats or making the sign of the cross, and in many Protestant houses they do not appease their hunger without asking the Saviour to share the meal. This is child's play, and very harmless and even pleasing, if in these little pious, symbolical exercises, men did not lose the capacity to realize the vast heights and depths of the idea of God, that would be worthy of this vast universe. But you make him out what you are yourselves, a being irritable, capricious, and so susceptible to flattery that he cannot bear to have a man, at a rare piece of good fortune, cry out: 'Well done;' but at once spoils the poor mortal's mirth. If forsooth nothing can be gained by a formal suit, he must try again to appease him, a being, that with all his majestic designs, does not suffer a sparrow to fall from the roof without serving his purpose, let alone a poor slater, who leaves a wife and children penniless.

"Very well; let them model their household God as they choose and can. But why do they rage with fire and sword or angry denunciations against all who cannot make the magnificent creation harmonize with such a creator, who to atone for the contradictions and mysteries, hardships and delusions of life, seek something besides the rewards and compensations to be received: in another world? Why should one who troubles nobody with his wanderings and searchings, not be permitted to fight his way through at his own risk, but always be forced to walk on the great high road, where by the rays of the privileged lights so much is done and approved that is utterly repulsive to him.

"Later.--My father too--in his tender affectionate way--has also asked what I think of N--r. I made no concealment of my utter indifference, and begged him to inform the worthy man that he might cherish no delusions. 'You know,' said I, 'I have always been a terribly obstinate child, and only one person has had with me the patience I need--yourself. I should be a simpleton if I left you to quarrel with somebody else who will not even listen to what I say, but already believes me a stray sheep.' He laughed and said he did not wish to give me up, I should have to run away from him till he could become reconciled, and besides he only wanted to know my opinion; the affair had seemed to him very improbable.

"I clearly perceived that Aunt Valentin, to whom he can never refuse anything, was at the bottom of the matter. But with all his mildness and gentleness, there is one point where he becomes firm as a rock, and we perfectly understand each other: a person who lacks real nobility and greatness of soul can not influence him, spite of the best qualities. And therefore--"

* * * * *

"What I wrote yesterday afternoon has been strangely verified.

"Aunt Valentin interrupted me and induced father also to leave his work and enjoy the fine weather in the Thiergarten. A concert was to be given for some benevolent object. When we reached the place, we found, as I suspected, N--r already there. As it was very crowded, he had secured places for us, so we sat very comfortably looking at the gaily dressed ladies and children, who moved up and down near us, and listening to all sorts of overtures and dances, which failed in producing a pleasant impression, on my ears at least. But the air was like balsam, the recent rain had made it soft and free from dust, and in the midst of the music a calm, cheerful feeling took possession of me, and I was very grateful to aunt for having afforded me this pleasure. She looked very bright; I often think she does not grow old, but in spite of her hard, dogmatic ideas, retains some of the innocence of childhood in her features; my father was very gay, his new coat fitted him perfectly, and we joked about it; even N--r seemed more agreeable than usual. Among all the blase vacant, or frivolous faces, his grave modest countenance looked like a human face amid mere masks. Suddenly, in a pause between two pieces of music, we heard from an adjoining table, where several officers were sitting, loud words about us, or rather me. A very saucy looking young lieutenant was beginning to tell his companions why he thought me pretty. I will not repeat his language here, but though not intended to be insulting, it was an offence against all good breeding, especially as various jests, stories, and satirical remarks, such as are common among gay young men, were added. Father turned pale and looked at Frau Valentin. 'We ought to go away,' said Aunt, 'this is intolerable.' 'We ought to request them to stop,' replied father, glancing at N--r. 'It would be better to avoid a quarrel and any scandal,' replied the latter without daring to look up. 'Why can't we remain quietly here, and let these children of the world continue their talk, which doesn't concern us.' 'Us?' said my good father rising. 'I should think, as we're sitting at the same table, it concerned us all if any person behaved rudely to one. I'll see whether this babbling mouth can't be stopped.' 'Would you--?' exclaimed N--r in astonishment, but father did not hear him. He had approached the table, courteously raised his hat, and said a few words in a tone so low, that I did not understand them; there was a strange roaring noise in my ears. I only saw his dear, gentle, honest eyes flash with an unusual light, a flush mount to his cheeks, and an expression of such firm resolution rest upon his features, that even the blustering young officer remained perfectly quiet, and no one interrupted him. When he had finished, he paused a moment to ascertain whether they had anything to say, then as all were silent and only the principal hero faltered a few incoherent words, father smiled very pleasantly, raised his hat again, and bowed to the whole table. Meantime the orchestra began, and when the piece was over, our neighbors departed, courteously raising their caps to my dear, knightly father, in doing which the ex-orator did not even venture to look at me.

"N--r was overwhelmed with shame, but father behaved as if nothing had happened. Afterwards when we were driving home with Aunt (my peaceful suitor had found some pretext to bid us farewell,) he took occasion to tell her that in the future she need not encourage this singular person to visit our house. 'I know,' said he, 'that we're told to turn the right cheek when smitten on the left. But although I greatly desire always to be disposed to forgive insults to myself, as soon as they are addressed to another, especially a lady, you must allow me to defend myself and hold the man who either has not the heart or spirit to do so, a weakling, with whom I prefer to have no intercourse.'

"When we were at home and alone, I threw my arms around my dear, noble papa's neck and kissed him till he was fairly out of breath and began to scold, though there were tears of joy in his eyes.

"N--r was not mentioned by either of us. I think I shall not see him again--

"How little the days bring, that really touches the heart! Oftentimes this void is not at all oppressive. A mist seems to enfold me, which is already beginning to grow less dense and be gilded by the first rays of the sun, which I cannot yet see. A soft, delightful expectation pervades my soul, like the anticipation of very pleasant events, experiences, and enlightenments, which will undoubtedly soon take place. But when another day has passed in monotonous waiting, I lie down on my bed with a very heavy heart, and think: suppose nothing should happen? Suppose all your hoping and waiting should only befool you? For I have long understood that our wishes can give no claim to their gratification, our longings no right to their fulfillment. We all strive toward perfection, and remain in our incompleteness.

"But there is so much beauty, depth, and joy accessible to me, even in my limited sphere--and yet I am unable to attain it--am still far from it--the greatest happiness is beyond my reach.

"To-day I stood a long time before a shop where medical and philosophical works were displayed in the window. If I only had money enough, I would buy all whose titles please me and read them hap-hazard, as the man in the fairy tale ate through a mountain of pan cakes and found priceless treasures. But the little I earn by painting--

"I have again looked over the contents of our book shelves which I already know by heart. Even in our great authors, I do not find what I seek and need. Then I mechanically took down a volume of Becker's History of the World and read a portion of it. If I only had some connection with those long past wars, political revolutions, and historical events! But the happy betrothal of our pretty little neighbor, our landlord's daughter, is really more important to me at this moment, than that Ninus married Semiramis, and Cleopatra had several husbands. Does not very much the same farce go on under different names, in other lands and costumes, a farce whose origin and purport we understand no better when we have read all these fourteen volumes?--

"And yet, if we did understand, could we endure life? Is not the fancy that we have something very important and necessary to do, is not this delusion perhaps the best in existence? At the theatre we ought to forget, as much as possible, that the actors behind the footlights are rouged and obey the prompter's voice instead of the dictates of their own hearts.

"I can still remember how I felt, when in my childhood I sat toward evening on the flight of steps leading down to the canal, gazing at the tiny spot gilded by the slender ray of sunlight that made its way between the high roofs. I always grasped at it and thought I could take the golden water in my hand. Then it was once more as dull and dirty as everywhere else in our lagune. But I had fancied or read somewhere, that if one knew a certain spell it would not turn back to common water, but remain liquid gold. Yes, if one knew the spell!--

"My good, kind, ever loving, ever thoughtful father! He has given me to-day a joy never experienced before. Be has found me a teacher and brought him home at once. The very first words exchanged with the Herr Doctor have convinced me that he is wholly unlike all the others, that he knows what I need, what I have not found in books and hitherto have not asked from men.

