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Through Night To Light

A NOVEL

BY

FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN

FROM THE GERMAN

BY

PROF. SCHELE DE VERE

Author's Edition

"Ex fumo dare lucem cogitat."

Horace

REVISED EDITION

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1878

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
LEYPOLDT & HOLT,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New York.

STEREOTYPED BY
DENNIS BRO'S & THORNE,
AUBURN N. Y.

Through Night to Light.

Part First.

CHAPTER I.

The sun hung glaring red near the horizon. In the valleys of the mountain ranges dark-blue shadows were gathering, while high on the forest-crowned tops the warm evening light was still aglow. The trees were gorgeous in their gay autumn livery, but in this part of the mountain dark forests of sombre evergreens covered the narrow ravines up and down, and all the swelling heights.

On the turnpike which led in manifold windings towards the main ridge of the mountains, and was lined on both sides with unbroken rows of dwarf fruit-trees, an old-fashioned carriage was slowly making its way. It was one of those broad but clumsy vehicles, drawn by two raw-boned, broken-kneed horses, and carefully provided with a huge drag-chain, which are hired in the cities for a few days' excursion into the mountains. The horses lagged, with drooping heads, heavily in their harness, and labored painfully step by step up the hill, for the road was steep and the carriage heavy. The driver encouraged them from time to time with a friendly Gee, bay! up, sorrel! as he walked slowly by their side, and the two gentlemen who had employed him for some days had gotten out at the foot of the mountain and were leisurely following at some distance behind him.

They were a couple of young men, evidently belonging to the best classes of society, that is, to the middle classes, in which intelligence and culture are nowadays almost exclusively found. They were both tall and showed the slight build and the elasticity belonging to their years. One, the smaller one, whose mouth and cheeks were nearly hid under a close, deep-black beard, would probably have been thought the more interesting of the two, as his finely-cut features, full of intelligence, were sure to please the more careful observer, and yet he was neither as tall nor as handsome as his companion, who at once attracted the eyes of all fair maidens and matrons in the towns and villages through which they had passed.

The two young men had for a time walked on in silence, separated as they were by the whole breadth of the turnpike, which was here covered with small broken stones, to the despair of horses and foot-passengers. Now, when they had passed the bad places, they approached each other again, and the one with the black beard put his hand in a kindly manner on the other's shoulder and said affectionately: "Eh bien, Oswald, why so silent?"

"I return your question," replied the latter, turning his beautiful, earnest eyes towards his companion.

"I enjoy in full draughts the glory of this evening's landscape," said Doctor Braun; "and enjoyment, you know, is silent, because the very pleasure is business enough, and leaves us no leisure for talking. But tell me, is it not a wonderful country, this Thuringia? Is it not worthy to be the heart of Germany, and thus the heart of the heart of our continent, in fact of the inhabited globe? Stop a moment where you are; we have just here a view which would be unique if there were not thousands and thousands like it in these lovely mountains. There is the valley, which we have just left! you can now follow easily the meandering course of the willow-fringed brook through the meadows. There is the village, a dirty place when seen near by, but now how beautiful it is, half veiled by its gay cloak of trees, and the blue columns of smoke, which rise straight up from the chimneys, and gradually dissolve on the sides of the mountains into blue, transparent clouds. And now these beautiful heights with their evergreens! how they rise one behind the other with their deep coloring. And now, here to our left, the glimpse of the blue mountains which we crossed this morning. And, above all, this marvellously fair sky, clear and deep and unfathomable, like the eye of some one we love. Oh, there is something divine in these outlines and these lights. They are surely intended to be more than a mere pleasure for the eye, or even a study for the painter: they are meant to comfort us and to admonish us. A glance at the enchanting face of our mother nature puts our wild hearts to sleep, makes us forget the eccentric character of our so-called culture, brings us back to the first harmony of the soul, and awakens and revives in us the conviction that everything true, beautiful, and noble, is infinitely simple, and that the well of contentment gushes forth at the bidding of every one who seeks it with a pure heart."

While Doctor Braun had spoken these words in his usual animated and impressive manner, Oswald had looked with sad eyes into the far distance. Now, when his companion ceased, he said--an ironical smile playing around his lips--

"Are you quite sure of that? And suppose it were so, who will blame the unfortunate man whose heart is not pure, who is cursed with blindness, and never sees the well of contentment? We shall meet one of these unfortunate men to-night. If you will open his closed eyes and restore to him the purity of his heart, I will worship you as a god."

Doctor Braun seemed to be much affected by these words, which had towards the end assumed a passionate tone of bitterness. He was silent for a few moments while they ascended the mountain, and then he said,

"I thought the journey would have calmed you and made you more cheerful, Oswald. I begin to doubt my professional skill when I see that the old dreams are as powerful as ever in you. You seemed to be almost cured of the fatal desire to sit down, like Heine's young man, by the sea coast, and to ask the restless waves for an answer to the painful old riddles of life, and now----"

"Now I am once more bored with the old complaint! No, Franz, I will not bring disgrace upon your mental cure and try to find the world as beautiful and reasonable as you do. That was only a recollection of the past. Is it not natural, is it not quite intelligible, that it should turn up just now, when we approach the end of our pilgrimage, and I am about once more to meet face to face the noble, unfortunate man to whom I owe so much, and that after an interval during which so much, so very much, has changed for him and for myself! I have followed your advice faithfully, as well as I could. I have let the past bury the past; I have practised industriously the art of forgetting, and I have sent the very shadows of the departed back to Hades, when they became troublesome. But here comes the form of a living man who is dead, of a dead man who still lives, and I find neither in my mind nor in my heart the magic words which will lay this spirit, whom I reverence, whom I mourn with tears, like the others."

"Then let us turn back," said Doctor Braun, with great vivacity. "If you do not feel the strength in you to maintain the position which you have yourself chosen, against every objection and every authority, it would be madness to expose yourself to such danger. Let us turn back; it is time yet."

"No," said Oswald, "that would be both cowardly and foolish. We do not overcome danger by avoiding it. I must see Berger and speak to him. This interview must be the test of the problem that has occupied us these four weeks. Either I recover myself from my own insanity by seeing this madman, or----"

"There is no or," cried Franz. "Really, when I hear you talk so, Oswald, I have a great mind to let you starve and thirst till you come again to your senses, or consent to do honor to reason. You are an enigmatical man, a thoroughly problematic character. There are incongruities in your character which I have not yet learnt to explain, in spite of our long intimacy. Natural disposition and education, which jointly make the man, must in your case have been most strangely intermingled. I have so far always avoided speaking of your early youth, because I felt a natural reluctance to inquire after what you evidently did not care to reveal. But my friendship for you is greater than such considerations, which are after all of little account between such intimate friends as we are. What do you say, Oswald, while the sun is gloriously setting behind those mountains, and our poor horses are painfully dragging themselves up the hill, you might tell me something about your early years--much or little, as you are disposed. Will you do it?"

"Willingly," replied Oswald. "I also have been thinking much of my youth in these last days. If one is engaged in settling his affairs, as I am now doing, at a certain epoch of one's life, it is almost indispensable to trace that life back to the beginning. It is true you are the first man, and perhaps the only one, whom I could permit to look into those dark portions of my existence; but I will do it."

"I shall be all the more attentive," replied Doctor Braun.

CHAPTER II.

"To begin at the beginning," said Oswald, after a pause, during which he seemed to have collected his thoughts, "I was born in the capital. My father was a teacher of languages, my mother the daughter of a mechanic. You see, therefore, that I have no claims to nobility, and that my hatred against the nobles is the very natural and legitimate hatred of the plebeian against the patrician, of the Pariah against the Brahmin.

"I have never learnt why my father left the capital, and shortly after my birth--I was, and remained, the only child of my parents--he went to live in the little Pomeranian port W----. It is true I never knew much of the history of my parents and of all that happened before my birth. I do not even know whether I have any relations on the father's or the mother's side. If there are any, I have never made their acquaintance.

"My mother also I only recollect dimly, after the manner of a person whom we have seen in a dream. But even now I sometimes dream of a fair young lady, with great, sweet blue eyes. She says in a soft tone some words which I do not understand, but which sound like the music of heaven, and always move me to tears even in my sleep. I know that this lovely creature of my dreams is my mother, for she never changes. She died before I had ended my fourth year.

"If ever man succeeded in replacing a mother to an orphaned, motherless child, my father solved that problem. When I was a little child, he sang and talked me to sleep; when I was sick, he watched day and night by the side of my little bed; he sat by me in the garret window and blew alternately with me bright soap-bubbles from a little clay pipe into the air; he taught me the alphabet and to make ships from the bark of trees; he made me learn the first Latin words, and taught me to swim and to skate; he gave me the first lessons in Greek, and in pistol-shooting and fencing. I had no other friend but him, until I went to the University."

"He was a strange, unfathomable man, even so far as his outer appearance was concerned. Imagine a figure of dwarfish size, but exceedingly well proportioned, very agile and active, dressed in winter and summer, early and late, invariably in a worn-out black dress-coat, black shorts, black stockings, and shoes with large buckles, walking in sunshine or rain, always hat in hand, through the streets of the city. Imagine this figure ending in a disproportionately large head, with a well-set brow, bald on the temples, beneath which a pair of sharp eyes sent out flashes of lightning, and a face which, though fine and sharp of outline, either had never known how to laugh or forgotten how to do it for long, long years. This was the figure of my father, the Old Candidate, as he was called in W---- by everybody, even the boys in the street, with whom I had many a battle royal, when they dared to laugh at the old gentleman's appearance.

"The nickname, besides, had no application to my father, if I except the word Old. He had never in his life been a candidate for any office, clerical or political, as far as I know, and, in spite of his enormous erudition, he would not have been fit for any office, for his eccentricity and odd disposition would have made it impossible for him to fulfil his duties.

"In later years I have often and often tried in vain to find out what bitter experience of life, what sad misfortunes, could have changed my father into such an odd character. He was a hypochondriac and a misanthrope at once, who avoided most carefully every contact with the world, and who, therefore, was as carefully let alone by everybody else. Those who claimed to be men of refinement and religious convictions called him a cynic because he had emancipated himself from all social obligations; and an atheist, because he never appeared at church. The superstitious rabble crossed themselves when they saw him, as if he were standing in nearer relations to the Evil One than was proper for a good Christian. If he had lived two hundred years sooner, they would no doubt have burnt him as a sorcerer or a magician.

"I must confess, to be candid, that the refined and the unrefined rabble were not so far amiss when they attributed to my father ideas and notions which are not ordinarily met with in the brains of the majority. He had a supreme contempt for all faith founded merely upon authority, because he felt himself fettered by it in the freedom of his existence; and an intense hatred for all worldly tyranny, because it prevented him from acting freely. He openly declared a republic to be the only form of government under which a man who had the right point d'honneur could live happily. Every prerogative granted to one, to a few, or to the many, was to him an injustice, which could only be explained by the insolence of the ruler and the cowardice of the ruled. He could see no difference in the end between a flock of sheep driven to the slaughter-house by a stupid servant and a savage dog, and a people who allowed themselves to be oppressed and ill-treated by a proportionately small number of men. The men, he said, only managed to cover their disgrace with bright-colored garments, while the sheep were not able to do the same.

"His special hatred, however, was given to the nobility. As soon as he happened to speak of their caste, he had a whole dictionary of opprobrious epithets at his command. He never entered the house of a nobleman; and whenever young men of noble birth proposed to take lessons from him, he immediately refused. Once, as we were firing at a target--a practice in which he excelled--he told me that in his youth he had hoped thus to engage himself against a nobleman who had mortally offended him. Unfortunately the man had died before he could carry out his plan. That is the only hint which I ever received as to my father's former life.

"And thus I grew up, exclusively communing with this strange man. The relations between us were as extraordinary as he himself. Although my father did more for me than generally both parents jointly do for their child, and although he apparently lived and suffered only for my sake, I still do not think he really loved me. He was a purely spiritual man. Either his heart had received, at some time or other, a fatal blow from which it had never recovered, or his sentiments had all evaporated into mere notions under the influence of his scepticism. Whatever he did, he did from a sense of duty, from a conviction that it was right; for, as he said himself, Justice is higher than Love; it does all that Love does and a great deal more.

"More, and yet not quite so much," interrupted Franz, "What we do from affection for those we love, we ought to do for others from a sense of justice; that is, from a conviction that the interests of all men are represented in each. Love and Justice stand in the same relation to each other as individual and species. One can not exist without the other, for they need each other mutually. Justice can never teach us all the thousand little acts of tenderness which we lavish upon those we love, as individual love does not aid us any longer when we are called upon to help a brotherhood, a nation, or all mankind."

"You may be right," replied Oswald, "and what you say renders it easier for me to make a confession which I was about to make. I honored my father deeply, but I did not love him; on the contrary, I often experienced, as I only felt clearly in later years, a fear approaching repugnance, when I came in closer contact with the strange man. Now I hardly wonder at it, since I have found out that nature probably never produced two beings more radically different than my father and myself. We were as unlike in body as in mind and in inclination. I loved already, as a boy, with perfect passion, everything brilliant and splendid, and whatever is beautiful in nature and the world of men. I was enthusiastically fond of my schoolmates, who rejoiced in the youthful ornaments of golden locks, red cheeks, and bright eyes. I loved to visit in houses where everything was elegant and in style, after the manner of those days. I attached much importance to my dress, and liked to hear it when women called me a handsome boy.

