Here follows the elucidation of these enigmatical inscriptions:
One day I went into Elvira’s room, and, as was very often the case,
found her sitting at her writing-desk. I came up to her and saw her
hastily cover up the blank-book in which she had been writing.
“What did you hide the book for?”
“I?” and she was suffused with fiery red.
“Show it to me.”
“No, no—”
“Have you secrets from me? Do you call that friendship?”
“You would laugh at me, mock at me!”
“Mock at you, I? You think thus of _my_ friendship?”
“The book has love-songs in it.”
“Well, every poet writes those; there’s nothing to laugh at in that. On
the contrary, I always feel that you write too many ballads, nothing
that sounds personal. Read me one of those love-songs, do.”
She drew out the book:
“All right, you shall hear the first—there are ten of them in all.”
She read. They were glowing stanzas. I do not mean such as many of our
up-to-date young girls print, volcanic outbursts of eroticism; but,
within the range of the permissible, the respectably permissible, they
were enthusiastic outpourings of heartfelt devotion. I thought them
marvelous.
“You must send that to Grillparzer.”
“No, there must never a stranger see these poems—my love is my secret.”
“Your love? Why, surely that is only poetry; we don’t see anybody but
the old schoolmaster and the minister; your verses are addressed to an
ideal—”
“My ideal is alive; look here!”
She pushed the book over to me and pointed to the final poem. The next
to the last line ended with the word _adeln_ (unhappily I have forgotten
the rest of the line), and the last ran
_Weil ich dich liebe, Friedrich zu Hadeln._
(Because I love thee, Friedrich of Hadeln.)
“For dear heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed. It had given me a turn. There
before me was the miracle. A real living love for a real living object.
Elvira seemed to me transformed, and now the remembered figure of the
Nassau ensign too came before my soul bathed in magical light. Yes, he
was in truth handsome, and assuredly there was in his nature the power
to _adeln_, “ennoble,” those who had learned to understand and to love
him, the adorable Friedrich von Hadeln.
To make a long story short, in a few days I too was “in love.” I let
Elvira pour out to me her enthusiasm and her accounts of what had so
greatly pleased her about him, and what she had felt all this time with
this hidden passion in her heart; I called back to my memory the
features of him who was so glowingly admired; and soon I could not
understand how it was that I had not also fallen in love on the
spot—now, now, the fire began to burn in my heart too. I remember
exactly how at a certain time it came over me clearly, the consciousness
that I was equally in love with the irresistible Friedrich. In the night
I had dreamed vividly of Wiesbaden. Again I danced the quadrille with
the ensign, his elder sister vis-à-vis,—I felt the pressure of his hand
in the _chaîne anglaise_ and heard the tone of his voice. In the
morning, on waking, I had the feeling that something new, rich, warm,
gladsome, was inundating my soul. What could this be? For a few seconds
I had no answer to this question, but then, with the recollection of the
dream, I knew what it was: love.
I relate this because this sensation remained so distinctly stamped on
my memory that I have derived from it a piece of knowledge which perhaps
not every one has discovered, or not every one preserved in memory,—to
wit, that in youth being in love comes upon one like something
elemental, like a newly existing sort of material so to speak, and is
then carried around with one as a possession, as a treasure. If it be
even a hapless love, by this very misfortune one feels himself enriched,
elevated, transformed. It may be a suffering, but it is a suffering
which is unspeakably sweeter than all hitherto-known joys. That my love
was a hapless, nay, a tragic love, was a thing of which I was conscious
not without pride. The humorous side of the whole thing did not become
clear to me till long afterward. At the time I saw only the frightful
situation—I loved the same man for whom the friend of my bosom was
burning, therefore I loved hopelessly.
Was I to confide in her, or lock my terrible secret in the depths of my
soul? I decided for the former. I had reproached her too bitterly for
having so long kept silence toward me—and we had then exchanged the
promise that henceforth we would impart to each other everything,
everything. I owed her a confession, therefore, and I made it in the way
of inscribing on the page of her album the lamentable word “Past!” in
English.
But now Elvira showed herself in her whole greatness. She said, “My
friendship shall not only be sworn, it shall be proved too.—I step back,
I renounce—be Friedrich von Hadeln yours.” And I could set down in the
album, “On the 8th of July you have proved your friendship.” For a while
I hesitated to accept the self-sacrificing present, but in a short time
I seem to have given in, since so soon as July 13th I could set down
that it was no longer past. “You are beautiful, you are brilliant,—by
the gift of your hand he will become a thousand times happier than by
insignificant me—therefore I renounce, not only for your sake but for
his.” These reasons she adduced, and such as these; and I took
possession of the sweetheart so nobly resigned to me, took possession so
thoroughly that henceforth our games of puff assumed a new form. I
remained the heroine, but the hero no longer played different parts; he
was always Friedrich von Hadeln again and again, only in different
situations.
But the drollest thing about this schoolgirl romance is that next summer
we really made the journey to Wiesbaden again, that we met Him there,
and that he paid neither of us the least attention. This reality
speedily sobered us. We did not laugh at each other as we deserved, for
we had too much respect for the conflicts of soul that we had undergone;
but we were cured. And in later years we laughed, too, over the story.
III
AN AUTOGRAPH ALBUM
Anastasius Grün · Friedrich Halm · Grillparzer · Wagner · Lenau’s
sister · Military autographs · King Ludwig of Bavaria · Schiller’s
daughter · Liebig · Schücking · Mädler · Körner · Anderssen ·
Meyerbeer · Rückert · Hebbel · Gregorovius · Lamartine · Victor Hugo ·
Manzoni · Dickens
I will still linger over that album. There sounds forth from the book,
as it were, a whole chime of tones from the past; a whole procession of
spirits—right illustrious spirits among them—goes by. Ah, that is the
fine thing about youth, that it operates with as many hopes as old age
does with memories; to it the joyous “will be” beckons from every
quarter—to age the gloomy “has been” shows itself at all points.
So let us turn the leaves. Here is a letter from Anastasius Grün[4] to
Elvira, in its envelope. The poet writes:
Esteemed young Lady:
Your letter addressed to my dear wife bespeaks so unaffected a frame
of mind, so noble an aspiration, and at the same time so tender and
womanly a disposition, that it would in any case come very hard for me
to decline the request addressed—properly speaking, to me—in so
earnest a tone, even were it one less easy of fulfillment. Busied as I
am at this moment, I must to-day limit myself to these few lines, that
I may not again, as I lately did by inadvertency, miss a date set by
you. I hope the opposite leaf [it is not in the album] may meet with a
friendly reception from you.