J'Y PENSE.I know a little maid--J'Y PENSE!With eyes deep brown and staid--J'Y PENSE!Her hair in brown curls fell,Her laugh was like a silver bell--J'Y PENSE!It was a summer's day--J'Y PENSE!The wood in shadows lay--J'Y PENSE!I took the flowers from your hand,You laughed at me, the dreamer, and,J'Y PENSE! J'Y PENSE!Oh, I forgot the word,J'Y PENSE!Now sung by every chord,J'Y PENSE!It takes my happiness and rest,Oh, maiden say and be ye blessed,J'Y PENSE!
J'Y PENSE.
I know a little maid--
J'Y PENSE!
With eyes deep brown and staid--
J'Y PENSE!
Her hair in brown curls fell,
Her laugh was like a silver bell--
J'Y PENSE!
It was a summer's day--
J'Y PENSE!
The wood in shadows lay--
J'Y PENSE!
I took the flowers from your hand,
You laughed at me, the dreamer, and,
J'Y PENSE! J'Y PENSE!
Oh, I forgot the word,
J'Y PENSE!
Now sung by every chord,
J'Y PENSE!
It takes my happiness and rest,
Oh, maiden say and be ye blessed,
J'Y PENSE!
Not all the poems are as naïve and full of hope as this, but they are all addressed to the same person.
Later, the poems become rarer and make way for philosophical and political reflections. Only on one of the last pages there was written in a very bold hand, as if the soul of the writer had burnt with hope and love while he was writing the lines:
Yes, thou art mine! I have aroused to lifeThy fair but cold and pallid face divine.I gave thee life, and thus thou art now mine!And I am thine! For all my mournful strifeWould but be wandering in a wildernessWithout thee, therefore I am thine!
Yes, thou art mine! I have aroused to lifeThy fair but cold and pallid face divine.I gave thee life, and thus thou art now mine!
And I am thine! For all my mournful strifeWould but be wandering in a wildernessWithout thee, therefore I am thine!
The lady leaned back in her chair, let her hands fall into her lap, and looked for a time fixedly before her, absorbed in deep thought. Are these last verses true? "I gave thee life, and thus thou art now mine!" I owe him more than I can tell; he sowed the golden seed of varied knowledge in my young mind; and if I can look higher than most of my sex, if I have an interest in art and science, if I have a heart for the sick and the suffering--it is all his work. And who has ever faithfully stood by me in the strife of life, when no one else troubled himself about me? He, and always he! And yet, if I thus live through him only, do I therefore really belong to him? Melitta rested her head on her hands in order to be able the better to puzzle out this enigma, which, after all, the heart only can solve, and not the head. She does not succeed, therefore, any better now than before, and this only is clear to her, that Oldenburg has never been so near to her heart, and has never been so dear to her as now. But now for the reverse of the medal. "Therefore I am thine!" To be sure he has told me so a thousand times by words and by acts, but--but--is this love, which dates back to the first years of his boyhood, which, he says, he has carried within him through all the changes of his eventful life? is it more than an illusion, such as is not uncommon in fanciful men--one of those fixed ideas in which very obstinate minds take delight? Is it not, perhaps, the love of a Don Quixote, who seeks refuge in it when he is offended by the fearful prose of everyday life, so repugnant to a great and noble heart? Is it not but too probable that this mirage may look charming at a distance, but when seen near by, would quickly dissolve into ethereal vapor?
What can I be to him? Has he not nobler ends to live for than to make a woman happy? Can so restless a mind ever restrict itself to the narrow limits of a family circle? May not what he now aims at as his highest happiness, soon become to him an intolerable chain?