"You may imagine how little a young fellow with such wants and such inclinations must have suited, as a companion, a misanthropic hypochondriac, whose manner of life he was nevertheless forced to share to a certain degree. For although my father allowed me a certain amount of liberty, which was hardly in keeping with his general views, and although he indulged me in my love of fine clothes and the comforts of life to a degree which I have never been able to comprehend, I knew nevertheless that he was deeply offended by this fondness of mine for a world which he despised. I tried, therefore, very hard, to wean myself from such a life, and succeeded all the more readily in my efforts, as I soon discovered in the solitude, which was at first intensely hateful to me, a source which changes the most desolate desert into a blooming paradise--the Castalian spring of poetry.

"We lived in a small house built against and upon the city wall. The solitary small window from which my room received its light was pierced in the thick wall, so that the whole looked very much more like a prison than anything else; and yet, what marvellously blessed hours I have spent in that room! From my window I had an unlimited view over the wall and the ramparts of the city--upon smooth ponds, lined with beautiful copses of trees--upon rich meadows, with willows scattered over them here and there, far out to the sea, which glittered like a dark-blue ribbon through the green woods.

"Here, at this window, I used to sit on summer evenings, when the sun was setting in brilliant splendor, my heart full to overflowing of chaotic sentiments, and my head weaving thoughts as fair and bright, and, alas! as perishable as soap bubbles! I remember I often wrote verses in bright summer days and in dark autumn evenings, afterwards, while I was sitting in deep meditation over my books, to remind me of the happy days then, which had dropped one by one from the cup of time, bright and brilliant, into the ocean of eternity.

"But why should I any longer attempt to describe to you these relations to my father, which appear only the more enigmatical to me the more clearly I desire to present them to you. If I ever had felt, as a child, true, hearty love for my father, it grew less and less as I became older and more independent. I had to hide in my heart all the feelings, all the tenderness, which we ordinarily lavish upon our mother and brothers and sisters and friends, for I could not feel any confidence in him who, as matters happened to stand, ought to have stood me in place of all of them. The constant intercourse with a mind so sombre and sceptical gave to my mind a coloring which was little in harmony with my sanguine and passionate disposition. I was an Epicurean sitting at the feet of a Stoic, a Sybarite on terms of intimacy with a Cynic philosopher. My exuberant fancy dreamed of the most magnificent worlds, which my cool judgment destroyed pitilessly; I exhausted myself in subtle devices, while my hot blood was filling my heart to overflowing; I sat in my cell and studied dusty old parchments, while my adventurous mind was longing for the marvels of the East and for lofty deeds of chivalry.

"Thus matters continued till I went to the University, when I was nineteen years old. I parted without grief from my father. What he felt at the parting I cannot tell. He spoke to me, when I said good-by, like a philosopher who dismisses his pupil, and recalled to my mind once more all the great principles of his harsh worldly wisdom. The letters which he wrote to me at regular intervals were in the same tone. There were not many of them; for about six months after I had left him I received a letter from the authorities of my native place, in which they dryly informed me of the death of my father. He had left me a little property, the fruit of his long and painful saving; it was just enough to support me in a modest way during my university course, and perhaps some little time beyond that. No will had been found; nor had there been any papers, letters, diaries, or anything which might have possibly given me a clue to the former history of my parents.

"Thus I was standing alone in the world--a young man in years, with the weary mind of an old man. I was far too old for my fellow-students, who looked to me like children at play; and yet I was far too young and inexperienced myself to resist the temptations of a large city, or to wander about in such a Babel without ever and anon losing my way. How could a young man, in whom the current of full youthful life had been so long artificially dammed up, avoid going astray? I became the hero of many an intrigue, of which I was in my heart thoroughly ashamed, as I ought to have been. I was spoilt by the women, and became the innocent victim of many a heartless coquette. I gathered much experience without growing any wiser--the worst thing that can befall a man. And the most remarkable of it all was that I loathed in my heart the enjoyments to which I gave myself up; that my heart yearned after true love at the very times when I wasted it upon women unworthy of such a gift; and that I cherished the most extraordinary plans for the future, while I squandered my strength in senseless amusements.

"A friend, who in those days had some influence over me, rescued me from the whirlpool in which I would have perished sooner or later. He advised me to go to Grunwald. I followed his advice.

"From that moment you know my life, at least in its outlines. You know that I became there acquainted with the unfortunate man whom we are about to visit. You will now also be able to understand why it was utterly impossible for me to resist the charm of Berger's extraordinary character, and how I entangled myself by my intercourse with him only more and more deeply in the thorns and briars of internal conflicts, which finally made my heart bleed to death.

"Berger wished me to go to Grenwitz and to take there a position in a noble family, which suited me about as well as a dove-cote suits a hawk. You have followed me through the great periods of my life there with an observant eye, and at the same time as a philosopher and as a friend. I do not know--and I do not want to know--how much you have seen, how much you have understood, and what may have remained an unexplained mystery for you. A part of these events I dare not touch upon; another part I am in duty bound to leave untouched. When the catastrophe came which you had anticipated, and the frivolous world in which I was living, crushed me--then you stood by me as a friend; you snatched me out of the confusion, and you laid upon yourself a burden which has no doubt made you sigh more than once since. But no! that cannot be! You are as clever as you are wise, and as wise as you are kind. Tell me, Franz, what Odysseus was your father, what Penelope bore you, that Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom, should always so manifestly have held you under her gracious protection?"

"I believe everything in my life has happened in the most ordinary way," said Franz, laughing. "I pray you will not think I escaped altogether from either Scylla or Charybdis! I have been, like yourself, on the point of despair. What has saved me is the conviction that the world is, after all, but a Cosmos, in which everybody, be he what he may, has to fill his modest place--a conviction which came to me first very dimly, then more and more clearly and distinctly, and finally filled my heart with triumphant certainty. This idea has given me that cheerful calmness without which life would in the end become unbearable. I said to myself: This world, of which you know after all but very little, is such an old, solid, and well-finished edifice that you need not give up the plan on which it was built, even if you should not comprehend it in all its details. This race of ours, which maybe is intended for as many millions of years as we now know thousands, is such a marvellous and unfathomable problem of creative power that you will never come to an end studying it, if you were to live ever so long. Goethe tells us that no man ever possessed art, and I add, no one ever possessed philosophy.

"Starting from this conviction, I determined to find a sense and a meaning in life, and I cannot help saying that my efforts have been crowned with some success. Mistrusting even as a school-boy the results to be obtained from mere speculation, I chose a science which reveals the processes of our soul, as it were, ad oculos--Medicine. I chose it, moreover, because in its practice it brings us advantageously into intimate contact with other men, from whom we hold but too generally aloof--whatever may be said in praise of solitude. He who has once understood the solidarity of all human interests--that fundamental principle of all moral and political wisdom--knows also that his individual existence is but a drop in the vast stream, and that such a drop has no right to claim absolute independence. It would be different if men fell like ripe fruit from the trees. But we are brought into this world through the agony of a mother, in order to be the most helpless of all created beings, entirely dependent on the faithful care of parents; we are then allowed to grow up, if fate favors us, amid brothers and sisters, in order not only to share with them all the joys of life, but also to obtain them by their assistance; and, even later, we cannot enjoy any true pleasure, any delight of our heart, except through others and with others. All this teaches us that we are true children of men, the offspring of this earth, with the right and the duty to work out our life here below upon our inheritance side by side with other children of men, our brethren, who have the same rights, and of course also the same duties, as we ourselves.

"Thus you see, Oswald, the world becomes a Cosmos, and we cease to be mere atoms whirling about in the infinite space without a reasonable government, while nobody knows whence we come and whither we go. The great fault of your life, which it is true you could hardly avoid with such an experience as you had in your young days, is that you have always lived for yourself only and never truly for others. Thus you have drifted into a false position, in which you could not be useful to the world, and the world could not be useful to you. Now, all this will be different. From friendship for me, you have made the sacrifice of taking a step which I know well--and better now than before--must be very painful to your whole nature. But I am convinced you will bless this step hereafter. The trial year which you mean to devote to the college at Grunwald will be in more senses than one a trial year for you. You will see whether you can obtain the hardest of all victories, the victory over yourself--over your own arbitrary, sovereign will. I wish you were, like myself, engaged to some good, sensible girl. That would compel you to work and compel you to struggle, if not for your own interest, at least for the sake of her who is dearer to you--ten thousand times dearer to you--than your own life, and you would see how easy the battle, how easy the victory would be to you."

Oswald made no reply. He felt convinced of the truth of what his companion said, but at the same time he felt painfully ashamed. For the face of truth is stern, and makes him tremble who does not worship it at the cost of every feeling of his own.

Thus they walked side by side in deep silence, until they reached the top of the mountain, where the carriage was waiting. They got in again, and now they rolled in a quick trot down hill towards the little town which was lying at their feet in the bosom of a secluded valley, surrounded on all sides by well-wooded hills, and veiled at this moment by the gray evening mists. It was the end of their day's journey, and for Oswald the place of his destination--a watering-place, called Fichtenau, renowned far and near on account of its charming position, its invigorating baths of spruce leaves, and more recently yet its large and admirably-kept insane asylum, which Doctor Birkenhain, a man of great intelligence and large experience in such matters, had founded there a few years ago.

Oswald's heart was filled with strange sensations as he saw from the corner in which he was leaning back the rocks and the trees flit by, and felt that every step brought him nearer to the place which had occupied his mind during the last months so persistently and so painfully. How unmeaning the name had sounded to him when he first heard it mentioned at Grenwitz as the place where Melitta von Berkow's suffering husband was living! Then he did not know Melitta yet, then he did not anticipate that he would a few days later be enchained by the charms of that beautiful woman. Afterwards he had heard her mention the name, though only rarely, and always with much reluctance, and in his state of boundless delight the place had given him very much the impression with which the owner of a superb, brilliant house looks upon a dark room which he does not like to open, and of which he avoids speaking, because years ago a person who was dear to him had committed suicide there. Then the time had come when Melitta obeyed Dr. Birkenhain's summons and went to see her dying husband--at last the painful, wretched days during which he knew she was at Fichtenau by the side of her unfortunate husband, and when he received from Fichtenau those letters in which every word was a longing kiss. In those days Fichtenau had appeared to him alternately the grave and the cradle of his happiness, as he at one moment fancied Berkow's death would remove all impediments in the way of his marrying Melitta, and then again feared the very same event might forever separate him from her. Then came the fatal day when he found out that the man whom he had from the beginning looked upon as his most formidable rival was with Melitta; when malicious tongues had whispered the most hateful explanations of this fact in his ear, and he, unhappy man, had but too readily listened to these abominable slanders. Alas! he had even then betrayed his own love by his own acts, and, like a ship-wrecked man, who, in order to save himself and his treasures, pitilessly pushes his best friend from the frail plank into the ocean, he had sacrificed Melitta in order to justify his passion for the fair Helen before the tribunal of his own heart! And finally, to fill the cup to overflowing, and to prove as it were to his troubled mind that the whole world was out of joint, and one error more or less did not matter much, the same place must hold both the woman he loved so ardently, who sought comfort for the moments she must needs spend at the deathbed of her husband in the arms of a fascinating roué, and the revered friend and teacher, whose genius, so like a bright blazing torch, had just been extinguished in the deep darkness of insanity! Only a little later death had robbed him of the boy whom he had learnt to love as a brother, and Fate had broken, in a most painful manner, his connection with a great and noble family; then he had seen his rival wounded unto death by his ball, lying at his feet, and separating him forever by this one deed from the beloved girl, from whom a thousand other reasons would, even without this, have compelled him to flee. Was it a wonder that he felt as if the whole earth had no more suitable asylum for him than a cell adjoining that of his friend and teacher in Doctor Birkenhain's famous Insane Asylum at Fichtenau?

Doctor Braun had originally suggested to him this trip for scientific purposes, but now Oswald had insisted upon starting at once, although the former had endeavored to postpone the visit under one pretext or another for some time, and this for good reasons. He had written to Doctor Birkenhain, without telling Oswald, and asked him to give him a minute description of Berger's case. Doctor Birkenhain had replied, that Berger's insanity consisted exclusively in the fixed idea of the absolute non-existence of all things, but that otherwise he was in full possession of all his mental powers, and would have been dismissed from the institution long since but for his own urgent desire to prolong his stay there. Doctor Braun knew perfectly well that under these circumstances a visit to Fichtenau might be extremely dangerous to Oswald's eccentric mind, excited as he was by all that had happened of late. The sight of a madman might have restored him to tranquillity; but the intercourse with a hypochondriac, whose genius shone brightly even in Its aberrations, might possibly only tend to confirm him in his extravagant ideas.

Moved by this apprehension Doctor Braun had postponed the visit to Fichtenau till the end of their journey, instead of going there at first, as Oswald had wished. He had hoped that the frequent intercourse with other men, the beneficent influence of a journey through a beautiful country, brilliant in all the glory of autumn, would bring Oswald back to calmer and more reasonable views of life, and enable him to meet Berger, if not with the superiority of this calmness, at least without danger for himself.

Now Franz saw himself deceived in his hopes. He was by no means pleased with Oswald's excited manner, and would have liked best to turn back, if that had still been possible. He sat casting now and then an anxious glance at Oswald, who, throwing himself back in his corner, looked with fixed eyes upon the little town below, and he determined at least to shorten the visit as much as possible, and to prevent his friend's being alone with Berger while they were there together.

CHAPTER III.

