“O, what a comedy life is!—But enough!From the depths I call to Thee, Oh, Lord!
“O, what a comedy life is!—But enough!
From the depths I call to Thee, Oh, Lord!
Albert”
A mid-April day, rather warm for the season. The sunbeams were playing around the slender spire of the Petrithurm at Hamburg, with sparkling flashes at the bluish surfaces of the calm waters of the Alster.
At the curb before one of the houses on Grosse Bleichenstrasse stood a blinking horse, harnessed to a cart, a driver fidgeting with whip and reins. Soon the portal of the courtyard opened and from it emerged a strapped black leather valise, then a little squatty man, then a slender young man of medium height with small greenish eyes and light brown hair, carrying a cane and an umbrella in one hand and in the other a small bundle.
The older man placed the valise in the cart, the younger one threw in the bundle, umbrella and cane; the two clasped hands.
There was a mist in the prominent eyes of the older man. There was a faint smile on the large mouth of the younger, a smile pregnant with sadness.
“Goodbye,mein lieber Herr Zorn,” murmured the older man.
There was emotion in his voice, tenderness in his tone, sorrow on his face.
“Adieu,” muttered the young man; an involuntary sigh escaped his lips.
Their hands remained clasped.
“I hope success will meet you wherever you turn,” the older resumed affectionately. “I hope your enemies will have no occasion to rejoice——”
A smile again appeared on the young man’s pale face, a cynical smile that only touched the iris of his eyes and the corners of his mouth.
“Don’t worry,lieber Hirsch.Sie werden noch von mir hören!” (You will hear from me yet!)
A sympathetic pressure of their hands and they both smiled.
The young man jumped into the vehicle, the driver slightly rose in his seat and clacked his tongue, the horses moved.
“Goodbye,” the man called from the curb.
“Goodbye,” called back the young man from the moving cart and waved his hand . . .
PART TWO
A FIGHTER IN THE MAKING
THE SALON.
Somecities are like affected women. In their desire to appear original, without possessing any originality, they ape the mannerism of one, the gait of another, the gestures of a third, striking poses not their own.
While Paris, for example, has always been her natural self, with her vices and virtues, her elegance and tawdriness, her brilliance and superficial glitter, which spring from her native appetites; while London, likewise, is always herself, as is Vienna and Munich and Venice and Florence and Rome; Berlin, of all great cities, has never been her real self. With the subtle artifices of the poseur she has always imitated her envied rivals and at the same time ridiculed those whose manners she simulated. Her lurking jealousy has always decided her model. It is a safe prophecy that within a decade Berlin will pattern her life after New York and will at the same time raise her voice in derision against the materialism of the great American Metropolis.
Berlin a century ago, no different from Berlin of today, had broad avenues, beautiful public gardens, spacious boulevards, gaudy palaces, luxurious homes, busy restaurants, noisy cafés, all immaculately kept with the orderliness of an army on parade, and with a palpable newness that made one feel that the city and all her gardens, avenues, boulevards, palaces, were laid out by cord and line, chiefly after the design of an individual, without the least indication of the character or ideas of the inhabitants.
During the Napoleonic wars, especially after Blücher’s hospitality in the British capital, Berlin had become London-mad and copied her life openly, but no sooner was the treaty of Paris concluded, and Napoleon’s threatening shadow was definitely removed, than Berlin struck her former pose. She again wished to vie with her hated rival, Paris.Salonswere formed, art circles sprang into being, the Prussian began to scoff in Voltairean style, simulated French wit, and presented plays of flagrant immorality which to the Berliner seemed quite Parisian.
Superficial imitation, however, frequently brings about changes of a deeper nature. With the adoption of foreign fashions came foreign ideas. The spirit of revolt which had been smouldering in Paris—soon to break out in roaring flames—had also permeated theKaiserstadt. French ideals had sifted in and Young Germany was awaking.
But whenever, and wherever, people fight for freedom the brave and the strong perish that the cowardly and the weak may live. Officialdom is ever ready to forgive the offenses of the truckler. At this period, however, even the weaklings sought an outlet for their aroused feelings—in polemics that did not disturb the Prussian officials. Religion, philosophy, romanticism, were safe substitutes. At no epoch in the history of Germany did the land abound in so many cults and sects as during the last two decades of the reign of that weak and good-natured king, Frederic William the Third. There were the Kantians, who discarded all miracles and regarded Christianity as a mere philosophic doctrine; the Hegelians, who were pantheistic yet clung to the romantic life story of Jesus; the followers of Schleiermacher, who swung between Pantheism and Rationalism, without touching either; and then there were the unadulterated romanticists, who followed—without clear understanding—Fichte, Schlegel and Schelling.
The vortex of all great discussions was the salon of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense. Her house at No. 20 Friedrichstrasse was the Mecca of all people of note and her “at home” was sought with eagerness. Not to have known Rahel reflected upon one’s intellectual standing. And Karl August Varnhagen von Ense was modest enough not to resent being known as Rahel’s husband. His admiration for his wife’s personality equalled his great love for her.
Rahel was as enigmatic and as paradoxical as the race from which she sprang. With her, as with her race, the unexpected happened. The daughter of a wealthy merchant and bearing the name of Rachel Levin at a period when a Jewish name was the greatest social handicap in Berlin, she had risen to a secure place in society. Princes courted her, artists sought her counsel, men of letters craved her opinion. No less a personage than Wolfgang von Goethe, at the very zenith of his fame, sent in his card. Unlike her social rival, Henrietta Herz, it was not physical beauty nor fascinating coquetry that helped her win her position in society. Rather plain looking, save for her brilliant black eyes, and small of stature, she possessed that indefinable charm which is even more attractive than beauty; and although she had already reached her fiftieth year her slender figure gave her a girlish appearance.
With the tact of a clever hostess she engaged one guest in conversation while her ears caught the drift of the talk of another.
“Rahel has discovered a new poetic genius,” her husband was saying.
His smile was not that of banter but rather of triumph. There was pride in his small featured countenance.
A little man, with a large head and an ugly sharp face, was laughing blandly, as an echo to von Ense’s remark.
“I see you are sceptical about new poetic geniuses, Pastor Schleiermacher,” resumed von Ense.
“No,” said the little man, still laughing, “but I thought that with Herr von Goethe still alive Frau Varnhagen would admit of no other poetic genius.”
Rahel, who was giving her attention to one of Hegel’s discourses—Hegel was always delivering discourses, even in drawingrooms—caught the gist of Schleiermacher’s ironic remark and her smiling eyes seemed to say, “Wait until Professor Hegel gets through with his monologue and you shall get your deserts.”