"If I should describe the wonderful impression this man and our first conversation--"

Here the writing suddenly stopped at the bottom of a page. The following sheets seemed to have been cut out with a small pair of scissors--how many could not be discovered. Then began in a clear, regular hand--all the previous writing had shown traces of agitation--an elaborate account of all Edwin had said during his lessons. He was astonished, since in his presence she had scarcely written a name or a date, to see how clearly the essential portion of his statements was given without the slightest misunderstanding, and yet in her own words, so that her memory was the least merit. No description of personal moods and experiences interrupted the quiet flow of these thoughts, but oftentimes there was a dash or interrogation point on the margin, a sentence thrown in which showed that here and there the writer's mind had not yet penetrated the lowest depths, and was obstinately seeking to fathom them. "This might be printed just as it stands, as a history of philosophy for women!" exclaimed Edwin, when he had read the last line. "What a head! And I, when she was gazing so dreamily into vacancy with her great eyes, thought 'where is she wandering'--when she perhaps understood better than her teacher.

"It's a pity that it closes so soon! I should like to see what she would have made of later events. But there's something more."

He had turned the page and now read as follows:

"The most difficult thing in life has always seemed to me to clearly perceive, in a conflict of duties, which is the higher, and those are the happiest and most ingenious who can do so. If goodness were a perfectly simple matter, what would be more delightful than always to be good? But that reason must put in its word where affairs of the heart are concerned, that we must think of what is customary, and often come to no positive decision, is sad, because it makes us doubt that on which we should most rely, our own consciences, and---whichever path we may choose--leaves in the soul a sting, a something to regret.

"We are firmly convinced that it is our duty to offend no one. It is the law of the gospel, as well as of our deepest feelings, which deals with all the sorrows of the world, and therefore makes every individual, out of compassion for the others, labor to alleviate the misery of the world. And now each individual again strives toward perfection, to the full extent of his powers, and yet can rarely carry his point without injuring others, as a tree in the midst of a forest has only just as much light and air as the neighboring trees admit. And therefore many a one withers and pines away, knowing it, foreseeing the end, and obliged to be silent--

"Yes, obliged to be silent even if speech would injure no one, when a mere prejudice decides it to be unseemly to grow beyond a certain height and breadth, and that those who are exceptions, would be struck by lightening; Oh! why must----"

Here several lines were erased. Then on a fresh page was a letter:

"I never dreamed that I should ever give this volume to any one, least of all that it would come to your notice, my honored teacher. But father wishes that the instruction for which I owe such inexpressible gratitude, should cease, that for some time I should turn my thoughts from all that was the subject of your lessons. He begged me to destroy these pages too. But I cannot yet resolve to do so, and requested him to allow me to place the volume in your care. So what came from, you returns to you again.--I beg you not to laugh at the earlier records, if you happen to cast a glance at them. I must now dispense with that which during the past few weeks has occupied all my thoughts and feelings, and for which I can never thank you enough! How deeply this grieves me I cannot tell you, and yet I feel that it would be the only thanks I could offer, if I could make you fully understand how much I shall now sacrifice. You would then perceive how much you have given me, and that I have received everything, even what was perhaps somewhat above my comprehension, with the most eager and honest purpose. At least I must tell you that presentiment and the incompleteness of my knowledge will never torture me in the future, as they have done in the past, now that I know there are clear judgments, and that even an untutored, simple girl, if she collects her thoughts and has the right guide, can at least advance far enough to comprehend the grandeur of the task, and exercise her powers upon it.

"Farewell, honored Herr Doctor. Be kind enough to accept the little memento I venture to send, and hold an indulgent memory of your sincerely grateful pupil,

"L. K."

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Chapter VIII

It was high noon when Edwin turned the last page of this confession, and meantime the maid-servant had brought his dinner, which stood untouched on the little table. Even now he sat motionless at the window for a long time, with the book on his knees and his hands crossed on it, as we place them on a chafing dish by whose feeble glow we try to warm ourselves.

When he rose, his eyes sparkled with a light as strong and brilliant as if the slow work of his convalescence had suddenly been completed. He extended his arms toward the blue March sky, and drew a long breath, like a person who feels strong enough to cope with anything that may come. "If I could only speak of it to Balder!" he said to himself; then he carefully locked the book up in his desk and went out into the street.

Once more life seemed dear and pleasant, the motley throng of people as delightful as the swarming of bees in midsummer, the faces he met kind and dignified. He paused before the shop windows, entered a confectioner's more to look at the dainties and the human beings who were eating them, than to enjoy them himself, and visited several of his intimate acquaintances, whose thresholds he had not crossed since the autumn. All congratulated him on his recovery, and said the sickness had rejuvenated him. At last, when he had walked till he was tired and remembered Marquard's threats if he attempted too much at first, he went to Mohr's rooms and would not be deterred from entering when told he was not at home. A strange, joyous restlessness urged him to see all sorts of strange people and things, and remain with them for a time, in order to have the secret pleasure of thinking of the treasure he concealed in his bosom; as in times of special happiness, when the lofty joys we experience render our sleep full of dreams, we wake, turn from one to another and reflect that the joy we feel on awaking, is the only real and actual experience.

Mohr did not return home. When Edwin had ransacked his room, looked through his books, and softly struck a few chords on Christiane's piano, which Mohr had bought at the sale of her effects, he at last resolved to go home. He was delighted to see Franzelius, but did not tell him one word of the subject that was occupying his thoughts. But as he fancied he read in his friend's honest countenance something like a reproach that Edwin could be so cheerful, almost wantonly gay, when Balder had scarcely been dead five months, he took his hand, and said gravely: "Franzel, I know of what you're thinking. But have patience with me a little while. Signs and wonders happen, and a dry stick which seemed fit for nothing except to be hacked to pieces and cast into the fire, suddenly puts forth green branches. If he had lived to see this, I really believe the joy and wonder would have prevented his death, we should have kept him here."

Then the next morning, when he opened his eyes and saw the sunbeams playing among the palms, he could not help thinking of a verse of poetry he had read somewhere, and as Franzelius had long since risen and gone to his printing office, he softly repeated it:

How pleasant to wake in the bright morning's glow When one has lain down with a soul full of love. And hear in our wonder the heart laughing low And know not the music that maketh it move, Till full soon the radiant light comes, and low The purple veil is withdrawn from above, Revealing the vision of love just dawning, Nodding and murm'ring: "Good morning! Good morning!"

He started up and hurriedly threw on his clothes. All hesitation was over, and he now reproached himself for having waited yesterday to see whether other thoughts would come during the night. If it had been admissible to make a call at nine o'clock in the morning, he would have rushed off without his breakfast. But he allowed another hour to pass, and then in the brightest of spring sunlight, turned his steps toward the Schiffbauerdamm and the lagune.

"Where are you hurrying at such a rate, Herr Doctor?" he suddenly heard some one call behind him. "One must borrow the wings of the morning to overtake you."

It was extremely disagreeable to be compelled to stop and give his pursuer a courteous answer. And yet the speaker was a man whom he was usually by no means unwilling to meet, a Livonian baron, whose great wealth gave him the means to indulge his passion for art and extend and correct his powers of judgment by constant travel. He had a gay, careless disposition, with which a sort of Berserker rage that overwhelmed him whenever the conversation turned upon spurious pictures or undeserved fame, oddly contrasted. One who saw him passing through the streets in his negligent attire, with a broad brimmed black hat crowded down over his bald head, and eyes that from constant searching and gazing, protruded like a snail's, as if eager to touch everything visible, would scarcely have expected to find the artistic judgment and delicate enthusiasm, which had made him dear to Edwin.

But to-day nothing could have been more inopportune to our friend than this meeting. He pleaded a business engagement as the cause of his haste, but could neither decline the troublesome companionship, nor conceal the goal of his walk.

When the baron heard the zaunkoenig's name, he paused in astonishment, and with a "Cospetto di Bacco!" seized Edwin by the coat.

"Listen to me, my dear fellow," he exclaimed, "this is a dispensation of Providence, or there is no God. Do you know I was just in the act of taking the same walk, and grumbling because I was obliged to do so, and now I'm heartily glad to be relieved of the necessity."

"Have you an errand to the artist, which I could perform in your place?"