Melitta sighs as she comes to this hard knot in her tissue. She has mechanically opened the book once more, and as she turns over the leaves she comes to a place which she has not noticed before:
"They say love is a mere luxury for men, but a necessity for women; apasser le tempsfor the former, a life's end for the latter. But often it is just the reverse! How often do idle, unoccupied women (I speak only of the wealthier classes) look upon love as a mere article of luxury with so many others, while to the active industrious husband it is a pure refreshing element, which gives him ever new courage and ever new strength! To the laborer (and after all every man is a laborer, from the president of a cabinet to the president's bootmaker)--to the laborer, night is the reward of day, as Virgil says beautifully. And to this must be added: A woman, especially a beautiful woman, is overwhelmed with attentions from childhood up; wherever she goes, a hundred hands are ready to serve her. She is always surrounded by a whole court of flatterers and admirers. Is it not very natural that like all the great of the earth, she is likely to have her head turned? that the worship of a single one cannot count for much with her? that love loses its value because of the abundance of the supply! But man! if he is not exceptionally a prince, they do not make much ceremony with him in life. At school, at the university, he may, if luck favors him, have so-called friends who help him to bear existence; but he has no sooner entered upon actual life, than the host of friends is gone and forever, and he stands alone; he must bear alone his sorrows, his necessities, and what is almost as bad, his joys. Society opens for him; but when?--after he has succeeded; and until then?--till then he has to journey along a weary, dusty road, without shade and without resting-place, which robs him of the best part of his life's strength, and his life's joy. But if he succeeds, he is chastised with scorpions, though he was before chastised only with whips. Even his friends become now his rivals; and he finds himself reduced to lean on his own strength, his own courage, facing a world in arms, a world without pity, delighting in his failures, and at best indifferent. And oh! what bliss, if now, in this fearful crowd, a soft warm hand seizes his own, and a dear voice says to him, 'Be strong! persevere! if all abandon you, I will not abandon you; if others are envious of your triumphs, they will make me unspeakably happy; and if you fail in your work and they scoff and scorn you, or if you succeed and they pass you with cold indifference, then you shall rest your weary head on this bosom, then I will cool your feverish brow with my kisses, I will pour the precious balm of good, compassionate, comforting words into your poor, torn heart.' Oh, thrice happy man; now let the world do its worst, you tremble not, you fear not! In your wife's love you have the point of Archimedes, from which you can move a world.
"And thus I have found more than one man in my life who was attached to his wife with a love which was simply unbounded, which burnt with the steady light of the north star, unchangeable, through the night of his life. And certainly, when we find in history an Arnold Winkelried, who defied death and made an opening for freedom with his body--did he do it for freedom's sake? Yes! For his country's sake? Yes! But above all, he did it for the sake of wife and children, who were to him more than freedom and country and life itself."
Melitta let the book drop into her lap and looked thoughtfully down; then she puts it again on the table, rises and takes an album from a bureau, with which she sits down once more at the table. In the album there are pencil sketches, and sketches in charcoal and sepia, of landscapes and portraits, etc. She has not had the album in her hands since last summer, and she has not taken it out now to draw or to paint. She searches till she comes to a loose leaf, upon which the profile of a man is lightly sketched in bold outlines. In the corner are the letters A. V. O., and the date, July, 1844. The leaf has not come loose of itself; it has evidently been torn out. What unnecessary trouble we give ourselves by indulging in a moment's caprice! now the detached leaf has to be carefully glued upon another! Well! it looks quite well again; but alas! there the name and the date have been cut off. What is to be done? name and date must be upon every sketch. The young widow takes a pencil and writes: Adalbert von Oldenburg; the 22 November, 1847; then she closes the album, puts it back in the bureau, and goes to the window.
It has become nearly dark, and instead of single flakes as before, the snow is falling pretty thick; nor does it melt now on the ground, but has already spread a thin, white cover over the lawn. Melitta begins to be troubled about the long absence of Julius. Perhaps he has had after all an accident; or perhaps it was the old man. She reproaches herself for having allowed the boy to ride out so late; she is angry at Baumann, that he at least has not been more prudent. And Oldenburg, too, is not coming. If he were here she would ask him to ride out and meet the two. How cheerfully he would do it!
She goes, seriously troubled, to the dining-room, to the right of the garden-room, from the windows of which she can see for a short distance the road which leads through the wood past Grenwitz to Cona. The snow is now falling so fast that she can hardly recognize any more the edge of the spruce forest, although it is only a few hundred yards off. She opens the window and leans far out, unmindful of the flakes which fall on her dark hair and melt on her brow. Was not that a horse's hoof? There they are coming out of the forest, one, two, three dark figures: Oldenburg, the old man, and between them Julius; Almansor and Brownlocks in full trot, the pony between them at full gallop so as to keep up. Melitta waves her handkerchief and calls out, and Julius answers with a hearty Holloa! and whips the pony across the neck, whereupon the pony shakes his shaggy head indignantly and begins to race so furiously that he finally beats his long-legged rivals, after all, by the length of his own nose.
The horsemen leap from their saddles. Julius runs up to the window and calls: "I was the first, after all, mamma!"