The sun had already set for half an hour behind the broad back of the well-wooded hill, which embraces Fichtenau on the western side, when the carriage left the mountains and rolled down into the plain in which the town is situated. The wearied horses enjoyed the level ground and the easier motion of the carriage, and hastened to meet their good supper of oats. They seemed to gather new strength from the shrill notes of a clarinet which were heard high above the unfailing roll of a big drum, from the midst of a close circle of men on the commons near the town-gate, who surrounded a band of rope-dancers. The road passed close by the place, and as the crowd of curious people had overflowed upon the turnpike, the driver saw himself compelled to drive more slowly, and at last to stop altogether, as the people were not willing, in spite of his scolding and cursing, to give up their vantage ground, and persisted in remaining on the spot, from which they could comfortably look down upon the performance.

The good people thought it naturally quite hard to be disturbed just then, as the wandering artists were at that moment engaged in performing their masterpiece, with which they always wound up the evening's work, so as to dismiss the audience with the most favorable impression.

They had stretched a rope from the little circus to the top of a tall but broad-branched oak-tree which stood upon the common, smaller ropes ran on both sides down to the ground, and were there held fast by stout boys, who had volunteered to perform that service for the sake of High Art. The increased shrillness of the clarinet and the growing thunder of the big drum announced the coming of the great moment when the famous acrobat, Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, called the Flying Pigeon, would have the honor to perform, with permission of the authorities, his great feat, admired by all the potentates of Asia and Europe, viz., to fetch down a flag fastened to the top of a steeple four hundred feet high, on the extraordinary path of a single rope, and moreover walking backwards all the time, a feat which he hoped the nobility and the highly cultivated public of Fichtenau would not fail duly to appreciate.

The tower, four hundred feet high, of which the placards at all the street corners had spoken, had changed, it is true, into an oak of perhaps forty feet in height, and the enemies and rivals of the Flying Pigeon--and what great artist is without enemies?--insisted upon it that this change in the programme diminished not only the danger but also the interest of the daring feat. But it was not Mr. John Cotterby's fault, surely, that in the Thirty Years' War the Imperialists had shot to pieces the steeple of the little church on the public square of Fichtenau, which was then held by the Swedes. Nor was he to be blamed if the paternal government had now for two hundred years annually determined to rebuild the steeple, but never accomplished it yet. What could he do, Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, if, for want of better times to come, the church on the square was to this day without a steeple? Certainly, if the conscience of the Flying Pigeon was as innocent of every other crime as of this, he could perform his great feat, even with the change of the programme, unblushingly before the potentates of Europe and Asia, and the nobility and highly cultivated public of Fichtenau.

And without blushing--unless the carmine of his rouge should be interpreted as the flush of modesty--the Flying Pigeon now presented himself upon a little scaffolding, hung with soiled linen sheets, to begin his journey heavenward, accompanied by desperate efforts of the clarinet and the big drum, which were at that solemn moment reinforced by the tinkling of a triangle and the squeaking of a tuneless fiddle. He was a handsome, well-made man, and quite young; his dark curly hair was confined by a narrow band of brass, and his whole costume consisted of a suit of stockinet which had long lost its first color of innocent white, and a jacket of the same material, to which on the shoulders two wings had been fastened, which, however, had evidently performed such very hard service that they had lost many a feather on previous occasions.

Encouraging applause greeted the artist and drowned easily the hissing of the opposition; he bowed gracefully all around, with an air which is only found among circus riders, rope-dancers, and other members of that airy guild, while other mortals in vain endeavor to imitate it, and thus to rob them of their exclusive secret. But the applause ceased suddenly, when to the astonishment of the whole audience a huge, shapeless figure was seen climbing after the courteous artist upon the platform, and presenting him, after a hearty slap upon the place between the Icarus wings, with a long slip of paper! The white nightcap, the large blue apron, but above all the enormous, deep-red nose, left no one who was learned in such matters long in doubt as to the nature of the man; they saw at once in him the owner of a beer-shop, or something of the kind, and in the paper an unpaid bill.

The artist would not have been a true artist if he had not been deeply embarrassed by this sudden intrusion of stern reality upon the bright regions of art. There followed a pretty pantomime; the Flying Pigeon shrugged his shoulders and pointed at the place in his stockinet where people with trousers of larger dimensions indulge in pockets, in order to express his very evident inability to pay, and seemed to implore the landlord with much wringing of hands and plaintive gesticulating to have patience. The latter replied, however, as it seemed, only by making fearful faces and by striking his hand with his closed fist, and thus made it very clear that he was inexorably hard-hearted.

The highly-cultivated public of Fichtenau and the surrounding country looked upon the scene as a very serious affair, and showed their amazement and deep interest in every feature. But the excitement rose to a painful intensity when next, upon a sign from the red-nosed landlord, two fellows with huge moustaches, in blue coats and black tri-cornered hats, came climbing up on the stage, and filled the hearts of the innocent spectators with horror as they raised their arms upon the bidding of injured Justice, and, seizing the unlucky artist with fearful grimaces and gesticulations, bound his impecunious hands behind his winged back.

And now, at this most painful moment in the earthly career of an artist, it was to be shown that the great god Apollo knows how to lead his saints wonderfully out of troubles and trials, and to secure to them the well-earned apotheosis, if not in this vale of tears, at least in heavenly regions.

For, from the thickest of the oak-tree, where the rope had been fastened to a mighty branch, there suddenly appeared the figure of a lovely genius, winged like the Flying Pigeon, with a wreath on the hair and a bright banner in the right hand. This was evidently the flag which Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, usually fetched down from a steeple four hundred feet high, and which he saw himself on this day forced, for want of a suitable tower, to bring down from heaven itself. For was not the winged genius one of the heavenly choirs?

When the messenger from Olympus showed himself so opportunely, the servants of earthly Justice and the wine-colored dispenser of abominable beverages were, as in duty bound, seized with sudden terror. They abandoned their victim and fell with all the signs of deep contrition upon their knees, while the Flying Pigeon relieved himself of his fetters and began to ascend the narrow path that leads to heaven, with all the swiftness and agility which had won such honor for his name and reputation. When he had gone up half-way he knelt down before the heavenly apparition, who had beckoned him on with unceasing waving of the flag, rose to his full height and made there, far above the earth and all earthly fear, a gesture towards his conscience-stricken pursuers, which is universally understood upon the earth. Loud applause and cheerful laughter accompanied the humorous artist up to the very heavens, where the genius handed him the flag, crowned him with the wreath, and then disappeared once more in the branches. Mr. John Cotterby then returned to the stage, where the constables had in the meantime learnt to appreciate the value of the ideal and of the divine nature of art, and now received him with deep bows, while the red-nosed landlord yielded to the impulse of the moment, and with most praiseworthy repentance tore the enormous bill from end to end, thus giving the spectators a comforting assurance that the Flying Pigeon was, at least for the present, safe against all attacks upon his freedom.

The performance was at an end. The generous landlord, who now appeared in the character of manager of the company of artists, alone remained behind on the stage, and in his epilogue promised the nobility and highly-cultivated public of Fichtenau and the surrounding country on the next day a far more splendid representation. The audience dispersed very suddenly, for a suspicious ringing of money on tin plates reminded them suddenly of a duty which the ungrateful among the spectators did not hold themselves bound to perform, while many grateful admirers regretted deeply their inability to prove their gratitude.

Nevertheless the majority of those unable to pay were still honest enough to allow the unwelcome plate to come quite near to them, and those who were not kept by honesty remained from curiosity to find out how the genius who dwelt in the branches of oak-trees might look when seen near by. For it was Apollo's own messenger who deigned to make the collection for the benefit of his children upon earth.

The cunning director could not have made a better choice. The genius--it was hard to tell whether it was a boy or a girl--had a pair of magnificent brown eyes, which looked with such bewitching modesty and so imploringly into every face that the purses opened together with the hearts. Kindly words followed the child everywhere, and one or the other of the well-to-do citizens seemed to think himself entitled by his gift of a few cents to pinch the brown cheeks; but the genius appeared by no means disposed to appreciate the caress.

The driver had been on the point of leaving as soon as the crowd allowed him to pass, but Franz and Oswald, who had followed the drama of the artist's earthly career and his apotheosis with great interest, and now and then with hearty laughter, ordered him to stop till the genius should have made his way through the dense crowd to the carriage. They had not to wait long, for a travelling carriage with two gentlemen inside was surely worth more than a dozen of poor citizens of Fichtenau.

Franz was looking for some small change in his purse when he was startled by a loud exclamation.

"What is the matter?" he asked, looking wonderingly up at Oswald, who had jumped up and uttered the cry.

Oswald did not reply, but leaped with a single bound out of the carriage, and hurried to meet the genius, who no sooner recognized the young man than he dropped the plate with all the silver and copper coins, and fell into his arms.

"Czika, is it really you?"

"Yes, man with the blue eye," replied the child, eagerly and affectionately, still hanging on his neck; but then suddenly tearing herself away and anxiously looking toward the carriage:

"Is the other one there also?"

"No, Czika," said Oswald, knowing very well that the other of whom she spoke was Oldenburg. "But are you quite alone?"

"No, mother is with me; mother does not leave the Czika. Come and help me to collect the money again." And the child stooped down to pick up the coins that were half hid in the dust.

"Oldenburg's child among rope-dancers," said Oswald to himself, mechanically obeying the child's injunction and unconscious of what he was doing, kneeling down and picking up here and there the scattered pennies.

The highly-cultivated public thought this meeting of an apparently great personage with a rope-dancer's child, and their warm embrace, more remarkable than anything they had seen that evening. Young and old they crowded around them, forming a close circle, and apparently determined not to leave the place till they had solved the mystery of this extraordinary meeting.

Franz, who had witnessed the scene from the carriage, had scarcely been less amazed than the crowd. Very soon, however, he recollected the mysterious reports about a gypsy girl whom Baron Oldenburg was said to have harbored at his lonely house for several weeks, until she had escaped from him one fine day, and, with that rapidity of combination which is often found in strong heads, he at once concluded that Oswald, who no doubt was in the baron's secret, had recognized the gypsy girl in the beautiful genius. His next thought was to shorten the scene, for Oswald's sake mainly, and in order to diminish as far as possible the sensation which it had already produced. He jumped, therefore, from the carriage, hastened to Oswald, and said,

"Let us go on! At least till the crowd has dispersed."

At the same moment the director of the company, who had also observed the scene from the stage, on which he had harangued the public, pushed his way through the assembly. His curiosity to know what was going on, and his indignation at seeing the important business of collection interrupted at the critical moment, had made him forget that he still wore the costume of the red-nosed landlord, and that he, therefore, ought not to have mingled with the people unless he wished to sacrifice the dignity of his art. Franz was justly afraid that the tragi-comic scene might become decidedly disagreeable if that personage should join them, and therefore anticipated his questions by meeting him before he came near, and whispering to him in a tone just loud enough to be heard by the bystanders,

"I am a physician, sir. This young man (pointing over his shoulder at Oswald, who was still kneeling down with Czika) is rather eccentric. You understand. Here is something in compensation for the loss he may have caused you."

The man considered this explanation, which was given in a very solemn manner, perfectly satisfactory, since the possible loss was amply made up by the two silver dollars which Franz had slipped into his hand. He smiled cunningly, and said, pulling off his night-cap and bowing low,

"Understand, understand, your excellency. Only pray get him away quickly, so that the Czika can go on with the collection."

"Where are you staying?" inquired Franz.

"At the Green Hat, your excellency. Your excellency will rejoice a poor artist's soul if you will bestow upon him your gracious patronage."

"Well, well," said Franz, and then turning to Oswald, who had risen in the meantime,

"I pray you, Oswald, let us go on now. I know where these people are staying; you can go and see them some other time."

Oswald, who had recovered from his first overwhelming astonishment at finding Czika in such company, now saw very clearly the extraordinary character of his position, and knew too well how sensible his friend's advice was to neglect it any longer.

The Czika had shown the wonderful self-control which this remarkable child never lost but for a few moments, and was going on with the collection as if nothing had happened. She did not even cast a glance at Oswald as he went back to the carriage, almost forced to do so by Franz.

The carriage drove off. The crowd had quickly seized upon the fable of Oswald's insanity, which Franz had invented with such admirable presence of mind, and dispersed all the more rapidly as the increasing coolness of the evening air reminded them forcibly of the warm supper that awaited them in their warm rooms at home.

CHAPTER IV.

It was a few hours later. The evening had come completely. The mountains of Fichtenau were wrapped in their double veils of night and mist; on the dark sky a few lonely stars peeped here and there through the drifting clouds. The narrow streets of the little town were deserted; lights, however, were shining from the windows of the low, simple houses. People were sitting around the stove after their frugal suppers, and the husband told his wife, who for good reasons had not been able to venture into a crowd, what wonderful feats of strength, agility, and skill he had seen outside of the town on the great meadow; how an insane gentleman had driven up with his physician (who no doubt was bringing him to Doctor Birkenhain's great institution), and how he had embraced the pretty gypsy girl, who was going around with the plate, before all the people. The old, half-deaf grandmother, who was nodding in her arm-chair near the stove, and only heard half of what he was saying, remarked,

"Yes, yes! gypsies are the devil's children; everybody knows that. My sainted great-grandfather lent a hand when five of them were burned on the great meadow."

There was great feasting that night in the Green Hat, a low drover's inn near the gates of the town, and not far from the great meadow. The Green Hat was also the headquarters of all wandering rope-dancers, and therefore a most attractive place for all lovers of art among the people of Fichtenau.

