At this moment a horseman passed them at full gallop, who had turned
a few moments before from a byway into the high-road. A large
Newfoundland dog, whom Oswald at first took for Melitta's dog,
galloped in long strides by the side of the horse, a superb jet-black
thorough-bred, whose chest was covered with white foam. The horseman,
as far as they could judge in passing, was a man of perhaps thirty,
tall and thin, and, contrary to the custom of the country gentlemen of
that region, in long trousers instead of top-boots; his seat on
horseback was utterly unlike that of a country gentleman. But this was
perhaps more the effect of negligence and the habit of carelessness
than real awkwardness, for when he found himself suddenly close before
the two wanderers, whom he had not noticed before in his thoughts or
his reveries, he threw his horse with such force and skill on his
haunches, that he proved his horsemanship beyond all doubt. "_Excusez,
Messieurs_," he said, touching his hat and riding off again.
"Do you know that gentleman?" said Oswald, pausing and looking after
the man, whose features seemed to him familiar and yet strange.
"_Tiens!_" said Mr. Bemperlein, also stopping; "that must have been
Baron Oldenburg. Yes, it was the baron!" he cried, as he saw the
gentleman stop when he reached the two boys, with whom he shook hands.
"I should not have recognized him with his black beard and his sunburnt
face. He looks like a veritable Cabyle. When can he have come back?"
"Has he been travelling?" asked Oswald, with assumed indifference.
"He has been travelling these ten years," replied Mr. Bemperlein.
"Three years ago Frau von Berkow, the two Barnewitz, met him in Rome,
and then they travelled together through Southern Italy. In Sicily they
parted again. My friends prepared to return home, but the baron went on
to Egypt, Arabia, and heaven knows where else his restless spirit has
driven him. But we have again lost sight of our subject."
Mr. Bemperlein began his tale once more with his inexhaustible fund of
details; but if Oswald had before only listened with one ear, his
thoughts now were far away. That, then, was the man who had played so
prominent a part in Melitta's life! So great a part! How great a part?
She had never really loved him--perhaps--no, certainly never loved
him--but is true love always the last reward of a woman's highest
favor? Is there no such thing as desire without love? Or love without
desire? Only a wish to hold him captive by all means, among them, by
the memory of pleasure enjoyed. Has she ever been happy by the side of
this man, at whose cradle the graces had failed to appear; happy,
though not perfectly so, not as happy as she had hoped, but still? Oh!
that thought brought intolerable torment!
The demon of jealousy was whispering and hissing bad thoughts in his
ear, which made his blood boil and big drops of perspiration to break
out on his forehead--no wonder, then, that he heard Mr. Bemperlein's
tale only in a dream. This only he understood, that the strange man had
only now begun to think of his so-called science, his long-cherished
profession only now, when all the troubles of life seemed to be ended,
and he could breathe, a free man, in the green solitude of Berkow. He
had now only begun to make the acquaintance of the heroes of modern
literature, especially of Shakespeare; and from the poets he had passed
to the philosophers, here again above all in Spinoza finding a new
world opening before him which he had not suspected in his scholastic
studies. Under such influence he had been led to the study of nature,
to botany, mineralogy, and physics; he had built himself, with old
Baumann's aid, a small laboratory, where he had industriously pursued
his new sciences, and there, alas! he had found, amid phials and
retorts, that his orthodox faith, as far as the reading of the
philosophers had not destroyed it already, had altogether evaporated!
"Thus matters went on for a while," said Mr. Bemperlein, "but the
moment came when it was my duty to decide whether I should openly avow
my apostasy from the faith of my fathers or not. A very lucrative cure
in this region, which was in the hands of an uncle of Frau von Berkow,
became vacant by the death of the incumbent. The gentleman thought he
would please his niece by offering the place to me; I had nothing to do
but to go the following Sunday and preach my trial-sermon. Now, you
must know that when the thing was first mentioned to me I was so much
overwhelmed by surprise and by fright, and so unwilling to hurt the
kind man's feelings, that I said: 'Yes.' You know Frau von Berkow
intended to send Julius to Grunwald, and thus I could not have stayed
at Berkow any longer at best. I also sat down to compose my sermon. I
had so far succeeded in avoiding every call to show my theological
talent of declamation, and now I felt, to my horror, that I had
completely forgotten the pulpit-talk, and, what was worse, the pulpit
logic. Three nights in succession I began my Sisyphus work, but I never
got farther than 'My dear brethren!' In the third night, when I had
gone to bed quite in despair, and had fallen asleep in great sorrow,
thinking what my good father and my worthy grandfather, whom I had
known still, would have said if they could see their son and grandson
in full incredulity, after he had been so carefully trained in
orthodoxy, I had the following curious dream, which no doubt partly
arose from an animated description Frau von Berkow had given me of the
Louvre.