However, the opportunity had not yet come. Professor Hegel was still laboring to complete his sentence in his strong Swabian accent, speaking haltingly, with jerking gestures, and, swaying his body awkwardly, he continued:
“As I was saying, when I think a thought, for instance, I am not thinking my own thought but only part of the universal thought of all human intelligence, and while the thought strikes me as my own it is only the thought of the universe I am thinking, and when I think of God, or rather of the absolute, the idea of the consciousness of one, I am only thinking as part of the whole which is God—in other words, my consciousness of this thought and the opposite of this very thought are one and the same thing, both being the same consciousness of an integral whole——”
Rahel welcomed the guests while giving part of her mind to Hegel, who was laboring through the labyrinth of his thoughts, seeking a way out. Fortunately Hegel minded no intrusions nor interruptions, and with his shoulders stooped, his prematurely aged, wrinkled countenance undergoing the visible contortions of a twitching pair, proceeded:
“In other words, though directedan sich, concerning and pertaining to one’s self as an incomplete and imperfect existence—such thought, as I have clearly demonstrated, is different and yet identical, all forming complementary parts of a whole, as segments make up a circle, and yet without a circle there can be no segments——”
“Clearly so,” struck in the hostess.
“Yes, Pastor Schleiermacher,” she turned her keen eyes upon the little savant, “I have discovered a new poetic genius. Venus may shine even though the greater lustre is that of Jupiter.”
She wished him to know that she had overheard his pleasantly about the bard of Weimar.
“Who is this new genius—a Berliner?”
Several other faces turned upon the hostess.
“No, a recent arrival. He hails originally from the Rhineland but he has just come from Goettingen, a student of Jurisprudence——”
“With no past?”
“All future,” laughed Rahel. “Yes, he has something pelled from Goettingen——”
“Then there is indeed hope for him,” struck in Gubitz, editor of the “Gesellschafter.”
“I expect him here this evening,” Rahel soon added seriously. “He has real talent. He promised to bring a few of his poems and I may induce him to read them to us.”
When Rahel praised the most critical paused to consider. She had been the first to proclaim Goethe’s supremacy when to the literary world at large he was still “only one of the poets.”
Soon Albert was announced and every one divined that he was the object of Rahel’s admiration. Even Hegel, who was still elucidating his trend of thought, raised his eyes to get a glimpse of the newcomer.
Dressed in a velvet frock coat and frilled shirt, with lace falling over his white, beautifully shaped hands, with a broad laid-down collar, he looked taller than he actually was. In his face was boyishness with something indefinable about the deep corners of his mouth that already spoke of world-weariness, and the peculiar twinkle in his narrowed eyes accentuated the suggestion of cynicism.
Rahel, with thesavoir faireof the hostess of a celebrated salon, made a special effort to put the young man at his ease. She realized that in spite of his innate pride—the pride she well understood—the gathering of so many notables, so many years his seniors, embarrassed him. She meant to be his patroness. Inwardly she was already proud of him. She was not displeased with the manner in which he met the brilliant assemblage. She could see he was not over-modest but she was enough of a student of human nature to know that while true genius may understand its own limitations it is never humble enough to reveal them to others. Again, she was pleased because he did not betray his Semitic lineage. She had not yet outlived her secret wish to obliterate her racial past, though in her heart of hearts—deeper than she permitted herself to penetrate—she was proud that he was of her race.
She kept close to him all evening, eagerly watching over him lest he might make somefaux pasand put himself in a wrong light before the critical audience. She was conscious of his youth and of his readiness of speech, and knew the prejudice of elders against a talkative young man, no matter how scintillating. For after a momentary constraint Albert joined in the conversation with his wonted recklessness and offered opinions that might be construed as presumptive in a man of his age. And she was particularly glad that he had made a favorable impression upon Gublitz. The editor was not as pedantic as most of the coterie and possessed enough of cynicism himself to appreciate the young poet’s bitter tongue. She was counting on the editor of the “Gesellschafter” to be of service to her protégé.
Though she urged him to read a few of his poems she was pleased when Albert declined, and she was still more gratified when he handed her a packet for her personal perusal.
Albert left Rahel’s salon elated. Rahel was a revelation to him. In the past two years he had met learned Professors at Bonn and Goettingen, and had met a few charming women, but had as yet never met a person of either sex that combined the erudition of pedants with the ease engendered by good social breeding.
What particularly drew him towards her was her naturalness; her freedom of sham, her uncompromising truthfulness. And what was rarest of all, she was innocent of all prejudices. She could sympathize with those whose opinions were diametrically opposed to her own. Inner suffering is very often the most effective instructor of tolerance. The only thing she despised and for which she showed no sympathy, was correct mediocrity—Philistinism. At last Albert Zorn had found a kindred spirit.
His experiences of the past two years had prepared him for this friendship. He had read a great deal, thought profoundly, and suffered no little since he left Hamburg. Embittered by his unrequited love he had fled from theSchacherstadtas from a nightmare, and at first found Bonn very much to his liking. Not only was the atmosphere of learning alluring after the sordid commercialism of Hamburg, but the town on the Rhine, with its picturesque surrounding, reawakened in him the sentiments of his boyhood. And here, too, was the friend of his boyhood, Christian Lutz, also another old classmate. Indeed, at first it seemed like old times. He was again sauntering along the banks of his beloved river, dreaming fanciful dreams; he persuaded himself that he had obliterated the rankling memories of that hateful city, the cradle of his great sorrows.
And though already twenty-two he flung himself into the college life with boyish ardor. He became a member of theBurschenschaft, joined the Round Table of a young literary coterie, and participated in the students’ pastimes, such as fencing and dueling, and only refrained from smoking and drinking because of his precarious health. Save for his narrowed dreamy eyes and peculiar restlessness, he appeared as a typical “flotter Bursch”. He wore a black coat, a red cap, and across his breast shone the colors of theBurschenschaft, a band of black, red and gold.
TheBurschenschaftwas more than a mere student fraternity, withcamaraderieas its objective. It claimed idealistic aims. Its leaders spoke of a United Germany, they prattled of Neo-Hellenism—the Neo-Hellenism of Goethe and Winckelmann—they orated about Romanticism—“Die Welt wird Traum, der Traum wird Welt.”——
But much as they indulged in fine speeches their real aims were visionary—Schwärmerei—rather than practical. It was only the Prussian Government that took them seriously. The assassination of Kotzebue by a fanatic student had aroused the authorities to drastic action. Students had been expelled, professors incarcerated, the members of theBurschenschaftwere under police surveillance. And the open antagonism of the Government fanned the smouldering embers of revolt in the breasts of the young dreamers who despised Prussian tyranny.
