THE ARREST.
On the following morning the rumor spread all over Nuremberg, that Palm,
the bookseller, had returned and was concealed in his house. The cook
had stated this in the strictest confidence to some of her friends when
she had appeared on the market-place to purchase some vegetables. The
friends had communicated the news, of course, likewise in the strictest
confidence, to other persons, and thus the whole city became very soon
aware of the secret.
The friends of the family now hastened to go to Mrs. Palm for the
purpose of ascertaining from herself whether the information were true.
Anna denied it, however; she asserted she had received this very morning
a letter written by her husband at Erlangen; but when one of the more
importunate friends requested her to communicate the contents of the
letter to him, or let him see it at least, she became embarrassed and
made an evasive reply.
“He is here!” whispered the friends to each other, when they left Mrs.
Anna Palm. “He is here, but conceals himself so that the French spies
who have been sneaking around here for the last few days may not
discover his whereabouts. It is prudent for him to do so, and we will
not betray him, but faithfully keep his secret.”
But a secret of which a whole city is aware, and which is being talked
of by all the gossips in town, is difficult to keep, and it is useless
to make any effort for the purpose of preventing it from being betrayed
to the enemy.
Palm did not suspect any thing whatever of what was going on. He deemed
himself entirely safe in his wife’s peaceful, silent room, the windows
of which, opening upon the garden, were inaccessible to spying eyes,
while its only door led to the large store where his two clerks were
attending to the business of the firm and waiting on the customers who
ordered or purchased books of them.
Anna had just left the room to consult with her servants about the
affairs of the household and kitchen; and Palm, who was comfortably
stretched out on the sofa, was engaged in reading. The anxiety which had
rendered him so restless during the previous days had left him again; he
felt perfectly reassured, and smiled at his own fear which had flitted
past him like a threatening cloud.
All at once he was startled from his comfortable repose by a loud
conversation in the store, and rose from the divan in order to hear what
was the matter.
“I tell you I am unable to assist you,” he heard his book-keeper say. “I
am poor myself, and Mr. Palm is not at home.”
“Mr. Palm is at home, and I implore you let me see him,” said a strange,
supplicating voice. “He has a generous heart and if I tell him of my
distress he will pity me and lend me his assistance.”
“Come back in a few days, then,” exclaimed the book-keeper; “Mr. Palm
will then be back, perhaps, from his journey.”
“In a few days!” ejaculated the strange voice--“in a few days my wife
and child will be starved to death, for unless I am able to procure
relief within this hour, my cruel creditor will have me taken to the
debtors’ prison, and I shall be unable then to assist my sick wife and
baby. Oh, have mercy on my distress! Let me see Mr. Palm, that I may
implore his assistance!”
“Mr. Palm is not at home as I told you already,” exclaimed the
book-keeper in an angry voice. “How am I to let you see him, then? Come
back in a few days--that is the only advice I can give you. Go now, and
do not disturb me any longer!”
“No, people shall never say that I turned a despairing man away from my
door,” muttered Palm, rapidly crossing the room and opening the door of
the store.
“Stay, poor man,” he said to the beggar, who had already turned around
and was about to leave the store--“stay.”
The beggar turned around, and, on perceiving Palm, who stood on the
threshold of the door, uttered a joyful cry.
“Do you see,” he said, triumphantly to the book-keeper--“do you see
that I was right? Mr. Palm is at home, and will help me.”
“I will help you if I can,” said Palm, kindly. “What does your debt
amount to?”
“Ah, Mr. Palm, I owe my landlord a quarter’s rent, amounting to twenty
florins. But if you should be so generous as to give me half that sum,
it would be enough, for the landlord has promised to wait three months,
provided I paid him now ten florins.”
“You shall have the ten florins,” said Palm. “Mr. Bertram, pay this man
ten florins, and charge them to me.”
“Oh, Mr. Palm, how kind you are!” exclaimed the beggar, joyfully. “How
shall I ever be able to thank you for what you have done for me to-day?”
“Thank me by being industrious and making timely provision for your
wife and child, in order not to be again reduced to such distress,” said
Palm, nodding kindly to the stranger, and returning to the adjoining
room.
With the ten florins which the book-keeper had paid to him, the beggar
hastened into the street. No sooner had he left the threshold of Palm’s
house than the melancholy and despairing air disappeared from his face,
which now assumed a scornful and malicious mien. With hasty steps he
hurried over to St. Sebald’s church, to the pillar yonder, behind which
two men, wrapped in their cloaks, were to be seen.
“Mr. Palm is at home,” said the beggar, grinning. “Go into the store,
cross it and enter the adjoining sitting-room--there you will find him.
I have spied it out for you, and now give me my pay.”
“First we must know whether you have told us the truth,” said one of the
men. “It may be all false.”