"I dreamt, then, I was entering into a lofty, large hall, with pictures
and statues on all the walls. There sat God the Father himself, a
handsome, bearded old man, and held forth his hand and created heaven
and earth; then came Adam and Eve, in white marble--Eve pretty well
preserved, but Adam had lost his head; then 'Cain's Fratricide,' a
large oil-painting, and by its side 'Adam and Eve find the corpse of
murdered Abel,' on which the form of the deadly pale youth, who looked
like broken white lilies, was deeply touching. Thus I went on and on,
looking at statue after statue and painting after painting. I was not
alone in the hall; on the contrary, a crowd of people was moving along
the walls and amid the forest of statues. Large groups were standing
before some of the most prominent works; for instance, the passage of
the children of Israel through the Red Sea, a gigantic fresco, and
smaller groups before other paintings, less remarkable for historic
importance than for the piquancy of the scene they represented. Thus I
was much annoyed by a crowd of young people who stood before 'Lot
drunk,' and put their heads together and laughed. Altogether, the
deportment of the company appeared to me highly improper. The women
were laughing and talking and coquetting; the men chatted and ogled,
and a few, with long legs and long teeth,--probably English,--actually
kept their hats on. Almost all had a book in their hands, into which
they looked conscientiously from time to time, when they wished for
information about one of the works of art. This book seemed to be a
catalogue of the Museum, and I wished to obtain one, because I had
forgotten the order in which the prophets came, and thus could not tell
whether the bearded man in No. 8 was Habakkuk, and the young man in No.
9 Zephaniah, or not; I turned, therefore, to an old gentleman whom I
had seen busy with a fly-brush, and whom I therefore took to be one of
the keepers. As I approached him the man turned round, and what was my
surprise when I recognized my own grandfather. 'What do you desire,
young man?' he asked, in a severe tone. I repeated timidly my question.
'Here is a catalogue,' he said, taking one of the books which lay in
large numbers on the table and handing it to me, 'it costs half a
dollar.' I opened the book; 'I wanted a catalogue,' said I, 'you have
given me--' 'To be sure,' said the old man, in a melancholy tone of
voice, 'this is the catalogue of the Old Museum; the door to the New
Museum, in which you will find the works of art from the year one of
our Christian Era till the year 1793, when the Christian religion was
abolished, and the goddess Reason ascended the throne--is there.' He
pointed towards a fine flight of broad stairs, which led up to the
other halls. 'You will do well to buy another catalogue there. It costs
much less, and you must speak about it to your father, who holds there
the same office which I fill here.' And thereupon the old man turned
his back to me and began once more to dust the statues and pictures
with his tall fly-brush. 'Excuse me, dear grandfather,' I said.--'I am
not your grandfather,' replied the old man, quietly going on with his
occupation. 'Well, are you the keeper?' I asked. 'Yes, indeed, keeper
of the Museum, nothing else.'--'And where have they put all the works
of art which have been produced since that time?'--'Since that
memorable year,' said the old man, 'nothing worth speaking of has been
achieved. A few schools of art have been formed here and there, but
they have produced nothing that can be called artistic. The artists
lack the proper faith, and without faith nothing great can be painted
or sculptured or written'--when he said this he looked at me
reprovingly--'Or written,' I repeated, abated, thinking of my
unsuccessful efforts--'Or written,' he continued, 'and then the world
has become so indifferent, and critics have become so very sharp and
severe, that they have lost that naive simplicity and dreamy security
without which, unfortunately--but now I must beg you to leave; the bell
has been ringing for some time, and you are the very last.' He
accompanied me to the entrance, showed me the door, and invited me with
a stiff bow to walk out. I did so--the door closed with a crash and--I
awoke.
"After that dream," continued Bemperlein, "I made no more efforts.