Albert joined theBurschenschaftat this critical moment, and brought to it all the zeal of a new convert. Hitherto he had given but little thought to political strife, his being had been immersed in romantic sentiments of the heart, but in this league he beheld the means to a great end. To him theBurschenschaftstood for the contending force against Prussianism. And when one night the students marched to the Kreuzberg, back of the town, where by the glow of flaming torches and bonfires they voiced their undying loyalty to the great cause, Albert Zorn was one of the most fervid. It was his first taste of action. His, innate love of liberty flared up and took the place of his erstwhile sentimentality.
Through the carelessness of a fellow student, who had written a report of this torch parade to an editor, the authorities learned of this march and at once cited the offenders to appear before theUniversitätsrichter(college judge). In the protocol it was charged that not only was theBurschenschaftgreeted with “Lebe hoch!” but a seditious speech was made which ended with the following ominous words: “Brothers, a great burden rests upon our shoulders. We must free the oppressed Fatherland!” And out of the 216 members of theBurschenschaftonly Albert Zorn and three others were singled out for chastisement. True, he was not severely punished but the accusation and the proceeding of the trial were enough to deepen his hatred for Prussian rule, and to dampen his ardor for Bonn. Moreover, this unexpected jolt brought clarity to his vision. His temporary illusion was gone. He saw the futility of theBurschenschaft; its members had not displayed such courage at the trial as to arouse his admiration. He saw in their endeavors nothing but sound and empty phrases. He had mistaken the boyish circle for a manly organization.
In addition to his disillusions came the crushing disappointments as regards Christian Lutz. Albert was grieved at the change in his boyhood friend. The son of a Prussian official, he began to reveal his inner self. The leopard could not change his spots. Instead of the buoyant youngster that he had been in former years, Christian was now a stolid young man and frowned upon all liberal views. Albert felt that Christian was regarding him with the eyes of a Prussian official, for which function he was preparing himself. And Christian had also lost interest in literature. He regarded Albert’s poetic flights as mere child’s play, unbecoming a serious minded student.
At the end of the second semester Albert again found himself alone and aloof, walking, brooding, planning, sick at heart. Everybody and everything had suddenly changed, only he was the same, the same dreamer, dreaming of things that were not coming true.
Discouraged he left Bonn and went to Goettingen. However, it did not take him long to realize the fallacy of the change. Instead of the picturesque scenery of the former town the environments of Goettingen were commonplace and instead of the romantic spirit of the Bonn University the air in this “learned nest” was charged with pedantry; everybody was bent on “grinding”, with scholarship as its shibboleth. And what was more irritating to the democratic son of the Rhineland was the predominant element of the HannoverianJunkeraristocracy; the superciliousness and the boorishness of these tyrannical fledglings goaded him on to voicing his contempt for the whole breed. Always outspoken, always blunt, always showing his likes and dislikes too plainly, he made no secret of his opinions. As a result he had quickly gained a reputation for wit but at the expense of popularity. The historian Sartorius, one of Albert’s professors at Goettingen and an ardent admirer of his talents, lauded the young poet’s verses which were shown him, but added, “Indessen, man wird Sie nicht lieben.” No, they neither loved his songs nor himself at Goettingen.
Before long he was again called before theUniversitätsrichter. A charge was lodged against him that he had challenged one of the students, a nobleman, to a duel, against the rules of the University. He admitted the charge and justified his act because his opponent had questioned his veracity. But the college judge would not recognize such a defense.
So after a summer of study and foot-journeys with a knapsack on his back he came to Berlin.
Berlin thrilled him at first. Keen observer though he was, he mistook her superficial dazzle for a deeper brilliancy. He was still looking at the world with the eyes of a rustic. The opera, the galleries, the fine avenues, the gay cafés, thesalons—everything about him engaged his interest and furnished food for his vivid imagination. Furthermore, though still a law student, he was received in society as a promising young poet and as such many doors of distinguished men and women were open to him.
At last the fates were kind to him, he thought. His health had improved, he had a circle of friends and admirers, he was writing new poems, getting old ones published, had finished a poetical drama, and had hopes of seeing it presented on the stage. And Rahel’s house had become his second home. He did not wait for her “at home” but came and went as he pleased. She read and criticised every line he wrote, and her severest censure never hurt his feelings. Very frequently her husband was also invited to pass critical judgment on Zorn’s verses. Dinners and teas with brilliant people, late evenings at Lutter and Wegner’s—the café where the young literary talent of Berlin congregated to discuss the latest book, the latest play, the latest musical composition. Conversation was to him like reading: it stimulated his own thoughts. And when he was not reading or arguing he was strolling alongUnter den Linden, swinging his cane, his eyes narrowed, his chest thrust forward, gathering impressions. When fatigued from walking he dropped in at Café Josty, famed for itsKaffee mit Sahne.
To be sure, moments of sorrow were not lacking even in those happy days. His father’s financial condition had grown worse and then came the crushing blow that Hilda was betrothed—that she had preferred an everyday business man to a poet by the grace of God! Besides, he was always short of a fewLouis d’orfor which he would rob Peter to pay Paul, and he was ever perplexed as to where his money had gone. Uncle Leopold’s stipend came punctually on the first of the month, and according to his calculations should see him through till the first of the next, but somehow it never lasted more than a week. Ah, if he could only catch up and start with a clean slate the next month! Every month he would take a vow to be more regular in his habits, more methodical—never, never would he be inveigled into a game of Pharo—but then at the end of the week he found himself with but oneThalerin his pocket, with three more weeks before the first of the next month, and he would then hasten to one of his friends to borrow enough to tide him over the difficult period. Then, again there were other sorrows. Albert had collected a number of his poems and wished to publish them in book form but he was still unable to find a publisher. “The bats!” he would mutter under his breath, “I turn the sun upon them and they see it not.” Rahel was the only one who saw the light. It was heartbreaking. Byron at his age was already famous and he—“Oh, the blind bats!”
One day a would-be friend came knocking at his door. It was late on a cold January morning and he was still in bed. He had awakened earlier in the morning but a few stray thoughts tormented him so he turned over and tried to forget them in sleep. Fortunately nothing but a headache disturbed his sleep. Grief had the opposite effect on him. The day before had been a very trying one. He had lost a few Louis d’or at Pharo, had a quarrel with one of his comrades at Lutter and Wegner’s, and had received an unpleasant letter from his parents. So he had stayed up late the night before writing verses on the cruelty of fate.