"Yes," says mamma, "only make haste and come in, and tell Uncle Oldenburg not to busy himself so long with Almansor's saddle."
It was after tea. Julius had gone to bed. Old Baumann had removed the tea-things, and then gone out, casting a benevolent glance at his mistress and her visitor. Melitta and Oldenburg were alone in the "red-room."
"Now tell me candidly, Adalbert, why you are so out of humor to-day," said Melitta, who sat on the sofa, while the baron was slowly walking up and down the room, as was his habit. "I am not out of humor."
"Well then, troubled?"
"That perhaps. I had a letter this afternoon from Birkenhain."
"That is strange. I have just been writing to him this afternoon."
"Have you heard from him lately?" said Oldenburg, pausing in his walk and looking kindly at Melitta.
"No; why?"
"Hem!"
"Is that an answer?"
"Certainly, and a very significative. 'Hem!' means a good deal."
"In this case, for instance?"
"Do you know that we were in all probability at the same time in Fichtenau when Czika and Xenobia as well as Oswald were all there, and we never knew it?"
Melitta blushed deeply, and did not at once know what answer to give. Oldenburg, however, did not give her time to reply, but drew Birkenhain's letter from his pocket, sat down by the table, opposite Melitta, and said:
"You see, Birkenhain writes, after having advised me, at my request, regarding Julius's health--'Julius must be spared all studying till New Year'--as follows:
"'You have so often and so kindly inquired in your letters after Professor Berger, dear baron, that it will interest you to hear again of this extraordinary man, especially after having made his personal acquaintance here at my house last summer. You may recollect from what he told you in your conversations with him, that his insanity belongs to the class of philosophical aberrations, and that he defended his fixed idea of the absolute non-existence of all things--or rather the great original Naught as he called it--with all the erudition and all the ingenuity which he possesses in so large a degree. My hope to be able to restore this distinguished man in a short time, was unfortunately ill-founded, and I confess that the method which I pursued in his case was, perhaps, not the correct one. I intended to arouse in him, by seclusion, withdrawal of books, etc., a sensation of weariness and loneliness, and through these a desire to see company, to exchange thoughts; in one word, a fondness for life. But I had immensely underrated the fund of inner life which was at the disposal of my patient. He could have lived for years on the treasures of his mind, and the only effect of my efforts was, that he gave himself up more fully than ever to his bottomless, original Naught. Nevertheless, I still hoped for some improvement, a reaction which I thought could not fail to arise in so vigorous a mind as Berger's. About that time--I think it was the very day on which you and Frau von Berkow were here, and I forgot to tell you in the hurry in which you were, anything about these matters which interested me deeply--a visitor, who had announced to me his desire to see Professor Berger, came veryapropos. This was a young man called Doctor Stein'"--Oldenburg did not look up as he came to the name--"'of whom a colleague in Grunwald, with whom he was travelling, had told me that he had been Berger's favorite and most intimate friend. I hoped the very best results from this visit--a hope which I must confess was considerably weakened when I made the acquaintance of this Doctor Stein. I found him a remarkably handsome, distinguished-looking man, who, however, in spite of evidently rare talents and thorough cultivation, seemed to be completely at odds with the world and himself, as we find this to be the case, unfortunately, but too frequently, more or less, in our most gifted men, thanks to the inactive, thoughtless times in which we live. I ought to have been able to tell myself, if I had maturely reflected, that Berger would not have attached himself so heartily to this man just before the breaking out of his insanity, if he had not also been a hypochondriac. But here he was, and the thing could not be helped now; besides, I had given Doctor Stein very precise instructions before I allowed him to see Berger, and awaited with great interest the result of this interview, at which I was purposely not present. The result was strange indeed.
"'When I returned from my interview with you and Fran von Berkow, I went at once to my patient, who had in the meantime taken a walk at my request. He had been to the woods in company with his visitor.