The long table in the public room, which was filled with tobacco smokers, could scarcely hold the number of guests, although they were sitting closely enough on the hard benches. At the upper end, especially, the crowd was great, for there the artists sat and drank in the full consciousness of their dignity and the hearty enjoyment of a free treat. The director, Mr. Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, presided as a matter of course. He had laid aside all the insignia of the last part he had played, except a few patches of rouge which still adorned his bloated face; he had taken off his nightcap and the blue-checked apron, together with the pillow with which it was stuffed. He appeared now in the comfortable and elegant costume of a gentleman who has relieved himself of his coat and waistcoat, and who forgets, in the consciousness of his artistic fame and of his broad, richly-embroidered suspenders, that his linen is not of the cleanest. Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, who sat on the right hand of his lord and master, had been compelled to make a greater alteration in his toilette, especially since the artistic wardrobe boasted only of a single suit of stockinet, and it was therefore of the utmost importance for him to do all that could be done in order to preserve its delicate whiteness. Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, wore a short, gray coat with green trimmings, and would have looked, all in all, far more like a handsome Tyrolese (which was, by-the-by, his real character) than the son of the land of mystery through which the Nile rolls its waves, if the narrow brass band which still confined his dark locks, and the broken German which he composed most artistically for the occasion, had not vouched for his mystic descent. There were two other artists sitting a little further down the table; one a modest, silent, tall man, who took his craft in earnest, and meditated deeply how he might introduce a new feature in his far-famed performance, the Gigantic Cask; the other, the clown of the company, a round, odd-looking creature, who produced a new grimace at every glass which he drank with a new guest, and thus proved the immense stock of those valuable commodities which he owned, since this process of touching glasses occurred on an average every five minutes.

Mr. Casper Schmenckel, director, etc., had been a fine-looking man until the abundance of his potations had injured the fair symmetry of his person, and he loved to recall the many gallant adventures of which he had been the hero, and in which even great ladies, whose eyes had been well pleased with the gigantic proportions of the Hercules, played a prominent part. When Mr. Schmenckel had emptied his third glass he was apt to become eloquent about this heroic age of his life, and tonight he had already more than doubled the mysterious number which loosened the chaste seal on his lips. The young men who pressed around him glass in hand would have fared better, probably, as far as their morals were concerned, if they had not honored the Green Hat on that particular evening with their presence.

Mr. Schmenckel's fancy was exuberant, and where ordinary eyes saw but a number of midges dancing in the air, his rolling orbs beheld a host of elephants. He calculated with incredible boldness upon the credulity of his listeners; above all he endeavored to surround himself and the members of his company with a nimbus of adventurous glory. The accident on the great meadow, which had brought the madman and the Czika into contact with each other, was far too useful for such a purpose not to be fully employed by Mr. Schmenckel. It is true the gypsy and her child had joined his troop quite accidentally a few days ago, as they were making their way across the mountains towards Fichtenau, and Mr. Schmenckel knew as little of their former history as any one in the company; but his imagination was only the more perfectly free to rove at random, and he invented a magnificent story in order to satisfy the curiosity of the guests, who continually came back to the beautiful child and the gypsy woman who had appeared as a dancer in the first part of the performance.

"Yes, you see," said Director Schmenckel, "that is a very mysterious story, and I should be quite ready to tell you all about it, but it is so very incredible."

Mr. Schmenckel dived with his red nose into his beer and slowly absorbed the remaining half, while his eyes twinkled with delight as he looked by turns through the swollen lids at one and the other of his friends.

"Tell us, tell us, Director!" cried half a dozen voices.

"Another bumper for the Director!" cried another half dozen.

"It may be about ten or twelve years," began Mr. Schmenckel, after having diminished the contents of the new glass to a considerable extent, "when I was making a trip to Egypt----"

When he said Egypt all eyes turned to Mr. John Cotterby, who leaned back in his chair and smiled mysteriously.

"What were you going to do in Egypt?" asked a voice.

"May I tell, Mr. Cotterby?" asked Mr. Schmenckel.

"Fideremkankinsavalilaloramei," replied the Egyptian, who could not imagine what his lord and master wanted to be allowed to tell.

"Thanks, Cotterby," said Mr. Schmenckel, "modesty adorns a man, but why should I conceal it that it was on your account I was making that journey? You must know, gentlemen, that the fame of Mr. Cotterby was in those days filling the whole Orient, and that nobody spoke of anything but the Flying Pigeon. I said to myself: You must induce this man, the greatest artist whom the world ever saw, to join your company, as sure as your name is Caspar Schmenckel. No sooner said than done. I went to Egypt, where I was told Mr. Cotterby was then residing, but Mr. Cotterby was nowhere to be found. At last I learnt from an old Dervish who had sold me the talking serpent, which I shall have the honor of exhibiting to-morrow, that Mr. Cotterby was staying somewhere far away in the desert near the pyramids. May I tell why you did so, Cotterby?"

"Framtebaramta! Tell what you wish to tell," replied the Egyptian, with a generous, modest smile.

"Mr. Cotterby, you must know, had retired for some time into the desert, and sworn a fearful oath that he would not again appear in public till he had ascended every one of the pyramids on a rope."

"What are those pyramids?" inquired a voice.

"Pyramids!" said Mr. Schmenckel, dictatorially, "are immense heaps of stone, which the old Egyptians raised in honor of their gods, a thousand feet high, or more, and so steep that a cat can hardly get to the top. On the top there is a pointed stone pillar, called obelisk; to this Mr. Cotterby fastened one end of a rope, while the lower end was held by two thousand black slaves of his, and thus he walked up and down, so that those who saw it felt their hair stand on an end. That was the way I found Mr. Cotterby engaged in the desert, and of course I became more anxious than ever to engage him for our company; but he refused. What was I to do? I had nothing left but to climb at night to the top of the pyramid at the risk of my life, and next morning, when Mr. Cotterby arrived there, to seize him around the waist and to cry: Either you consent to an engagement for three thousand a year, or I send you head over heels down this pyramid, as sure as my name is Caspar Schmenckel. May I tell what you replied, Cotterby?"

The Egyptian nodded assent.

"If you are Mr. Schmenckel from Vienna," said Mr. Cotterby, "you need not have made such an ado about it. I should have come to you any way to Vienna, as soon as I had done with this pyramid. There is only one Schmenckel, as there is only one Cotterby; both ought to be together, like bread and butter. But that was not exactly what I was going to tell you, gentlemen," said Mr. Schmenckel, emptying his glass and holding it up to the light, as if he wished to convince himself that there was really nothing left in it.

"A glass for Director Schmenckel," cried a dozen voices.

"Thanks! thanks! gentlemen! Your health!--but how I made the acquaintance of Madame Xenobia--or Kussuk Arnem, as her true name is. But that story is almost still more incredible, and contains certain episodes which I can only touch upon in the way of delicate allusions----"

"Oh, never mind! Just go on and tell us!" exclaimed the listeners, crowding more closely around him.

"Well, then, I will tell you! A short time after I had thus secured Mr. Cotterby for my company, I was giving a few representations at Constantinople on the great square before the Sultan's palace. He took uncommon interest in our art, and had given us permission to fasten our rope to the uppermost turret of his palace, upon the flat roof itself. Now, you must know that the upper story of this palace contains the rooms of the wives of the Sultan, and on that account it is called the harem. I had always felt the most intense desire to make my way some time or other into such an harem, which otherwise is utterly inaccessible to everybody. And now Cotterby had told me that whenever he came by the top story the most beautiful black eyes in the world were glancing at him through the narrow crevices between the planks, which are nailed over the windows of the harem. What could I do? I say to Cotterby: 'Cotterby,' says I, 'you can do anything. Suppose you take me to-morrow in the wheelbarrow which you carry up and down the rope, and then let me get out on the roof. I must see how things look up there. You can bring me back the same way the day after. Will you do it?' 'Why not?' says Cotterby, 'if you wish it particularly.' The next day the thing is done. I hide myself in the wheelbarrow. Cotterby carries me up to the roof; he turns the barrow over and there I am, on the roof, quite alone, for Cotterby had gone back immediately, so as to create no suspicion. Now you may believe it or not as you choose, gentlemen, but I assure you I felt rather peculiar in that position. How easily the head of a black guardsman might pop out through one of the openings in the roof--and then farewell to my sweet life! But there I was, caught in the trap, and I was determined not to leave again until I had a taste of the bait. While I was still considering what I had better do next, I suddenly hear the rattling of spears and of swords on the staircase which leads up to the roof. It was the Sultan himself, who wished to admire Mr. Cotterby from that elevation. I, in my terror, run up to the nearest chimney which rose out of the roof, creep into it, and--I had not time to think for a moment--down I go some twenty feet deep--and where do you think, gentlemen, I came out again? In the fire-place of the bed-room of the Sultan's first favorite. But here I must ask the pardon of all the gentlemen present if, to spare the honor of a great lady, I can only assure them that the next twenty-four hours were among the happiest which Caspar Schmenckel has ever enjoyed in this life. On the day following, Cotterby brought, as a matter of precaution, a much larger wheelbarrow, and carried me safely down again. We left Constantinople that very night, and from that moment our company was richer by one great artist, and the harem of the Sultan had lost its fairest flower."

Mr. Schmenckel looked around him triumphantly. He could well be satisfied with the impression which he had made by his stories on his audience; they sat there listening with breathless attention. At that moment a lady came running into the room; it was the same one who used to sit at the ticket office, and who attended to all the domestic affairs of the company; she whispered a few words in the director's ear, of which the company only heard one or two, which sounded like "woman--run away." The director did not seem to be pleased with the information. His face darkened perceptibly. He grumbled something about the devil and his luck, and left the table without finishing his glass--a proof that the news he had just received must have been of the utmost importance.

And the news was important, for it amounted to nothing less than that the fair flower, which Mr. Schmenckel had stolen ten years ago with so much daring and such cunning from the palace of the Lord of the Faithful, had been lost again. Alas! he had allowed her to rest ever since on his broad bosom, he had seen the tender bud of the beauteous flower unfold itself under his watchful care, and now both flower and bud had been torn away by a storm, carried off by the deeply-injured Sultan, or at least they could not be found anywhere in their chamber or in the whole house! Mamselle Adele had made the discovery as she was about to invite the gypsy to the common supper of the ladies of the company, which was laid in another room. Mamselle Adele, a lady with an abundance of black curls, the genuineness of which was strongly suspected by envious rivals, a dark face full of energy, and a voice chronically hoarse and rough, informed Mr. Schmenckel of her discovery with that gift of the gab and that dramatic power which is given to ladies who are in the habit of addressing the public from the open steps of a wooden booth. The news was soon confirmed by the result of a thorough search of the whole house, in which he himself took the lead; it fell upon him like a flash of lightning from a clear sky. The escape of the gypsy woman was to him what the death of his best lioness and her cub would have been to the owner of a menagerie. He lost in the mother and child a capital which had cost him next to nothing, and which yet promised to produce abundant interest--the ornament, the glory, the poetry of his establishment. Even Mr. John Cotterby, of Egypt, might have been replaced more easily. Flying Pigeons are rare, but after all they can be procured; but a genius with such eyes, such deep, brown eyes, with such a kindly, serious smile, that could tempt the stingiest green-grocer to lavish profusion, was not to be found again. Mr. Schmenckel would not have been a man and a director, and above all he would have had to drink, instead of so many glasses of bitter beer, as many gallons of the milk of human kindness, if he had borne such a loss with stoic repose. Mr. Schmenckel was a man, he was a director, he had been drinking beer and not milk--and Mr. Schmenckel gave himself up to fearful wrath. The first explosion fell very naturally upon the bearer of the bad news, especially as Mr. Schmenckel had had full opportunity during the many years of their intimacy to become aware of the jealous temper of this lady, as well as of her other foibles. He accused her in terms which ought t© be impossible even among the most intimate friends, of having compelled the gypsy by her intrigues to seek safety in flight. Mamselle Adele, whose temper was naturally not of the gentlest, and who found herself in this case considered guilty when she was really quite innocent, replied in a tone which betrayed her inner excitement but too distinctly. Mr. Schmenckel belonged to that class of heroic men who, in the consciousness of their superiority--especially when they have drunk deep--allow of no contradiction, and whose proud motto in decisive moments is: "Works, not words." Mamselle Adele no sooner felt the heavy hand of her master upon her cheeks than her burning heart burst forth in flames, and her tongue began to ring the alarm-bell with such loudness and shrillness that the guests inside started up from their seats and hurried to the door, apprehending that some dire calamity had taken place in the hall, where the scene between Mr. Schmenckel and Mamselle Adele was then under way.

The sight of so many uninvited and undesirable witnesses brought the director, who was always anxiously concerned for the good name of his troop, very quickly to his senses; but the poor lady, who saw her honor thus compromised before a great crowd, was exasperated beyond endurance. So far she had only threatened to let the director feel her nails; now she added the act to the threat. The highly-cultivated public of Fichtenau, as far as it had assembled at the Green Hat, were unspeakably shocked when they saw the celebrated artist, the hero of so many adventures, the master of the far-famed pyramid-climber, the robber of the Grand Sultan's own palace, in such a state of suffering. Mamselle Adele's attacks did not cease for a moment; they were even carried out with irresistible energy, force, and agility. Some wished to come to the assistance of the defeated general; others laughed and encouraged her; still others, men in blue blouses and heavy hob-nailed shoes, who were regular customers at the Green Hat with their wagons and horses, and bore no good-will to the rope-dancers, because they interfered with their accustomed comfort, spoke loud of "rabble," and "turn them out," a sentiment which in its turn displeased a few enthusiastic admirers of high art. Angry faces, threatening arms lifted high, and curses loud and many, formed a tableau, which in the twinkling of an eye was changed into another, in which even the landlord of the Green Hat, who was leaning against the kitchen door in phlegmatic composure, his pipe between his lips, could no longer distinguish any details. Dense clouds of dust half concealed and half revealed a heap of struggling men, rolling to and fro on the floor of the inn, while everybody was striking out with his natural weapon of the fist, or the artificial weapon of a leg of a chair, against his real or imaginary adversary.