As he turned in his bed a thought flashed across his brain that eternal sleep was the greatest gift of the gods—Death! No rejected manuscripts, no unrequited love, no debts, no asinine critics, no Hegels and Schleiermachers, no Jews and Christians, no Prussian censors—death surely was bliss, he determined and buried his head in his pillow. He recalled that when he awoke he was in a very pleasant dream, and hoped to pick up the golden threads of that fantastic web. He wondered what had awakened him. It must have been the sounds outside. Friedrichstrasse was becoming noisy, he was saying to himself, and he ought to change his lodgings where his pleasant dreams would not be interrupted. He was trying to bring back the vanished phantom. He sometimes went back to sleep and resumed the dream at the point left off, like a story given in instalments.
Confound that noise outside! Albert was vexed with Friedrichstrasse, with the mob that never respected the sensibilities of a poet, with those clattering hoofs—why could not such heavy treading beasts have rubber hoofs? Rubber—a Pharo wheel—a girl’s face—the girl was beating a drum—it was deafening . . .
He rose with a sudden start and blasphemous ejaculations.
“Who is there? What do you want?” he demanded in a high pitched voice.
He remembered that he had forgotten to bolt his door, so he shouted again, “Open the door and tell me what you want!”
“A man wants to see you—”
“This early? What does he want? Who is he?”
“I told him you were asleep but he would not leave. He said he must see you; and, besides, he said you had no business to be asleep at eleven o’clock—”
“What business is that of his?” Albert shouted. “Tell the impudent fool I won’t see him—”
The landlady laughed blandly. She knew her lodger, and there was but a step between his uncontrollable wrath and overflowing tenderness.
His features softened. Hegel’s lectures came punctually at two and he did not want to miss that. It was not so much that he wished to hear what the philosopher had to say—Hegel had been repeating the same thing in the past ten lectures—but he loved to watch the Professor’s grotesque movements and the peculiar contortions of his wrinkled face. A classmate next to him was making interesting caricatures of the Professor while he was lecturing.
“Who is this fellow?” Albert asked in a modulated voice. “Has he no name at all?”
“He said he was a genius and was sure you’d appreciate him—and he looks like a genius.”
“You have probably misunderstood him,” laughed Albert. “He must have said he wanted to see the genius. Alright, let him come in.”
The landlady shrugged her shoulders and closed the door.
He was about to throw himself back on his bed when she reappeared, followed by the stranger.
“Look at the damn thing!” the intruder burst out, without a word of introduction. “No publisher would have it. I showed it to the editor of the “Gesellschafter” but he only shook his head and said ‘Show it to Albert Zorn.’ So here it is!”
With that he flung a packet of papers on the bed.
Albert reached for the manuscript, then glanced at his visitor.
“So your name is Krebsfleisch?”
“Johann Friedrich Krebsfleisch” the stranger corrected him, with a sullen expression on his high cheekbones and short, receding chin. His brow was like a dome and his eyelids were heavy, with bovine eyes protruding.
“Before long everybody in the land—princes and paupers—will know who Johann Friedrich Krebsfleisch is!” he added. “The world is as yet too stupid to recognize my genius. I was told you might understand me—But you can’t be a poet and have that fine fur coat!”
Krebsfleisch suddenly checked himself, his bulging eyes turned in the direction of an open clothes-closet, where Zorn’s clothes were hanging. He crossed the room and patted the fur as if it were a purring cat.
Albert’s mouth tightened with a humorous smile on his lips. There was a mischievous twinkle in his narrowed eyes. He could not decide whether his visitor was an escaped lunatic or had not recovered from a night’s drinking. He wore a short, tattered coat, baggy patched trousers, and his hairy breast was seen through his unbuttoned shirt. His headgear was a cross between an old-fashioned high silk hat and the present day derby.
“Why don’t you read it?” he presently accosted Albert. “Some day you’d be glad to tell your friends that the great poet Johann Friedrich Krebsfleisch had given you the chance of reading his great epic in manuscript.” Then he added, as if soliloquising, “Every genius is a John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. Years later people wake up and try to catch the echo.”
Albert undid the package and glanced at the title page.
“Since Schiller died no one has produced a tragedy worthy of the name. At last you have one before you,” Krebsfleisch struck in.
“Have you published anything?”
“The idiots can’t see my genius—yet. And the finest quality of my genius is hunger. Yes, I am a genius by the grace of god. No one has ever known hunger in all its stages as I have.”
He moved his jaws, his eyes wandering around the room.
A knock at the door and a maid entered with a tray of steaming coffee and several rolls and butter.
Krebsfleisch stared at the food avidly.
“You must be a millionaire,” he said, sitting down at the foot of the bed. “A fur coat, a warm room, steaming coffee in the morning. Are you a poet or a publisher?”
“Just a poetic genius like yourself,” laughed Albert.
Krebsfleisch looked suspiciously at his host. There was something in Albert’s voice that was always puzzling. One could never tell whether he was jesting or was in earnest.
“You can’t possibly drink all this coffee alone?” said the visitor.
“No, I ordered enough for both of us,” responded Albert seriously. And he removed the cup from the saucer and filled them both to the brim.
“Which would you rather have, the cup or the saucer?” he asked.
Krebsfleisch’s bulging eyes skipped from one to the other, with a peculiar glitter.
“I always drink my coffee from a saucer,” he finally replied, and taking hold of it with both hands carried it to his lips.
“You may have all the bread and butter—I don’t care for any this morning,” Albert said nonchalantly.
Krebsfleisch stared at Zorn incredulously. How was it possible that one did not care for bread and butter! Overlooking the knife he spread the butter on a slice of bread with his finger and began to devour it ravenously.
“That’s how my mother used to spread butter on my bread.” His words were half drowned in the fullness of his mouth!
A moment later he sighed. “Those were happy days in my native village! My mother had a cow and there was always bread and butter and cheese in our house, but she insisted she must make an educated man of me. It serves her right. I have eaten her out of house and all. She inherited silver spoons from her father—her father was aBeamter—and I have devoured them all. The ladle goes for this semester’s tuition.”
Albert heaved a sigh. He had devoured his mother’s pearls and his grandfather had consumed a prayer-book with silver clasps during his last term at the medical school. There was now a bond of sympathy between the two. There was mist in Albert’s eyes. He caught his breath but could not speak. His first impulse was to have fun with the queer stranger but instead sympathy filled his heart.
“There is a pair of trousers I don’t need,” Albert said presently. He was too sensitive to make the offer directly.
“Yes, they might fit me,” Krebsfleisch glanced at the pantaloons thrown over a chair by the bed. Then he stood up and measured the length of the legs against his. “Perhaps a little tight around the calves, but they’ll do.”