"'At the first glance I felt convinced that something extraordinary had happened to him. He was walking up and down in great excitement. As soon as he saw me he paused and said: "What do you think of a theory, doctor, which has never been tried practically?" "Not much!" I replied; "but why do you ask?" "Oh, a thought occurred to me to-night, which lies so near, so near, that I cannot understand why it never occurred to me before." I asked him to explain. "I cannot do that now," he said, "but I will certainly do it as soon as I am able." I had to be content with his promise, for it was useless for me to press him further. I hoped to learn more about it from Doctor Stein. He had left the same night, "on account of pressing business," as he wrote me the next day in a little note from one of the nearest stations. What had happened between him and Berger remained a secret for me; I only learnt from others that they had been seen that night in a waggoner's inn, where they had been eating and drinking with rope-dancers, who happened to be in the place, and who had created quite a sensation there, less by their tricks than'"--Oldenburg's voice began to tremble a little--"'by a beautiful gypsy woman with a still more beautiful child. Berger was very quiet and taciturn the whole of the next day. I left him quite to himself, for I did not wish in any way to interfere with the crisis which was evidently taking place. He had from the beginning been free to go and come as he chose. It did not strike the waiters, therefore, nor the gate-keeper, as strange, when he went out of the asylum at seven o'clock in the morning of the seventh day--it was the day on which Frau von B. left. But this time he did not return during the day nor at night, as he usually did, nor on the following day. He had disappeared.
"'You can easily imagine what I felt when this occurred. Although the search which I immediately ordered, and which was carried out with great energy and circumspection, had no result, I was firmly convinced that Berger had not attempted his life. He had too often spoken most impressively against this way "of tying the Gordian knot still more firmly," as he called it. A letter written by him, which I received shortly afterwards, and which bore the post-mark of a small northern town, proved to my great joy that I had not been mistaken. In this letter the strange man asked my pardon if he should have caused me a few disagreeable days by his stealthy departure from Fichtenau; he had not known, he said, how else he could have carried out the idea which he had mentioned to me. He had joined, for the moment, a party consisting of "good people, but bad musicians," for the very purpose of carrying out that idea, and the idea itself was this: that he could not put his asceticism, the practical side of his theory of the non-existence of life, to a satisfactory test within the four walls of his room, or in solitude generally, but only in the wide world, and especially amid the lower classes of society, to which he had now descended for the purpose. He begged me, if I felt any interest in him, not to interrupt him in his experiment, and promised to inform me at the proper time of the result of his expedition, which promised to be very favorable.'"
Oldenburg folded up Birkenhain's letter, after having read so far, and looked at Melitta.
"How is it, Melitta?" he said; "you were several days in Fichtenau, I know; did you also hear people talk of this beautiful gypsy woman and her child, who must have been Xenobia and Czika, if I am not altogether mistaken?"
"More than that," replied Melitta; "it was Xenobia and Czika, and I saw them and spoke to them."
Oldenburg rested his head on his hand. "You did!" he murmured; "and you--why did you not tell me?"
"Because I feared to renew your sorrow about the lost one; because--listen to me, Adalbert, I will tell you. I would have told you long ago if I had had the courage." And she told Oldenburg of her meeting with the Brown Countess in the Fichtenau forest, how she had tried to persuade the gypsy to come with her, and how she had been grieved when she found all her persuasions and her prayers unavailing; and, finally, how she had received from Xenobia the promise to bring her the child if she should ever change her mind, and how she, Melitta, was firmly convinced that this would happen sooner or later.
As the young widow told him all this, the tears were running down her cheeks, and her voice trembled with deep emotion.
Oldenburg rose and silently kissed her hand, then he strode eagerly up and down the room, while Melitta continued to tell him how she had, shortly before her encounter with the gypsy, overtaken the wagon of the rope-dancer, and that she now recollected having seen among them a man in a blue blouse whom she had then taken for a peasant, but who she now knew must have been Professor Berger. "There is no doubt," she said, "that 'the good people and bad musicians,' of whom Berger speaks in his letter to Birkenhain, were none else but those very rope-dancers, whom he had joined, and with whom he has wandered to Northern Germany, as the letter says. Perhaps he is even now in our neighborhood. If Birkenhain had mentioned the name of the place, I would suggest to you to go there at once and to do what you can to bring Xenobia and Czika back with you; as it is, however, it would only be a wild-goose chase, from which you would return disappointed in your hopes, out of humor and out of health. I advise you, therefore, to write to Birkenhain and to await his answer before you undertake anything. I ought to add, candidly, that I consider it best, all in all, to leave the unravelling of this strange complication confidingly to the future. Xenobia has a thousand ways and means to escape from you if she chooses; her resolution to return to us and to surrender Czika to us must be the work of her own free will."
"If you think that waiting is the best I can do in this case, why do you advise me then to do just the opposite?"
"Because I fear you will find it impossible to sit still after you have once more found a trace of the lost one; because I know that you yearn to see your child; because I know that the resignation to which you have now condemned yourself is unnatural; and, finally----"
"Finally?"