CHAPTER V.

Oswald had been hospitably provided for in the elegant "Kurhaus" of Fichtenau, but he had not been able to resist the desire to visit little Czika that same evening. He hoped to learn from the Brown Countess how they had become mixed up with such strange company, and at the same time to persuade her either to return to Baron Oldenburg, or at least to give up the child to him. He thought he should be able to accomplish by management what the violence of the baron had rendered impossible, and this all the more readily as the Brown Countess seemed to be kindly disposed towards him, and little Czika evidently felt more confidence in himself than in the "other," who was her father. And then there was still another feeling besides the personal interest which he felt in the beautiful child and the gypsy, whom he had first met on that eventful afternoon when he was lost in the forest on his way to Melitta, and who, therefore, had in a manner been the instrument to bring him to Melitta, to say nothing of their subsequent connection with Oldenburg, all of which prompted him to act energetically. He felt the burden of the gratitude which he owed to Oldenburg for his chivalrous assistance at Bruno's death, and in the duel with Felix. He did not like to be under such obligations to a man against whom he had felt a strong antipathy from the beginning, and whom he had afterwards, in the days of his love for Melitta, feared as his most dangerous rival--a man whose determined strength of will had something imposing to him in spite of his reluctance to acknowledge it, and whom he yet accused--heaven knows with what justice!--of duplicity and inconsistency!--a man who had betrayed him all these days in the most humiliating manner, if the relations between Oldenburg and Melitta were at all like what they were represented to be by the Barnewitz family and other friendly spies and gossips. If he could now succeed in rescuing the child whom he had almost given up, and render him the very great service of restoring her to him--then the oppressive debt of gratitude would be paid, he would have acquitted himself of all he owed, and Oswald Stein would have no reason to cast down his eyes before Baron Oldenburg, if fate should ever array them against each other as foes--and the young man apprehended that such a moment might come.

These thoughts and feelings filled Oswald's heart as he followed a servant from the Kurhaus through the silent streets of the town towards the Green Hat, where he had been told by Franz that he should find the rope-dancers. Franz himself had remained at the Kurhaus, as he was too discreet to intrude upon a secret which was apparently kept from him. For when he had laughingly endeavored to explain to his friend how he had managed to interpret, for the benefit of the crowd, the strange scene with the rope-dancer's child, Oswald had remained perfectly silent, and Franz had seen no other way to explain this reticence than by supposing that his companion was either not willing or not at liberty to give any further explanations about the matter. When Oswald, therefore, remarked that it would probably be too late that evening to pay a visit to Berger, he had simply answered: "I think so!" and refrained from offering his company when Oswald, after walking up and down in his room for a quarter of an hour in perfect silence, had at last declared his intention to take a walk in the cool of the evening. Franz adapted himself all the more readily to the fancies of his companion, as he was busily occupied at that moment with his own affairs. He had hoped to find in Fichtenau a letter from his betrothed, but his hopes had not been fulfilled. This disappointment caused him some apprehension, as Sophie generally wrote very punctually, and they had come to Fichtenau several days later than they had originally intended. He consoled himself, however, with the hope that the last mail, which was expected every moment, might yet bring him the much-desired letter.

In the meantime Oswald arrived at the hospitable shelter of the Green Hat at the very moment when it sent a part of the odd crowd that had assembled there that evening through the open house-door into the street, where the conflict in large masses, as it had been carried on in the hall, changed into a fight between isolated groups. For a moment they blazed up, like the remains of an exhausted fire, only to sink the next moment into utter night for want of fuel. Peace was soon restored, for nobody knew exactly why they had been fighting each other with such rage, and there were quite enough closed eyes and bruised limbs for such an intangible cause of war. The excitement, it is true, was not allayed, and there was still a good deal of noise, but it was only the long swell of the ocean after the violence of the storm has been broken. They cursed and swore, they bragged and threatened--but they sat down again and drowned the last remnants of hostility in beer.

Oswald was so anxious about Czika that he had not been so much disgusted with the horrible scene as he would have been under other circumstances. Fortunately he saw neither the child nor Xenobia in the crowd, but the mere thought that they might have been mixed up with such a pandemonium was terrible to him, and he determined to remove them at any hazard. He pushed his way through the noisy fighting crowd, who did not notice him at all, and inquired of the one and the other why they were fighting, and where Xenobia the gypsy was, with her child? No one had time or inclination to answer his questions, until at last he happened to speak to a young man who looked a little less rowdyish than the rest, and who told him that some members of the rope-dancer's troop had run away, a gypsy woman and her daughter, and that this had given rise to a general fight. He pointed out to him a man who was wiping the blood off his face and speaking with most animated gesticulations, intimating that that was the director, and that he would probably be able to tell him all he desired to know.

Oswald felt greatly relieved when he heard this. Xenobia and Czika were gone, and it mattered little where they had gone to, so they were free from this association. He considered for a moment whether he had better return without having anything more to do with the rope-dancers; but the desire to hear more, and to ascertain, perhaps, the place to which the fugitives might have escaped, overcame his reluctance, and he addressed the person who had been pointed out to him as the director.

Mr. Schmenckel was a man of remarkable elasticity of mind, and had readily recovered the imperilled harmony of his soul after the battle, from which he had come forth covered with honorable wounds. As soon as the first storm of his passions had subsided a little, he generally exhibited a high degree of that philosophic resignation which submits with dignity to the inevitable, and makes every effort to adapt itself to the circumstances. Since the gypsy woman was gone, all lamentations about his loss would only make him ridiculous, and it became a noble character to forgive and forget. He pretended, therefore, to ignore the whole occurrence, and treated it as something by no means unexpected. "Ingratitude is the world's reward--easily won, easily lost--to-day it is I, to-morrow it is another. Let us sit down again, gentlemen. Director Schmenckel is not so easily thrown out of gear. We have other means still in reserve to entertain a highly-honored public, and you shall see that the performance which I shall have the honor to give to-morrow--what does the gentleman wish?--you wish to speak to me? I am at your service--a director must be always ready." Mr. Schmenckel followed Oswald, who had asked him for a few moments conversation, very readily, since the circumstance that an elegantly-dressed gentleman came all the way to the Green Hat in order to have an interview with Director Schmenckel, was well calculated to make a sensation.

"What does your excellency desire?" inquired Mr. Schmenckel, when they were in the hall.

"I should be glad if you would give me some information about the gypsy woman, who, I am told, has left your company this evening."

Mr. Schmenckel was startled; the question sounded suspicious. He availed himself of the light of the lamp before the house--for they had reached the street by this time--to examine Oswald's face more carefully, and he now recognized in him the gentleman whom the Czika had embraced. Mr. Schmenckel knew at once how the matter stood. This young gentleman was an immensely rich lord who had a mania for gypsies, and was in the habit of buying up young gypsy children for his amusement. Mr. Schmenckel reflected that the woman might possibly return, and that the greater his claims were upon her, the higher the price he might ask for the child.

"Well," he said, in order to gain time for consideration, "why would your excellency like to know?"

"That does not matter," replied Oswald; "it will suffice for you that I do not mean to leave the man who gives me the information I desire to obtain unrewarded," and he slipped a dollar into Mr. Schmenckel's hand.

"Thanks, your excellency," replied Mr. Schmenckel, whose suspicions were only confirmed by Oswald's liberality, "nevertheless I should like to----"

"But I do not understand why you should hesitate to tell me what little you may possibly know about the woman?"

"Well," replied Mr. Schmenckel, "perhaps it is not so very little I know about her. When one has had somebody thirteen years in the company----"

"But I have met the gypsy only this summer at--never mind, not very far from here, and quite alone."

"That may very well be," replied the cunning director; "it is not the first time to-night that Xenobia has run away, but she has always come back again."

"Thirteen years!" said Oswald, who did not think for a moment of doubting the fable; "how old was the child, then, when she came to join you?"

"How old?" said Mr. Schmenckel. "Why, your excellency, when she came to us, she had no child. I know that, as a matter of course, ha, ha, ha!"

"You?" said Oswald, and he shuddered. "You?"

"Well! why not? Do I look to your excellency's eye as if a pretty young woman could not possibly fall in love with me; and did not this girl, moreover, take wages from me? I can tell your excellency that I have made very different conquests in my time. Has your excellency ever been in St. Petersburg? There is the Princess--but, after all, I am not at liberty to speak as freely of such a great lady as----"

"In one word," said Oswald, scarcely able to restrain himself, "the Czika is your child?"

"I couldn't swear to that," said Mr. Schmenckel, smiling, "but I can take my oath that she might be my child, and that I have always looked upon her in that light."

"And you think the gypsy will come back again?"

"Oh, your excellency may rely upon that; she is never as well off as when she stays with me."

"But why does she run away so often, then?"

"Yes, just think of it, your excellency; women are a strange kind of people," said Mr. Schmenckel, philosophizing, "and the kinder you are to them, the sooner they will play you some trick or other. There is no truth and no faith among them, and especially these gypsies----"

"Very well," said Oswald, who was overcome with disgust, "we will talk about that some other time." And he went away quickly.

Director Schmenckel followed him with his eye for awhile, shook his head, put the dollar, which he was still holding in his hand, in his pocket, laughed and returned into the public room, feeling very happy in the pleasant conviction that he had cheated a greenhorn. Within peace had in the meantime recovered its sway, and the whole company had joined in singing the favorite ballad: "Blue blooms a blossom."

While Oswald was receiving this doubtful information about the true history of poor little Czika from the truth-loving lips of Director Schmenckel, Franz was waiting for his return with painful impatience. The mail had really brought him the long-desired letter from his betrothed, but unfortunately had also confirmed the vague apprehensions which had of late troubled his mind. Sophie wrote in a hand almost illegible from anxiety, that her father had had a stroke of paralysis, from which the physicians feared the very worst. Her father, she added, was at that moment, several hours after the attack, still speechless and unable to move. If there were any hope for her father, help could only come from Him whom she looked up to with trusting confidence and perfect submission.

Franz had formed his resolution instantly. As the driver who had brought them to this place declared he was unable to go any further, he had at once ordered post-horses, in order to reach the nearest railway station that night. To think of his sweet love in such bitter need and sorrow--watching and weeping by the sickbed, perhaps already by the coffin of her father--and he, her comfort and her hope, some four hundred miles away--all this was enough to disturb even so firm a heart as that of Doctor Braun was under ordinary circumstances. He felt as if the ground was burning under his feet. The few minutes before the carriage could be made ready, seemed to him an eternity.

At last he heard the horses coming, and Oswald also returned. Franz told him the sad news he had just received, and what he had determined to do. He begged his friend, in a few parting words, not to prolong his stay at Fichtenau beyond what was absolutely necessary, and above all to be punctually at the appointed time at his post in Grunwald. Oswald had been so thoroughly excited by the many extraordinary occurrences of the last hours that he apparently expected nothing but surprises, and thus he received his friend's communications with an air of indifference. He promised, however, what Franz asked of him, as he accompanied him to the carriage.

"What do you say, Oswald," said Franz, who had already settled himself down in the carriage; "Come along with me! You may find my proposal somewhat extraordinary, but the strangest way is often the best way."

"I cannot do it, Franz," said Oswald. "I cannot leave here without having seen Berger, and besides----"

"I know all you can possibly say on that subject," replied Franz, "and I must tell you frankly that I have no good reason whatever for making the proposition. But I feel as if I ought not to leave you here alone--as if there was something in the air here that boded you no good. Come with me, Oswald!"

"I will follow you as soon as I can."

"Then farewell! Go on, driver!"

Franz once more pressed Oswald's hand. The carriage rattled over the uneven pavement of the little town and disappeared around a corner.

"What a pity the gentleman had to leave so soon," said Louis, the head waiter at the Kurhaus, who was standing near Oswald, a napkin under his arm and a pen behind his ear. "A most pleasant gentleman--would you like to have supper now, sir? You will find very agreeable company in the dining-room, sir."

Oswald went back into the house. If Franz could have repeated his request at that moment, Oswald would not have again refused to accompany him. For since Franz had left him he felt as if his guardian angel had abandoned him, and as if the air of Fichtenau was really laden with mischief.

CHAPTER VI.

On the next morning Oswald awoke late from his broken slumbers, which had been much disturbed by strange haunted dreams. Melitta, whom he had so ardently loved but a short time ago, had appeared to him, her fair, pale face disfigured by sorrow, her brown, gentle eyes overflowing with tears, and looking at him with an expression of ineffable sadness. Thus she had sat by him--her sad, sweet smile on her full lips, which he had so often kissed, intoxicated with love! And Oswald's heart had been overflowing with love and pity! He had forgotten all that had come between her and himself the bad weeds sown by whispering tongues which had grown up to maturity so suddenly, thanks to the fickleness of his own heart; he had forgotten everything except the remembrance of those sunny days of inexpressible happiness. And he had thrown himself at her feet and shed tears, bitter-sweet tears, upon her knees, and stammered words of repentance, and implored her forgiveness. Then an icy-cold hand had been laid on his brow, and as he looked up it was no longer Melitta, but Professor Berger; but not the man of the melancholy humor and the biting satire, who had so often sat opposite to him with his sardonic smile on the mysterious lips when they met at æsthetic teas, but a gruesome mask of wax, motionless and silent. And of a sudden there had begun a quivering and a stirring in the cold, rigid face of the mask, as when one tries to speak and the tongue refuses to serve him; then the mask had actually spoken, not in human language, but in a mystic idiom, of things half intelligible, half mysterious, of unspeakable, fearful things--awful secrets of another world.