A few coppers jingled in the trouser-pockets. There was a questioning look in his eyes.
“Yes, the contents goes with the trousers,” said Albert with seeming absentmindedness.
Krebsfleisch at once removed his own tattered trousers unceremoniously and pulled on those offered him.
“Your father must be very rich,” he was saying as he was stretching the waist line to fit his rotundity.
“Very, very rich,” stammered Albert with a sad smile on his face.
“And you never go hungry—not for a single day?”
“No, not for mortal food,” Zorn intoned wistfully.
“The other day,” Krebsfleisch said in a plaintive tone, “I did some copying for a rich idiot who took i a notion into his head that he had a new theory about the universe. He paid me four silver Thalers! Yes, sir, I had four silver Thalers in the hollow of my hand and was on my way to Jagor’s to have a real spread—Bratenand white bread and a bottle of wine—and invited two friends for the feast. On the way to the restaurant I met a fellow-student and we dropped into Lutter and Wegner’s for a drink. I don’t know how it happened but we both got drunk and when night came the four Thalers were gone. One of the students, who had been invited to the spread, waited for me at Jagor’s until midnight, and then he challenged me—that fool! Must I lose my life in addition to the loss of my four Thalers? I have no more chance of a dinner at Jagor’s,” he ended with an audible sigh. “Rich idiots with new theories do not grow on trees.”
He rose and stretched his arms, with a downward look at his tightly fitting trousers.
“Can you perchance spare a top coat to cover this misfit?”
Yes, Albert had a top coat. It was hanging on a peg in the open closet.
“A fur coat and a top coat! You are not related to the Rothschilds?”
“Just distantly—the same as to the Prophets and to some of the Apostles.”
The jest was lost on Krebsfleisch.
Later in the day Albert hunted up a friend and borrowed five Louis d’or and then went to 20 Friedrichstrasse, where he announced to Frau Varnhagen von Ense that he had discovered a kindred spirit in the form of a starving genius.
Months passed. Albert began to tire of Berlin. Every phase of the city’s life, like the pages of a book conned too often, bored him. He yearned for idealism, for truth, and because he could find neither he began to scoff and blaspheme. Here, as elsewhere, sham and falsehood ruled life. Politics, religion, literature, philosophy—a veritable Tower of Babel, where no one understood the other and all were bent on building something colossal, eternal. When he had first arrived here his zeal for so many things was kindled, now it was waning, cooling, dying. He suffered the pain of lost illusions, and that at an age when most people commence to have illusions. Despite his keen mind he had not yet learned that no one can see truth and live—peacefully. And he not only saw the truth but he was unwise enough to shout it from the housetops. He always took the world into his confidence, without realizing that one who gives the world his confidence gets none in return.
The scales were falling off his eyes. The Salon, the literary Bohemians—he saw the sham and sickly sentimentality of it all!
The Salon was but a nest of chattering parrots, where one repeated the phrases and syllogisms dropped by Goethe, by Herder, by Hegel, by Schelling. If these parrots had at least croaked their own tunes!
He was still attending the Round Table at Lutter and Wegner’s on Charlottenstrasse, where the rising young poets were having heated debates on literary topics. Every one of them had his shoulders in readiness for the mantle of the Prophet of Weimar to fall upon him and every one thought everybody else a mere pretender. And when they were most animated, stimulated by drink and smoke, Albert sat in a corner, neither drinking nor smoking, a strange gleam in his narrowed eyes, and from time to time sent a shaft of irony or an arrow of wit through their web of fancy phrases. When he did argue his colleagues scented arrogance in his statements. He had an unfortunate manner of belittling his opponents’ assertions and brushing them aside with a scoffing jest. They were talking of romanticism as if the period was only beginning while he was speaking of it as if it had ended. They persuaded themselves that dreams were realities while he only wished to clothe the sordidness of life in the garb of romance. When he persisted they could not see the difference.
He was also at variance with them on political issues. They spoke of the radical democracy of Ludwig Börne while he believed in a democracy of Government based on justice, with an aristocracy of achievement in all walks of life. When Krebsfleisch accused Albert of aristocratic tendencies he retorted that he had more respect for an industrious aristocrat than for a coarse, drunken, lazy plebian poet who abused the nobility at Lutter and Wegner’s and then went to his lodgings to write a cringing, begging letter to a son of the nobility. Krebsfleisch was silenced but had become Albert’s mortal enemy. Without direct accusation Albert had revealed Krebsfleisch to himself. When people told him that Krebsfleisch was slandering him he only smiled and said Krebsfleisch was a genius and geniuses never had any sense of gratitude.
He again found himself almost alone, strolling alongUnter den Linden, visiting cafés, reading, thinking suffering from headaches, and when in the throes of pain writing love songs. He wrote love songs because he craved love and had it not. When he had no one to love he was dreaming of love.
MIRIAM.
Atthe end of that semester he was seized with a passion for work and decided to stay in Berlin the following summer vacation and devote all his time to the execution of his literary plans. His head was full of literary schemes. He again applied himself to another revision of his poetic drama; dashed off a tragedy; penned moreLieder; and also sketched a weird romance with Venice as a background. He had just read Hoffmann’s “Die Elixiere des Teufels”, and was so influenced by its mystic charm that he was revolving in his brain the plot of a tale with witches and spirits. He meant to take the world by storm and attack it from many angles.
But the fates always interfered with him, not only in his plans, the affairs of the heart but also in his literary pursuits. One day an admirer sought his acquaintance and became a worshipping friend. And he was a friend worth having. He was the sort of person Albert needed. He was a nobleman from Posen, a count with a genuine love for poetry; sympathetic, generous, young, handsome and entertained liberal religious views, though a Catholic by birth. Besides, he was an accomplished musician and had composed music for a few of Albert’s songs. Eager for recognition, chafing from the public’s neglect, the count’s praise was an infusion of new courage. And the more the count praised his verses, the higher he rose in the author’s estimation. The count had become the “worthiest of mortals”, “a flower of purity”, the “embodiment of all that was good and noble”.
Albert talked of the count to his friends, to his acquaintances, to strangers, and could not even resist the temptation of utilizing the count’s given name in his verses. Impetuous, influenced to love and hate at first sight, the count had won him completely. And what was even more precious in this nobleman, he possessed originality and wit—rare faculties among Albert’s ponderous Berlin friends. So when the count invited him to his estate near Gnesen, Albert forgot his resolutions for an industrious summer and accompanied him to Posen.