“But I tell you I have seen him with my own eyes,” replied the beggar.
“I stood in the store, and cried and lamented in the most heart-rending
manner, and protested solemnly that my wife and baby would be starved
to death, unless Mr. Palm should assist me. The book-keeper refused my
application, but then I cried only the louder, so as to be heard by Mr.
Palm. And he did hear me; he came out of his hiding-place and gave me
the ten florins I asked him for. Here they are.”
“Well, if you have got ten florins, that is abundant pay for your
treachery,” said the two men. “It is Judas-money. To betray your
benefactor, who has just made you a generous present; forsooth, only a
German could do that.”
They turned their backs contemptuously on the beggar, and walked across
the street toward Palm’s house.
There was nobody in the hall, and the two men entered the store without
being hindered. Without replying to the book-keeper and second clerk,
who came to meet them for the purpose of receiving their orders, they
put off their cloaks.
“French gens d’armes,” muttered the book-keeper, turning pale, and he
advanced a few steps toward the door of the sitting-room. One of the
gens d’armes kept him back.
“Both of you will stay here,” he said, imperiously, “we are going to
enter that room. Utter the faintest sound, the slightest warning, and we
shall arrest both of you. Be silent, therefore, and let us do our duty.”
The two clerks dared not stir, and saw with silent dismay that the two
gens d’armes approached the door of the sitting-room and hastily opened
it.
Then they heard a few imperious words, followed by a loud cry of
despair.
“Oh, the poor woman!” muttered the book-keeper, with quivering lips, but
without moving from the spot.
The door of the sitting-room, which the gens d’armes had closed, opened
again, and the two policemen stepped into the store; they led Palm into
it. Each of them had seized one of his arms.
Palm looked pale, and his brow was clouded, but nevertheless he
walked forward like a man who is determined not to be crushed by his
misfortunes, but to bear them as manfully as possible. When he arrived
in the middle of the store, near the table where his two clerks were
standing, he stopped.
“Then you will not give me half an hour’s time to arrange my business
affairs with my book-keeper, and to give him my orders?” he asked the
policemen, who wanted to drag him forward.
“No, not a minute,” they said. “We have received stringent orders to
take you at once to the general, and if you should refuse to follow us
willingly, to iron you and remove you forcibly.”
“You see I offer no resistance whatever,” said Palm, contemptuously.
“Let us go. Bertram, pray look after my wife--she has fainted. Remember
me to her and to my children. Farewell!”
The two young men made no reply; their tears choked their voices. But
when Palm had disappeared, they rushed into the sitting-room to assist
the unhappy young wife.
She was lying on the floor, pale, rigid, and resembling a lily broken
by the storm. Her eyes were half opened and dim; the long braids of
her beautiful light-colored hair, which she had just been engaged in
arranging when the gens d’armes entered, fell down dishevelled and
like curling snakes on her face and shoulders, from which the small,
transparent, gauze handkerchief had been removed. Her features, always
so lovely and gentle, bore now an expression of anger and horror, which
they had assumed when she fainted on hearing the French policemen tell
her husband that they had come to arrest him, and that he must follow
them.
They succeeded only after long efforts in bringing her back to
consciousness. But she was not restored to life by the salts which her
servant-girl rubbed on her forehead, nor by the imploring words of the
book-keeper, but by the scalding tears of her little girls which melted
and warmed her frozen blood again.
She raised herself with a deep sigh, and her wild, frightened glances
wandered about the room, and fixed themselves searchingly on every form
which she beheld in it. When she had satisfied her-self that he was not
among them, he whom her glances had sought for so anxiously, she clasped
her children with a loud cry of horror in her arms and pressing them
convulsively against her bosom, sobbed piteously.
But she did not long give way to her grief and despair. She dried her
tears hastily and rose.
“It is no time now for weeping and lamenting,” she said, drawing a deep
breath; “I shall have time enough for that afterward, now I must act
and see whether I cannot assist him. Do you know whither they have taken
him?”
“To the headquarters of Colomb, the French general, who is stationed in
this city,” said the book-keeper.
“I shall go to the general, and he will have to tell me at least if
I cannot see my husband in his prison,” she said, resolutely. “Quick,
Kate, assist me in dressing-; arrange my hair, for you see my hands are
trembling violently; they are weaker than my heart.”
She rose to go to her dressing-room. But her feet refused to serve her;
she turned dizzy, and sank down overcome by a fresh swoon.
It was only after hours of the most violent efforts that the poor young
wife succeeded in recovering from the physical prostration caused by
her sudden fright, and in becoming again able to act resolutely and
energetically. Then, as bold and courageous as an angry lioness, she was
determined to struggle with the whole world for the beloved husband who
had been torn from her.