"If you will be so kind, my friend; for that you can do so, and ten times better than I, is just the miracle. But first hear di che si tratta. Last autumn, when the exhibition of paintings was held here, I had the honor of escorting Prince Michael Paulovitsch Bataroff, our great Maecenas, you know, a man who between ourselves has allowed a wretched Byzantine daub to be imposed upon him for a Taddeo Gaddi, and otherwise paid dearly enough for his connoisseurship. But that's of no consequence if he's in the right hands, his money sometimes goes to the right man. Well, I am, so to speak, his oracle. Whenever anything is offered him, especially by a modern artist who is not yet famous, he always wants to ascertain from me, how the picture really suits him. Of course I'm as rude and inconsiderate toward him, as a good diplomat must be to conceal his subtlety. At that time, when as I've already mentioned, we nosed around the exhibition, in doing which he used me as his truffle-dog,[7] he had his pathetic days, when he would pour forth the most incomprehensible tirades about the moral influence of art, the priesthood of genius, and the incapacity of the German race to produce any great artists--phrases which always made me think of the famous symphony on the influence of blue on the arts, from the Scenes de la Vie de Boheme. Well, one day he was riding his hobby: in art only the highest developments have a right to exist. If he could be a Caligula of aesthetics, he would wish that all mediocre painters had but one neck, that he might sever it from the trunk at a single blow. I, who've grown old enough to make a wry face at the theory of perfection in art, dryly remarked that I knew spheres of life in which bungling did still more harm. Was not a mediocre statesman, doctor, priest, nay even an unskilful cook, far more injurious to the community, than a poor devil of a painter, who quietly daubs his little square of canvass, and meantime thinks himself an artist who understands how to enjoy life and beauty far more than other mortals? Whom does he injure except himself, if he sells nothing, and is compelled to starve with his wife and children? And if he really helps to corrupt the taste of the public, would the crime be any more reprehensible, than that committed by a statesman who incites nations to war against each other, or a cook who destroys our stomachs, let alone miserable doctors who can't heal them again. No, I would not on any account wish the innocent mediocrities away, unless they were blatant fools or scoundrels, and procured large orders by intrigue. A hundred bunglers were necessary, before one genius distinguished himself; but whether this eternal star enjoyed as much happiness amid all its splendor, as the majority of these ephemeral insects derived from their feeble spark, was very questionable, etc., etc. His Highness condescended to laugh and call me a paradoxical sophist. 'Look at this picture, my dear baron,' he exclaimed stepping before a genuine zaunkoenig, which really did cut a very poor figure. 'Will you, even in the presence of this sufficiently pitiful production, assert that the kingdom of heaven belongs also to the poor in art, that the worthy painter was satisfied with his work and would not joyfully abandon his trade, if he had learned anything else? I'll wager that most of these gentlemen, who pretend to glow with the sacred fire of genius, would not hesitate a moment, as they've only got into the habit of painting, as old Schadow said, to get out of it again, if they were better paid for their idleness, than for their bungling industry.'

"Well, he's not usually so unjust. You know, my friend, what a part materialism plays at the present day, even in art. But the cold, blase tone thoroughly enraged me, as I know the condition of the so-called sacred fire of art in His Highness' own breast. Just at that moment I saw our zaunkoenig, with his good, modest face, standing at some little distance, almost alarmed to see people linger so long before his insignificant picture. 'Suppose you make the trial, your Highness,' I hastily replied. 'The artist who painted this picture is close at hand. My Mantegna against your Luini, that no money in the world will induce this worthy man to sell the pleasure of occasionally sending such a little abomination of art into the world. But we must go to work delicately. An open offer would mortally offend his pride. Propose to give him a yearly salary, on condition that he does not touch a brush except for you, and must wait till you give him orders. I'll declare your Taddeo Gaddi genuine, if the little artist can hold out even a twelvemonth, without scrawling his hedges and foregrounds.'

"What do you say to this malicious wager? Shameful, my dear fellow, wasn't it? But it popped out all at once, and really my Maecenos was prince and Russian enough to think the trick very clever. I was ashamed of myself, when the zaunkoenig was summoned and showed a touching confusion, when he heard that his 'speciality' had at last found the right purchaser. 'How much do you earn by your painting in the most successful years?' asked the prince. 'Three hundred thalers at the most,' was the reply. 'Well, I'll give you a thousand, and from this time you're my court painter. You'll receive your salary from the embassy every six months, and in return bind yourself not to touch a brush except to execute my orders. Adieu!'

"So the good little man stood as if he had suddenly fallen from the clouds, surrounded by several perplexed, envious colleagues, who were paying him sarcastic compliments. But do you know, since that day I've not slept as quietly as usual, for I've also undertaken the pleasant task of watching the new court painter, to see whether he scrupulously keeps his contract. As I should make the mischief still worse by tattling, and moreover at last hope to win the wager and bring off my old friend with all the honors, I must after having said A., go on to B. I was just on my way to him again. He once told me that the spring always arouses in him a desire to paint. The trees themselves are then as dry as hedge poles, and vegetation is scanty; he can at any rate reproduce that. And yesterday the secretary of Legation handed me a letter, in which our artist asks His Highness whether he may be permitted to paint a very charming picture for him: the last snow on a low heath, with the bright spring sky arching over it, the first tender grass, etc. All letters to the prince, at least from artists, pass through my hands. Well, I shall win my Luini sooner than I expected. But this espionage is very repugnant to my feelings. Dear Doctor, you're an entirely disinterested person, and might do me the favor, especially since, as a psychologist, it must be of interest to you--"

"My dear baron," interrupted Edwin laughing, "I'm very much obliged to you for the part you wish to assign me in this tragi-comedy, but I really don't know whether I can undertake it, whether the visit I'm about to pay may not be the last for a long time, perhaps forever. Yesterday I wrote to L., where a professorship of mathematics is vacant. If it is given me, I've determined to exchange the air of Berlin, which does not agree very well with the constitution of a private tutor, for some more favorable climate. Besides, you take your wager altogether too much to heart. To say nothing of the fact that psychology will be greatly indebted to you, I see no danger whatever to our excellent friend. Like you, I'm convinced that you'll win, and then, as Russian princes always have their whims, it will be easy to find some pretext for breaking the bargain. Your Herr Michael Paulovitsch will have a good lesson, and the zaunkoenig his thousand thalers, which in spite of all, he'll have honestly earned. But here we are at his nest. Won't you come in with me? For this time I can place my talents as a police inspector at your disposal."

"Mille grazie," replied the other. "I'll take you at your word. Write a line this afternoon, either yes or no, to inform me whether the old sinner is secretly spoiling colors and washing brushes, or conscientiously keeps to his bond. I'll then add a postscript to his letter to the prince. Adieu, my dear fellow, I wish you success!--"

Edwin's heart beat violently as he entered the little house. The door chanced to be open, and he met no one in the entry. His heart told him that he should find Leah in the sitting room on the left. Yet he knocked at the door of the studio, and without waiting for the "come in," crossed the threshold he had so long avoided.

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Chapter IX

At his entrance the little artist started from a chair by the window, where he had apparently been seated a long time, absorbed in deep thought.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed, and his sad, honest face brightened, as he held out both hands to Edwin--"you again walk among the living. It's pleasant that you instantly remember your old friends--though this is not exactly the right atmosphere for a person just recovering from illness--you come to people who, in the midst of the loveliest air of Spring, sit in affliction and the shadow of death. Well--it's as God wills, I keep calm."

With the tear's streaming down his cheeks, he now told Edwin that Leah had grown so ill that she could scarcely get an hour's sleep, and the food she took was hardly enough to nourish an infant a week old. Yet she bore her fate with a divine patience that often made him wonder whence she derived her strength, since she neither prayed nor accepted everything as the will of an all merciful Father who could make even the most incomprehensible and hardest things result in a blessing. "In that she's like her mother, whose only defense and weapons against all sorrow were silence and meditation. Go to her, dear Doctor, I know she'll be delighted to see you. She always esteemed you so highly, and God is my witness that I've often reproached myself for yielding to Frau Valentin and interrupting your lessons. Doctor Marquard says the sickness is connected with the mind--if she could but divert her thoughts, and not brood perpetually over one idea--Ah! me! If philosophy could give her sleep and appetite, preserve my child to me--" He paused and pressed his handkerchief to his eyes.