He found his surroundings there a veritable poet’s dream. A palatial villa surrounded by extensive woods, luxuriant gardens, hundreds of acres of fertile fields, with a great forest back of the estate, a water mill, and all that the heart could crave. Nor were coquettish maidens wanting.
One day he met with a real adventure. He was alone, wandering through the narrow filthy streets of Gnesen, the town close by. The little town presented a strange sight to him. It looked medieval. Unpaved, without sidewalks, pulverized mud in the streets, the houses of heavy logs, unpainted, and straw-thatched and black with age, with grotesque looking people in the doorways or seated on earthen stoops extending across the whole front of the house. The peasants wore the national costume of unbleached linen coats without sleeves, with a colored girdle fastened around the waist, and trousers tucked in top-boots.
It was near sunset, the sun was sinking in a mist of gold and indigo and lustrous copper, the cows were returning from pasture through the main street to the resounding pistol-like echoes of the shepherd’s long whip and to his exasperating shouts of “Whoa!”
Albert strolled along aimlessly, listening to the unintelligible jabber of the people around him, only now and then catching a word of their jargon.
He soon reached the market-place. It was deserted. Now and then a door opened, and a bar of a raucous song was heard. Then silence. A drunken peasant, lying on his back in the dust near a dram shop, was hiccoughing a love song, but soon his voice was hushed, too. Silence again. The last rays of the dying sun rested like a halo around the head of the Christ upon the tall black crucifix in the centre of the market place. Albert was about to turn in the direction of his host’s villa when his attention was arrested by a girl, who emerged from a narrow passageway that branched off the market place. In her hand was a large jug and she was on her way to the Marktbrunnen. He recalled a scene in Mesopotamia, in the city of Nahor. The scene appeared to him as if he had actually seen it in his childhood. It was distant but vivid. He visualized all Biblical scenes. This damsel too, was “very fair to look upon, and she went down to the well.” But it was harder to draw the water here than in Mesopotamia of old. The well was very deep and the frame above the ground was of round logs, which were mossy and wet and dripping, and there were puddles of water between the stones around the well. At a straight line from the centre of the well a perpendicular heavy pole was suspended from a long beam high above, and to the bottom of the suspended pole was attached an iron-hooped pail, which one was obliged to lower into the deep well, plunge it into the black looking water, and then with the aid of the balancing beam, bring up the pail.
Albert approached the well as the girl had gripped the pole and began to lower it while the beam above was creaking resistance. He remained standing across the well, looking straight at this Rebekah, but she seemed unconscious of his presence.
“May I help you?”
A scarcely perceptible frown on her dark face was the only response and the grip on the pole tightened. In Gnesen young men offered no assistance to girls at the well. A deep gurgle from the depths, a frog-like grunt, and soon the pail was balanced on the top log of the well. As she filled her jug and turned to leave her eyes never betrayed the least knowledge that a young man was eagerly watching every move and gesture of hers; only the brown of her cheeks seemed of a deeper warmth and her gait lacked the ease which had marked her steps on her way to the well.
Following at a respectable distance he soon found himself in an uneven, unpaved, open space, to the right of which was an edifice of unmistakable character—the simplicity of structure, the indefinable gloom hovering over it, the long arched windows, told him that this was a house of prayer—and to the left was a row of dingy houses, with high stoops.
The girl cut diagonally across the large courtyard, mounted a high wooden porch, and when she entered the house closed the door with a slam that resounded throughout the square. Albert stood and looked at the two windows for a while. No face appeared at either of them.
He took a step nearer the house which the girl had entered. It was a humble hut, a one-story affair painted by Mother Nature in drab colors with streaks of black rot and dabs of yellow, where the decay was dry and worm-eaten and crumbling powder.
That evening the gay assemblage at the count’s lost interest for Albert. His friend teased him about his sudden fit of melancholy and made guesses as to whose darted arrows had pierced the poet’s heart. The count was certain it was the flaxen haired Katinka to whom Albert had read his verses earlier in the day; and he rather liked his guest’s sudden fit of melancholy. Since he had a lion under his roof he wanted him to roar.
The next day Albert was again at theMarktbrunnenbut he saw only shambling men and slovenly women come to draw water. He could think of no means of reaching the object of his search. His brain was very active but he had no mind for scheming; neither in real life nor in literary plots. He could only add color to reality, invent he could not.
In his present restlessness he turned to literature. He was planning a descriptive essay on Poland and discussed with his host the status of the peasantry. When he touched upon the condition of the Polish Jews, the count said, “The Jews of Gnesen count me as their best friend.”
He spoke rather tenderly, almost affectionately, of “his Jews”.
“You might follow in the footsteps of Casimir the Great and take a Jewish Esther for your wife,” jested Albert.
“The Jewish Esther of Gnesen would spurn a Casimir the Great,” laughed the Count. “I have carried on flirtations with many a Jewish innkeeper’s daughter but Miriam is adamant.”
“Who is Miriam?”
“The rabbi’s daughter. She is the prettiest and sweetest girl I have ever laid my eyes on.”
After a space he added, “By the way, I always pay my respects to the rabbi when I come here in the summer and I should like you to meet him. We have quite a time in understanding each other. He speaks almost no Polish and my German is beyond him, so Miriam often acts as our interpreter.”
A few days later the count’s carriage stopped before a dilapidated little house near the synagogue. Albert was with the count and his heart beat tumultuously as he recognized the high wooden porch. They were soon knocking at the door.
People in Gnesen did not usually knock on people’s doors. They just opened them and walked in.
They knocked again and again without response until the beadle, who happened to pass by, saw the dignitary at the rabbi’s door and hurried to the rear of the house, pushed the door open unceremoniously, and burst out, “Miriam,der Graf!”
Miriam was bent over a copper pot which she was polishing.
Miriam dropped the pot and, rushing up to her father, exclaimed, “Der Graf!”
The rabbi, with a velvet skull-cap on his head, deep creases in his high, broad forehead, was swaying his body and pondering over some knotty problem in the Talmud.
“Der Graf?” he asked as if suddenly awakened from a profound sleep. “Quick, fetch me my Sabbath coat.”
The next moment the rabbi, arrayed in his long silk Sabbath caftan, with a large round fur cap on his head, stood at the open door, courtesying and welcoming theGraf. And while the rigid laws of the Polish Jewry forbade such familiarity between the opposite sexes Miriam clasped the count’s extended hand and also shook hands with his companion. Albert looked fixedly at Miriam but beyond a pretty blush could detect no recognition of their former meeting.
In introducing his friend, the count mentioned the fact that Albert was a poet, but that made no impression upon the rabbi. The rabbi considered it a sin to waste ink and paper on anything save a Biblical or Talmudic treatise or upon songs glorifying the Almighty.
