Nearly four years had passed in the life of the dreamy youth. They had
been turbulent, epoch-making years, years full of anguish and unabated
fear. Napoleon’s armies had swept South as far as the Mediterranean and
beyond, had also pushed their way East as far as the ancient capital of
Russia, the whole world breathlessly awaiting the ultimate fate of the
conqueror. For mingled with the fear of the invader was the conviction
that no matter how heroic, he must meet with defeat in the end. When
would the end come? The vanquished nations had hoped against hope, but
finally beheld a sign from Heaven in the devouring flames of Moscow. A
lull followed, the lull before an impeding storm. Spring had arrived,
and with it came the nervous tension of prolonged suspense. Foreboding
was in the air. The very elements foretold a terrific struggle.
Westphalia and all of northern Germany was visited by devastating
storms. On clear nights the superstitious saw in the heavens blood-red
stars in the shape of besoms with long handles—the unerring omen of
bloody battles! Everybody was certain that a gripping conflict between
God and the devil was at hand, but no one knew on which side was God and
on which the devil.
But what did it all matter to Albert Zorn? Nero fiddled while Rome was
burning; Goethe rhymed sweet lyrics and made love to Christiane Vulpius
while the enemy was at the gates of Weimar; on the very day that the
Battle of Jena was fought, Schlegel, the savant of Jena, unconcernedly
dispatched a manuscript to his publisher.
Albert was only thinking of his hero, the Emperor. Tears were in the
boy’s eyes as he listened to the reports of the Emperor’s flight from
the Russian steppes, mortification in his soul as he looked upon the
foot-weary, wan, hollow-eyed, bedraggled forms of the straggling
grenadiers, making their way home from the snowfields of Smolensk.
However, even the stirring news of lost battles, the flying rumors of
approaching clashes, the roar of death-dealing cannon, were to him mere
tales of adventure romantically told. Spring had come, the sun was
shining brilliantly, perfume was in the air, flowers were unfolding
treasures of gold and silver and dazzling rubies, the buds were
revealing depositories of emerald and opal and ermine, the nightingales
were singing of love and passion and death—adolescence’s holy
trinity—and the banks of the Rhine were re-echoing the mystic legends
of bygone days.
He had even failed to note the difference between his father’s brown
coat with a sheen of genteel shabbiness and his own clothes of good
quality and latest mode, and the disparity between his mother’s frocks,
antedating the French occupation, and those of his sister in the fashion
of the day.
His mind was occupied with other thoughts. He was aloof and alone. He
never had many friends but always had at least one devoted comrade, who
accompanied him on his rambles through the woods on the outskirts of the
city or lay with him outstretched on the grassy bank of the Rhine and
listened to his exuberant speeches. Christian Lutz was still his trusted
friend. Christian was to Albert what Jonathan was to that poetical
shepherd boy, David. Perhaps the Psalmist’s love for the son of King
Saul was likewise strengthened by the latter’s willingness to listen.
Albert poured into Christian’s ears all his secret hopes and tormenting
despair. Not infrequently the hopes and despair came almost at once. In
the midst of an outpouring of his poetic fervor despair would seize him.
One day he read a glowing account of Byron in a German periodical. The
author of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” was only in the early twenties
and he, Albert, was already sixteen and had done nothing! Consumed with
burning envy he tossed on the grass in utter misery, tears rolling down
his pale cheeks. He called himself a vain coxcomb, a braggart without a
spark of talent. But presently his loyal friend began to contradict his
self-accusations. Christian reminded him of the drama in verse he was
planning, and after all one was not so very old at sixteen. Albert
remained quiet for a space, listening to his friend’s comforting,
pulling blades of grass by the roots and absently tearing them into tiny
bits. And finally he burst out impetuously, “I know, Christian, I know
I’ll be a great poet—I’ll write better than Wilhelm Müller, better
than—.” Becoming conscious of his boasting he checked himself and,
producing a few sheets from his breast pocket, began to read the verses
he had penned the evening before. And Christian was such an encouraging
listener! His enthusiasm was boundless. “Albert, these verses are as
beautiful as any of Uhland’s!” he exclaimed.
Albert blushed scarlet. He had thought that himself but dared not utter
such blasphemy. For to Albert at this stage of his life, Uhland was the
highest of all high. It was as if some second rate god of antiquity
boasted of a mightiness surpassing that of Zeus.