"If you'll give me leave, dear Herr Koenig," said Edwin, "I'll try what I can do. Philosophy has already banished many evil spirits and infused new blood into whole races. I'll speak to your dear daughter, and hope it is not yet too late."

He turned away to conceal his emotion, and hastily left the studio. When he entered Leah's room, he found her resting on the sofa with a book in her lap, her beautiful dark eyes fixed upon it, each a burning fire in whose glow a waxen image is slowly consuming. In other respects she was not altered, except that her complexion was more transparent and a sorrowful smile seemed frozen on her lips. But as he approached her and with a few cordial words took her hand, a deep blush suffused the delicate face and gave to it the appearance of blooming freshness and health.

"What sorrow you are causing us, dear Leah!" he said drawing a chair toward her couch. "No," he added as she attempted to rise, "you must remain as you are, if you don't want to drive me away. I'm so glad to see you again. Since that terrible day I've only heard of you through others. And yet not entirely through others, through yourself, too. Do you know that I read your journal yesterday for the first time?"

She moved her head as if to beg him not to talk about it, and replied: "You've so many better things to do--if my father had not desired it--"

"No, dear Fraeulein," he answered, "I only wished I had not spent my time over things so much more useless, before I took up that volume. And yet, who knows whether I should before have been capable of estimating the full value of the treasure entrusted to me."

She suddenly turned pale. "No," she murmured, "do not talk so, don't treat me like a silly child, to whom you must make pretty speeches, because you perceive my weakness and think you must spare or flatter me; it pains me--I've been used to different things from you."

"I know you're ill and need consideration," he replied in a trembling voice. "And yet, dear Leah, I've come to tell you something which will at any rate excite you, think what you please and answer as you may. Since I've read those pages, it has become evident to me that I've been groping about in the mist like a dreamer and not perceived a real happiness--the happiness of having found a soul, such as is revealed in those pages, never to lose it again!

"They've tried to part us, dear Leah," he continued with increasing agitation, while she lay with closed eyes and hands clasped upon her bosom, without any sign of life. "But it only served to unite our hearts more closely. We've both experienced how necessary we are to each other, how little qualified to cope with life alone. True, you'll doubt whether I've really missed you; nay I did not even realize it myself. I was enchained by a passion which like some diabolical enchantment, made me a stranger even to myself. I know not how much you know or suspect, dear friend. For the first time in my life I learned, a woman's power, and suffered keenly from it. It's over, Leah, the last trace of it has vanished. She's about to become another's wife, and I heard the news without the slightest heart-throb. Oh! Leah, those were terrible days! When I think that the result might have been different, that I might have been forever forced to bow to this power--a power which treated pride and freedom, all that was worthy and precious in life, as a toy, and rendered me almost unfeeling, even in the days of Balder's keenest sufferings--I shudder at myself and the danger I have escaped. But you ought to know, Leah, the weakness of the man who now comes to you and says: 'will you, can you, notwithstanding all that has happened, unite your life to mine? Can you give your soul to one who has already once lost his own, while both he and you, perhaps may never wholly overcome the smart of his servitude?'

"If you were to say no, Leah, I should understand why and be forced to bear the pain. I know that I was dear to you. You would have burned that book rather than have entrusted it to my care, if your heart had not resistlessly drawn you toward me. And yet, Leah, I should not think less of you if after the confession I have just made, your heart should draw back, your pride forbid you to be satisfied with that which I offer with this perfect candor. You've a right to expect and demand that the man to whom you give yourself will repay you for the treasure with such enthusiastic and passionate devotion, that even the thought that any other power could become dangerous to him, would never enter his mind. I, dearest Leah, am, as you see me, a fugitive, whose wounds are scarcely healed after a severe battle. I come to you because I know I can nowhere be safer, nowhere find a more inaccessible refuge than with you. What I feel for you--we've not yet come to Spinoza," he interrupted himself with a quiet smile, "so the phraseology of the schools is not familiar to you. He, the great philosopher, calls the feeling men have for that which he termed God--the absolute something which encompasses, does and wills everything--the exaltation of all emotions which follows when we become absorbed in the nature of this one and all, he calls 'intellectual love.' It's neither a jest nor a blasphemy, but the simple words of truth when I say that with such a love I love you, Leah! That blind, demoniacal passion, which is usually called love, has been washed out of my blood--I trust forever! What now lives in me is the happy consciousness that you're the best, purest, noblest creature that ever appeared on earth, the one being in whom my world is contained, and that the man whom you should love and to whom you consented to belong, would be the happiest of mortals!"

As he faltered the last words he knelt beside her couch, and taking her hands held them clasped in his, fixing his eyes upon her cool, slender fingers, unable to look her in the face. He remained for a long time absorbed in a blissful stupor; it was such a relief to have told her all, that he felt he scarcely feared her answer, although he was far from being sure of a favorable one.

She still remained silent. At last he grew anxious, looked at her, and instantly started up in alarm, for he could not doubt that she had fainted. He hastily seized a little bottle containing some powerful stimulant which he found on her table, and poured some on his handkerchief to rub her temples and restore the color to her pale lips. "Leah!" he exclaimed, "come to yourself again! Oh! do not punish me so fearfully for my thoughtlessness; oh, how could I, when I found you so ill--"

Her lips moved and she slowly opened her eyes. "Forgive me for alarming you, my beloved!" she murmured. "The happiness was too great--too sudden. But--I'm well again--I live--aye, I will live, now that I know, through you and for you--Edwin, is it possible!"

She raised her arm and timidly put it around his neck. He bent toward her face, now again glowing with blushes. "My wife!" he whispered. "You are mine! mine! mine! And so surely as I hope to be happy through you--" His lips, which met hers, stifled and sealed the vow of eternal love and constancy.

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Chapter X

The same day, toward dusk, the little artist was seen hurrying along the street in which Frau Valentin lived. Any one who had seen him in his studio that morning, would scarcely have taken him for the same man. Although the March winds could not seem exactly Springlike to elderly gentlemen, he had stolen lightly out of the house without an overcoat, like a youth whose hot blood keeps him warm. He had paid five groschen for a little bouquet of violets which a poor girl offered him, and fastened it daintily in his button hole; his white hat rested jauntily over his left ear, as always happened during his hours of inspiration, and those, who saw him pass, looking around with a merry joyous face, nodding sometimes to a pretty child or flourishing his cane, might well suppose that wine had played one of characteristic pranks on the little man, and persuaded him that he was once more a youth of twenty, and might yield to the most unbridled gayety as freely as the most hopeful young schoolboy.

But when he saw Frau Valentin's house in the distance, his joyous manner suddenly changed, his step became more moderate, a grave expression shaded his face, and he even paused as if considering whether it would not be better to turn back. Then he seemed to summon up all his manhood, energetically fastened the upper button of his coat, set his hat straight, and with resolute steps walked toward the dwelling of his pious friend.

He found her up stairs in the large room among a party of little girls who came to her twice a week after school, to be taught sewing, and then, strengthened by lessons of wisdom and virtue and a cup of coffee with a huge roll, were dismissed to their homes. The hour had just expired, and the little ones were crowding around their benefactress, who usually had to prevent them from kissing her hand by kindly stroking the round cheeks or giving a friendly pat on the shoulder. In spite of the dim light, she instantly perceived by the voice and expression of her old friend, that some important motive had brought him to her, and hastily led the way into the adjoining room, where her little lamp was already lighted before the picture of the dead professor. Her first question was concerning Leah. "She's very well," replied the artist, as he took the bouquet of violets from his button hole and gallantly offered it to his old love.

"What has happened to you, my dear friend?" asked the lady in surprise. They used the word ihr[8] in addressing each other when alone, as they were too intimate for the formal "you" and yet did not venture to adopt the familiar "thou."

"To me," he answered boldly, as if he were really meaning to conceal something from her. "I don't know what you mean, my dear madame. I'm just the same as usual. But it's suffocatingly hot here. Allow me at least to open the windows--"

"Don't talk nonsense, my dear Koenig," she said quietly. "I can read your good old heart as easily as the coarse print of my hymn book. You've come here to tell a piece of news that pleases you, and yet you've not the pluck to speak out. And that's just what surprises me; for whatever pleases you, my old friend, has always been agreeable and welcome to me. So out with it quick. I must go to the meeting of the lying-in society in half an hour. Is Leah improving? Has any quack of a doctor suddenly inspired you with such good courage?"