Without faith no sermon can be written, I said to myself, and even if
one could be written it could not be delivered, at least not by a man
like yourself, who has a little conscience left, and neither chick nor
child, such as have tempted many an honest man to write and say things
which he can only on that plea defend before God and the world. I felt
clearly that I could not become a minister of the gospel, and I
therefore wrote this morning to the patron of that church, thanking him
for the honor he had done me, and declining his offer, because I had
decided to accompany Julius to Grunwald. For, as I was writing the
sentence, the idea occurred to me. I went at once to Frau von Berkow to
tell her of my resolution, and she seemed to be delighted. Now, my dear
sir, after you have had the goodness to listen to this long story of
mine, pray tell me, what would you do in my place? Consider that
I am already twenty-eight years old, and that I still have all my
twenty-eight teeth. The wisdom-teeth have not yet appeared, perhaps
because Nature has forgotten them, or because of a wise provision of
Fate, which remembered how little I would often have to bite in this
life."
"What I would do in your place," said Oswald, "if I were such a brave,
conscientious, excellent----"
"Pray don't, my dear sir," said Bemperlein, blushing all over.
"I say conscientious, excellent man? Well, that question can easily be
answered. I would do what you have already done. I would cheerfully
turn my back upon the paradise of naive thoughtlessness and harmless
orthodoxy, after having, tasted of the tree of knowledge. I would not
allow myself to be cooped up in that stall in which the hypocrites, the
vile dogs in the sheeps' clothing of humility, are whining and howling
so fearfully."
"Very well, very well!" said Mr. Bemperlein, rubbing his hands with
delight, "and what would you do next, my dear sir?"
"Then," replied Oswald, "if I were you, I would remember what
sufferings I had endured as a weak boy, and what industry and
perseverance I had shown, simply in order to acquire a vast mass of
knowledge which I am now glad to be able to forget again. I would
remember this, I say, and now study a science which I should not wish
to forget again, because I could be a pupil there without first
fettering my reason, and because this science is fruitful for myself
and fruitful for my fellow-beings."
"Excellent! excellent!" said Mr. Bemperlein. "Go on, go on!"
"In one word, I would devote myself," continued Oswald, "with all my
strength to those sciences which you have already tried, and I would,
for that purpose, return to Grunwald and enter my name once more as a
student, but not in order to study Theology, but this time Medicine."
"The Medical Faculty in Grunwald is excellent," said Mr. Bemperlein.
"It is acknowledged to be one of the best in Germany," continued
Oswald. "Then I would go to some other universities as long as the
money lasts."
"Money like hay, money like hay," continued Mr. Bemperlein--"for six
years a princely income and full board--I pray you, my dear sir, I have
enough to live on for half a century."
"Then I would become a famous physician----"
"Do you know," said Bemperlein, standing still and looking back at the
boys, in a whisper, "I have already poisoned some of Julius' rabbits
secretly, and dissected them afterwards, and the frogs in the swamps
behind our park have no reason to be friends of mine."
"Well done!" laughed Oswald. "And then I would marry."
"Really?" said Bemperlein.
"Well, of course, and--have a half-dozen little Bemperleins who would,
after a while, all turn out great Bemperleins, bright, shining lights
in modern science."
"And the girls?" said Bemperlein, laughing.
"The girls will marry brave, truthful men, and thus help to bring on
the good time when we shall have, 'Oh Liberty, sweet liberty!'"
"Yes, yes," cried Mr. Bemperlein, "so must it come. Thanks, a thousand
thanks, my dear friend; you have scattered the last clouds of doubt by
your encouraging words. Tomorrow I go with Julius to Grunwald."
"I will give you a letter of introduction to Professor Berger," said
Oswald; "he is connected with all the great men in Natural Science."
He tore a leaf from his pocket-book, wrote a few lines to Berger, and
gave it to Bemperlein.
"Thanks! many thanks!" said the latter, taking the note. "The
acquaintance with such a man may become very useful to me."
"Most assuredly. Speak quite candidly with him, without any reserve
whatever, and then you may feel assured that he will not conceal from
you anything that is in his heart. Perhaps he will advise you to go at
once to a larger University, as, for instance, that at the capital. You
must follow his advice."
"_Nous verrons! nous verrons!_" said Mr. Bemperlein. "But here we are
at the park gate. Won't you come in?"
"No, no," replied Oswald, hastily. "I must get back to Grenwitz."
"Well, then, farewell! As soon as I have installed Julius in Grunwald,
and as soon as I have obtained all the information I want from Berger,
I shall be back again to take formal leave. In the mean time, farewell,
my dear sir."
"Good-by, good-by!" said Oswald, pressing Bemperlein's hand, and then
Julius', and taking Bruno back with him into the forest, as if an angel
with a flaming sword was keeping watch at the park-gates of Berkow.