Miriam soon withdrew to the adjoining room, but the door between the rooms was open and Albert stole glances into the next chamber. She was paying no attention to his glances. Her eyes were downcast, though her face was turned toward him. Only once, when Albert used a Hebrew word in addressing her father, did she raise her eyes inquiringly and then dropped them quickly as if she were displeased at something.
Albert expected a sign of cordiality when he informed the rabbi that they were of the same race but instead he felt increased coldness—the hospitality was now only extended to theGraf.
When they rose to leave Miriam stepped into the room and bade them goodbye. Albert wondered if she understood that the second meeting was not wholly accidental. He was determined that she should understand this.
Love teaches subterfuge. The young poet soon found a pretext to pay another visit at the home of the rabbi. He was taking notes for an article on Poland and came to the rabbi for first hand information.
This time the rabbi seemed more cordial. The absence of the count made Albert, too, feel more at ease. They discussed the misery of the Jews in Poland more freely. Besides, Albert quoted a few Biblical verses and that seemed a welcome password. When he repeated some of the eloquent phrases of Zunz on the martyrdom of Israel and spoke with poetic feeling of Jewish antiquity the rabbi’s eyes glowed with a strange light and there was a warmth on his bearded countenance.
After the next visit Albert was at his wit’s end. He was making rapid progress with the rabbi but not with his daughter. A glance, a blush, a rapid movement of the lashes, but no communication. Jewish daughters in Gnesen did not chat with young men callers. But luck is usually on the side of lovers. When he called again the rabbi was away.
“I wished to ask your father about something concerning the Jews in Poland,” he was stammering, eyeing with delight the changing tints in her cheeks. “Perhaps I could write to him about it.”
“My father doesn’t read German,” Miriam said, catching her breath as if apologizing for his ignorance.
“Do you?”
“Yes,” and she again caught her breath.
Her mother stood at a respectful distance, pride in her eyes. It was through her tolerance that Miriam had learned to read and write German unbeknown to her father.
Albert’s eyes sparkled. A thought sped through his brain. Producing a slip of paper he wrote: “Like King Saul I came here to look for the asses and found a kingdom. Dare I hope that you might meet me at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon inside the second gate of Dzyalin? Until tomorrow.
Albert Zorn.”
“See if you can read my handwriting,” he said as he handed her the note.
She read it, blushed scarlet, grew confused, and raised her eyelashes with a helpless look on her face. He did not offer to shake hands with her, having become confused himself, and left the house.
Dzyalin, the count’s estate was half an hour’s walk from the heart of the Gnesen. On Saturdays and summer evenings the gates were open and the town people were allowed to promenade through the wooded paths and the tree-lined winding alleys. The grounds were entered through a narrow portal and after passing the spacious courtyard, around which were located several imposing homes of the manager and his assistants, there was a tall iron gate which led to two broad shaded lanes. The one to the right led to the count’s castle and the one turning left was open to the public. The latter extended over more than a mile, rows of Lombardy poplars on either side, like sentinels on guard, and came to a sudden halt at the dam, which held the streams in check for the water mill. For farther left was a narrow river, beyond which spread the count’s vegetable gardens and grain fields.
Albert was at the designated spot ahead of time, and when he spied her in the distance he ran toward her with an extended hand but she overlooked it and remained standing stock still, pale, shy, trembling. Her cheeks looked almost bloodless for a moment and her eyes, which he had thought were jet black, were of a sapphire blue and devoid of all animation. A dark cashmere shawl, which had covered her head, had slipped to her shoulders, and the tassels at the ends were gathered in her clasped hands, with an expression of stunned fright on her face.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he mumbled.
She drew a long breath, her hands clinching the tassels in her hands, and a film of mist appeared in her dark-blue eyes.
“Some one might see me,” she muttered in a fretful voice and a frown of agony appeared on her countenance.
They moved back of the row of poplars, where the ground sloped toward the river, screened by shrubs and bushy willows.
He soon made her forget her fears. He began to ask her questions about the people in Gnesen, about herself, but she would not talk about herself. She wanted him to tell her about Berlin, of which she had heard so much. She sighed. She was tired of Gnesen and the people here. There was nothing new in Gnesen. The same gloom day after day, week after week, year after year. Ah, for a glimpse of Berlin!
He made attempts to console her. Her naiveté, her ignorance of the world, her simplicity, her artlessness, her evident truthfulness charmed him. She had never been outside the little town, and she was in her eighteenth year. She entertained strange notions of what a large city was like, and wished she could go to one—she would go anywhere to escape the tedium of Gnesen.
They were now seated in the screening shade of a clump of willows on one side and on the other were the bushy shrubs through which one caught only intermittent glimpses of the flowing stream below. Now and then were heard the quaint songs of the peasant women in the fields—Polish folk songs—the piping of a swineherd in the distance, the barking of a dog, the shrill drilling sound of the locust. He sat on the ground opposite Miriam, listening to her wistfully, catching the enchanting melodies around him, and looking, with narrowed eyes, at the beautiful maiden before him. There was an exhaling purity about her. Sheltered by her mother’s rigorous virtue she was like a soft-colored wild flower surrounded by high woods, never scorched by the burning rays of the sun, never harassed by gusts of cold winds. As he looked at her appealing dark-blue eyes with those exquisite long black eyelashes, her rich black hair combed straight back from her low, square forehead, and the faintest dimple in her chin, there was a strange sentiment in his heart. He was conscious of a desire to rest his hands upon her bowed head—barely touching it—as did the Jews of old, and murmur a prayer and a blessing that God may guard her sweet purity.
“You ought to be glad to be away from large cities,” he endeavored to cheer her. “Here you have treasures Berlin could never give you.”
He halted. A finch dropped a few sweet notes and sailed away, and then the chattering crickets accentuated the silence around them.
“Ah! you don’t understand—you don’t understand—” she was saying, sadness spreading over her face.
She was playing with the tassels of her cashmere shawl absent-mindedly. She could not explain what he did not understand, for she did not quite fully understand herself beyond the fact that she was weary of Gnesen. Life in Gnesen was a perpetual “You must not.” Being a rabbi’s daughter more things were forbidden her than other girls. And the sudden appearance of this elegantly dressed young man, with his intent eyes upon her, his charming voice and pure German speech, made her conscious of her circumscribed, narrow, drab existence with all its dinginess. Strange feelings had been stirring in her the past year or two but they only made her restless, without revealing to her, her inner desires. Recently she had overheard her mother complain that her father was not active enough to procure a husband for their daughter and the rabbi murmured that “the good Lord would provide.” Miriam trembled at the thought of marriage; a repulsive feeling came over her at the mere mention of it. Marriage in Gnesen meant shaving off her beautiful tresses and exchanging them for the detestable wig; it meant—she shuddered—the drudgery of married life in poverty.