"You are the very embodiment of wisdom," replied the artist, who had taken the chair at her work-table and was thoughtfully rummaging in her little basket. "It is certainly a doctor, who has inspired me with courage, but he's no quack, and the affair is altogether--"

He hesitated again and stooped to look for a thimble which he had luckily dropped. "Keep your hands away from my things, for heaven's sake," said the good lady sharply. "You know your meddling makes me as nervous as I should make you if I wanted to paint a part of your pictures. And now, once for all, for I hate all mysteries and enigmas, what doctor are you talking about and what hopes has he given to you?"

"You shall hear, my dear friend, but I know you'll not like the mode of cure, and that's why I want to prepare you a little; for you often put on a look that makes even an old friend fear you. But if you want me to speak out: our Leah's engaged!"

"Engaged! That's certainly a piece of news nobody could be prepared for. My dear old friend, I hope you're not joking with me. You almost look as if you'd come from a drinking bout and had all sorts of fancies and notions in your head."

"Another sign of your sharp-sighted wisdom, dear lady!" laughed the artist, rubbing his hands in delight, for he had already told the most difficult part. "I really have emptied half a bottle or perhaps three quarters, as my son-in-law, he who is to be I mean--these people who are in love don't know how to value good wine--"

"Better and better! Have matters already gone so far? A formal betrothal dinner, and Leah's second mother would have heard nothing about the matter, if the wine had not betrayed it. Well, Herr Koenig, I've had to forgive many things in the course of our long acquaintance; but this--this--"

The artist started up from his chair, as if he had been touched by a spring and approached his offended friend, who had seated herself on a sofa and tried to look resolutely away.

"Dear lady," said he, "first hear how it all happened. It was precisely because we all have so much respect for you, that we wanted to reflect a little and discuss the matter among ourselves, before we asked your consent. It came upon me like a thunder clap. And amid all the happiness--you may believe me--the thought of what you would say to it never left my mind a moment. You best know how I submit to your authority, and how willingly I yield to the gentle yoke, though you often treat me worse than my long years of love and loyalty deserve. But this time--no! I could not ask you first. Tell me yourself: if your child had fallen into the river and a man was ready to pull her out, would you first ask what faith he had? Now you see, although I know you don't like the doctor--"

"Doctor Marquard? That marriage-hater and Don Juan? That child of the world in the worst meaning of the word--and our Leah?--"

"God forbid, my dear friend, this time your prophetic soul leaves you in the lurch. But I scarcely know whether the right man will not seem still more frightful to you. You see, I'm perhaps a weak Christian, at any rate weaker than you, and as for the higher branches of theology, you've more in your little finger than I in my whole artist skull. And yet--I too felt a little alarmed when the children came to me and confessed what had never entered my mind, that dear godless fellow of a philosopher--"

"Edwin? Doctor Edwin? Oh! my presentiments!"

"Yes, indeed," said the little artist, "no other than the dismissed teacher, who now wishes to continue the interrupted lessons all his life. Do you think my poor daughter's rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes consoled me at once for the destruction of my hopes in regard to her religious life? But, as I said before, only a monster of a father would have had the heart to say no, when the life of his only child was at stake. Or if that word is too harsh--it would have inquired a martyr of the dark ages, to prefer to see his child pine away and die, rather than live and be happy with an unbeliever. And that her sickness was only concealed love and that she would have wasted away without Edwin, I saw plainly enough at dinner, when simply because he sat beside her and looked tenderly into her face, she suddenly, in spite of her happiness, felt an appetite she has not had for months, and afterwards when he had gone away, lay on the sofa sleeping more soundly than if she had taken all the opiates in the world. Then I slipped away to come to you, my dearest friend. And now say a kind word to me--or if it can't be kind, an angry one, anything is better than to have you sit on the sofa so still and silent, with your handkerchief pressed to your face, so that I can't even see what sort of expression my best friend wears when she hears of my poor child's happiness."

The widow withdrew her handkerchief and revealed eyes streaming with tears, which looked at him with a singular expression of mingled indignation and kindness. "You're an old hypocrite," she said, drying her lashes. "I'm not what you call me, your best friend, or you would not have misunderstood and slandered me to my face, and to those too lovers, as if I sat here with the air of the judge of a supreme spiritual court, to whom it would be dangerous to bring news of such an engagement. Fie! shame on you for a faint-hearted fellow. You're a weak Christian indeed, if you expect to find in your fellow mortal a heart full of bigotry and intolerance, instead of one submissive to God's decree and accepting with gratitude and hope whatever he sends--If I can't help crying, not only from joy and thankfulness that our Leah is saved, but also with anger toward you, you reprobate, make amends for your sin by taking the godless doctor my congratulations this very day, and inviting him to dine here tomorrow; one of a party of four; do you understand? And moreover give me your word of honor, that I'm better than my reputation, and no ossified theologian. Don't you know my dear friend, that God's ways are wonderful? Suppose he intends to draw to himself these two hearts, that neither know nor desire to know him, by this circuitous way: first leading them to each other, and causing them to experience all the joys and sorrows of married life, in order, hand in hand and heart to heart, to guide them back to their heavenly father? There's no more influential home mission than matrimony, for two honest people, of course, and that the doctor, with all his blindness, has an honest soul, we've never doubted. So yes and amen, dear friend, and because it's such a day of joy, all sins must be forgiven. As a token that I bear no malice--come, dear father of the future bride, and let her mother embrace you."

"You're a blessed angel right out of heaven!" exclaimed the artist, making such an enthusiastic use of the permission, that the blushing lady was at last obliged to defend herself by force. "Yes indeed," he continued, when he recovered his breath, "this marriage has really been made in heaven, all the signs prove it. Think, dear Frau Valentin, how wonderful it is, that this very morning I was sitting thinking whether it would not be better to resign my position and salary as court painter to His Russian Highness, rather than continue to live on the money so indolently and dreamily. For I said: who knows whether the prince has not already forgotten me, and that I may not sit year after year, like a fool, waiting for orders which will never come?' But now I see that the dear God has so arranged this, that I need not portion my Leah quite so shabbily. Dear Frau Valentin, I know what you've always said--that that was your affair. But after all a father would also--"

He was just in the mood to tell everything he had planned for the immediate future, when Frau Valentin's maid-servant entered and announced a visitor. The gentleman only wanted to ask a question, and would not give his name. Before her mistress had time to answer, a hasty step was heard in the ante-room, and to the zaunkoenig's no small surprise, the gigantic figure of Heinrich Mohr crossed the threshold.

"I beg ten thousand pardons," he exclaimed in his hoarse voice. "Although I've the reputation of being unceremonious, I'm not usually so bold and uncivil as to enter a lady's room without ceremony. But circumstances which will be explained at some future day--the conviction, that there's danger in delay--perhaps several lives may depend upon whether this lady will grant me five minutes conversation--"

He had poured forth these words with such strange agitation, his whole appearance was so singular, that Frau Valentin really did not know whether she ought to grant his request. But the little artist relieved her of all hesitation.

"My dear friend," he exclaimed, "don't have the slightest scruple. My mission here is fulfilled, and I must hurry home to illuminate the Venetian palace; our lagune must flash and sparkle like the Grand Canal at the weddings of the doges, and you're invited too, my dear Herr Mohr. No refusals. You owe it to your friend."

"To whom?"

"Why our doctor, your friend Edwin, my little Leah's betrothed husband. Haven't you heard of it yet?"

"Not a syllable. So he's engaged! I congratulate him. But don't depend upon me for this evening."

The artist started and looked at him in astonishment. This indifferent manner of receiving such wonderful news surprised and vexed him. But his joy was too great to be long clouded. "As you choose," said he, "we won't quarrel about it. Besides the young couple won't miss you, and to sit with an old fellow like me--you're right, it would not be much pleasure. So another time and farewell!"

He seized his hat in the exuberance of his delight waved an adieu to Frau Valentin. While so doing, the pins which had fastened the somewhat rusty piece of crape came out, and the sign of seven years mourning fell on the floor. He was about to pick it up, but changed his mind. "No," said he, "we'll let it lie. If the mother can look down upon her child, she will think it natural if no crape is worn after this day. Farewell, my best friend! I still insist that you're an angel."