In moods like these he would steal out of the house, his visored cap
over his eyes, and wander aimlessly through the maze of crooked, narrow
streets, driven by irresistible impulses, until he would find himself on
the bank of his beloved river. Here there were a thousand objects to
dissipate his gloom. The gently flowing stream, the floating boats, the
changing tints of the sky, the little wildflowers turning their pretty
faces up to him like coquettish young maidens. And the ruins of the
castle on the bank of the Rhine abounded in mystery. He often paused,
pensively listening to the moaning and sighing of the wind-driven waves
against those ruins with a secret awe creeping into his being. Was that
the rustling of her silk dress—the dress of the “headless princess”, of
whom his nurse had told him in his childhood? But the headless princess
only came out of the ruins on moonlight nights! Perhaps they were the
stealthy footsteps of the fair young shepherd, looking longingly at the
battlements in hope of catching a glimpse of his beloved princess!
His eyes opened, and circles seemed to go round and round—circles of
fanciful colors like those he had often seen when pressing his eyes
against his pillows—and there was a strange surging in his blood,
tumult in his head. His heart filled with a thousand longings, a
thousand yearnings, yearnings and longings indefinite, inarticulate. He
was only conscious of an aching restlessness, of an irritating strife
within him . . .
Throwing himself upon the grassy bank, he would lie listlessly for a
time, blankly staring at the sky, only half-conscious of chirping birds
around him. Gradually, slowly, strands of thought would begin to
come—desultory, fugitive, disconnected fibres of thought, like flying
gossamer.
Sometimes other ambitions stirred his being. His mother had often spoken
of a military career for him. His mind would skip to Napoleon, the hero
he had worshipped ever since he could remember. He would see himself in
the role of a warrior, mounted upon a spirited little white horse, as he
had once seen Napoleon. His vivid imagination would behold the
battlefields, littered with bleeding men and horses, the cry of agony in
his ears . . .
No, no, not that! He could not bear the sight of blood, the shriek of
pain. He could not be a great warrior.
Again his fancy drifted. He recalled “The Life and Adventures of the
Ingenious Knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha,” which he had read and
reread with such delight. He would like to be a warrior without being
obliged to shed blood, a hero like Don Quixote. Presently the stories of
Quixote became fused with those he had heard of his great-uncle, Nathan
Hollmann, of whose travels and adventures his aunts had told him so many
grotesque tales and whose writings he had discovered in a dusty chest in
his grandfather’s attic. Like his great-uncle he would also be dressed
in an Asiatic costume and smoke a long Turkish pipe and speak Arabic and
travel all over “the seven seas” and through Morocco and Spain and the
deserts of Egypt and make a pilgrimage to the Holy City and perhaps,
like him, see a vision on Mount Moriah! From the fantastic image of his
great-uncle to a Sheik of the Bedouins was but a step. He visualized
himself traveling with long trains of caravans and robber bands,
scouring the dense forests of Arabia for victims (when Albert’s
imagination took flight it disregarded geography). The notion of a
robber chief appealed to him. The romantic scenes from “Die Räuber”
haunted him. Of course, he would not really rob people—he could not
think of taking anything away from anybody—but he would lead the robber
bands through the immense woods and—and in chorus—sing beautiful
songs, the echoes resounding through hill and dale . . .
Lying thus, his fancy at large, the arabesque tales about his
great-uncle eventually merged into those of the knight errant. Cervantes
and Don Quixote and his great-uncle became one and the same person, and
he himself, for the moment, was the reincarnation of them all. He wished
he could go away—far, far away—to Morocco, to Turkey, to the “dense
forests” of Arabia, and perchance be thrown into an underground dungeon,
penetrated only by the stray rays of the sun, mildew smells everywhere,
with clanking chains and great keys turning in rusty locks, with big fat
mice—beautiful, snow-white mice—darting back and forth, the turbulent
waters of a surrounding moat lapping against the prison walls darkened
with age. His imaginary confinement in the dungeon, however, did not
interfere with his adventurous travels. His imprisonment was
simultaneous with his roving with caravans of camels and donkeys and
dromedaries, and elephants whose tusks glistened in the blazing sun of
the Orient . . .