On the day she caught a glimpse of Albert at the well she went home with her heart a-flutter. He was so unlike the young men in Gnesen. She had not thought he belonged to her people but his dreamy, intent look had not escaped her despite her seeming inattentiveness. No one had looked at her in the manner of this stranger.
The evening of their first meeting she remained seated on the steps of the porch, with her elbows on her knees, her pensive face between her hands, musing; at times her breasts heaved, though she knew not why. Her musing was interrupted by the approach of her father and Shloma, the marriage-broker. The two were conversing in a low confidential tone. She knew the topic of their conversation. The day before her father had been telling her mother that Shloma was proposing a suitable young man for Miriam. He mentioned his name. Miriam trembled. She had never spoken with the young man but she knew him by sight, an ungainly young man. When her father and the marriage-broker came near the porch Miriam went into the house and retired. She spent a troubled night, with a heart full of sorrow, and in the back of her brain was the picture of a young man, slender, handsomely dressed, with light-brown hair, and eyes that made her heart flutter.
When she beheld the stranger in the company of the count her heart stood still for a second and the blood rushed to her face. To Miriam the day of miracles had not yet passed. All her life she had heard of nothing but miracles. Her dreams were not of knights and princes but of the thousands of miracles God had performed for her people.
After Albert and the count had left Miriam threw her cashmere shawl over her head and took a long walk, to the very end of the town. She was not thinking of the stranger. She was not thinking of anything. Only her head was thumping and she was restless.
During Albert’s next visit Miriam sat in the adjoining room and drank in every word, every syllable. She loved to listen to his voice, to his pure German, and frequently blushed at the comical attempts of her father to make his patois sound Germanic. She hoped the young man would come again.
Then the miracle happened. The young man called when her father was away and he handed her that note. She cherished the scrap of paper and secretly read it over again and again. She did not hesitate about going to meet him but she trembled with fear. In her innocence the thought that she was running any risk never occurred to her until she had reached the meeting place.
On her departure from their first secret meeting she readily agreed to come the following day. She wanted to hear more of the great city where the streets were paved and lit by lamps at night. She naively asked him what street he lived on and when he told her she asked him to put the address on a piece of paper. Then she made a new discovery; the houses in Berlin were numbered! In Gnesen the houses needed no numbers. One knew the occupants of all the houses and instead of numbers, there were little descriptive signs over the doors, indicating what each owner must furnish in case of fire. The picture of a ladder was above the door of one house, that of an axe over another, and there were sketches—not very graphic—of long hooks and pails and besoms, and, in fact, of all the instruments of the Gnesen fire brigade.
During one of their clandestine meetings Albert remained seated on the ground, his hands around his knee, staring at her as if she were a work of art which aroused his innermost admiration.
Tears of ecstasy were in his eyes as he continued looking at her in silence.
The past three years Albert had learned considerably about the lure of sex—sensuality was no longer an unsolved mystery to him—but though Miriam drew him toward her with a thousand invisible chains he was conscious of an inner fear—the fear of touching a sacred shrine—whenever he touched her cashmere shawl or passed his hand, ever so lightly, over her sleeves, or when he clasped her hand in parting.
Miriam looked up at him and for a moment let her eyes rest upon his sensitive face. She did not understand the meaning of the mist in his eyes but she was conscious of an overwhelming desire to touch him, to let her hand rest upon his.
This was the first touch of romance in the young girl’s life, the first conscious awakening of the mysterious being within her. It was the first tiny opening of the bursting bud, the first petal catching the light of the sun, though its warmth had long before penetrated it. She thought of nothing save the irresistible sweetness of sitting under the willow tree with this young stranger. He seemed a mystery to her, part of the mystery of the great world, of which she knew nothing. The boundaries of her world were the bluish tree tops on the horizon to the left of Gnesen and the dome of the cathedral to the right. And it was midsummer and the Fearful Days—as the group of holidays at the end of summer were symbolically named—were soon at hand. Sadness! sadness! sadness! as if life in Gnesen was not sad enough without fasts, without heart-rending lamentations, without wailing and praying and torturing of the flesh.
“I can’t meet you tomorrow,” she said one day as they parted.
“And why not?” he inquired eagerly.
“Don’t you know what tomorrow is?”
He shook his head.
A strange expression stole over her face. Her eyes contracted, there was a deep dent between her eyebrows, and she stared at him as if sudden fear possessed her.
“So it is not true,” she muttered in a husky voice, “that you are a Jew.”
Albert threw his head back and laughed.
“Too much of a Jew, Miriam—too much of one to be left in peace.” The sunny smile now vanished from his eyes, the deep corners of his mouth drooped and twitched, the wing of melancholy brushed his flushed cheeks. “Why do you doubt it?” He again made an attempt at smiling.
“You couldn’t be a Jew without knowing that tomorrow is a Jewish holiday!”
He looked puzzled at her. He did not observe Jewish holidays.
However, she soon yielded and promised to come.
The next day they were seated in their secluded place, Albert reciting a song he had written the night before. He told her that if he had not met her the song would not have been written.
There were tears in his eyes; he uttered the last verse in a whisper almost, and then silence. The day was hot, without the slightest breeze; nothing stirred, not even the drooping feather-like boughs of the willow overhead.
Suddenly the sound of footsteps behind them arrested their attention. A tall, red-bearded, round-faced man was staring at them as if frightened by an apparition. He was Getzel the Beadle.
Miriam leaped up and like a frightened deer, sped through the bushes before Albert had fully realized what had happened.
He waited but she did not return. He called at the same place the next day and the next but she did not appear. Each new love was a first love to him, only it lashed his soul with greater fury. Ah! the shades of the past, they were nothing more than a memory to him now. The wilted flower of yesterday is always forgotten when the perfume of the living one is wafted into our nostrils. No one was like Miriam. There never was any other woman as sweet as Miriam. His whole being yearned for her. Hedwiga, Hilda, Eugenie—they were all fancies—but Miriam—everything swam before his feverish eyes as he thought of her. Nothing in life mattered any more—nothing! He tried to see her at her home—to tell her parents of his love for their daughter, but the rabbi, like Eugenie’s father, shut the door in his face.
He suddenly awoke from his poet’s dream. He saw nothing but abject misery around him. He could no longer share in his host’s gayety.