* * * * *
Alas for us unhappy guests of the Spring! It is all over with the
pleasures of Lilienbad. The above superscription my brother could still
make, before hurrying off to Maussenbach. For there Gustavus lies in
_prison_. It is all incomprehensible. My friend Beata sinks under the
news we have received and which came to-day in the following letter to
my brother from Dr. Fenk. Probably the following Job's-post will
conclude this whole book as well as our previous happy days.
* * * * *
"I will not, as a woman would, spare thee, my dear friend, but relate
to thee at once the whole extraordinary blow which has smitten our
happy hours and most of all those of our two friends.
"Three days after our charming night--dost thou still remember a
certain remark of Ottomar about the danger of raptures?--Professor
Hoppedizel undertakes to carry out his inconsiderate joke of breaking
into the palace of Maussenbach. The sly hunter Robisch was just then
away from home; but had gone for fun with thy predecessor, the
Government Counsellor Kolb, on a cruise after thieves. Observe, a
multitude of persons and circumstances are involved here, which can
hardly have been brought together by accident.
"The Professor comes with six comrades, and brings a ladder with him,
in order to set it up against a window which had been broken for years
and which looks over towards Auenthal. But when he comes up under the
window--lo! one is already standing there. He takes it as the most
fortunate accident and they go up in a body, almost on each other's
heels. At the top a hand reaches out a silver sword-belt as if offering
it to some one--the Professor seizes both and leaps in at the window.
There he found what appeared to be a thief, who was expecting
accomplices on the ladder. The thievish realist, in the fury of
desperation falls upon the nominalist--the gallery on the ladder
tumbles in after him and increases the fighting melee. The thumps upon
the floor startle the listening Roeper less out of his sleep than out of
his bed--he alarms the whole house and they his tipstaff--to tell all
in a word: in a few minutes, with the fury of a miser saving and
clutching his goods, he had made both the humorous and the serious
thieves prisoners, however much the true thief might lay about him and
however much the Professor might argue. And now all are sitting fast
and waiting for thee.
"--Ah! wilt thou be able to bear it--if I tell thee all? The scouts
of Kolb and Robisch find around Maussenbach the associates of the
captured thief--they penetrate the woods, they go to a cave, as if they
knew it led to something--they find a subterranean human world. Oh,
that of all men thou to thy sorrow shouldst have been destined to be
found there, thou innocent and unfortunate one! Now thy tender heart
beats even against a prison wall!--Must I name to thee thy friend
Gustavus?--Haste, haste, that the course of things may be changed!
"Lo! not merely on thy breast, but upon mine also has this day laid a
heavy load. Canst thou endure that I should tell thee more still?--that
it is the merest chance that Ottomar still lives. I carried him the
news of our misfortune. With a frightful struggle of his nature, in
which every fibre battled with a different horror, he heard me through,
and then asked me whether no one had been taken prisoner who had _six_
fingers. 'I took a solemn oath,' said he, 'in that hole in the woods,
never to reveal to a soul our _subterranean league_, until an hour
before my death. Fenk, I will now divulge the whole secret. My
supplications and struggles availed nothing; he told me all, 'Gustavus
must be vindicated,' said he. But this history is nowhere safe, hardly
in the most faithful bosom, least of all on this paper. Ottomar was
attacked by his so-called moment-of-annihilation. I let not his hand go
out of mine, so that he might outlive his hour and break his oath.
There is nothing higher than a man who despises life; and in this lofty
position my friend stood before me, who, in his cave, had risked more
and lived better than all they in Scheerau. I saw upon him the sign
that he meant to die. It was right. We were in the chamber where the
wax mummies stand with the black garlands, to remind man how little he
was, and how little he is. 'Bend thy head aside,' said he (for I
chained myself to him), 'that I may look into Sirius--that I may see
out into the infinite heavens and have a solace--that I may transport
myself over an earth more or less. O friend, make not dying so bitter
to me--and be neither angry nor sad. O, see how all heaven gleams from
one infinity to another, how it lives and nothing is dead up yonder;
the human originals of all these waxen corpses dwell there in that
blue.--O ye departed ones, to-day I too join you, into whatever sun my
human spark of light may fly, when the body melts away from it. I shall
find you again.'"
"The striking of every quarter of an hour had up to this time pierced
my heart; but the last quarter struck upon my ear like a funeral knell;
I watched anxiously his hands and steps; he fell on my neck: 'No! no!'
said I, 'here is no parting--I shall hate thee into the very grave, if
thou hast any design--embrace me not.' He had already done it; his
whole being was a throbbing heart; he would fain expire in the very
emotion of friendship; I pressed his bosom to mine, and his soul to
mine: 'I embrace thee,' said he, 'on the earth; into whatever world
death may cast me, never shall I forget thee; I shall there look toward
the earth and spread out my arms after the earthly friend and nothing
shall fill these arms but the faithful, heavy-laden breast which here
has suffered with me, here with me has endured the earth.... Behold!
thou weepest and yet wouldst not embrace me! O beloved!--on thy bosom I
feel not the vanity of earth----thou too wilt die!... Mighty Being
above the earth!' ... Here he tore himself away from me and fell on his
knees and prayed: 'Destroy me not, punish me not! I go away from this
earth; thou knowest what man comes to; thou knowest what earthly life
is and our earthly condition. But, O God! man has a second heart; a
second soul, his friend! Give me again the friend, together with my
life--when one day all human hearts and all human blood molder in
graves; O gracious, loving Being! then breathe thou over men and show
Eternity their love!' A leap upward--a sudden dart towards me--a
crushing embrace--a blow upon the wall--a shot from it.--
"But he still lives.
"Fenk."