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Chapter XI

As soon as the artist had left the room, Mohr, who had remained gloomily standing at the door, approached the astonished Frau Valentin and said in the tone of a foot-pad, who demands the traveler's purse at the pistol's point: "you know a certain Lorinser, Madame. As I have reason to think this man of honor a scoundrel, who with persistent cunning escapes the punishment he deserves, I take the liberty of asking whether you've heard anything of him since he left Berlin."

"Lorinser!" exclaimed the good lady. "Oh! dear Herr Mohr, say nothing about that unhappy man; he has already caused me sorrow enough. No, no, I don't know where he is, nor do I desire to do so, I will never see him again, and I think I'm tolerably sure he will never approach my threshold as he has every reason to remain away from Berlin."

"In so believing, Madame," Mohr replied with a short fierce laugh, "you have probably misjudged this Protestant Jesuit. True, when a few months ago and again very recently I made inquiries about him at his former lodgings and the police headquarters, I learned that he had gone away. But people like him, who live on such intimate terms with angels and archangels, ascertain before death, how one must manage to move about as a glorified body. One saves rent thereby and passes through every key hole. That this mysterious man should have forever abandoned the great city, where people can take advantage of others so much more comfortably and profitably, always seemed to me improbable. And this very morning, just as I was doing him the honor to think of him, he drove past me in a droschky--to be sure I only saw him through the window, and he has let his beard grow; but I hope to be condemned to go to the same heaven into which this fellow hopes to smuggle himself, if I was mistaken. Pardon my somewhat strong expressions. Since scoundrels like this, our beloved in the Lord, adopt a sweet pastoral style, an honest man must wrap himself in his natural bluntness."

"You've seen him? Lorinser? No, no!"

"I'm sure, Madame, that no other man has those mother of pearl, Lucifer-like eyes in his head. And besides, he seemed to recognize me, for he hastily cowered back into the corner of the droschky, but it was too late. Unfortunately I lost sight of him again. Perhaps, I thought, he's gone to his old customers once more; it's a Christian duty to forgive even such an imp of Satan, seventy times seven times. And after all, I said to myself, he's doubtless always behaved properly to the good Frau Valentin and not let the mask fall. I confess I half expected to find him here, when the servant said you had a visitor, that's why I rushed in so hastily."

Frau Valentin had sunk down upon the sofa and was gazing into vacancy with unconcealed horror. "No," said she, "we've done with each other. I'll take care, that even if he should have the effrontery to knock, my door will not be opened to him again. No man has ever more shamefully misused the holiest words and trampled the purest confidence underfoot. I'll not mention the sums of money, amounting to hundreds of thalers, he has talked out of me for charitable and religious objects, in order as I afterwards learned, to use them for himself and his dissolute life. But that he could do me the injury to corrupt an excellent young girl, to whom I gave employment in my own house--let's say no more about it, my dear sir. It always makes me so angry when I think of it, that I forget all the commands of charity and wish this fiend in the lowest depths of hell."

"Hm!" muttered Mohr between his teeth; "money embezzled--an innocent young girl--very valuable material. Pardon me, Madame," he continued aloud, "if I'm not yet inclined to cut short this interesting conversation. Perhaps you would have the kindness to tell me the name and residence of this unfortunate girl?"

"What interest can you have in it?"

"A very Christian, or at least an honest one, honored lady. For when the arch-angel Gabriel--or was it Michael--drove the arch-fiend to the spot where he belonged, the lesson of forgiving seventy times seven times had not yet been invented. Suppose I had a fancy for playing arch-angel? Trust me without fear. I'll wager your poor protege knows where this wolf in sheep's clothing has his den, and as I've all sorts of things to settle with him--"

"Do what you believe to be your duty. I'll not prevent you; that is, forestall God, who has perhaps chosen you for an instrument to execute his decrees. Here"--and she tore a leaf out of her pocket book--"here's the list of my seamstresses. The name through which a line is drawn is that of the unfortunate girl."

"Like the black tablet in the doge's palace: Marino Falier, decapitatus pro crimine. Permit me to write down the number of the house. There--and now forgive this disagreeable visit, Madame. The messengers of the Council of Ten in Venice were notorious for their obligatory intrusiveness."

She took leave of him with a silent bend of the head; but as he was passing through the ante-room, she called him back to entreat him for God's sake to deal considerately with the poor girl, who had deserved a better fate. "Have no fear," he replied. "We children of the world are all sinners ourselves, and know how poor sinners feel."

Half an hour after, he knocked at the door of a garret in one of the most out of the way streets in Friedrichstadt. A man's voice called "come in!" Seated on a table in the deep recess of a window, to catch the last rays of light, was an odd little figure with his legs crossed under him, sewing busily on a woman's dress. At the mention of Fraeulein Johanne's name the busy little man let his work fall, shook his head angrily, and exclaimed in his hoarse falsetto tone:

"Can you read, sir, or not? Pray look at the sign on the door, and see if there's not an inscription on it in large letters: 'Wachtel, Ladies' dressmaker.' The person whom you seek did live here, but is now entirely to set up for four flights of stairs. Of course the fall is first down stairs from the garret to the ground floor; after a time they go still farther down: into the cellar, and then five feet under ground. Besides, it isn't my affair; ladies' tailors are not responsible for the first fall of man. Why! Well of course you know that yourself. Ha! ha!" He laughed and took up his needle again.

"Does the young lady live alone?"

"Yes and no, according to the way you understand it. 'I'm lonely but not alone'--as Schiller says. But try yourself, sir; I believe she's no longer as timid about having evening visitors, as she used to be when she worked for me; I work for her now, but I'm better paid at any rate. This sort, you must know--"

"Does a certain Herr Lorinser happen to be with her, a clerical-looking, pale man, with a black beard?"

"Can't say, sir. It's not my business to keep the register. Mam'selle Johanne will be glad to tell you what you want to know--her present admirer is a clerk, in a banking house, and can't get away till the counting house is closed. So if you want a private conversation--ha! ha!"

Mohr silently nodded a farewell and left the grinning little man. A feeling of repugnance overpowered him, which only increased, when on reaching the entry outside of the first floor rooms he heard a girl's voice singing one of Offenbach's favorite airs.

His ring interrupted the song. Directly after, a slender young girl with singularly large sparkling eyes in her pale little face opened the door. "Is it you, Edward?" she exclaimed. Then perceiving her mistake, said without any special sign of embarrassment: "What do you want, sir?"

Mohr looked at her a moment with an expression of sincere sympathy, which however formed so singular a contrast to his stern face, that the beautiful girl was alarmed and began to consider how to get rid of this mysterious man.

"Don't be anxious, Fraeulein," said he suspecting her thoughts, "true, I'm not 'Edward,' but I come with the best intentions. If you would give me two minutes--"

"Please, sir, if it can be settled out here--"

"As you choose. Be kind enough to answer but one question, whether you know the present residence of a certain Herr Lorinser--"

A deep flush suddenly crimsoned her face, her eyes which had hitherto flickered with a strange restless light, now glowed with a sullen angry fire, and her hand trembled on the door. She was evidently obliged to reflect before she could reply.

"Why do you ask this question?" she said in a low, hurried tone. "But come in. Here in the public entry--"

He followed her into the ante-room, and she closed the door behind them, but remained on the threshold and did not invite him to sit down.

"Fraeulein," he began, "I have a personal matter to settle with this man. He vanished for some months and has now appeared again, and as no one can help me on the track--for I suppose he has not used his real name again in the city--"

"But why do you come to me? Who told you--?"

"Some one who means well toward you and deeply regrets all that has occurred."