Oswald had not been able to endure the horror any longer, and his soul had made a desperate effort to rise from the intolerable twilight into the bright light of day. But the light of day had not brought him the right kind of cheerfulness, for the visions of the night still cast their spectral shadows upon the day. Woe to him whose heart is not clear of sin! Woe to him whose heart conceals recollections, which he drives away with a slight frown, when they obtrude upon him in moments of wakefulness and preparation! He may well see to it. What dreams are coming to him in his sleep?

Oswald spent the whole forenoon in this heavy state of mind. He could not summon courage to undertake the painful task of going to Doctor Birkenhain's Asylum; he postponed the visit till the afternoon, and tried to persuade himself that he would then be in better humor, and better prepared to stand once more before Berger, face to face. He went down to take his dinner at the table-d'hôte, where he found, in spite of the advanced season, quite a number of persons still, who, were either drinking the waters of the place or travelling for their amusement. He sat quietly sipping his wine, and amused himself with listening to the brilliant conversation of some commercial travellers, as it flitted to and fro, touching a thousand subjects, and among them also the escape of the gypsy woman and her child, and the "enormous row" which had arisen in consequence, disturbing the peace of the Green Hat and the nightly rest of a considerable part of the little town. Some of the young gentlemen who had witnessed the exhibition on the great meadow enlightened more recent arrivals as to the beauty of the gypsy, and regretted eloquently the disappearance of that "famous person." The little one, also, was represented as a "famous" thing, with really "famous" eyes. An eccentric Englishman, who had been near the stage, they added, had instantly fallen in love with her, and there was no doubt at all but that this Englishman, of whom no one had afterwards seen or heard anything more, had eloped with the gypsy girl.

Oswald was rather troubled by these authentic reports of the fate of Xenobia and the Czika, and left the table for the purpose of returning to his room. He was naturally less than ever disposed now to call upon Berger, and he had therefore to make a great effort at last to ring for the waiter, and to inquire of him the way to Doctor Birkenhain's institution.

"Doctor Birkenhain's asylum, sir? Quite near by, sir. The best way is through our garden up the hill, then always turning to the left, on the height along the river, until you come to a large house. That is Doctor Birkenhain's asylum. You have perhaps a relation of yours there? We have many people coming here who have relations at Doctor Birkenhain's. Only this summer there was a lady here from your country, who stayed several months at the house. Very beautiful lady, sir, perhaps you may know her; a Frau von Berkow, with her brother, a Baron Oldenburg--very tall gentleman, with a black beard----"

"Is Baron Oldenburg a brother of that lady?" asked Oswald, not without some reluctance.

"Why, certainly, sir. The gentleman and the lady were at least two weeks here, and always together. But the brother had to leave before the lady's husband died--what a misfortune for such a beautiful lady! Will you be back in time for supper, sir? No? But you will certainly stay over night, sir? Oh, I thought so--of course. Nothing else I can do for you, sir? How far is it? Oh, at most, ten minutes' walk. I'll show you the way, sir."

When the loquacious waiter had at last left him, Oswald walked slowly along the path which followed the slope of the low range of hills. On the left hand prattled merrily a clear mountain brook, rich in trout, which gave its name to the town, and flowed evenly beneath tall trees. Here and there the water peeped out from between the dense foliage, but only to disappear again, like a playful child that likes to tease. At one point the brook had been stopped and forced to turn the wheels of a mill. The little vagabond did not seem to like the delay. It poured its waters wrathfully into the mill-race, shook and struck the buckets with all its might, and then rushed off, foaming and pelting, in angry haste.

Oswald sat down on the low railing opposite the mill, and looked wearily into the water, as it played and purled, drawing wide circles and pushing wave after wave. He thought of Melitta, how often she had probably come down this way, hanging on the arm of "her brother," and stopping no doubt frequently at this very spot, whose picturesque beauty could not have escaped her attention.

He felt sad unto death. His feelings boiled within him as the waters did in the mill-race; his thoughts were whirling around like the foam-bubbles on the surface. Was his hatred to be as blind as his love? Was there anything wrong and anything right in the world?--the world to be a cosmos? Yes, for him whose glance was content with skimming the surface, where the waters flowed merrily over the level ground in the shade of beautiful trees--but also for him who sounded the depths, where all was rushing and roaring chaotically? Up! up! to him, the man of sorrow! He had sounded the depths of life, he shall tell me what he has seen there, what masks and spectres, that he should ever after close his eyes in horror and disgust!

Oswald rose and continued his journey; the path became steeper until it led to a large building, which lay at a short distance from the highroad on a moderate hill, amid gardens. Surrounded as it was on all sides by high walls, it looked too much like a castle to be a private residence, and yet too much like a prison also for a castle. It was Dr. Birkenhain's asylum.

Oswald rang the bell by the side of the iron grating, with some palpitation of heart. A window opened in the porter's lodge; the gate-keeper looked out and asked what he wanted. Oswald wished to see Doctor Birkenhain.

"Do you come by appointment?"

"Yes."

"Your name?"

Oswald gave his name.

The man looked at a table, on which the names of those who were to be admitted seemed to be written; then he put his head out again, and said through the small window,

"Go straight across the court to the main entrance; there ring again!"

The gate opened, and closed again when Oswald had entered. He went towards the house across the large court-yard, which was covered with gravel and adorned here and there with groups of trees and shrubberies. On a bench under one of the trees, amidst a group of several persons, sat a young man remarkably well dressed. When Oswald passed him he rose very politely, and taking off his hat and making a deep bow, said,

"I surely have the honor of addressing the Emperor of Fez and Morocco?"

As Oswald answered No! to the strange question, the young man shook his head sadly, and looking at Oswald with a vacant stare, he added,

"It is very remarkable! the emperor had promised me solemnly to come for me this summer; and now the summer is nearly gone and the emperor has not come yet. I shall have to wait till next summer. But then he will be here most certainly. Don't you think so?"

"I do not doubt it for a moment," replied Oswald. A faint ray of joy flashed across the pale face of the unfortunate man. He bowed again, put on his hat, and went back to his seat on the bench.

Oswald went to the front door, rang the bell, and a servant who appeared at the summons opened the door for him and showed him into a parlor. Then he took his name, and begged him to wait a few moments. Doctor Birkenhain would be in directly.

It was a handsome, lofty apartment. A few excellent oil-paintings hung on the walls; antique heads and busts stood about on brackets, the Apollo Belvedere, the Zeus of Otricoli, the Ludovisi Juno; upon the centre-tables lay books and portfolios with engravings. All breathed the highest kind of enjoyment, and nothing reminded the visitor that he was in a house of disease and death.

After a few minutes the door opened and Doctor Birkenhain entered. Oswald had of course formed to himself some idea of the man who had recently become so very important to him, and was grievously disappointed when he found that there was not a feature of his portrait in the man before him. He had imagined Doctor Birkenhain to be a venerable old man, full of dignity and gravity, and now he found himself standing before a man little older than himself--he had surely not passed his thirtieth year--tall and thin, with spare, light-brown hair and carefully-trimmed moustache and beard, a pale face of a sickly, sallow color, a lofty brow, and large light-blue eyes, in which one could instantly see that they were accustomed to read the hearts of men, and whose intense piercing sharpness became after awhile almost unbearable.

Doctor Birkenhain greeted Oswald with due politeness, and then expressed his regret that he should have been deprived of the pleasure of making Doctor Braun's acquaintance, whom he had wished to congratulate upon having secured to himself a place among the first physicians of Germany by his admirable treatise on typhus. Then he added:

"I have looked forward to your visit with the greatest interest, because I hope great things for Berger from the effect of your meeting with him. I know through Mr. Bemperlein, and also from Berger's own lips, that you are the most intimate friend, and, so to speak, the favorite, of the unfortunate man--that you were so at least before the breaking out of his disease. If anything can succeed in reviving once more the interest in life which has been almost entirely extinguished in Berger, it is love--not the universal love of mankind, which is only another kind of egotism, but the special love for a single individual, with whose joys and sorrows he can heartily sympathize. Love is the most vigorous of all feelings; it resists annihilation better than any other and outlives all others. The greatest psychologist who ever lived, and to whom we physicians are deeply indebted, Shakespeare, makes Lear say to the fool shortly before insanity overwhelms him: 'I have one part in my heart that's sorry yet for thee.' This one part of the heart is the sound part, where the cure must begin, and so it is with Berger. I beg, therefore, you will try to interest Berger by all means in your own fate. Tell him all about your plans and purposes, your hopes and your wishes--about your joys and your sorrows; speak to him especially of your griefs, if you have any--and you will pardon such an indiscretion in a physician--I think your confidences will be particularly ample in that direction. You smile! Well, perhaps I am mistaken, and what I thought I read in your face is the result of mere bodily uneasiness, and not of mental suffering; but, however that may be, do not conceal from Berger the shady side, and even the night side of your life. On the contrary, complain--and the more impressively, the more painfully, you can do that, the better--only mourn and grieve like a sick man, who longs after health like an imprisoned bird that yearns after freedom. The sufferings of those we love are a thousand times more touching to us than our own, and the burden which Berger hardly feels in his own case will appear to him unbearable when he sees it on the shoulders of one who is dear to him. For, I repeat it, that is the only way to approach such a man. He is too deep a thinker, too subtle a philosopher, not to be clad in impenetrable armor against all reasoning. If you prove to him the dignity and usefulness of life, he meets you with ten arguments which prove the contrary; and if you split a hair, he splits each half over again. On the other hand, you need not fear that he will involve you, as formerly, in long philosophic discussions. The science which was once his delight, is now a horror to him; he will hear nothing of it and see nothing. And now, one thing more: how long do you propose staying in Fichtenau?"

"Four or five days at most."

"Very well; I was just about to ask you not to extend your visit beyond that. The purpose is to make a deep impression upon Berger; and after the pleasure he will feel at seeing you again, he must experience the pain of parting so soon. Perhaps we may thus lure him back into the world, from which he now turns away in disgust."

"Has Berger been made aware of my arrival?"

"No. I wished to profit even by the surprise. I shall not go with you, so that there maybe nothing to diminish the surprise. You can tell me afterwards how he received you. He generally takes about this time a walk in the mountains, which he occasionally extends into the night. I give him perfect liberty, as any restraint would only be injurious. You know, besides, that his coming here was his own wish and resolution. Go with him when he takes his walk; heart opens to heart more readily under the great dome of heaven than under the ceiling of a room."

"One thing more," continued Doctor Birkenhain, as they were rising. "You will find Berger much changed in appearance; try to influence him in that direction also, though of course you will have to use your discretion. Such apparent trifles are of great importance; a missing glove-button may make a dandy lose his composure, and we have a different temper in our dressing gown and in evening dress. Now let us go, if you like; I will show you the way to Berger's door."

The two gentlemen went from the reception room across the hall, with its tessellated floor, up the wide stone steps, through lofty, airy passages.

They were met by several persons whom Oswald would not have taken for patients if Doctor Birkenhain had not told him so; they gave such sensible answers to the casual questions of the physician.

"This wing is for the slightly-affected patients," said Doctor Birkenhain; "as it is such fine weather most of them are in the garden or in the court-yard. How do you do, counsellor?"

"Thank you, doctor," replied an exceedingly corpulent, good-looking man, whom they met passing with a watering-pot in his hand, "thank you, I should be perfectly well, if----"

The counsellor cast a glance at Oswald, and then came quite close to the doctor, whispering something in his ear, of which Oswald could only catch the words, "bundle of hay"--"in my side." "Oh, that matters very little," replied Birkenhain, in a tone full of confidence, which sounded as if it must have been inspiring to the greatest hypochondriac; "we'll soon settle that." The patient gratefully shook hands with his physician and went on, evidently quite comforted and delighted with the probable victory over his imaginary ailment.

"I wish Berger's case were as easy as that man's," said Doctor Birkenhain, as they were walking down the long passage; "but pills and ointments have no effect on his complaint. Here we are; now you go to the end of the passage, and the last door to the left is Berger's room. I am very curious to hear what you will have to tell me. Will you dine with me to-morrow? I shall take great pleasure in presenting you to my wife. At three o'clock. Will you come? Au revoir, then!"

Doctor Birkenhain shook hands with Oswald and went into one of the rooms which they had passed. Oswald went alone to the end of the passage, full of the deep impression which the man who had just left him had made upon him, and at the same time very much troubled about the part which he was to play. He was to help Berger to recover his interest in life, and he had himself lost all such interest! Was he not of all men the least fitted for such a mission? And yet he had accepted it! He must fulfil it!

Oswald came to the door which had been pointed out to him. Upon the brown panel was something written in chalk, and evidently in Berger's hand:

"Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate."

Oswald shuddered as he read it. He remained standing undecided before the door, and it was some time before he could make up his mind to knock. He listened to hear if anything was stirring within; he heard nothing. At last he summoned courage and knocked with a strong hand. As no answer came, he knocked still louder; again no answer. A great fear overcame him; he hastily opened the door and entered the room.

CHAPTER VII.