"Because, if I advise you to do nothing for the recovery of Czika it might look as if I did not wish you such happiness, and for all the world I would not have you suspect me for a moment of such heartlessness."
"The human heart is a strange thing," said Oldenburg, after having continued his promenade through the room for a little while. "Can you believe it, Melitta, that I could now almost wish you would show less readiness to restore to me my child, and the woman to whom I owe her?"
"Impossible, Adalbert!"
"And yet it is so. I have made up my mind to be always unreservedly candid towards you, as you are towards me; at least to try to be so; and therefore I can keep nothing from you. Formerly, when you seemed to be beyond my reach as far as the stars in heaven, I often longed for other human hearts to warm me, and to let me feel by their pulsations that everything around me was not as dead as I felt; or I threw myself into wild excesses and neck-breaking adventures, in order to feel at least that I was still living. But now all that has suddenly changed. Since there has come to me the faintest ray of hope that you may yet some time consent to be mine, the world has recovered all its youthful beauty in my eyes; but now I should also like to see the fountain from which I have drunk this water of youth, free of all admixture and undimmed. As you are all in all to me, so I should like to be all to you; to see you have no other desire than to be loved--loved more and more--as I have no other desire than to love you, more and more. What is the rest of the world to us? I have forgotten it; it does not exist for me any more!"
Melitta had let this storm of passion rush over her with bowed head. When Oldenburg paused she took the diary, which lay open before her on the table, turned over a few leaves, and said:
"Man strives according to his nature after the general and infinite; in woman, who stands in every respect nearer to nature, the characteristic feature of every being, self-love, is much more distinctly marked. Man represents the centrifugal power of the moral world; woman the centripetal power. If the former had the government, the world would soon be in the clouds altogether; if woman ruled, we should never rise above the top of the wheat-blades that nod over the lark's nest in the furrow. The way to reconcile the two tendencies is love. When he loves a beautiful woman, man learns that he is not merely a denizen of the spiritual world; and when a woman loves a noble man, she learns that there are higher interests than those of the domestic hearth. They must complement each other; she must remind him that mankind is made up of men; he must teach even the most gifted among us first to spell and then to read fluently the great words of our day: 'Liberty and Fraternity.'"
She closed the book and glanced up at Oldenburg, who stood at a little distance from her, his arms crossed on his bosom.
"You were right not to let me become faithless to my own convictions," he said; "and I should like to know but this one thing--whether your zeal to convert me is quite pure, or whether the priestess is not anxious to direct the eyes of the sinner to the idol itself, because their longing glances directed at her begin to be a burden to her?"
"Oldenburg!"
"Yes, Melitta, I must say it or it will crush my heart. You know how dearly, how unspeakably, I love you. The wish to possess you is all-powerful in me. I have nourished it so long that it fills my whole being, and all my life is concentrated in it. Without you I am nothing. With you I defy a world in arms. I know very well that we ought to do right for the sake of the right, and that he who asks for reward has already his reward. But I am not a saint. I am a man, with all the weaknesses and passions of a man, which rise over him and threaten to drown him like a raging sea, if the dear, the beloved hand is not stretched out to save him. Melitta, say that you will be mine, and my deeds shall not fall below my words."
Oldenburg had remained standing at the same place, in the same position. As in his carriage, so in the tone of his voice there was rather a tone of command than of prayer. That man would not have knelt down before a dozen rifles, nor have suffered his eyes to be bandaged.
Melitta felt this; but his pride did not offend her this time as it had often done before. She answered in an almost humble tone:
"Do not let us act rashly, Adalbert! You know how dear you are to me, and that must for the present content you. See, Adalbert, this letter comes just in time to remind us of our duty. You must recover your child. I should not enjoy a single hour of my life if I were to fear that your love for myself had extinguished in your heart its most sacred sentiment. And, Adalbert, think also of this; I am willing to believe it: You do not love any longer the woman who once inflamed the passion of the inexperienced youth; but she is the mother of your child! What will you say to your Czika, if she asks you why another person than the poor woman whom she calls mother is the wife of her father?"
"Where did you meet Oswald Stein the last time since you saw him in Fichtenau?"
Oldenburg said these few words slowly and with withering scorn.
Melitta turned scarlet. A spark of the evil passion of offended pride which raged in Oldenburg's heart set her own on fire, and kindled the spirit of opposition which had already been so often fatal to both.