"I know whom you mean: Frau Valentin. Ha! ha!" she exclaimed, with a sudden change of tone, "so it is she! And she means well toward me! Why yes, as she understands it, so she does! When I went to her again and wanted to work--for I thought she would surely receive me, though old acquaintances would have nothing more to do with me--I was met with only a shrug of the shoulders and a stern face; she was very sorry, but she couldn't give her other seamstresses such an example--then a few thalers were pressed into my hand and a recommendation to some house of correction. First I wept--then laughed, as I always laugh now when I hear that these religious people mean well toward us. Go back again and tell her--"

"Pray, Fraeulein," he interrupted, "let's keep to the point. That wolf in the sheep's clothing of humility, that vender of souls, who treated you so shamefully--"

"I'll neither see nor hear anything of him!" she exclaimed violently. "I'd rather die, than be compelled to meet this man but for whom I--but pshaw, it's not worth while to get angry about it. I was a simple child, I believed everything I was told, now I no longer believe in anything, neither in heaven nor in hell, only in the little space here on earth, where I'll not allow my peace to be destroyed. Excuse me, sir, for receiving you so uncourteously but I'm not yet dressed and am going to Elysium--a concert and ball--we can't be young but once. If you want to know where the Herr Candidat lives--he no longer calls himself Lorinser, but has taken the name of Moser--there's his card, on which he wrote his address. He said his first visit was to me, that he still loved me and would prove it and provide for me. But as I said before, I'd rather jump out of the window than have anything more to do with the abominable scoundrel. Perhaps"--and she lowered her voice a moment--"perhaps there's some truth in the tales about the other world and the last judgment. But if I'm condemned, then I'll open my mouth and tell what I know; what I was, and what I have become, and through whom. Here, sir, here's the card, and now--"

She opened the door, bowed with an easy grace, and took leave of Mohr, who fluent of speech as he usually was, remained silent from deep compassion for the poor lost girl.

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Chapter XIII

The clock struck seven as he left the dwelling, and night had closed in. The house whose number was written on the card, stood at the eastern end of the city, and he felt somewhat exhausted by the many excitements of the day. Yet he could not make up his mind to defer his visit until the morrow, and therefore threw himself into a droschky, and drove through the dark streets absorbed in thought.

At last he paused before a neat two story dwelling, and by the light of a lantern read the name of the owner under the night-bell, and above the word "Rentier." In reply to his ring, a maid-servant appeared, and positively refused to admit him. Her master and mistress were just at prayers with the gentleman who rented the upper room, and she was not allowed to announce any one.

"And you must not announce me either, my pet," Mohr calmly replied, pressing a thaler into her hand. "I want to surprise them. I'm a very intimate friend of the Herr Candidat, and he'll be wonderfully delighted when he sees me enter so unexpectedly. When I've once found him, I'll let him continue his prayer without interruption."

The girl did not mark the tone of savage sarcasm, in which these words were uttered, but took it all for coin as good as the thaler she held in her hand. She lighted the generous visitor up to the second story and with a smile of secret understanding pointed to the door, through which a strange dull buzzing sound was heard.

Mohr distinctly recognized the voice of the man whom he had pursued for months with unquenchable hate. The blood rushed to his head, and he needed several minutes delay to regain even the appearance of calmness. "Go, my good child," said he. "I need no farther help to find my way."

After she had gone, he listened a few moments longer. Lorinser seemed to be reading aloud from some book of devotion, and at intervals came long drawn regular tones, like a person snoring. Mohr softly grasped the handle of the door and opened it so noiselessly, that he stood in the room for some time before those present perceived him. Lorinser sat on a wide sofa, the lower half of his face was shaded by a heavy black beard which made him almost unrecognizable, and his closely cropped hair was covered with a three cornered black velvet cap, which worn as it was far back upon the head exposed the high polished brow. Nestling beside him in very unequivocal proximity, sat a pretty young woman who seemed to be looking at the book also and eagerly following the words, while she held his hand firmly clasped in hers. An elderly man with a simple narrow-minded face was leaning back in a large arm-chair, and accompanied the reading with his peaceful snores. Mohr needed but one glance to understand the condition of affairs.

"Don't let me disturb you," he said suddenly in the most courteous tone. "I merely wish to say a few words in private to Herr Candidat Moser."

Lorinser started up, the young wife uttered a cry and let fall his hand, the sleeper rubbed his eyes in astonishment. For a moment it seemed as if all three had been petrified by the sudden appearance of the stranger. Mohr did not grudge himself the mischievous pleasure afforded by the scene, but quietly approached a step nearer and bowed to the mistress of the house.

"Whom do you want here, sir?" asked Lorinser, who had hastily regained: his composure. "I've not the honor of your acquaintance."

"So Peter said," replied Mohr dryly. "But you, I hope, will remember me before the cock crows. Permit me to take a seat. Will you have the kindness to introduce me to the company, or shall I do it myself?"

"This insolence goes too far," muttered Lorinser, who had grown deadly pale. "Do you presume, sir, to force your way into a stranger's house and disturb the devotions of the family without apology?"

"I do, my worthy sir. The night will be long enough to continue that which, to my great regret, I've interrupted. I desire only a quarter of an hour of your precious time--and will not disturb you longer."

The young wife had turned away to conceal her embarrassment, and now glided out of the room. Her husband prepared to follow her.

"Stay," exclaimed Lorinser, still clinging to the mask of indignation. "You must bear witness, my dear friend--"

"As you choose, my good fellow," said Mohr with icy composure. "It will be a favor to me if the gentleman will make a record of our treaty. To begin: in the first place--I've just come from Fraeulein Johanne--"

He looked Lorinser steadily in the eye, and the effect produced by this name was fully equal to his expectations. A short pause ensued, then Lorinser whispered something in the ear of his host, and the latter with a submissive bend of the head, left the room.

They were scarcely alone, when Mohr drew his box of Latakia out of his pocket and began to make a cigarette. "You'll permit me to smoke I hope," he said affably to his silent companion. "The air here is abominably bad, the breath of heaven and hell mixed; I am afraid of the contagion and should like to disenfect myself."

Lorinser's eyes were fixed upon the floor. Not a muscle of his rigid face betrayed the feelings that were aroused by this visit. But when Mohr had lighted his cigarette, he said with a slight cough: "I must beg you to be brief, I don't like this odor."

"As brief as possible, my dear fellow," answered Mohr phlegmatically. "You'll give me credit for having troubled myself about you only for very serious motives, not merely from a desire to continue an acquaintance which is utterly uninteresting to me. The class of human beings to which you belong is, thank God, by no means numerous, but sufficiently well known for it to be a mere waste of time to study it. Goethe has described it admirably in Faust; you remember the passage where he speaks of a certain abortion. Even the manner of playing you represent, is not new. Zacharias Werner and others are your predecessors, so you've not even the merit of originality, but are simply a second-hand scoundrel."

"I only wish to observe," began Lorinser without losing his composure, "that we will suppose you to have poured forth all your invectives and come to the point at once. I'm accustomed to insults, and console myself by thinking, that far more holy men, nay our Saviour himself--"

"Beautiful!" interrupted Mohr. "But one good turn deserves another. I'll avoid every incivility except those which the mere business in hand may entail, and you'll promise me not to again desecrate in my presence a name so venerated as that of the founder of the Christian religion by uttering it with your lips. I confess my weakness; it makes me fairly sick, when I hear that a--how shall I express it--a poor sinner--that's not insulting--is playing a blasphemous farce in the name of that sublime sufferer and champion of humanity. So we're agreed? Very well. And now we'll proceed at once to business. Do you know this?" He put his hand into his breast pocket; Lorinser involuntarily shrank back.

"Calm yourself," said Mohr with a scornful laugh. "I've no pistol in my pocket, to aim at your breast and force you to a full confession. I despise such melodramatic means, which moreover would undoubtedly fail if directed toward such a holy man, to whom a martyr's crown would be a fitting reward. What I've brought here, is only a little book, a neat pocket edition of Thomas a Kempis. Your name is written on the first page, I mean your real name, before you believed in a second baptism and exchanged the somewhat foul old Adam of your 'Lorinser' for a speck and span 'Moser.' Do you recognize the little book?"