Oswald need not have feared. Berger was sitting in the centre of the darkened room, all the curtains being closed, before a table covered with books. He was resting his head in both hands, and seemed to sleep, for he did not stir even when Oswald stepped up close to the table. Oswald did not dare wake him. He remained standing by the table and looked at the poor sufferer, his eyes filling unconsciously with tears. What havoc these few months had made with the face once so proud, so full of energy; the dark curling hair was grizzled; the massive brow, hewn apparently out of the live granite, appeared even more powerful and imposing, thanks to the increased baldness at the temples. A full beard, formerly an aversion to Berger, now flowed, silver-gray, from cheek, lips, and chin, so that the end nearly touched the table. His hands, once so plump and carefully kept, had become so thin, so transparent! And what a costume! A blue smock-frock, instead of the black coat which was never allowed to show a particle of dust; a coarse, ill-fitting shirt, instead of the fine, dazzling white linen upon which he formerly insisted. On the table a worn-out slouched hat and a stick, which had evidently not long ago formed part of a hedge of thorns, in place of the smooth silk hat from Paris, and the clouded cane with its gold head! If the outer man could change to such an extent, what a revolution must have taken place in the lowest depths of the soul!

Berger stirred. He raised his head, opened his eyes, and looked at Oswald. His eyes were deep and clear, and looked larger than usual; he did not start nor betray astonishment, wonder, or fear, at the unexpected sight.

"I had but just now dreamt of you, Oswald," he said, rising, with a low voice, from which all former sharpness and energy seemed to have departed.

Oswald could restrain himself no longer. He sobbed aloud and threw himself into Berger's arms. Now only, lying on the bosom of this man, he felt all his sufferings fully, as he thought; now only, in the arms of this man who had endured so much, he fancied he need not be ashamed any longer of the tears which his heart had bled when his eyes refused to weep.

Berger held him in his arms, as a father holds his son who comes home from a far country in which he has fed with the swine.

"Weep on," he said, "weep! Tears relieve a young, overflowing heart. When I was as young as you, I wept as you do; now my eyes have forgotten how to weep."

"Berger, dear, dear Berger!"

"I knew I should see you again. I expected you long ago. I did not think you would stand it so long in the great desert outside. Weep on! Tears are the price with which we buy our souls back again, when we find what a wretched bargain we had made before we knew better. Ere we give up life we have to learn that it is better not to live. Some learn that sooner, others later. Be glad that you are one of those who during the bitterness of the Sansara have already a foretaste of the sweetness of the Nirvana."

He left Oswald, and took his hat and cane from the table.

"Come!" he said.

Oswald was so deeply moved by this scene that the recollection of Berger's odd costume only suggested to him the conviction how utterly impossible it would be to speak to such a man of such things. He would as lief have reminded a mother who was weeping over the body of her child of some defect in her toilet, a bow out of place, or a ribbon which had come loose.

They passed through the long passages, down the broad stone staircase and out into the court-yard. As they went across the latter, the young man who was sitting on the bench came up to them and repeated the question which he had before asked of Oswald:

"I certainly have the honor to address the Emperor of Fez and Morocco?"

"No!" replied Berger, "The emperor is not coming; you may rely upon it."

"Is not coming!" repeated the young man; and his pale face became still paler, and his eyes wandered restlessly to and fro; "is not coming! how do you know that?"

"Because, if he should come it would not be for your happiness, as you imagine, but for your final ruin. Why do you wish him to come? To bring you gold, which you will gamble away? and jewels, which you will lavish upon your mistresses; to afford you the means of continuing a life which you ought to thank God on your knees you have escaped from--if you believe in any God? What appears to you a star of promise, is a will-o'-the-wisp from the moors. Do not trust in its glimmer--it lures you hither and thither, and each time deeper into the moor. Turn resolutely back from it! I tell you once more, the emperor is not coming! and it is fortunate for you that he does not come!"

"Do you know his majesty so intimately?" stammered the young man.

"Very intimately," said Berger, and a peculiar smile played on his features, "only too intimately. I also was misled by his majesty. You expect from his promise money and lands. I was promised--never mind what; and thus he promises everybody something else, in order to fool and trick everybody. The conviction that his majesty's promises are nothing but wind--that is the beginning of wisdom, and the last conclusion of wisdom into the bargain."

Berger had uttered the last words with a suddenly-sinking voice, as if he were speaking to himself. He paid no further attention to the young man, who was standing there, hat in hand, with an indescribably sad face. Nor did he seem to notice Oswald, who followed him silently, and most painfully affected by the touching scene.

Berger apparently felt what was going on in his companion's heart, for they had left the gate which was opened to them without delay, and found themselves on the turnpike, which followed first one bank, and then, after crossing the river on a bridge, the opposite bank, rising higher and higher into the mountains. He suddenly broke his silence and said,

"You are wondering why I did not treat the poor fellow more tenderly, instead of destroying so rudely his absurd illusions? This apparent cruelty was in reality a great kindness."

"Who is the unfortunate man?"

"A Count Mattan, from our country. He has spent during the last few years a fortune of half a million in senseless extravagance. Now he hopes for the fabulous emperor, who is to restore to him all his losses."

"But if your robbing the young man of his last consolation should deprive him of the last feeble remnant of sense----"

"You speak like Doctor Birkenhain. It makes me laugh to see how these optimists blindly try to arrest the power which drives man irresistibly into destruction, like children who try to stop a river with their little hands. My study here is the observation of this peculiar struggle, which would be grand if it were not so ludicrous. These doctors move in the dark, as if they were playing blindman's buff, and think they have cured the disease when they have gotten rid of the symptoms. They do not know, they do not even suspect, that life itself is the shoe that pinches, the garment of Nessus which burns our living body--and that to pull off this shoe, to throw away the garment, is not only the best but the only remedy by which we can escape the wretchedness of existence."

They had left the highroad and reached a clearing in the forest, which was thickly overgrown with moss and heather. Before them was a view over the tops of pine trees into the plain from which they had ascended, and far into the land of hills; behind them the forest extended upwards. It was quiet, perfectly quiet, around them. Long white gossamer floated through the thin, clear air. The flowers were gone; the birds had forgotten their songs, the locusts their chirping; summer itself had died, and Nature sat in silent grief by the corpse. Even the autumnal sunshine had something sad in it, like a widow's smile; the blue of the sky was sickly, like the tearful eye of a mourner.

Berger had seated himself on the low stump of a tree, and Oswald lay down close by him on the thick heather. In this silence of the forest, which reminded him so forcibly of the woods of Berkow and Grenwitz, and of the painfully sweet days he had spent there, he felt that irrepressible impulse to speak which at times overcomes us all of a sudden. As the Catholic is moved to whisper his deep-hidden secrets into the ear of the priest, his personified conscience, so Oswald felt impelled to confess to the unhappy man by his side, in whom he had ever seen another self, all that he had experienced, tried to obtain, suffered and sinned, during these last eventful, fatal months. He did not think of Doctor Birkenhain's suggestion to interest Berger by all means at his command in his own fate, and thus to play the part of the physician to his patient. Was he not a very sick patient himself? But, whatever might agitate his heart--the man by his side had suffered worse things; what, he hardly dared confess to himself--the man who was wandering with lowered head in the dark labyrinth of his soul, and could find no way to light, he could hear all, all. And thus he told him, first hesitatingly, then with animation, with passionate excitement, all he had to tell: his love of Melitta, his love of Helen, his friendship for Bruno, and how jealousy and sickness of heart had robbed him of the one, and strange circumstances and death of the other.

Berger had listened in silence, supporting his chin in his hand, and looking with his large eyes fixedly at the distance, without once interrupting Oswald. At last, when the young man wound up with the painful complaint "Why did you send me into this troublesome world? Why did you let me wander about so long in this darkness?" Berger raised his head, turned his eyes towards him, and said slowly, thoughtfully,

"Because you had to learn this also; because, as long as you were with me in Grunwald, you still believed in that great falsehood which we call life; because the pride with which you insisted upon its being a truth had to be broken. I have led you the shortest and safest way to wisdom. I knew you would allow yourself to be dazzled by false splendor; I knew you would hasten with beating heart, with parched tongue, through the lonely, white sand of the desert, towards the blue lake with the wooded shore, which drew back further and further as you thought you were coming nearer, until you would at last break down, cursing your sufferings and your existence. Be joyful! You have gone through with it; you have finished your first and hardest course in as many weeks as it took me years. You have opened your eyes and looked at what was there, and behold! it was not good! The value of life, the purpose of life, has become doubtful to you. You have begun to understand that the assertion of superficial optimists: Life is the purpose of life! is hardly correct--unless one could find satisfaction in striving after a purpose which can never be accomplished, or which, if it be accomplished, is worth nothing. You have seen how indissolubly untruth, stupidity, and vulgarity are interwoven with truth, honesty, wisdom, and majesty. This knowledge, which only the brutalized slave, grinning under the lash of the driver, receives with indifference, but which saddens noble hearts unto death, is the beginning of wisdom, the entrance to the great mystery."

"And the great mystery?"

Berger made no reply; he looked again with fixed eyes at the distance. Oswald dared not repeat his question.

Deep silence all around. Silently the light gossamer floated through the clear air; silently the evening sunshine wove its golden net around the heather and the dark-green tops of the pine-trees.

They sat thus speechless side by side--silent and sad, like two children lost in the woods. But while the one, who had wound up his life, and who was fearfully in earnest with his contempt of the world, suffered himself to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss of his grief, the young, fresh vitality of the other struggled mightily towards light and air.

"What is this in me which rouses me at this very moment, when I least expected it, to oppose your wisdom?" he inquired, looking up at Berger. "My reason tells me you are right, but my eye drinks with delight the beauty of this evening landscape; drinks it down into the heart, and there, in my heart, a voice whispers: 'The world is so fair, so fair! and even if life makes you suffer bitter things without end, it is still sweet.' Tell me, Berger, did you ever love with all the strength of your heart? and can love die, as the summer dies, and the flowers, and the warm sunlight?"

Berger smiled--it was a strange, weird smile.

"Did I ever love?"

He cast down his eyes, and took off with his stick a piece of the thick crust of moss at his feet.

"What good does it do," he said, "to lift the veil which so many years have spread over the past? You see what is below--decay and destruction."

"And yet," he said, after a pause, "it is but right you should learn that also. Hear, then:"

"It is now thirty years. I was then at your age, but without having made your experiences; clinging to life in full, unbroken strength, and thinking it as sweet and precious as a love of my heart. If ever man was enthusiastic about liberty and beauty--about all those fail fancies with which we try to beautify our miserable existence here, and to hide its wretched hollowness--if ever man was raving about those bloodless images which we call ideals--I was that man. In my madness I fancied that eternal bliss might be won even here below wherever men were living in a free country. I believed in my native land, and sealed my faith with my blood on the battle-fields of Leipzig and Waterloo. I returned full of burning zeal to complete the great work. But before I could undertake to heal the wounds which my country had received during the war, I had to think of healing my own wounds. They sent me, when I recovered, to Fichtenau.

"In those days Fichtenau was not what it is now. There was no Kurhaus then, and no asylum for the insane; nevertheless the town was always full of visitors, for the poetic halo with which the great men of Weimar had surrounded these valleys attracted the crowd. I kept aloof, and lived only for my health and my studies.

"I boarded in the house of an old schoolmaster with whom I had become acquainted, and whose friendship I cultivated because he possessed quite a large library, and books were not so easily accessible then, especially in this remote part of the world. But the old gentleman possessed yet another treasure, besides his library--a most beautiful daughter. The daughter soon became more interesting to me than the library. You asked me if I had ever loved with all my heart. If you had known Leonora, and seen how high and how powerfully my heart then beat, you would not have asked me that question.

"It was a summer day--a marvellously beautiful summer day. We had gone out into the woods after dinner--a mixed company--young and old. We lay down on the swelling moss in the shade of the pine-trees. How my eye dwelt upon her graceful form as she did the honors of the company with merry modesty; how my ear drank in the tones of her silvery, sweet voice! It was the old song of the sirens, which was heard thousands and thousands of years ago, and which will yet be heard thousands and thousands of years hence--till the time is fulfilled.

"After the coffee we strolled about in the forest--in groups, by pairs, as accident and inclination brought it about. I had followed Leonora, who was gathering a bunch of wild-flowers. I helped her, although I did not know much of these things, and was often laughed at by the teasing girls on account of my odd selection. She however became more and more silent the deeper we went into the wood and the further we left the others behind. As she became more silent and anxious, I grew more animated and pressing. Her silence and the blush on her cheeks told me what I had long since desired in secret, what I had prayed heaven to grant me, and what I had yet never hoped to obtain.

"Then we stepped out upon this clearing. The same mountains which are there lying before us looked as blue to us, and the same sun which looks down from heaven now poured a dazzling light lavishly down upon us. And the golden light shone brightly on her dark, curling hair, and played upon her round, white shoulders; and here, on this very place, we fell into each other's arms and swore each other eternal love, amid hot kisses and hot tears.

"The stump on which I am now sitting was then a tall, slender, powerful pine-tree, and I was young and slender, and full of exuberant strength. The tree has been cut down and burnt in the fire; I--I have become what I am----"

Berger paused and stirred up the moss at his feet with his cane. Oswald looked with reverence at the unfortunate man; but he dared not speak, nor even seize Berger's hand, which was listlessly hanging down by his side. Lofty calmness rested on Berger's face; not a gesture betrayed what was going on in his heart; but he did not look like one who requires sympathy or expects sympathy.