"Who tells you that I saw him at all in Fichtenau?
"I only thought so. Perhaps you kept this encounter from me as you did the others."
"And if I had seen him in Fichtenau?"
"That would be what I had expected."
"And if I had seen him since quite frequently?"
"That would only prove to me that my coming here is as improper for myself as it must be inconvenient to you."
Oldenburg went across the room and took his riding-whip and gloves from the console under the mirror. As he came back again to Melitta he stopped, and said: "Good-night, Melitta!" "Good-night!" replied the proud woman, without raising her eyes. He waited for a moment, and for another moment, hoping that she would look at him or say a word--but in vain. Not a word, not a sigh, rose from his crushed heart; he went to the door, opened it gently, and closed it as noiselessly again.
Melitta started. She hastened to the door; but instead of opening it she only leaned with uplifted arms against it and wept passionately. "I knew it would come thus," she murmured. "Poor, poor Adalbert!"
Suddenly she heard a horse's foot-fall close by the window. She ran from the door to the window and opened it, she leaned far out and cried "Adalbert! Adalbert!" but the storm that drove the icy snow-flakes in her face swept away her voice, and the black shadow of horse and rider, which was but just now gliding noiselessly over the white plain and through the gray night, was at the next moment no longer to be distinguished.
Winter has come during the night to the island, and still the snow-storm rages; and the countless flakes, swept down by its swift wings from northern lands, fall thick upon roofs and trees, upon meadows and fields; and one who looked for a time into the darkling air, from which the white stars are dropping forever, felt as if he were rising upward with moderate rapidity--up and up, into the gray boundless space.
Oldenburg seemed to-day to enjoy the melancholy sight to his heart's content. He is standing by the window in his study at the Solitude, and looks fixedly at the sea, or rather at the snow-filled air, for of the sea little or nothing can be seen to-day. He has been standing there many hours to-day, and scarcely noticed Herrman, who comes and goes with mournful mien, and packs several large trunks which stand open about the room, filling them with clothes and linen and books. The good servant's good wife Thusnelda, the comfortable fat housekeeper, has repeatedly bustled into the room under some pretext or other, and once actually dared to ask her master if he would not come to dinner. But he had only replied,
"Very well, my good woman."
Since then several hours have elapsed. The baron had intended to leave directly after dinner, but he had not ordered the horses yet. He can hardly hope that the weather will clear up, for the store-houses of snow seem to be inexhaustible; and besides, it would be the first time that he allows the bad weather to keep him from carrying out his purpose. Moreover, if he had intended to reach the ferry before night, noon would have been the very latest hour at which to start. He is probably not very much pressed to go. Perhaps he is rather pleased to see the snow-storm, as it gives him an excuse from without; or it may be he expects some important news, for he has repeatedly asked during the day. "Has nobody been here?" And every time when his old Herrmann has been compelled to answer, according to the truth, "No, sir!" he has turned again to the window and continued to drum upon the panes with his fingers.
It does not look very probable now that anybody will come. The muddy-red streak far down on the horizon shows that the sun, which has been invisible all day long, is sinking into the sea. A fierce blow, shaking the windows and racing with a howl and a groan around the house and through the high tops of the pine-trees, tears the snow-filled air asunder, and the infinite waste of gray waters, with their foam-crested waves, spreads out in fearful solemnity before the glance of the solitary man. He opens the door and steps out on the balcony; he leans upon the railing through whose iron bars the wind is whistling in shrill notes. He does not cast a look at the tall chalk-cliffs which stretch far out to the right and the left, and which now, with the stern forests they bear on their rugged brow, shine in the setting sun for a moment in blood-red colors. He looks fixedly down, where, a hundred feet below him, the wild ocean lashes the huge blocks of rock on the shore with grim thunder. The white spray rises at times in eddies, driven up by the fierce wind between sharp edges of the steep walls, till it reaches him and fills his hair and beard with icy-cold drops. But he does not mind it. In his soul there rages a wilder and stormier tempest than without. He feels as if he were utterly alone in this desert of a world--as if upon this desert an eternal night were gradually sinking down, and as if he were condemned to live on in this eternal darkness.
It serves you right! he murmured. Why did you let yourself be led by the nose once more, when you ought to have known perfectly well how it would end? And yet! She was so sweet, so kind all these days; she has never been so before. Could I close my ear to the siren-song that never sounded nearer or dearer to me? Siren-song--that it is! What do women know of the true love which men feel in their hearts? All is caprice with them--idle play and vanity. A pair of blue eyes, a smooth tongue, and courteous ways, and you have the doll that pleases good little children. They do not ask whether the little doll has a heart in her bosom, or brains in her head. On the contrary, that might be inconvenient, tedious; that would not suit the nursery.