He held it out, and when the other had assented to the question with a silent bend of the head, laid it on the table. "Thank you," he continued; "you'll make this business easier for both of us, if you'll drop all unavailing and useless lies. I found this little book in a room in Dorotheenstrasse, from which on the day of your nocturnal visit, a lady in whom I'm interested, disappeared. I was fortunate enough to find her two nights after, and, as you're perhaps unaware, with dripping garments and in a very silent mood. We worked for five hours to obtain the smallest word. When she at last decided to open her eyes and lips, of course there was no mention of you. But the little Thomas a Kempis, probably in revenge for having been taken in paths where there can be no question of the 'Imitation of Christ,' committed the indiscretion of gossiping; the old maid-servant, who unlocked the room for you in the evening and saw you creep out again at a much later hour--you probably supposed you'd be seen only by God, who is already accustomed to close his eyes to your doings--this worthy person, I say, in reply to my questions, told me all and then suffered her mouth to be sealed forever. So there are only four persons who know this secret of that night. Three of them have good reasons to keep silence; but the fourth might in some devilish mood, against which we must be on our guard, or for some 'benevolent' or profligate object, tell the tale. To prevent this, my dear fellow, you'll say to that fourth person, that I am determined in such a case to stop his mouth forever, by shooting him down like a mad dog or finding some other way to silence him. You've understood me? A syllable, a wink, a shrug of the shoulders, which would impugn that lady's honor, and you'll receive a passport into the better world." He was silent, as if he expected some explicit answer. Lorinser had leaned his head back and was gazing at the ceiling. He coughed several times and passed his long, pliant fingers through his beard.

"And is this all that has brought you to me?" he asked after a pause. "I hope you admire the patience, with which I listen to your disconnected fancies; but I beg you not to abuse it." Mohr looked at him with icy contempt.

"You are a precious rascal," said he. "Under other circumstances I should wonder at the iron mask Mother Nature has put in the place where other men wear their faces. But, as I said before, the atmosphere here is so unpleasant that I'll limit myself to the most necessary words. So in brief: do you know the present abode of the lady who is the subject of our conversation?"

"No."

"Have you determined never to inquire for her?"

"Why should I, since I no longer have any relations with this lady?"

"No longer have any relations? You express yourself admirably. But are you also disposed to bind yourself, if by accident you ever meet her again, to leave the place and the city at once and avoid her for all future time?"

"A singular obligation. You expect me to subject myself to all the inconveniences--"

"I regret that I'm compelled to still further increase these obligations. You must also forever renounce the pleasure of seeing me with a solemn oath--although the peculiar relation in which you stand toward your God, considerably weakens the value such vows usually have between men of honor. However, I've means to compel you to keep your promise."

"I should be glad to learn what they are."

"With pleasure, honored sir. Unfortunately, I'm unable to give you without ceremony the chastisement you deserve, as we crush a venomous reptile under foot. It would expose me to all sorts of unpleasantnesses, and as I still have duties toward my fellow men, I must avoid as long as possible the extreme measures which would bring me in conflict with the criminal courts. However, although vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,' I feel a repugnance to seeing a good for nothing fellow, like you, roaming about at large, and as the arm of civil justice is either too short or too clumsy to seize such clever criminals, I've resolved to set in motion against you a noiseless and silent vehm-gericht. Whenever I meet you in the future, I shall brand you without mercy--in what manner will depend upon the inspiration of the moment. But out of the world in which I live you must go!" he exclaimed, suddenly raising his voice almost to a shout, as he rose and threw his cigarette away. "Do you clearly understand me? I will not tolerate your presence, will persecute you until you no longer poison the air I breathe; perhaps the simplest way therefore, would be for you to decide without much hesitation to emigrate to America, and join the Mormons, a vocation for which you've all sorts of valuable qualifications, in case you don't prefer Cayenne, a region in which home missions still have a fine field."

A pause ensued. The two mortal enemies looked each other steadily in the face.

"And if," said Lorinser at last, "instead of taking advantage of all these benevolent counsels, I prefer to inform the police to-morrow morning, that a madman broke into my house with threats and attempts at intimidation, and request protection against this violence? Certain private affairs, over which you seem to have excellent reasons for drawing a veil, would probably not withhold me from procuring myself peace at any price."

"At any price? That might perhaps be somewhat costly for you. Or would you like, in answer to this notice, a complaint to be entered by an honored patroness--on account of the embezzlement of money entrusted to you for the poor?"

"Embezzlement!" exclaimed Lorinser, starting up. For the first time during the whole conversation the iron mask fell, and his real face appeared, disfigured by the most violent distortions.

"Embezzlement?" he repeated. "What ridiculous words you use; they serve to show how far you are from understanding a nature like mine! Or no: you're probably well aware whom you have before you, one of the elect, who pass through life enwrapped by the atmosphere of the supernatural, and do not think themselves compelled to keep always in the straight roads made for sober children of the world. What is money to us? A wretched, despicable necessity, as worthless as the other conditions of this poor clay! He who never rises from the dust, may allow himself to be a slave, watch pennies and reckon shillings. But should he who offers the poor treasures with full hands, those treasures which neither morth nor rust corrupt, opens heaven to them, and raises them out of all anxiety and trouble into the fulness of eternal life, scruple to receive from them what the lowest and basest human beings can give each other, coined metal or stamped paper, and haggle over his daily bread by mouthfuls with those who must forever remain his debtors? Would you come to such a man with accusations about careless bookkeeping, which to be sure to the petty souls in this world of trade seems to be the only sin against their holy spirit?"

"Bravo!" replied Mohr dryly. "You've memorized your part well and delivered your little speech bravely. But it can't produce an effect on every audience. These magnificent views of the work and money, which you share with all interpreters of dreams, alchymists, and false profits, from Mohammed down to our own times; this artless pilfering of enthusiastic innocence, which in its blindness so eagerly seizes the most glittering baits, may suit those who cling to you and find their interest in being preyed upon by you. Volenti non fit injuria--you've probably learned so much Jus. But the good Frau Valentin, who is not in love with you, does not stand on the same theological soil, or desire to purchase any religious enlightenment for hard cash, looks at the matter from the standpoint of common plebeian honesty. I think you've some idea of what people call honesty and good faith. The excellent soul, in her narrow mindedness, holds fast to these and thinks that he to whom she has given money for her poor, is a miserable cheat, when he uses these funds to defray his own expenses and pays for oysters and Rhine wine to the honor of God."

"You're a devil!" muttered Lorinser grinding his teeth.

"I never considered myself an angel," replied Mohr, still in the calmest possible tone. "But at least I hope to be no stupid devil. You've seen," he continued, as he again opened his tobacco box, "I'm tolerably skillful in the art of rolling cigarettes. If the one now in process of being made, is completed before you've given your consent to my very reasonable compromise, I shall go straight from this sacred place to the profane dwelling of a magistrate with whom I'm very well acquainted. You don't smoke yourself? A pity! It's often very useful to aid one in keeping cool. Bluecher smoked in every battle."

A suppressed snort of fury came from the dark end of the apartment, whither the other had retired. Suddenly he rushed to the door and flung it wide open. "Leave this room!" he shouted in so loud a tone, that any listeners outside could not fail to hear it. "That we never meet again shall be my care."

"Thank you," replied Mohr, putting on his hat. "The cigarette is just finished. I knew we should come to an understanding. Intelligenti panca. You're too polite; you need not so courteously open the door for me. I know the rule of all ghosts and spirits, that they must go out the same way they came in. There! And now success to you devoutness."

Without vouchsafing another glance to his conquered foe, he walked passed him with the calmest possible expression of countenance, while Lorinser, trembling from head to foot with passion, stood beside the door with clenched lists and slammed it violently behind his enemy. When Mohr was going down stairs, he fancied he heard a low groan of fury, such as might be uttered by a wild beast that has fallen into a pit. An expression of bitter loathing passed over his stern face, and his underlip curled with scorn. When he again stood in the cold dark street, he paused, drew a long breath, extended his muscular arms as if to throw off an unendurable burden, and for a moment closed his eyes.

"Where shall I go now?" escaped his lips. "Wither turn to regain what is lost? No, not lost forever! If I'm forced to search the earth to its remotest confines I shall find her, I must, I will find her. Poor, poor woman! I will give you peace, so far as is possible for men to know peace against devils!"

He walked on a few steps, absorbed in deep thought, then paused suddenly and passed his hand across his brow. "Good Heavens! I had nearly forgotten it while occupied with all this baseness; Edwin and Leah receive their friends to-night! I'll go there. I must see some good people, to restore my faith in humanity."

And whistling the adagio from the symphony in C. minor--his invariable remedy when he wanted to drive a bitter taste from his tongue--he turned toward the zaunkoenig's little house.

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