"Not at once," he suddenly continued--"the strength within me was great and could only be broken by piecemeal. I spoke, after our return home, to the old gentleman; he liked me and was heartily glad to see our affection. A few days later I returned to the University in order to resume my studies, which the war had interrupted. I studied with increasing diligence, for my thirst of knowledge was hardly less of an incentive than my desire to be able as soon as possible to carry Leonora home with me as my wife. I therefore went only rarely to Fichtenau, and then stayed only a short time to sun myself in Leonora's love, and to return to my work with new courage and new strength. But I had another lady-love, whom I worshipped with no less ardor--Liberty. I shared that passion with many other noble young men. We did not mean to have shed our blood on the battlefields in vain; we were not willing to become the prey of so many jackals and wolves, after we had successfully overcome a lion. But the jackals were on their guard, and the wolves broke in our fold.

"I had been engaged in teaching for a year; I had prepared everything for the wedding; the day was fixed; I was counting the days and the hours. Suddenly, one night, I was seized in my bed by armed men. My papers were sealed up; and the next night I slept in a casemate of a fortress.

"Or, rather, I did not sleep--I was enraged, I was maddened; my hands bled from my efforts to break the bars of my cage. Gradually I consoled myself with the hope that this captivity could not last long, and Leonora--well! she would bear her hard lot like a heroine. A second Egmont, I saw freedom and my beloved hand in hand. Through night to light! Through battle to victory! That was the mystic word with which I tried to frighten back the serpent-haired monster. Despair, when it was pressing upon me and about to strike its fangs into my heart. The mystic word had ample time to prove its power. I remained in prison for five years!

"You may imagine if my faith in the so-called divine nature of the world's government was shaken during this time, which I measured by the beats of my heart, and the drops which fell, one by one, from the damp ceiling of my cell. But, I told you before, my strength was great, and I was sternly determined to live. I had heard, to be sure, in the silent nights which saw me tossing restlessly upon my hard couch, the great word that releases us, but I had understood it only half, and perhaps not quite half. I had but just begun to spell the letters in my long apprenticeship; life itself was to be my school, before I should be able to read it fluently.

"I had scarcely been set free when I hastened to this place--you may imagine with what feelings! In the beginning of my captivity I had received one or two letters from Leonora, in which she conjured me to endure patiently, and to remain faithful, appealing to the God to whom she was hourly sending up her prayers for my release. Her letters had become rarer, and after about two years none had come any more. That was my greatest sorrow; but I always believed that it was the cruelty of my jailors which denied me this consolation, and I ground my teeth and cursed my tormentors.

"I had done them injustice.

"It was far in the night when I reached Fichtenau. I drove directly to the familiar house. I jumped from the carriage and pulled the bell. A window was opened up-stairs; an old woman looked out and asked what I wanted? I inquired after the schoolmaster. 'He died three years ago,' was the curt answer. 'And where is his daughter?' 'You must ask the great gentleman who eloped with her three years ago,' said the woman, and shut the window with violence. I stood thunderstruck. Then I laughed aloud; but I was silenced by an intense pain in the heart--for, Oswald, I had loved Leonora.

"I never knew how I reached the inn. Late in the night I roused the good people from their slumbers by my wild laughing and furious raging. They broke open the door of my room--I was in full delirium. The air of the prison had affected my health, and the fearful blow, finding me utterly unprepared, had shaken the weakened edifice to the foundation. I struggled four weeks for my life, but I clung to it fiercely, and Death had to give up its prey. Woe to me! That death would not have been the ordinary death to me--it would have restored me to life! If I should die now I would die for ever!"

Oswald shuddered. What was the meaning of these mysterious words: "Die forever!" Did they contain that great mystery which was yet hidden from him by a thick veil?

"My convalescence," continued Berger, "lasted long, for my strength had been utterly exhausted. I crept through the streets of the village, leaning on a stick, and rejoiced to find that I could climb, day by day, a few steps higher, until I succeeded at last in reaching this spot here--the scene of an oath, which I had fancied to be sworn for eternity, and which had passed away with the breath of her lips. I came every day here to weep over my lost happiness, and to quarrel with Heaven who lets his sun shine upon the unjust, and hurls his lightnings at the just. For I was, like King Lear, a man more sinned against than sinning. I had meant well and faithfully in all I had hoped and striven for in life. I had loved my native land as a child loves its parents, with a simple, believing heart; and in return it had made me suffer five years in a dungeon. I had loved Leonora with every drop of blood in my heart; and in return she had betrayed me. Up to that moment I had so lived in the world that I could face all and say: Who can accuse me of a sin?--and yet! and yet! I racked my brain to solve the mystery. I had never yet understood fully that life itself is the great sin, from which all other sins flow necessarily, as the stone, once set in motion, must roll inevitably down the precipice. Thus only I gradually comprehended that He cannot be a God of love who created and still creates a world in which the sins of the fathers are punished down to the third and fourth generation--a world, the whole government of which rests on the fearful Jesuitical principles that the end sanctions the means. So far I had always tried to find out only what was good in the world and in men; now my eyes had been opened by sore sufferings for the sufferings of my fellow-beings. I now saw how every page of our history bears the record of some fearful deed that makes our hair stand on end, and our blood curdle in our veins; I saw that there is a dark corner in every man's heart which he never dares look into; that no man yet has lived who did not wish once in his life that he had never been born; I saw that the life of countless multitudes is nothing more than a desperate struggle for existence; that sickness and sin, repentance and sorrow, undermine our life most thoroughly and eat their way to the core like worms in ripe fruit; that at best our pleasures are a dance upon graves--that, if life really ever was precious, death, inexorable death, is forever scorning and scoffing at this precious life. And I looked around on nature, in which poets see an idyll, and I found that it was either dead and insensible, or, when it does feel and sympathize, only repeating the bloody drama of human existence in a ruder and more shocking form. I saw that the different races of animals are engaged in fierce, implacable warfare against each other, uninterrupted by a moment's peace, and that their wars are carried on with a cruelty by the side of which even the most refined tortures of the Inquisition appear at times very harmless proceedings.

"And whilst I thus tore the gay rags to pieces, under which cowardice and stupidity try to conceal the wounds and sores of society, there arose in my heart a feeling which I had not known before--hatred. It was only my love in another form, although I tried to persuade myself that I had forgotten the faithless one; it was only another expression of my fondness of life, although I had fancied that I had forever closed my account with life. When we really give up life, we know nothing more of love or hatred.

"At that time, however, I did hate. Passionately as I had loved, my whole being was concentrated in the one, burning desire to be revenged. Revenge! revenge! on him! on her!--this was the cry of a voice within me, which I could never silence again. They all knew my misfortune in Fichtenau, and felt for me with that cheap sympathy which is composed of delight in scandal and the pleasure we take in the failures of others. They told me, unasked, all that was known about Leonora's flight.

"About the time when my letters had first failed to come to me, a young Polish count had arrived in Fichtenau and taken the rooms in the old schoolmaster's house which I had occupied. Soon the whole town had been full of him, of his beauty and his wealth. They had teased Leonora about her handsome lodger, but she had rebuked all such jests on the part of her young friends with great indignation. Soon, however, they no longer dared to say openly to her what they thought about her relations to the young count, but only whispered it about with bated breath that they had been seen together late at night at such and such places, and that the gold chain which she was now wearing had not been in her possession before. And then came a day on which they had no longer whispered, but proclaimed aloud in the streets, that the schoolmaster's Leonora had eloped the night before with the handsome count, and that her poor old father, a confirmed invalid, had been so deeply affected by the news as to be dangerously ill. A few days later the old man had really died. Of Leonora nothing had been heard since that night.

"Fortunately the name of the count was well known, and that was all I desired in order to carry out my plan of revenge. I took what little remained of my fortune and began my travels--first to Warsaw. There the count was very well known; they described him to me as a profligate young man, who made it the business of his life to seduce beautiful women. An acquaintance added, that he had seen him about two years before in Venice in company with a beautiful lady, who might have been Leonora from his description.

"I went to Venice. There also he was well remembered; he had lived there several months and had then moved to Milan. From Milan they sent me to Rome. There I met with a friend of my youth, a painter. He had seen the count and Leonora very frequently, and pitied the poor girl long before he knew that she had ever been dear to me. He told me that the count had treated her very badly, and laughingly told everybody that no one could do him a more valuable service than by relieving him of this burden. Then the painter hesitated and declined to say more. I conjured him to tell me all, assuring him that I was prepared to hear the worst. At last he yielded, and told me that after some time the count had really found a successor in the person of a French marquis, or at least a pretended marquis, who had taken Leonora with him to Paris. This had occurred about a year ago. The count was said to be living in Naples. I went to Naples, with my friend the painter. I had told him my purpose to have my revenge. He thought it would be very difficult, since the count was as cunning and brave as he was dissipated and cruel. But when he saw me firmly bent upon my purpose, he offered to accompany me. I accepted the offer; for the painter had many acquaintances among the great men of the world, and could introduce me into the circles frequented by the count, to which I would not otherwise have found access.

"We reached Naples. The count was still there, the spoilt pet of the women and the horror of fathers and husbands. The painter succeeded without any trouble in introducing me in good society. For some time chance seemed to defeat every effort I made to meet the count at one of the parties where he was expected. At last I met him at a great soiree given by the Russian Minister. I saw him standing in the centre of a group of ladies and gentlemen, and could not deny him the praise of really superb beauty and an almost irresistible charm of manner. I approached the group, with the painter by my side.

"'Count,' said the painter, 'Doctor Berger, of Fichtenau, desires to make your acquaintance; permit me to present him to you.'

"At the mention of Fichtenau the count had turned pale, and changed countenance in such a manner that all the by-standers were struck by it.

"'I shall not detain you long, count,' said I, stepping forward, 'I only desire to learn from you the present place of residence of that young lady whom you carried off from her paternal home three years ago, and whom you finally sold to a French adventurer in Rome.'

"I said these words calmly, slowly, weighing every syllable. My voice was heard all over the room, for at the first words I uttered everybody had become so silent that you could have heard a pin drop.

"The count had turned still paler, but he soon recovered himself and said:

"'And what right have you to ask such a question at a time and place which you have chosen marvellously well?'

"'I had the misfortune of being engaged to the young lady.'

"'And if I decline giving you the information----'

"'Then I declare you before all these ladies and gentlemen to be from head to foot nothing but a vulgar blackguard.'

"With these words I threw my glove into his face and left the company, after having asked their pardon for the necessity that had forced me to provoke so unpleasant a scene.

"An insult of this kind could only be wiped out by blood, according to the views of the society in which the count moved. To prevent his pleading too great a disparity in social rank I had taken the precaution of wearing my officer's uniform; and besides, the well-known name of my friend, the painter, secured me against the suspicion of being an unknown adventurer. The very favor which the count enjoyed with the ladies had, moreover, made him very hateful to the men, so that everybody was glad to see him thus publicly exposed, and if he had refused to fight me he would probably have lost his standing in society. His few friends had, therefore, shrugged their shoulders, and his enemies had smiled with delight, when he had left the house soon after my departure, and an hour afterwards I received a challenge for the following morning. That was all I desired. I was delighted; and the few hours still wanting till I should see the seducer of Leonora, the murderer of my earthly happiness, at the mouth of my pistol, seemed to me an eternity. I could not bear the confinement of my hotel; I wanted to cool the fever of revenge that burnt in me in the balsamic night air. My friend begged me not to do so, since I might easily take cold during my nightly promenade, as he called it, with an ironical smile. But excited and maddened as I was, I insisted on my purpose, and he accompanied me, but only after having provided daggers for both of us.

"I was soon to learn how much better the painter knew the character of my enemy and the manners of the people among whom we happened to be. We had scarcely gone a few hundred yards from the hotel, and were just turning into Toledo street from a narrow lane, when four men suddenly jumped forth from the deep shadow of a house and fell upon us with incredible fury. Fortunately the painter was a man of gigantic strength, and I also had my good arm and presence of mind. The murderers seemed to be surprised by our resistance. After a few moments they took to their heels. I was going to follow them. 'Let them run,' said the painter, wiping his bloody dagger; 'I fear I have scratched one of them rather too deep. But the fellow was really too zealous to earn the few dollars which the count had given him.'

"I had lost all desire to continue my walk. We returned by the nearest way to our hotel, and awaited the appointed hour with impatience.

"The painter tried to persuade me that I ought not to fight a duel with a man who had resorted to assassination, but should knock him down like a mad dog; but I replied to him that that was exactly what I meant to, do, and that the duel was only an empty ceremony. We became quite warm in the discussion.

"Very unnecessarily so. Morning broke at last; we were the first on the spot; no adversary was to be seen. At last, an hour later, the count's second appeared--a young Italian nobleman--pale and overwhelmed with shame. He told us how sorry he was to have kept us waiting so long, but that it was not his fault. The count had left his house late at night, after having arranged everything with his second, leaving orders for his man servant not to sit up for him. Since that moment he had not been seen again. It seemed to be highly probable that some accident had befallen him, for of course it would be ridiculous to presume for a moment that a man of the count's high social position should have escaped by flight from a duel.

"The painter replied that we could very well afford to wait, and that delay was not defeat. The young nobleman promised to inform us of anything he might learn concerning the count's movements. But the count remained unseen, and I had at last to take the painter's view, which he had already mentioned on the night of our encounter with the assassins, that the count himself had led the attack, being in all probability the very person whose violence had been most conspicuous, and who had been so severely punished by the strong arm of the painter. Either he had died in consequence of the wound received on that occasion, or, what was more probable, he was only wounded and remained concealed in order to avoid giving an explanation of his condition. Perhaps, also, he wished to escape the investigation of the affair by the police, who showed an unusual activity in the matter, as if they had been stimulated by the enemies of the count, and at the same time to escape from an adversary who attached such vulgar importance to matters which in his circle were passed over with a slight smile.