Well, let it be, then! Let me lay aside the fool's cap forever and for aye! As the evening twilight darkens yonder on the rocks, I will wipe off this rosy illusion from my soul and grow rough like the wintry sea; and as nobody loves me, I will love nobody in return. I will go through life lonely, as that snowbird is winging his way through the pathless air, and not even ask whether he has prepared for himself a sheltering nest under some overhanging cliff on the coast.
"That you will not do! You are a man; and a man is a great deal more than the birds under the heavens."
Oldenburg turned round in amazement, to see who it was that could have spoken these words in such a calm, firm tone. Close behind him stood old Baumann.
"I come," said the old man, answering Oldenburg's anxiously inquiring looks, "by order of Frau von Berkow."
"What is it?" said Oldenburg, his blood rushing madly to his heart; "speak out! Frau von Berkow is ill, is she?"
"Not Frau von Berkow," replied Baumann; "another woman, who came about an hour ago to our house, with a child, and who wishes to see the baron once more before her death, which seems not to be very far off."
"A woman--with a child!" It seemed as if a veil had fallen from the baron's eyes.
"Come!" he said.
Melitta's sleigh, with two powerful bays, was standing before the door of the Solitude. The men got in; Oldenburg took the reins and the whip from the hands of the servant, who sat behind, and off they went at full gallop through the dark pine-woods; out of the woods into the level land, which gradually falls off towards Fashwitz, and into the wide snow plain, with its distant gray horizon, and a few scarcely-perceptible trees and cottages here and there, thickly covered with snow. The road also was nearly hid, and even the track made by the sleigh in coming had long been effaced by the storm. It required all of Oldenburg's familiarity with the country, and all of his skill in driving, to be able to race as he did through this wilderness, up hill and down hill, between bottomless morasses on both sides. Not a word was spoken on the way, and half an hour later the sleigh with the steaming horses was standing before the door of the great house at Berkow. They went into the house.
"Will you please, sir, step into the garden-room?" said old Baumann.
He went in first. A lamp was lighted on the table, and in the grate a fire on the point of going out. The old man screwed up the lamp, kindled the fire afresh, and then disappeared through the door which led into the red-room.
Oldenburg was standing before the fire-place, warming his cold hands. A thousand confused thoughts filled, his mind at once; he walked up and down the room a few times, and then stood again before the fire.
"Melitta was right," he said to himself. "Before this wrong is atoned for, I cannot expect any happiness. And how can I make atonement? Is it not the curse of an evil deed that it brings forth more and more evil deeds? It was the shadow of to-day which fell upon our souls yesterday in anticipation. How stupid I was, how blinded by passion, that I did not understand the warning! Yes, she has an older, a holier right; and woe is me if I were to disregard this right! It would rise ever and again and testify against me! But it is terrible that the Furies should follow us even into the temple where we desire to purify ourselves of our guilt--even into the sacred shrine which holds our whole happiness!"
The rustling of a lady's dress behind him made him start. He turned round, and there stood Melitta, pale and serious, her sweet, fair eyes shining with the traces of recent tears.
"Melitta," said Oldenburg, offering her both hands, "can you forgive me?"
"I have nothing to forgive, Adalbert," she replied, placing her hands in his; "let us bear in patience what must be borne."
They looked silently into each other's eyes for a moment.
"There is still much between us," said Oldenburg, sadly. "I cannot see to the bottom of your heart."
"That is why we must bear in patience," said Melitta.
Oldenburg let go her hands.
"How is she?"
"She is very feeble: in a state between sleeping and waking, but she knows me; and she has asked for you several times."
"Is Czika with her?"
"Yes."
"May I see her?"
"Let me first go in alone. I shall be back directly."
After a few minutes, during which Oldenburg had walked up and down in the room, his arms crossed on his breast and his eyes fixed on the ground, Melitta reappeared in the door.
"Come!"
Oldenburg followed her through the red-room into a half-dark room--Melitta's chamber. It was the first time in his life that he saw it; and, as she led him by the hand to the door, the thought passed through his head, what a strange circumstance it was that admitted him to this room. At the door on the opposite side Melitta stopped, and whispered: "She is in there."
They went in. It was a large, very magnificent apartment, filled with rococo furniture, which belonged to the guest-chambers of the great house. Heavy curtains of yellow silk darkened the windows, the sofa and the chairs were covered with the same material, and the light of the fire that was burning in the grate was reflected here and there by the highly-polished floor of inlaid wood. The mantel-piece was supported by two little Amors, and on it stood an ormolu clock, representing the entrance to a grotto, guarded by genii and butterflies, from which a man with a scythe came forth whenever the hour struck. Paintings in the taste of the rococo period, full of sheep, shepherds, and shepherdesses, adorned the room, in heavy gilt frames. A massive lustre with glass crystals hung from the ceiling, and played in the fitful light which filled the room in all the colors of the rainbow. And in the midst of all this splendor, in an immense tent-bed, the silk curtains of which were drawn back, lay upon snowy pillows a poor woman, sick unto death, who had first seen the light of the stars in distant Hungary behind a hedge, and who had spent her nights through all her life in barns and stables, and still more frequently under the open sky, on the heath, or in the woods, beneath the lofty vaults of ancient beech-trees. Her large eyes, shining with feverishness, wandered restlessly over all the costly objects that surrounded her, and ever and anon remained fixed for a while on her child, as if this were the only point where her troubled spirit could rest in peace. Czika was standing by her bed, dressed in the fantastic gay costume which she commonly wore, even outside of the stage, in the interest of art. Her beautiful face looked more serious and careworn than usual. She did not take her eyes from her mother. She showed evidently that she knew perfectly well what all this meant; that she saw death in the yellow hue of her mother's brown cheeks, in the pallor of her red lips, and in the cold drops of perspiration which were bedewing her painfully-corrugated brow.
Near a small table, close by the bed, stood old Baumann. He was very busy preparing a cooling drink, and he hardly looked up from his occupation when Melitta and Oldenburg very quietly entered the room.
But the sharp ear of the sick woman had heard them. A faint smile of satisfaction passed over her wrinkled face. She beckoned them to her.
As they approached the bed, Czika came to stand between them. This seemed to please Xenobia. Her smile became brighter, then it vanished, and she said, in broken German:
"Put your hands on Czika's head."
Oldenburg and Melitta did so. Oldenburg's hand trembled as it touched the soft hair on the fair young head.
"And give me the other hand!"
Xenobia took their hands, and when she saw the chain formed in this manner, she murmured something which the others did not understand, and which might have been a curse or a blessing, or both, for the expression of her face changed at every word.
Then she said:
"Swear that you will not abandon the Czika!"
"We swear!" said Oldenburg; while Melitta, unable to utter a word, only moved her lips.
Xenobia let go their hands, in order to cross her own hands on her bosom.
"Now leave Xenobia alone," she said, in a very low tone of voice; "only Czika is to stay, and the old man."
Oldenburg and Melitta looked at each other, and then at the old man, who came up with the cooling drink. He nodded his venerable gray head, as if he meant to say: "Do what she asks."
Oldenburg did not dare refuse. He took Melitta's hand and led her out of the room. The clock on the mantel-piece began to strike. The man with the scythe was slowly coming out of his cave.
They went back into the garden-room. Neither said a word. Oldenburg threw himself into an arm-chair near the fire, and glared with troubled looks at the coals. Suddenly he felt Melitta's hand on his shoulder.
"Adalbert!"
He looked up at her with a questioning look.
"You will not leave, I am sure?"
"If you wish it--no!"
"And you will wait in patience till--you can see the bottom of my heart?"
"Yes!"
"Give me your hand on it."
Oldenburg pressed her hand to his face; she felt his tears flowing. She bent down and kissed his brow. Then she sat down on the other side of the fire and fell into deep thought.
The bells of a sleigh interrupted the silence. It was Doctor Balthasar. While the old gentleman was warming his hands by the fire, Oldenburg told him what was the matter.
"Hem! hem!" said Doctor Balthasar. "Know all: tubercles in the lungs--travelling in this weather--can't recover. Hem! hem! Where is she?--let us have a look at her."
As the three were turning round to leave the room, the door opened, and old Baumann, with Czika by his side, entered.
"You are too late!" he said to Doctor Balthasar.
Melitta, sobbing aloud, drew Czika to her heart.
"Hem! hem!" said Doctor Balthasar; "the old story--always call me when all is over--hem! hem! Let us have a look at her."